Disclosure first: Grünberg.Digital builds and runs its own editorial planner, RED. It is the third column below, and the feedback channel described here is the reason it exists. It costs nothing per seat, it is not free to build, and on every axis other than the feedback channel it is the least polished of the three. All of that is in the table.
An editorial plan has two jobs. The first is to decide what will go out, when and where. The second is to know what did. Almost every tool on the market does the first job well and the second not at all, because the second job requires the plan to look outside itself, and a board cannot see a website.
So the comparison is not about boards versus databases. It is about the feedback channel: does the plan find out on its own that the post is live, the mail was sent, the LinkedIn update went up? Or does a person tell it, which in practice often means nobody does?
1. Notion: the plan as a database
Notion publishes four plans. Free costs nothing and is aimed at individuals. Plus is listed at $10 per member per month and Business at $20 per member per month with yearly billing; Enterprise is custom pricing (Notion pricing page, checked 22 September 2026). The page says yearly billing saves "up to 20%"; the monthly per-member figure we could not read off the vendor's page itself, so it is not in this article.
The difference between Plus and Business matters for an editorial team because of AI. Plus includes only a limited trial of Notion AI; the full version (Notion Agent for chat, drafting, autofill and translation) comes with Business and Enterprise. Custom agents are metered separately: "free to try, then $10 per 1,000 monthly Notion credits" (same page, same date). A team that wants a language model to draft from the plan therefore prices Business, not Plus.
For eight people that is $80 a month on Plus, $160 on Business, billed yearly. Over three years: $2,880 on Plus, $5,760 on Business. In a company of eight where two people write the plan and six only read it, six of those seats pay for looking. That is the seat pricing problem from our twelve-tools comparison in its plainest form.
For the first job Notion is close to ideal. A plan is a database with a date, a channel, a status and a text; views turn it into a calendar, a board or a table; the draft lives in the same row as the schedule.
For the second job Notion offers a status field, and the status field is a promise. "Published" means somebody changed a dropdown. Whether the page is live or the LinkedIn post actually posted, Notion does not know. It has an API and database automations, and with those, or with an external automation service, you can build a check. At that point you are building the third column inside somebody else's tool, and maintaining it there.
2. Trello: the plan as a board
Trello publishes four plans as well, and it is the only vendor here that states both billing modes on its own page. Free costs nothing for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, with up to 10 boards and 250 Workspace automation runs a month. Standard is $5 per user per month billed annually, $6 billed monthly, with 1,000 automation runs. Premium is $10 billed annually, $12.50 billed monthly, with unlimited runs and the calendar view. Enterprise is shown at $17.50 per user per month, billed annually ($210 per user and year), as an estimate that depends on the number of users entered, and it goes through sales (Trello pricing page, checked 22 September 2026).
For eight people that reads:
- Free: $0. Eight people fit under the ten-collaborator limit.
- Standard: $40 a month billed annually, $1,440 over three years; billed monthly, $1,728.
- Premium: $80 a month billed annually, $2,880 over three years; billed monthly, $3,600.
Trello's strength is that a board is honest about its own nature. A card in the "Published" column is a card somebody dragged there, and nobody expects more. For short output, such as social posts or a weekly mailing, the board's speed matters more than a database's structure, and Trello's calendar and rule-based automation cover the routine.
The second job has the same answer as in Notion, only more visibly: the column is a claim. The card says the newsletter went out on Tuesday because a person moved it on Tuesday, or on Thursday when they remembered, or never. Trello's automation reacts to what happens on the board. It does not look at the website. Neither tool is at fault: a board and a database are containers, and nothing in them looks outside.
3. RED: the plan with a feedback channel
The third option is a plan that knows, for every line, how to check it. A blog line carries its future URL; the plan fetches it and marks the line live when the page answers. A newsletter line carries the mailing's identifier; the plan asks the sender. A social line carries the post's address; the plan looks. Nothing is dragged and nothing is promised. The status is a measurement.
That is what we built as RED, and this is what it consists of:
- A table with the usual fields (date, channel, title, status, text) plus, per line, the address at which the result can be checked.
- A checker that runs on a schedule, fetches each address and writes back what it found: live, missing, changed. For the blog that is an HTTP request; for the mailing it is a query to our own sender; for social channels it is a look at the post's page.
- A builder that turns a draft into the actual page in the website's own template, so that "publish" is a step the plan performs rather than a copy-and-paste into a CMS.
- A language model at two points: it proposes topics from what is already ranking and what has not been covered, and it drafts the first version of a text against the brand's own profile. A person edits; nothing goes out unread.
What this changes in practice is small and constant. The Friday question "what went out this week" has an answer that does not depend on anybody having updated anything. A line that says "scheduled" and is three days past its date is flagged by the plan itself, because it looked and found nothing. And which of last quarter's pieces are actually being found comes from the same table, because the checker also reads the search console export into the row.
The checker is only as good as the systems it reads. Where content goes out through a scheduling tool of the kind we described in our piece on social media automation, the check can read the tool's result. Where a mailing goes out through a hosted sender, the check needs that sender's API; we compared those senders in Mailchimp, Brevo or your own.
