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Use AI to plan your work, automatically. Be 137% more productive. Use the AI assistant for busy people and work teams.
Motion (also often referred to as Use Motion and Motion App) is in a category of it's own that we've been referring to as time management…
Let me explain:
Motion's main goal is to take care of all of your team's needs revolving around time. If you're someone that wakes up in the morning and looks at their calendar app to see what you have on for the day, Motion App will fit in like a glove.
It connects in deeply with your Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar, and even Apple Calendar, allowing you to build out project management and task management for yourself and team members. The best part is that all of these tasks automatically organize themselves based on priority right onto your calendar (and your team's) to ensure the most important (and blocking) tasks get done.
If you've heard of the productivity app terminology of "time blocking", well Motion does that automatically using AI, no manual time blocking needed.
It even goes to the degree of allowing you to share meeting scheduler links with others, all while respecting your existing events across all of your calendars (and even your team's calendars), along with automatically inviting team members into the appointment once booked.
With your entire team using Motion, it's like you have a full-time personal assistant shared across the company, ensuring that everyone is getting deep work done all while focusing on what is most important (at the most ideal time), all while making sure that no one is ever double-booked.
All of this makes for an incredibly powerful tool for individuals, but exponentially more valuable with every additional team member you add. No other project management or daily planner tool on the market seems to go to this degree.
As compared to some of the best project management software on the market often mentioned like Asana, Monday, ClickUp, Motion has taken their sights on slightly smaller teams of between 1–50 people.
This team size target is based on their current feature-set, from what we've seen. For example, the larger teams that we work with who have many layers of management often require reporting capabilities over everything else. And with Motion, that's not something you're going to get, because they are currently focused on giving the only AI project management tool on the market focused on helping the individual and teams, over the needs of upper-management.
So if you and your team are used to spending a lot of time planning deadlines, and rearranging your "My Task" view in the existing tools on the market, Motion flips this on it's head with the use of AI. Something to consider if you're fed up with the manual work involved with traditional project management tools.
Compared to the best daily planner apps on the market like Sunsama and Akiflow, Motion is the only daily planner we've seen that actually leverages AI to plan your day for you. With all of the other apps in the category, you need to manually drag in tasks to time block and plan each day. This is an incredibly time consuming process, that some justify as being "more mindful", but once you actually have AI schedule your day for you, you realize how much time is actually wasted "mindfully planning your day".
Compared to the best calendar schedulers on the market like Calendly and Chili Piper, Motion bakes in the core functionality of these tools, with the added visibility of team tasks and urgent deadlines, actually booking off availability for you and your team if high priority work needs to get done by a quickly approaching deadline.
Large teams (100–500) with other enterprise software implemented will find integrating Motion more involved than other enterprise tools. When using an enterprise software stack like that of Salesforce, it's common for other project management tools to have native integrations.
With Motion, it will require a custom integration approach (something that we actually help teams do). But while it's possible, one might ask if it's worth making the large investment in a custom integration when you might be able to get something more native out of the box with the other tools focused on larger teams.
(This of course depends on the actual integration needs of your team, as native doesn't always do exactly what you'd like it to do).
Motion currently lacks advanced reporting and dashboard functionality. So while you can see at a top-level the status of projects and tasks in Kanban and Listviews, even a team workload view, that's about where reporting dashboards end, making it less suitable for large teams requiring extensive project analytics.
If all of that connects with you and you think it might fit your needs, they have a 7 day free trial that you can use along with your team to see what it's like having a personalized AI assistant.
Collaborative task manager and note taking tool for personal and small team use.
We'll be honest, when we first got a chance to check out and use Superlist, we were a bit thrown off—while it was one of the most beautiful productivity apps we've seen, we didn't quite know what it was trying to be, to that's where we reviewed it to compete in the best project management software space.
After reviewing it longer, seeing their feature roadmap a bit, and talking with the team, we realize now that Superlist is not trying to compete with Motion, Asana, Monday, or ClickUp, but rather, they're looking to compete in the more personal and small team task and note taking space.
