Stack replacement
Replacing Notion and Trello
A page describing the project and a board describing the same project, kept in step by somebody's memory.
What the move costs
Notion and Trello give a small team a place to write and a place to track, with no chat tool between them, so coordination happens in email, direct messages or in person. Notion pages import into Polaris Docs within fixed caps. Trello has no importer, so lists are rebuilt as lanes. Consolidating this stack adds team chat that neither tool provided.
- Notion
- Imports, 25 pages per run
- Trello
- No importer. Rebuild lists as lanes
- New capability
- Team chat this stack never had
The duplication is the whole problem
This stack has an unusual shape. Notion holds a project page with the plan, the context and a list of what needs doing. Trello holds a board with cards for what needs doing. Those two lists are the same list, written twice, in two products, by the same person, on two different days.
Keeping them in step is nobody's job and there is no mechanism for it, so they drift. The page says one thing, the board says another, and the team resolves it by asking whoever wrote them. On a team of five that works, which is exactly why the duplication survives for years.
The other unusual thing is what is missing. There is no chat tool here. Coordination happens in email, in direct messages on whatever people already use, or across a desk. That means the coordination is invisible and unsearchable, and it means consolidating this stack adds something rather than only removing something.
The move, item by item
| What you have | Where it goes | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Notion project pages | Docs, as a nested tree | Imports. A small workspace often fits in one run |
| Notion databases | Workstreams with lanes | Rebuilt. Properties do not transfer |
| Trello lists | Lanes, shared across list and board views | Manual, and usually quick |
| Trello cards with a member and a date | Tasks with an owner and a horizon | Manual. Type them as you decide they still matter |
| Trello cards with neither | A decision, then a task or the bin | This is where the value is |
| Card attachments | Re-uploaded by hand | No bulk path. Most are not worth moving |
| Nothing | Team chat | New. Nothing to migrate because nothing existed |
A migration a five-person team can do in a morning
- 1
Import Notion first, because it is the fastest win
Small workspaces often clear the whole import in a single run. Twenty-five pages per run, sub-pages three levels deep, sixty pages and fifteen hundred blocks in total. Text, headings, lists, to-dos with their checked state, quotes, code, callouts and dividers all arrive. Images, tables, databases and embeds are skipped and counted.
- 2
Rebuild the board from the page, not from the board
This is the trick that pays for the whole exercise. Open the Notion project page, not the Trello board, and create tasks from what the page says is actually needed. Then check the board for anything real that the page missed. You will find that one of the two lists was mostly obsolete, and the duplication ends there.
- 3
Start using chat for the coordination that was invisible
The decisions that were happening by email or across a desk now happen where the work is. This is the part that feels different a week in, because for the first time the reasoning sits next to the task rather than in somebody's sent folder.
Read next
A Notion alternative for teams tired of maintaining the database
Notion is the best place to write the plan. The question is who executes it once the page is written.
A Trello alternative for teams who outgrew ten boards
Trello made work visible to everyone. Visible work is still work waiting for a person.
Notion pricing, checked August 2026
Two seat prices and a second meter for AI, which is the part that surprises people on renewal.
Trello pricing, checked August 2026
The cheapest tracker on this list, and the one teams outgrow fastest.
Tool stack cost for a 5-person team
Three subscriptions, five people, and the arithmetic laid out so you can check it against your own invoices.
Replacing Trello and Slack
A board that everyone can read and nobody maintains, plus a channel where the real assignments happen.
Replacing Notion and Slack
A stack with a writing tool and a talking tool, and no place where a piece of work has an owner and a date.
Questions people ask
+Which should I move first, Notion or Trello?
Notion, because it is the only one with an importer and it takes minutes. Once the pages are in Polaris Docs, rebuild the board from what the pages say rather than from the cards. That order surfaces the duplication instead of copying it into a new tool.
+Will my whole Notion workspace fit in one import?
For a small team, usually. The limits are twenty-five selected pages per run, sub-pages to three levels, and a hard stop at sixty pages or fifteen hundred blocks. A workspace heavy on images and tables will report a high skipped-block count, because those are not carried across.
+We do not use Slack. Do we need to add it?
No. Polaris includes team chat, so this combination gains a chat layer without adding a subscription. Slack is in the connection catalog if you ever adopt it, but a team coordinating by email and in person has nothing to connect and nothing to migrate.
+What does it cost for a team of five?
The software is free with no seat count, so five people cost nothing. Charges start only when an AI worker delivers work, at roughly two dollars per human-equivalent hour, estimated by an open formula and logged job by job. Nothing delivered means nothing billed.
Related
A Notion alternative for teams tired of maintaining the database
Notion is the best place to write the plan. The question is who executes it once the page is written.
A Trello alternative for teams who outgrew ten boards
Trello made work visible to everyone. Visible work is still work waiting for a person.
Notion pricing, checked August 2026
Two seat prices and a second meter for AI, which is the part that surprises people on renewal.
Trello pricing, checked August 2026
The cheapest tracker on this list, and the one teams outgrow fastest.
Tool stack cost for a 5-person team
Three subscriptions, five people, and the arithmetic laid out so you can check it against your own invoices.
Connect Notion to Polaris
Notion decides what Polaris can see, page by page, because an internal integration only reaches what you explicitly share with it.
Replacing Trello and Slack
A board that everyone can read and nobody maintains, plus a channel where the real assignments happen.
Replacing Notion and Slack
A stack with a writing tool and a talking tool, and no place where a piece of work has an owner and a date.