4. The concrete bill
Eight seats, three years, yearly billing where offered, published US-dollar list prices as cited above, taxes left out.
- Trello Free: $0, as long as the team stays at ten collaborators or fewer and ten boards are enough.
- Trello Standard: $1,440 (monthly billing: $1,728).
- Trello Premium: $2,880 (monthly billing: $3,600).
- Notion Plus: $2,880, with AI only as a trial.
- Notion Business: $5,760, with Notion AI included; custom agents extra at $10 per 1,000 credits a month.
- RED or any self-built plan: no seat price, hosting we pay anyway for the website, and the build.
The build is the line you fill in yourself. If website, mailing sender and plan already live on infrastructure you control, the checker alone is a small scheduled script; if not, each connection is its own project. Divide the three-year figure of the tool you would otherwise buy by your developer day rate. At an assumed $800 a day, Notion Business for eight seats buys a little over seven developer days over three years, Trello Premium or Notion Plus about three and a half, Trello Standard under two, Trello Free none. Beyond that, a self-built plan costs more on the invoice, and more again every time it needs maintenance.
5. The comparison on the two jobs
- Deciding what goes out. Notion: excellent. Trello: fast. RED: adequate; a table with a form.
- Knowing what went out. Notion: a status field somebody sets. Trello: a column somebody drags a card to. RED: measured; the plan checks the address and writes the result.
- Draft to publication. Notion and Trello: copy into the CMS. RED: the plan builds the page in the site's template.
- Who pays for readers. Notion and Trello paid plans: every member is a seat. Trello Free: nobody, up to ten people. RED: nobody; a reader is a login.
- AI drafting. Notion: full AI from Business. Trello: not the point of the product. RED: a model drafts against the brand profile, paid per request.
- Mobile, polish, marketplace. Notion and Trello: yes. RED: no.
6. Where our own option loses
It loses on price against Trello Free. A team of eight can run its plan on Trello for nothing, and no build beats nothing. It loses on onboarding: a new colleague learns Notion from the internet; they learn our plan from us. It loses on flexibility: adding a field to a Notion database is a click; adding one to ours is a migration. It loses on collaboration: Notion's comments, mentions and page history are years of product work that a table with a form does not have. And it loses on portability: if the person who built it leaves, the plan is a liability until somebody reads the code.
It wins on one thing: it knows what went out. Whether that one thing is worth the rest depends on how often your team has discovered, a fortnight late, that the newsletter everyone assumed was sent was not.
7. Verdict: the column is the symptom
If the "published" column on your board has ever been wrong for more than a day without anyone noticing, you have a feedback-channel problem, not a tool problem, and no template will fix it.
- Teams that write long content and have a reliable person updating the plan should use Notion. Plus is enough without AI; if a model should draft from the plan, price Business and accept the seat cost as the price of having draft and schedule in one row.
- Teams with short, frequent output should start on Trello Free, move to Standard when the automation runs or boards run out, and put the weekly "what actually went out" check in somebody's calendar as a task, not a hope.
- Teams that have been caught out should either build the checker, which against a table they already have is a small script, or ask whoever builds their website to add one. The feedback channel is not a product. It is a scheduled request to a URL.
Would you like to know how many lines of your current plan say "published" and are not? Book a free initial consultation: export the board, and we will check the addresses.
8. FAQ: editorial plans for small teams
Is Notion or Trello better for an editorial plan?
For long-form content with drafts, Notion, because draft and schedule live in one row. For short, frequent output, Trello. Both mark content as published only when a person says so.
What do Notion and Trello cost for a team of eight?
With yearly billing, Notion Plus costs $10 and Notion Business $20 per member per month: $2,880 or $5,760 over three years for eight seats. Trello is free for up to 10 collaborators; Standard costs $5 per user per month billed annually ($6 monthly), Premium $10 ($12.50 monthly), which for eight users over three years is $1,440 or $2,880 with annual billing. Prices from the vendors' own pricing pages, checked 22 September 2026.
Does Notion AI cost extra?
On Free and Plus it is only a limited trial; full Notion AI is included from Business. Custom agents are metered on top at $10 per 1,000 monthly credits (Notion pricing page, 22 September 2026).
What is a feedback channel in an editorial plan?
A way for the plan to find out, without being told, whether a planned piece actually went out: fetching the blog URL, asking the mailing tool whether the campaign was sent, checking the social post's address. The status becomes a measurement instead of a claim.
Can this be added to Notion or Trello?
Partly. Both have APIs and automations, and with those or an external automation service you can connect the plan to the website or the mailing tool. Each connection has to be built and maintained. It works, but you are then building the check inside a tool not designed for it.
What does a self-built editorial plan cost?
No seat price, hosting you usually pay already, plus the build and its upkeep. Compare the build with the three-year bill it replaces: for eight seats, between $0 on Trello Free and $5,760 on Notion Business. Its one advantage is the feedback channel; if that is not your problem, it is the wrong build.
