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So the truth is, Sunsama is one of the best daily planners on the market. It has a great user experience and a beautiful interface, and they have really honed in on their target market: people who love the ritual of daily planning. The people who love Sunsama most are those who come from using pen & paper for planning their tasks, and they enjoy spending 10-15 minutes mindfully planning their day 🧘♀️. But given you're on this page, our guess is this doesn't sound like you, so let's give you some better alternatives.
The first tool to consider (and what we use, as we don't have time for daily planning rituals when running the business), is Motion. Similar to Sunsama, Motion allows you to add in tasks but instead of you needing to manually plan your day, you just tell Motion the priority, deadline, start date, and it will automatically schedule the task into your day. What is this experience like? Well, you wake up, look at your calendar, and you see what you need to work on for that day. It's the closest thing to having and assistant. For us as a team, it more than pays for itself in the time it saves us.
Another popular Sunsama alternative for professionals is Akiflow. Akiflow is what we'd call a task consolidation tool. Basically, it's a task app, for all the tasks you have across every single software that you use. Have an email to answer? Task in your project management software? Message from Slack? Well, integrate all those apps to Akiflow so you have one master to-do list. Similar to Sunsama, you still need to manually time block tasks on your calendar, but you can also just keep them in a list format and triage through them that way. It's similar to Sunsama but with less of the "ritual planning" and "intentional planning".
Then you have your more barebones Sunsama alternatives like Morgen Calendar, Amie Calendar, Routine, and Todoist. All of these apps have a free tier, which might sound appealing, but you will be asked to upgrade at a point to unlock certain useful features.
Morgen & Amie are more so calendars first (rather than daily planners first). They allow you to add basic tasks or reminders on your calendar in time blocks, but they are both way more barebones than Sunsama. If you're looking for a more simple version of Sunsama, either apps are worth trying (heads up, Amie is iOS only at the moment, Morgen is Android + iOS).
Routine is a basic daily planner where you can add tasks and drag them onto your calendar, although it's still more basic than Sunsama. They are in building mode so they currently have a free tier, but unsure how long that will last.
Finally, Todoist is a Sunsama alternative if you just want an app to throw tasks in. While Todoist has a calendar view available on their Pro plan, it's also quite barebones compared to Sunsama. Todoist was always known for their simple tasks lists, and they recently introduced a calendar view due to popular demand from their customers. That said, it's a secondary feature rather than the main way folks use Todoist.
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Motion isn't just a calendar, scheduler, task manager or project manager. It's really an assistant that takes all of this unique information, and uses it to build your perfect day, making it one of the best productivity tools on the market.
Motion is a great alternative for those seeking a daily planner or a project management solution.
It's differentiation comes into play with their AI scheduler that helps you plan your day (one of Motion's best features). Entering a task with Motion is easy, whether you're on your desktop app or mobile app. Simply tell Motion the task, the length of time to complete the task, the priority, the start and due date and Motion will organize your day based on what you entered and schedule tasks on your calendar into time blocks. For example, say you have a jam packed day, but and urgent task comes up. Simply tell Motion it needs to be done ASAP and it will shift all your other tasks to make space for the new task.
We personally use Motion here at Efficient App after using a myriad of tools over the years, including Asana, Calendly and Chili Piper. We love it as a project management solution, daily planner for time blocking and a meeting scheduler.
For those seeking a project management tool that is simple (< 50 team members), we recommend Motion as an alternative to Asana, ClickUp and Monday. While with Motion, you won't get reporting or dashboards for your tasks, it's helpfulness comes into play with team collaboration as all team members have tasks auto-scheduled right on their calendar. Motion is more focused on helping teams "get more deep work done" rather than "managing the work that needs to get done".
In the daily planning app category, Motion app has the most differentiation as it leverages the AI scheduler. Other tools like Sunsama or Akiflow are for those who want to manually plan their tasks onto their calendar, while Motion is more for the "hands off" type of folks who just want to show up to start their work day and see what's on the agenda to get done.
Motion's meeting scheduler makes it easy to share your availability with others to allow others to book meetings with you. If a new meeting is booked in, your daily tasks will be automatically re-scheduled around your new meeting. Viola! ✨
Overall, Motion is our top choice for an alternative to consider.
A daily planner tool to help you centralize your schedule.
Akiflow is one of the top daily planner alternatives that most folks consider. Akiflow integrates with almost anything through their Zapier connector and allows you to pull your tasks into an universal inbox. Imagine tasks from your email, project management software, CRM and Slack all filtering into one inbox that you can triage through.
If you're juggling multiple tools like email, Google Calendar, Asana, ClickUp, and Slack, and want a daily planner to help you with time blocking, Akiflow could be a suitable option, as long as you're happy manually planning those tasks onto your calendar.
Akiflow's powerful command bar allows you to plan tasks into time blocks on your calendar, snooze tasks, mark as done or assign labels for categorizing tasks. You can do all this through keyboard shortcuts, without even touching your mouse.
