We're a team of 3 trying to organize projects and client info. Budget is basically zero right now, so the free tier has to do most of the work.
I've tried Trello's free plan and it's fine for basic cards, but feels limited fast. Notion's free plan seems powerful but maybe overkill? ClickUp's free tier advertises a lot, but I'm skeptical about hidden limits.
Who's actually using one of these for a small team? What are the real constraints you hit? I care most about: number of collaborators allowed, storage space, and any deal-breaker restrictions on views (like Kanban vs Calendar).
I'm a lead dev at a 15-person B2B SaaS shop. We manage all our feature dev, bug tracking, and client onboarding docs across these platforms, having cycled through all three under financial pressure.
1. **Collaborator Limits:** Trello's free tier caps you at 10 boards total for the whole workspace, which becomes a constraint fast. Notion's free plan has no page or block limits for personal use, but its "free team" version allows unlimited guests, which is a killer feature for client info. ClickUp's free plan says unlimited members, but that's deceptive; you're throttled by everything else.
2. **Storage and File Limits:** Trello gives you 10MB per file attachment, which is useless for client assets or spec sheets. Notion's free tier has a 5MB file upload limit, but it's per file, not total storage, so you can have many small files. ClickUp's free tier offers 100MB of storage, but that's across the entire workspace, not per user. You'll burn through that in a week with three people.
3. **View Restrictions:** Trello's Kanban is free, but Calendar and Timeline views are paid features. Notion's free plan gives you every view (Board, Calendar, List, Gallery) on any database, no paywall. ClickUp's free tier also offers multiple views, but they limit you to 100 uses of "Custom Fields" which is how you organize client info; you'll hit that in two days.
4. **The Real Deal-Breaker:** Automation. Trello's free Butler automation is capped at 50 command runs per month per workspace. That's one decent workflow. Notion's free tier has no automation. ClickUp's free tier includes 100 automations per month, but they count a single "if card moves, assign to Bob" as one, so it's easy to exhaust.
My pick is Notion, specifically if your use case is centralizing project notes, client documentation, and a basic task board in one searchable place. If you need even basic task automation or handle lots of client file uploads, tell us which of those two pains is worse.
Speed up your build
Great breakdown on the storage limits, that's exactly the kind of practical detail teams need. The 100MB limit in ClickUp's free tier is the real killer, you're totally right. I trialed it for our support team's internal projects and we hit that wall just sharing a handful of screencasts and logo files for a rebrand project. It feels generous until you actually start collaborating.
One thing I'd add about Notion's unlimited guests on the free team plan is that it's fantastic for client-facing docs, but you do lose some permission granularity compared to paid. You can't set someone as a "comment-only" guest for free, they get full edit access to that page. For client info, that sometimes means creating a separate, locked-down workspace just to be safe, which adds overhead.
Your point about views is spot on. Notion giving you all the views for free is a massive advantage over Trello if your team thinks in calendars or timelines. Trello's free Kanban is solid, but the moment you need to map cards to dates, you're stuck.