So for those of you who are using Notion, Obsidian, Google Keep, Apple Notes, or even Bear, as your personal note taking tool, and a personal task management tool like Todoist, TickTick, Google Tasks, Superlist might be able to consolidate all of those tools for you in one place. Now that is something I can connect on the pain-point with.
If you're looking for a full-fledged team project management tool like Motion or Asana, you won't get what you're looking for here with Superlist.
The same goes if you're looking for one of the best daily planner apps or best calendar app like that of Motion, Amie, Sunsama, Akiflow, Vimcal, and others, you're going to left a bit disappointed using Superlist for those things.
I have been extremely excited to check this tool out. I've been on the waitlist for 2–3 years, checking in with them monthly about getting access and it's finally available to the public.
The largest appeal is that it was created by the team behind Wunderlist (which is a task manager that was sold to Microsoft in 2015 for between $100–200m). So if there's a team that understands task management deeply, it's this team.
They've even teased Superlist at Google I/O 2022 on stage, as an example of a tool built in Flutter (an open source framework by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase). This is important because this means everyone gets a native app—imagine having native MacOS + iOS + Android + Windows apps all generated from the same codebase.
This was the largest appeal, alongside the sheer beauty of their marketing site and in-app teaser screenshots:
What's cool is that with Superlist, you can assign to-dos to one another and due dates, which let's be honest, there are endless personal tasks any married couple needs to collaborate on.
Superlist is probably one the of most thoughtful/beautiful personal task managers out there. It has amazing UI/UX interactions. Heck, even marking a task as "complete" and "incomplete" plays the most relaxing noise (and it changes each time!). I was using TickTick for years and I'm seeing Superlist as a great alternative.
I think we're seeing what happens when you get tens of millions of dollars in venture backing and some of the best designers in the world to focus in the UI/UX. I mean heck, just go visit their website, it's incredibly beautiful.
Being able to also take notes and assign tasks to different individuals is also super cool as there aren't really a ton of good personal collaboration tools out there.
While Superlist is marketing itself for both personal and professional, we're more open to recommending it for personal use. Perhaps Soloprenuers and super small teams may be able to collaborate in a barebones way with Superlist, but we're still apt to recommend professional project management tools instead like Motion (what we use).
Keeping this in mind, we do want to point out that the Superlist team is has built the tool in a way that encourages you to use it for both work and personal. So much so that you can toggle on/off your "work" or "personal" notes/to-dos so that you can disconnect from work for example on the weekend.
Check out our full Superlist review here.
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Amie is a calendar app that helps you manage tasks and easily add emails as tasks to your calendar.
Amie doesn't try to hide what it is and isn't. It's a calendar at the core and like many of the other best daily planners on the market, they've gone and added some basic task creation functionality.
Where they've gone a step further is actually pulling in email to the mix. Depending on the type of person you are, maybe you want to turn emails into tasks and schedule them directly on your calendar in a time blocking fashion.
Amie is definitely not a full email client, although it is listed on the best email clients page, that's because it allows you to time-block on your calendar emails, and then respond to those emails from right within Amie.
That said, view it as more of a "feature" and less of a software category. When comparing Superhuman vs Amie for example, there's no match—Amie is not a full-fledged email app.
Turn to-dos into daily action plans.
Morgen Calendar falls into two categories. First and foremost, it's a calendar with a much more beautiful interface than Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Mail. If you're considering Morgen as a calendar for personal use, you can't go wrong as it will give you a much more elevated experience. The second category Morgen toes the line with is being a daily planning tool. But when considering it as a daily planner tool, it's quite barebones compared to other daily planners on the market.