Like with other daily planner apps, your tasks can be scheduled on your calendar into time blocks. You also get progress visualization to see how close a task is to being complete.
While other daily planners like Motion use AI to auto schedule your tasks onto your calendar (read our Motion app review), Akiflow along with Sunsama are the daily planners to use if you prefer to manually plan your day. We think Sunsama has a slightly more beautiful minimalistic design than Akiflow, although if that's not important to you, but integrations are, then Akiflow would be a better choice for you.
Akiflow along with Motion are the two daily planner apps that have meeting schedulers built in as a part of the tool. Akiflow's scheduler allows you to schedule and manage meetings, and share your availability with others.
Overall, if you're looking for a daily planner that can consolidate all your tasks from different tools in one place and integrations with numerous tools is important to you, then consider Akiflow.
Turn to-dos into daily action plans.
Morgen is the best calendar alternative for those who are using iOS or Android and just want something simple. Morgen has a smooth user experience that is intuitive and nice design. It's a great all around calendar for your desktop + phone (although you'll need to upgrade on the paid tier to use it on your phone).
You can schedule meetings via a booking link, and manage basic tasks/reminders within Morgen. We recommend Morgen more for individuals managing personal tasks and simple work tasks.
As a daily planner alternative, Morgen is quite barebones and simple compared to others on the market. We recommend using Morgen if you more so want to dabble with daily planning with basic tasks to see if it's for you.
The all-in-one work platform Routine is the next-generation platform for professionals and teams to get things done faster!
Routine is for individuals who are looking for a personal app to help with habit building, daily planning, task management and time blocking. It is an alternative for those looking for a personal task manager with time blocking capabilities, but less so an alternative for those looking for a daily planner for professional use.
The reason we categorized Routine for more personal use is because it's yet to integrate with other project management tools and has a less responsive time blocking experience than it's alternatives.
For instance, if you have a last minute task that arises, with other daily planner alternatives like Motion, Sunsama and Akiflow you can simply move around the task into a new time slot, shifting everything in a responsive fashion, with Routine would require you to manually shift all the other tasks around also which is time consuming.
If you're new to time blocking and daily planning, definitely consider signing up for Routine as they have a free forever tier. Their free plan will let you plan your daily habits and tasks and you can see if it keeps you more on track with your specific needs. If you feel like you wish Routine has more functionality for business needs as you're using the app, then perhaps try a free trial of the other daily planners mentioned to see if any can help you get work done faster.
Routine is a beautifully designed app. Both the desktop app along with the mobile app are simply beautiful. We applaud the team for their design decisions 👏
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The all-in-one work platform Routine is the next-generation platform for professionals and teams to get things done faster!
Consider Amie as a calendar alternative if you are just looking for something that is beautifully designed and you want a better user experience than Google Calendar. With Amie Calendar, you can add basic tasks, integrate your emails, and have basic meeting scheduling links. Amie Calendar is best for individuals looking to manage their personal tasks and some simple work tasks/reminders.
Amie currently has a free tier so if you're just looking for a beautifully designed calendar with minimal task management, we'd say it's worth giving it a shot. Especially if the term "anesthetic software" resonates with you.
As a daily planner alternative, Amie is quite barebones compared to others on the market. We recommend using Morgen if you more so want to dabble with daily planning with basic tasks on your calendar to see if it's for you. If you're super serious about time blocking tasks on your calendar, consider another alternative.
The all-in-one work platform Routine is the next-generation platform for professionals and teams to get things done faster!
Todoist is a task management alternative for those who want an all around good-yet-basic task management app. With Todoist, you'll get task lists, kanban boards, and a calendar view (on the Pro tier). If you don't want all the bell's and whistles, yet want a modern task management app for personal tasks, then consider Todoist.
Consider Reclaim AI as a scheduling/time management alternative if you have many meetings and want an automated way to allocate time for focus work, lunch, and other activities throughout the day.
Reclaim was designed for folks working in corporate who feel the stress that there are not enough hours in the day to get work done (or eat lunch for that matter), and their team members are constantly pulling them in for meetings because they see an empty calendar. Not anymore with Reclaim as you can set Habits that will automatically block off time in your calendar. Reclaim uses AI to find the perfect time for all your habits each day, therefore allowing you to literally "reclaim" your time.
Notion Calendar is a free & beautiful calendar app alternative. If you just want a free, nicer looking calendar, that allows for basic meeting scheduling, then Notion Calendar is a great choice.
If you're considering Notion Calendar as daily planner alternative, that's where it falls apart. To use Notion Calendar for as a daily planner, you'd need to be using Notion for task management, which strongly advise against (Read our full Notion Review to understand why). While avid Notion users (who have built their own task management system) may benefit from using Notion + Notion Calendar, this is not recommended for the average person—don't start down this rabbit hole. Instead, use any other daily planner alternative listed and you'll be in a better spot 👌
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