WeKan

What WeKan does

WeKan is a kanban board application that follows Trello’s model closely: boards contain lists of cards, and cards carry descriptions, checklists, labels, due dates, attachments and comments. WeKan adds swimlanes, so a board can be split by team, client or priority as well as by stage, and updates appear in real time for everyone viewing a board. Board, list and card templates can be shared across an installation.

The project has grown well beyond basic kanban. The README lists table, calendar, timeline and several Gantt views, a Scrum mode with product backlog, sprints, velocity and roadmap, and a long set of flow charts such as burndown, burnup and cumulative flow. A rules engine automates actions on cards in a similar way to Trello’s Butler. Dependencies between cards can be drawn as colored lines for PI planning.

Importing and exporting

Migration is one of WeKan’s strengths. The README lists importers for Trello, Jira, Asana and monday.com, along with many other task tools, issue trackers and open formats such as CSV, Excel, Markdown and plain-text task lists. Several exports can be imported at once, each becoming its own board. Boards can be exported to PDF, Excel, CSV, JSON, an iCal feed and the formats of many other tools, which lowers the risk of lock-in. The list is very long, so test an import from your own data before you commit.

Self-hosting WeKan

WeKan is built with Meteor on Node.js. It can be installed as a Snap package with automatic updates, with Docker or docker-compose, on Kubernetes, or from a bundle. The default database is now FerretDB on SQLite on every platform, so no separate database server is needed. PostgreSQL via FerretDB and MongoDB 6 to 9 are also supported. The README asks for 1 GB of free RAM for WeKan itself and at least 4 GB in total on a production server. Attachments can be stored on the filesystem, in the database or on S3-compatible, Azure or Google Cloud storage. Login options include SAML, LDAP, OAuth2 and passwordless sign-in.

The project stresses updates: only the newest version is supported, and the README warns that old versions have security issues because of outdated dependencies. Plan for frequent upgrades, which is easiest with the Snap package.

Hosted version

The maintainer’s commercial support page lists an official SaaS with an admin panel, as well as paid support plans and paid feature development. A public demo board is available at boards.wekan.team.

Limitations

WeKan changes quickly and adds features at a high rate, which means frequent updates and occasional rough edges. Its extra views and Scrum tools sit on top of a kanban model, so it is not a full replacement for an issue tracker with configurable workflows such as Jira. Meteor is a less common framework, which matters if you plan to modify the code.

Who it suits

WeKan suits teams and individuals who want a self-hosted Trello replacement under a permissive license, especially those who need to bring boards over from Trello or other tools. If you prefer a smaller and more stable kanban tool, look at Kanboard. If your team already runs Nextcloud, Nextcloud Deck adds boards to it.