For example, if you're considering Morgen Calendar for personal use and basic task management and you don't have a ton of things to manage within the app, then it's worth giving a shot. But if you're considering it for professional use, we recommend checking out tools like Motion (which offers AI auto-scheduling of tasks, and is a full-blown project manager—also is what we use here at Efficient App), Akiflow, or Sunsama. Even thought Morgen has started to build more professional features, it doesn't compare to the other tools we mentioned in terms of powering up your workflow.
When evaluating Morgen, we thought the user experience was quite swift, the the desktop app is intuitive and there was a minimal learning curve. The app works precisely as you'd expect.
Morgen has a free (albiet very basic) plan. Expect that you'll quickly want to upgrade to get access to unlimited calendars and task integrations with other tools (or even use a more fully-featured daily planner tool). You also need to upgrade Morgen to get access to their mobile app (something we think is a miss because to really get the most out of a tool, phone + desktop continuity is important 😬).
We're naming Morgen as the best daily planner for those who are unsure if daily planning is for them because it's perfect if you want to dabble into the world of daily planning, perhaps don't have a ton of tasks to manage, and just want to tinker rather than invest into a full-blown daily planner setup.
In general, we'd love to see Morgen become more differentiated with time, but for now, it's a relatively inexpensive calendar + barebones daily planner tool that will give you just enough features to keep you a bit more organized. That said, heavy users might find themselves outgrowing the tool fairly quickly, and yearning for more robust features.
Morgen Calendar has a desktop app (available on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android). You get all the functionality you'd expect from your normal calendar, but in a much more beautiful interface with a better user experience.
When it comes to daily planning, Morgen Calendar allows you to add super basic tasks (e.g. task name + deadline) and drag tasks onto your calendar. It will show you tasks that are upcoming or overdue, although it doesn't do anything to necessarily help you get more work done. Think of it as just being able to add static tasks onto your calendar. If you don't get them done, or if you want to categorize tasks with labels like you'd need for a bigger project, you can't do that in Morgen Calendar.
If you're already using a project management tool like Linear, ClickUp, or Notion, you can integrate your tasks with Morgen (heads up that integrations with Morgen Calendar are still very limited at this time, so check to see if your project management tool integrates before diving in!).
We're impressed with Morgen's user experience, especially for those who have very basic tasks to manage (or want to use it for personal use). But when it comes to professional use, it feels a bit too manual and barebones at the moment to fully rely on it as a business or for more robust task management.
For instance, if you miss a task deadline, you need to go back through your calendar and re-schedule all of your tasks, making it a manual tool to keep up to date accurately.
Morgen Calendar has a free tier although it is incredibly limited—you don't even get access to the mobile app on the free tier. We'd recommend starting off with the free trial (14 days) to get your head around the app, and then upgrading to the $9/month tier to unlock features such as meeting scheduling and the mobile app.
The all-in-one work platform Routine is the next-generation platform for professionals and teams to get things done faster!
Routine app falls into the daily planner + productivity tools category. If you are looking for a habit tracking app to help with daily routine planning, task management and, time blocking for personal use, Routine is an app to consider.
Compared to Motion, Sunsama, and Akiflow which are all task management tools, Routine is the newest kid on the block in the category and aimed for more personal use, while the others are more professionally focused.
Routine is for individuals who are looking for a personal app to help with habit building, daily planning, task management and time blocking. It has a beautiful and thoughtful user interface that makes it very aesthetically pleasing. You can also use it as your main calendar (as it integrates with Google Calendar) and take personal notes within Routine. Routine is a great introduction to using a productivity tool to help form good daily habits and manage your daily schedule.
Motion, Sunsama and Akiflow were built to be tools that can help you better manage your workload, while Routine is something we'd consider using as a "light" version of task management. For example, if you want to time block in more or less static blocks of time and want to build a routine (without much regular rearranging of tasks) then Routine is a great app to consider. Tasks that should go in Routine are healthy habits (e.g. drinking water or tasks to help manage mental health like meditation).
Routine is very much for individuals at the moment, not professionals. Their integrations with project management tools are limited (Notion is currently available while Asana and ClickUp are coming soon, according to the Routine app website). So if you are looking to centralize your tasks from other tools, tools like Akiflow or Sunsama would be much better choices for you.
