Trello

Trello is a kanban board: lists across the screen, cards you drag between them. That is very nearly the whole idea, and the simplicity is why it survives when heavier tools get abandoned after a fortnight.

How freelancers tend to use it

• One list per stage, so a job moves left to right: Enquiry, Quoted, In progress, Awaiting feedback, Invoiced, Paid
• One card per job, holding the brief, files, links and a running comment thread, so nothing lives only in your inbox
• Due dates and checklists for the multi-step jobs, so a half-finished piece of work is visible rather than remembered
• Power-Ups to connect calendars, time trackers and storage, and Butler to automate the repetitive card shuffling

Worth knowing

The free tier is genuinely usable on your own, which is unusual, and is all most solo freelancers ever need. It is owned by Atlassian, so it is not going anywhere.

Where it struggles is anything needing real project structure. There is no dependency tracking, no resource planning and no built-in time tracking or invoicing, so once you are juggling sub-tasks with deadlines that depend on each other you will feel the ceiling. It is a way of seeing your work, not a system of record for your business.

Who it suits

Best if your problem is "I have lost track of what is where" rather than "I need to plan a complex project". For a lot of freelancers that is exactly the problem, which is why it is often the only tool that sticks.