Everyone's going to recommend the usual suspects—Asana, Monday, ClickUp—and they're all wrong for this. They're either glorified spreadsheets or so over-engineered they need a full-time admin to manage the workflow bloat. You're a marketing agency, not a software dev shop sprinting in Jira.
Trello's problem isn't the feature set for 50 users; it's that it becomes a visual graveyard. You need something that enforces process without feeling like one. The real metric isn't user count, it's the number of simultaneous, client-facing projects with distinct teams and approval stages.
Forget the "best" and think about the least annoying. You want structured data behind the cards, not just comments and checklists. You also need to scale without the per-user price gouging. Most of the "powerful" alternatives charge you for every account, even the client stakeholders you just need to poke for feedback.
Look at Height, or maybe SmartSuite if you're not terrified of something that feels like Airtable built a project layer. The goal is to replace Trello's "boards" with something that can actually connect a creative brief asset, to the review stage, to the client approval, without everyone losing their minds. Most of the reviews you'll read are from teams of five who just moved their grocery lists to a new platform. That's not you. Your migration will hurt because of the history and the in-flight projects. Pick something that lets you import from Trello cleanly, then lock down the workflow so the "move fast" people don't turn it back into a colorful mess.
Anecdotes aren't data.
Hey there, we were in almost this exact spot last year. I'm a solutions lead for a 45-person creative agency, and our entire production pipeline - from initial brief to final client sign-off - runs on Height after migrating from Trello. We evaluated every tool you mentioned plus a few more. Here's the raw breakdown from our 10-month production run.
**Core Comparison:**
- **Structured Data & Process Enforcement:** SmartSuite is the strongest here if your team can handle an Airtable-like interface; you build custom "applications" so a card can have a strict field for "Client Feedback Due Date" linked to an approval record. Height handles it with "Custom Attributes" which are less flexible but far simpler; we have dropdowns for "Stage" and "Client Stakeholder" that lock columns, so cards can't just linger in "Client Review."
- **Pricing for External Guests:** This is the killer. Height's "Collaborator" seat is free for view-only/comment, and we've added ~15 clients this way. SmartSuite charges for "Member" licenses if they need to edit anything in a record, which they always do. Asana/Monday charge for *any* external guest at a full member rate, which blows the budget. For 50 internal users, expect $7-9/user/month on Height's Pro plan; SmartSuite runs $10/user/month minimum.
- **Migration & Ramp-Up Effort:** Moving from Trello, Height was a 2-week process using their CSV import; the biggest lift was mapping our old labels to the new custom attributes. SmartSuite required a full schema design before import, which took us a month of planning and testing. The "over-engineered" feeling you fear is real with SmartSuite; you need a part-time admin for the first 90 days.
- **Where It Breaks:** Height's reporting is basic - it's fine for workload per team but can't build complex cross-project dashboards. SmartSuite can, but building them is a project itself. Also, Height's sub-task handling feels tacked-on; we use comments with due dates for tiny steps instead. Both have native Slack integration, but Height's webhook configuration is more straightforward for connecting to our asset management system.
**My Pick:** Go with **Height**. It's the least annoying transition from Trello that actually adds the structure you need without a full-time admin. It solves the "visual graveyard" problem with column rules, and the free client stakeholders are a massive, real-dollar win. If you need deep, relational data behind every card (like a full creative brief database), then look at SmartSuite, but be prepared to tell us your team's appetite for building those table relationships.
Integration Ian
That's a critical point about pricing for external guests, and I think it's the make-or-break factor for many agencies. It's so easy to underestimate how many client stakeholders need just that light, comment-only access. Charging full member rates for them is a non-starter.
Your Height collaborator example is spot on. I'd add a caveat about checking what that "view-only" access actually looks like for each tool, though. In some platforms, it's so restrictive clients can't even see attached files properly, which defeats the purpose. The goal is transparency, not frustration.
How has your team handled client onboarding to the tool? Did you find it created more clarity, or did you have to field a lot of "how do I..." support questions initially?
Keep it constructive.
Exactly. We used a tool where "view-only" meant clients couldn't download the final asset proofs from the card. Defeated the whole point. They just emailed us anyway, creating chaos.
Onboarding is always a pain. We made short Loom videos for common actions and it cut questions by 80%. Clients don't read guides. They want to click the thing and see the file.
The real test is when a client tries to do something the permissions block. If your team gets a support ticket, the tool failed.
slow pipelines make me cranky
Totally feel you on the file download issue. We had the same painful lesson with a different platform - clients couldn't even view image previews in "view-only" mode, so they'd just screenshot their own monitors and send blurry cropped pictures in Slack. Completely broke the review cycle.
Your Loom video trick is golden. We found that embedding those video links directly into the card template (like in the description of an "Approval" column) worked even better than sending them separately. Clients would hit the button and the help was right there.
The support ticket metric is brutal but true. The moment your PM has to explain "how to click," you've lost.
Automate all the things.