If you are looking for a comprehensive project management tool, Routine would not be a choice to consider as it is very much a personal routine planner, habit tracking app and task management tool. If your team is not yet using a project management tool (or you individually know you need to manage larger projects), then considering something like Motion might be best as it would eliminate your need for a project management tool + a daily planning tool (it offers daily planning, time blocking, and calendar scheduling capabilities in addition to full project management capabilities).
Rating: C
When comparing Routine app to it's two closest competitors, Sunsama and Akiflow, Routine doesn't have too much differentiation with key features. It feels several steps behind the two apps and while it allows you to have note-taking capabilities (differentiating the tool), we much rather recommend people use proper note taking tools instead like Slite or Notion. The reason is because all your notes end up getting stuck within Routine and you can forget ever being able to collaborate on notes with others. The only share feature Routine has with notes is "exporting" which essentially copies the entire text. Depending on where you send the notes, all formatting can be lost which makes for a very frustrating experience. If you take notes in Routine, we'd recommend making sure they are just for yourself and you won't plan on needing them anywhere else!
Beyond that, Routine is much more a tool to use if you want to plan out your morning routine, or are craving a habit tracking tool with the ability to use free time slots to schedule daily tasks.
Rating: A-
This is where Routine shines. It is the most beautiful task management productivity tools on the market in terms of design. Aesthetically it is very pleasing to use, a gorgeous interface with minimalistic design.
Rating: C-
While Routine is gorgeous to use, we found the user experience limiting and frustrating quite quickly. Initially, integrating with Google Calendar, adding tasks, and dropping them on your calendar is easy.
But what if a task will take you two hours to do, and you urgently need to get it done and you have other tasks on your calendar? You'd imagine that dropping in a task at a specific time would automatically move your other tasks to accommodate for the new task, right? This isn't the case with Routine. You can drag the task to be as long as the free time slot, and beyond that you need to manually rearrange your entire schedule to accommodate the new task 😬😬😬
When you compare Routine vs Motion, Motion uses AI capabilities to arrange your day. Simply making a task low, medium or high priority will auto-schedule it for you based on importance, rearranging all your other tasks. This makes it way easier to arrange your schedule instead of spending time fighting with the tool to get your schedule right. This is why we say Routine app is much better for habit building and planning your daily routine rather than granular tasks.
Because of this, we'd say Routine might be helpful for static tasks like "Mental Health Check-In" or "Cook Dinner" but it's difficult to get super granular with tasks and time blocking as you would need for professional work.
Rating: B-
Routine only has an iOS app which is relatively new (only 4 reviews on the app store to date), with Android is coming soon. Routine can be used as your main calendar app on your phone (instead of Google Calendar) and it is much more beautiful than the others on the market.
Rating: C-
Routine currently doesn't integrate with very much beyond your Google Workspace tools and Notion. You can add tasks in from your email, Notion or manually enter tasks into the app. According to Routine's website, Slack, Asana and ClickUp integrations are coming soon. Although, even with these integrations, the tool doesn't appear to have an API coming in the near future which would make it difficult to build workflows with Routine. If you are using Asana or ClickUp and are looking for a time management tool with deep integrations and powerful workflows, consider Motion or Akiflow.
Is Routine app worth it? Routine currently has a free plan for hobbyists and students and this is where we think the tool probably fits best (not professional use). If you are looking for a productivity tool to help you track new habits, healthy habits, banish bad habits, and plan your daily routine then we think it can be a great app for that. The premium version is very much still under construction (coming soon).
If you're a business, we'd say it's probably best skipping Routine and opting in for something like Motion that along with their AI capabilities, will make you feel like you have a personal assistant helping you plan your projects, tasks and day. Alternatively, if you still enjoy manually planning your day, perhaps Sunsama would be the next best alternative for a workplace app.
