Open Source Project Management: Replacing Asana and Trello Without Losing Your Team

If your team has grown past five people, you’ve probably hit the moment where a free Trello board starts feeling cramped and Asana’s pricing page makes you wince. Project management SaaS tools are convenient, but they charge per seat — and those per-seat costs scale linearly while your budget doesn’t.

A 15-person team on Asana’s Premium plan pays about $250 per month. That’s $3,000 a year for task tracking. Add a few power features on top, and you’re easily at $400+ per month. The same team can self-host an open source project management tool for the cost of a $10/month VPS.

This isn’t about being cheap. It’s about control. When your project data lives in someone else’s database, you’re subject to their pricing changes, their outages, their feature deletions, and their data policies. Self-hosting puts that data under your roof.

Let’s look at three open source project management tools that genuinely compete with Asana and Trello — and which one fits your team.

The Three Contenders

Plane: The Modern Asana Alternative

Plane is the newest of the three, and it shows. The interface is clean, fast, and will feel immediately familiar to anyone who’s used Linear, Asana, or Jira. It’s built for product and engineering teams, but works well for any team that thinks in terms of cycles (sprints), issues (tasks), and modules (projects).

What it does well:

• Issue tracking with custom statuses, priorities, and labels
• Cycle/sprint planning with burndown charts
• Kanban and list views out of the box
• Rich text editor with markdown support
• Email-in integration — forward client emails and turn them into issues automatically
• Integrations with n8n, Slack-compatible chat (Mattermost), and webhook triggers

Where it falls short:

• No Gantt chart or timeline view (as of this writing)
• Self-hosting requires Docker and a PostgreSQL database — more setup than a one-click install
• Still maturing; some advanced features (time tracking, budgeting) are limited compared to OpenProject

Best for: Product teams, software shops, and any team that wants a modern, fast issue tracker that doesn’t feel like enterprise software from 2008.

OpenProject: The Full-Featured Heavyweight

OpenProject is the most feature-complete option. If you’ve used MS Project, Asana’s Timeline view, or Jira’s full suite, OpenProject is the open source equivalent. It’s been around since 2012 and has a mature codebase.

What it does well:

• Gantt charts, timeline views, and milestone tracking — the best project visualization of the three
• Time tracking and cost reporting built in
• Bug tracking and wiki pages
• Meeting management with agenda templates
• Agile (Scrum/Kanban) and traditional (waterfall) project support
• Role-based access control for client-facing projects

Where it falls short:

• The interface is more complex — there’s a learning curve
• Heavier resource requirements; you’ll want at least 2GB RAM for a smooth experience
• Some advanced features (boards, Agile charts) require the Enterprise edition, though the Community edition is still very capable

Best for: Teams that need Gantt charts, time tracking, or client-facing project portals. Construction firms, agencies managing multiple client projects, and any team doing waterfall or hybrid project management.

Focalboard: The Trello Replacement

Focalboard (developed by Mattermost) is the simplest of the three. If your team uses Trello and you just want the same thing but self-hosted, this is your tool. It’s a kanban board, plain and simple — but it does that one thing very well.

What it does well:

• Instantly familiar to anyone who’s used Trello
• Can run as a standalone server or as a Mattermost plugin (if you’re already self-hosting Mattermost for team chat)
• Lightweight — runs on minimal hardware
• Boards, lists, and cards with custom properties
• Fast setup — you can have a board running in under 10 minutes

Where it falls short:

• No timeline, Gantt, or calendar views
• No built-in time tracking
• No sprint or cycle features
• The project has been in maintenance mode recently; updates are slower than Plane and OpenProject

Best for: Small teams (2–10 people) who just need kanban boards and don’t want the overhead of a full project management suite. Perfect if you’re already running Mattermost — it installs as a plugin.

Comparison at a Glance

Getting Started: Self-Hosting Plane with Docker

If you want to try the modern Asana alternative, here’s a minimal Docker Compose setup for Plane. You’ll need Docker and Docker Compose installed.

