When we founded Atlassian 15 years ago, it seemed obvious to us that software could help teams work better together. But in those days most software companies were focused on developing for personal productivity. We felt that using tools designed for individuals to accomplish teamwork is a bit like using scissors to mow your lawn. You can do it, but it’s a lot harder than it needs to be. That’s why we focused on building for teams from day one.

Fast forward to today and there are still surprisingly few companies building software for teams. One company that has had breakout success is Trello. Over the past five years, Trello has grown to over 19 million registered users by solving an important problem: capturing and adding structure to fluid, fast-forming .

Trello’s pioneering use of an intuitive visual system has been embraced by all kinds of teams to do everything from managing marketing campaigns to tracking action items from team meetings. Organizations in nearly every country and as varied as the Red Cross and Google have adopted Trello to get work done.

Today, I am thrilled to announce that we have entered into an agreement to acquire Trello and add their amazing product to our growing family.

Choosing the right tool for your team

Atlassian’s mission is to unleash the potential in every team. That’s a big mission. In Trello we found a group that is as dedicated to helping teams get stuff done as we are. In fact, we have identical milestones towards achieving our missions: for our tools to be used by 100M people.

Atlassian tools are built to help all teams organize, discuss and complete their work. By adding Trello to the Atlassian family, we’re giving teams more choice in the tools they use to support the way that they want to work.

Trello will become an important part of the Atlassian portfolio, offering a fun new way for teams to organize the often messy range of information that feeds into great teamwork. Its card system is intuitive, easy to use, and instantly familiar, which has made it extremely popular with teams across marketing, legal, HR, sales and beyond.

One of Trello’s strengths is its flexibility. You control how the board looks and operates so you can mold it to how your team works, and track progress in stages that reflect your processes. You can take this flexibility a step further by integrating the tools you already use with Trello as Power-Ups that extend the functionality of the boards to meet your team’s unique needs.

The Jira family of products will continue providing purpose-built experiences such as Jira Software, the #1 tool for agile software teams; Jira Service Desk, a beautifully simple service desk solution for IT and business teams; and Jira Core for project and process management.

tools excel at work that benefits from a well-defined, traceable, and repeatable process, whilst Confluence is great for teams creating and collaborating on documents and rich content. Trello perfectly fills a gap between the structured workflows of Jira and the free-form collaboration of Confluence and will give teams the option to find the right Atlassian tool for the type of work they need to complete. Keep an eye out for integrations between these products in the near future.

What happens now

We’re thrilled to welcome the talented Trello team to Atlassian and look forward to working with them to change the way teams work together. Deep investments in R&D have long been a cornerstone of Atlassian’s business and we will continue that tradition with Trello.

If you currently use Trello as either a free or paid user, you can rest assured that we will continue to offer Trello as a standalone service. We’ll be working with their product team to help them accelerate development efforts. If you are an Atlassian user, I encourage you to set up an account on Trello and check out how it might work for your team.

Teams have always been the critical element of successful organizations. We’re excited about the opportunities that lie ahead in unleashing the potential of every team.

Get to know Trello