The digital daily planner that helps you feel calm and stay focused.
Sunsama fits into the day planner app category, helping with task management and time blocking. Sunsama is one of the best planner apps for those who want to mindfully and manually plan their day.
Sunsama is great daily planning tool if you especially like physical (pen and paper) note taking/to-do lists and are looking for a way to bring tasks into the digital world. Sunsama definitely knows their target customer well as the software reflects a zen-like philosophy and ethos incredibly well. It has a calming minimal design and is super easy to use.
Sunsama's philosophy is centered around creating a healthy relationship with work, intentionally planning tasks and avoiding burning out. Those seeking more focus, calm, and harmony should try Sunsama.
Get Sunsama Extended 30 Day Trial.
When you open Sunsama each morning, the software asks "What do you want to get done today?". It shows your previously planned tasks and your calendar side-by-side, giving you an overview of your schedule. From there, you can either add or remove tasks from your day, and drag tasks onto your calendar for time blocking.
At the end of the day, you also participate in a daily shut down routine which shows you all the tasks you completed that day and how you spent your time.
While Sunsama is a daily planner, it is not a project manager. Users typically connect in other tools such as Monday, ClickUp, and Asana to pull in tasks from their project management software. Sunsama then takes care of the daily planning piece with your weekly view and calendar view.
When you compare Sunsama vs Akiflow, they are very similar. The differences more so lie within their marketing/philosophy. For instance, Sunsama has a stronger philosophy around taking a zen-like approach work, while Akiflow is more for those who just want a tool to triage through tasks. If "zen-like" approach doesn't sound like you, then check out Akiflow.
When comparing Sunsama vs Motion, you're going to get two very different experiences. Motion uses AI to intelligently plan your tasks onto your calendar, taking into account meetings and appointments, task priority and deadlines. Motion also is a full-fledged project management tool that teams can use.
Sunsama, on the other hand, has been very clear they don't intend to build AI auto-scheduling tools as they want to encourage their users to take the 10-15 minutes per day to plan their schedule (while Motion, for example, does this automatically).
If you've read to this point and phrases like "zen-like approach", "mindful planning" and "intentional scheduling" resonate, Sunsama is probably the right daily planner for you.
Make sure you use the link below for an extended 30 day trial (normally only 14 days, but with the link below you get a full month—and no credit card is required).
Get Sunsama Extended 30 Day Trial.
Sunsama's philosophy is built around taking the time each day to manually plan your tasks. With that, Sunsama doesn't plan on building any auto-scheduling features, like Motion for example, that uses AI to intelligently plan your day.
For some people, Motion's AI is overwhelming and they prefer having dedicated task planning sessions. For others, Sunsama feels a bit too manual therefore gets left by the wayside, wishing the app would help more with proactive planning.
Sunsama aggregates all of your tasks from the different tools that you use, like Monday, ClickUp, Asana, Trello, Gmail, and Slack. Using the native integrations available, you can drag tasks from the above tools into time blocks onto your calendar, and within a weekly planning view.
If you're a part of a team that is using any of the tools above and you're seeking a daily planner, Sunsama is a happy medium.
However, Sunsama does lack in task management functionality for multiple people and it also leaves much to be desired when it comes to planning and managing larger projects. With that, you'd need to use a project manager (e.g. Monday, Asana or ClickUp) to manage projects, and use Sunsama solely for daily planning.
Sunsama won't be building a project manager (likely ever) as they're clear they prefer you to integrate with third party tools to aggregate your tasks. If you're looking for a tool that can help with daily planning and project management and team collaboration, then we recommend checking out Motion.
Get Sunsama Extended 30 Day Trial. No Credit Card Required.
Is Sunsama worth it? If you are someone that thrives on daily task planning and enjoys the process of planning your day, give Sunsama a shot.
It might be the key to keeping you more organized, all while bringing you a bit more enjoyment in the day-to-day and with that, it's definitely worth it.