# docker-compose.yml — Plane self-hosted (simplified)
version: "3.8"

services:
  plane-db:
    image: postgres:15-alpine
    environment:
      POSTGRES_USER: plane
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${PG_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_DB: plane
    volumes:
      - plane-db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    restart: always

  plane-web:
    image: makeplane/plane-web:latest
    ports:
      - "8080:3000"
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://plane:${PG_PASSWORD}@plane-db:5432/plane
      NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL: http://localhost:8080/api
    depends_on:
      - plane-db
    restart: always

  plane-api:
    image: makeplane/plane-api:latest
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    environment:
      DATABASE_URL: postgres://plane:${PG_PASSWORD}@plane-db:5432/plane
      CORS_ALLOWED_ORIGINS: http://localhost:8080
    depends_on:
      - plane-db
    restart: always

volumes:
  plane-db-data:

Create a .env file with a strong password:

echo "PG_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 24)" > .env

Then bring it up:

docker compose up -d

Visit http://localhost:8080, create your workspace, and you’re running your own project management platform. No per-seat charges, no data leaving your network.

Tip: If you’re running this on a VPS, put it behind a reverse proxy like Caddy or Nginx with HTTPS. Let’s Encrypt certificates are free, and Caddy config is a few lines.

Connecting Project Management to Your Automation Stack

The real power of self-hosted project management isn’t just saving money — it’s that you can connect it to the rest of your automation stack. Here are three practical workflows:

1. Client Emails → Automatically Created Issues

Using n8n, you can monitor a shared inbox and automatically create Plane issues when client emails arrive. The workflow:

1. IMAP node watches the inbox
2. Ollama node (local LLM) classifies the email and extracts the subject, priority, and project
3. HTTP Request node sends a POST to Plane’s API to create an issue

No manual triage. Every client request becomes a tracked issue with a clear paper trail.

2. Time Tracking → Invoice Generation

If you’re using OpenProject’s time tracking, you can:

1. n8n scheduled trigger runs weekly
2. HTTP Request node pulls time entries from OpenProject’s API
3. Ollama node formats the data into invoice line items
4. HTTP Request node creates a draft invoice in your accounting system (Odoo, or a PDF generator)

Billable hours flow from time tracking to invoices without a spreadsheet in between.

3. Mattermost Notifications for Board Changes

If you’re running Focalboard as a Mattermost plugin, board changes can trigger Mattermost channel notifications automatically — no extra setup needed. For Plane or OpenProject, a simple n8n webhook can push updates to a Mattermost channel:

"When a card moves to 'Done' → post '#project-updates' → 'Task completed: [title]'"

Your team sees updates in the chat tool they already live in, without checking a separate dashboard.

How to Choose

The beauty of open source is that migration between these tools is possible — they all support data export. You’re not locked in the way you are with SaaS. Start simple, move up when you need to.

The Real Cost Comparison

Let’s be concrete. Here’s what a 15-person team pays over a year:

The VPS cost is the same whether you pick Plane, OpenProject, or Focalboard — a $5–10/month VPS from any provider handles any of them comfortably for a 15-person team. The savings over a year range from $780 (vs. Trello) to $3,336 (vs. Monday.com).

That’s not the whole story, of course. Self-hosting means you’re responsible for backups, updates, and uptime. But if you’re already running n8n, Ollama, or any of the other tools we’ve covered in this blog, adding a project management tool to the same server costs you almost nothing extra.

Making the Switch

If you’re moving from Asana or Trello, here’s the practical path:

1. Export your data — Asana and Trello both support CSV export. OpenProject and Plane both support CSV import.
2. Set up the tool — start with Docker Compose on a VPS or a spare machine.
3. Import your boards — map columns (Asana sections → Plane statuses, or Trello lists → Focalboard lists).
4. Run both in parallel for two weeks — keep your team on the SaaS tool while you validate the self-hosted setup.
5. Cut over — once everyone’s comfortable, turn off the SaaS subscription.

Most teams we’ve talked to complete this transition in under a month. The hardest part isn’t technical — it’s getting people to try a new interface. The interfaces on all three tools are good enough that the learning curve is measured in days, not weeks.

Wrapping Up

Project management tools are infrastructure — they should work for you, not the other way around. When you self-host, you get the features, keep your data, control your costs, and can connect the tool to the rest of your automation stack in ways that SaaS never allows.

Start with Focalboard if you want something simple. Go with Plane if you want a modern, fast experience. Choose OpenProject if you need Gantt charts and time tracking. All three are free, open source, and a Docker Compose file away from running on your own hardware.

Want help setting up self-hosted project management for your team? ARDOT Consulting specializes in open source automation and infrastructure. Reach out through our contact form and we’ll help you pick the right tool, get it deployed, and connect it to the rest of your workflow.