When Trello Butler Rules Get Stuck
The first time I set up Trello Butler it felt almost too easy. I clicked into the card automation options, tapped a button that said something like create rule, and suddenly I had a trigger that moved every card with the word urgent to the top of the list. That lasted for about one week before something broke. The rule just stopped firing. Nothing in the Butler interface tells you why. My best guess at the time was that the trigger word was case sensitive because the moment I changed urgent to Urgent it came back to life. Honestly, it feels like Butler rules are sometimes picky about capitalization, list names, or even slight renames. Imagine editing a list title from Doing to In Progress — Butler quietly pretends you never told it what to do.
The funny part is that I have opened the automation log dozens of times hoping to see a red warning message like in Zapier, but Butler merely shrugs. The log looks like a history of what worked, not what failed. That means most of the debugging is just me creating temporary trigger phrases such as testpleasefire and waiting to see if anything happens 🙂 On days where I just need a small rule to clean up overdue cards Butler is great, but the second I tie it to multiple conditions I feel like I am rolling dice.
The Difference In Setup Speed
If a student asked me which one to try first, I would say Trello Butler simply because it is built directly inside Trello. No third party account, no webhooks configuration, just click a button near your card. That said, the time you save in setup you will pay back during troubleshooting. With Zapier, you spend more minutes connecting Trello as an app and authenticating an account, but once done you rarely have to touch it again. Butler makes you go in every so often like watering a plant, while Zapier feels like setting up a drip irrigation system and then ignoring it.
An actual example: I needed every card labeled Sales Lead to create a row in Google Sheets. Butler could not push directly outside Trello, so my only option was Zapier. Even though the Zap took longer to build (it asked me for spreadsheet names, worksheet ranges, column headers) it has been humming along for months without me touching it. Meanwhile Butler once ignored a rule that said when a card is completed set due date to today, and I only noticed two weeks later because cards piled up without deadlines ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.
Unexpected Triggers Double Fire
Zapier has this fascinating problem that caught me off guard once. I had a Trello trigger watching for new cards. Simple enough. Then I added another step that filtered by label. For unknown reasons Zapier fired twice for the same card creation. The first task slipped through because the card was saved before I even clicked a label, while the second task went through once the label appeared. Cost me extra tasks on the free plan. After digging around forums I realized this is because Zapier treats label addition as a card update, not creation. That kind of distinction does not appear in the main interface though, so you only learn about it by burning through your monthly run allowance.
Butler never double fires in that way, but it has its own issue: rules silently not firing if too many are active on the same card. If you stack conditions like when card is added to list move to top and also when label is applied copy to another board, sometimes it just runs one and skips the other. There is no order priority you can adjust, it is more like whichever one it feels like today. A student setting this up the first time will be confused why part of their automation appears to vanish without reason.
Costs That Sneak Up Unexpectedly
Both Butler and Zapier start free. Butler gives you a limited number of commands per month, which feels fine until you realize how quickly they count. Every individual move counts as one. If your rule says when a card is added move to top then add member then set due date, that is already three credits gone. I burned through the allowance faster than I thought, just testing. Zapier on the other hand charges by tasks, which means if your automation splits and branches you end up consuming them like snacks at a party.
What caught me off guard was that Zapier also eats a task for empty results. I once had a Zap filter cards that did not have a description. Instead of skipping gracefully, Zapier still ran the task up until the filter step and charged it. Multiply that across dozens of cards and suddenly I realized why my quota reset email kept arriving earlier than expected. And yes, I have shamefully upgraded a plan just because I was scared of automations stopping mid week 😛
Data Portability Outside Of Trello
Students often ask what happens if you want to push Trello data somewhere else. Butler is locked inside the board. You can move cards, rename them, assign people, and even send a chat notification inside Trello, but the moment you ask it to touch Google Sheets or Slack it throws up its hands. Zapier is built around the opposite world view. It almost assumes you want to move data out. I tapped three buttons and suddenly a Trello card label created a message post in Slack. That still amazes me because with Butler I cannot leave the walls of its garden.
One real problem I hit though: Zapier’s mapping menus list every single field from Trello in an overwhelming giant dropdown. Beginners will get lost choosing between Card ID, Card Short Link, Card Name, or Card Description. Half the time I click the wrong one, paste it in, run a test, and my Slack message comes out empty. Butler’s strength here is it only shows you simple options, so there is less chance of error. You trade power for clarity.
Debugging Without Losing Your Mind
With Butler, debugging looks like throwing darts blindfolded. You tweak one word at a time, hit save, and cross your fingers. Zapier has a huge advantage with its run history. It logs every step, every output, and will highlight the exact field that came back empty. That helped me once where my Trello trigger did not find a label field because labels were attached after card creation. The Zap history spelled it out with timestamps. With Butler I would never have seen that difference.
That said, Zapier’s debugging can get cluttered once you add multiple apps. I once had a Zap that touched Trello, Sheets, and Gmail. The run history included so much JSON output that my browser slowed to a crawl. I ended up copying and pasting chunks into a plain text file just to scroll through it. Butler never does this because it is contained, but then again there is nothing to debug if it hides the failure completely. So debugging with Zapier gives you a firehose while Butler gives you silence. Pick the poison that frustrates you less.
Which One Actually Saves Time
I always think of this question in terms of how many times I had to babysit the automation. Butler is fast when you want a single board action like moving cards every Friday or tagging overdue items. It saves time as long as your world stays inside Trello. The very second you want to expand across boards or apps, you will spend more time checking it than it saves. Zapier is almost the opposite. It takes longer to build the first time, but once you trust it the thing keeps running with fewer check ins.
For a beginner the best approach is to start by making one very small Butler rule. Something harmless like when a card is added add the yellow label. Watch it for a week. If it holds steady, then try a Zapier test like when a card is created copy name into a spreadsheet. Compare the results. That way you feel the difference in reliability before committing a lot of energy. Because learning this stuff in theory is comfortable, but the true education comes the first time a rule silently fails while you are depending on it.