A daily planner tool to help you centralize your schedule.
Akiflow is one of the best daily planning apps that helps you consolidate your tasks from many different apps in one central inbox. The Akiflow team built the app as a responsive to the frustration of using multiple tools to manage calendars, tasks, and plans. With Akiflow, you have one app that allows you to time block tasks and manage all your to-dos without having to switch between tabs and windows.
Akiflow has a relatively simple UI/UX with a powerful command bar that helps you complete, plan or snooze tasks straight from your keyboard.
Say you're using Trello, Slack, Google Calendar, Notion, and Todoist for work. Akiflow integrates with all of these tools to pull your tasks from each app into one central inbox. The idea is that having all of your tasks in one place will mean less forgetfulness when it comes to your to-dos and staying on top of what you need to action.
From your central inbox, you can drag tasks onto a calendar for time blocking or you can triage through your tasks with keyboard shorts such as "P" to plan for later or "S" for snoozing. Akiflow keyboard shortcuts are similar to those of Superhuman, so the tools compliment each other quite well. You can also use Akiflow's shortcuts anywhere on your desktop. Say there is a webpage you want to read later? Add it to Akiflow within seconds by opening up your command bar.
Akiflow also allows you to quickly share your availability and create bookable links for others to schedule meetings onto your calendar.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
Normally folks compare Akiflow vs Sunsama or Akiflow vs Motion. Akiflow is most useful for someone whose main problem is the lack of task consolidation from third party apps.
Compared to Sunsama, Akiflow has a basic API so you can pull in tasks from any app that has a Zapier connector (e.g. Monday, Salesforce, or Copper to name a few).
Sunsama also takes a more "zen-like" approach to daily planning and is marketed to folks who want to "intentionally plan their day". If you like the idea of daily planning, but the words "mindful planning" don't resonate, Akiflow is better suited for you.
When comparing Akiflow vs Motion, the tools are very different. Motion is a full-fledged project manager and uses AI to automatically plan your tasks on your calendar. If you're looking for an assistant when it comes to planning, Motion would be a better bet.
If leveraging AI to plan your day sounds overwhelming or "too much", and if you're main pain point is just "getting all tasks from different apps in one place" then Akiflow could be the best app for you.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
You can easily add too many tasks to Akiflow so some self-discipline is a good idea. For instance, if you're adding a bunch of website links, Slack messages, email messages and task + project management tasks, you can end up with a very flooded central inbox leading to feeling overwhelmed.
To get the most out of Akiflow, we recommend only adding in medium to high priority tasks that you need to action, and being careful to not add every task under the sun.
If you're overwhelmed with tasks from different apps, and want a central inbox to consolidate all of your tasks, then Akiflow can help. However, once the tasks are in your central inbox, you still need to manually plan your day and time block, which means you need to stay on top of triaging your tasks.
For some folks that enjoy manual task planning and can allocate 10-20 minutes per day to daily planning, this won't be a limitation but rather a benefit. For others, the manual task planning means that Akiflow can become cluttered and you can "fall behind" on using it to help you manage time effectively. You really need to use Akiflow daily as a part of your workflow to get the most of it.
Is Akiflow worth it? Well, if you are struggling to stay on top of your tasks from different apps and want a tool to help you consolidate all of your tasks in one place, then it might be worth giving it a shot. If you have other more robust needs (e.g. project management + daily planning), there are other tools to consider like Motion who are priced similarly and offer more features to help you manage your time and schedule.
A better way to build products for product and engineering teams of all sizes.
Linear is in an interesting category. It's in one way a product tool (e.g. focusing on bugs, feature requests, and sprints/cycles), and another part project management (for managing the tasks around the cycles).
The thing is, Linear is very much built for your engineering and product team to tie in all of this information together. You'd be hard-pressed to use Linear as a replacement for the company's general project management tool.
If you're heavily a product-focused company, and most of your employees are engineers and product people though, you can probably get away with just using Linear as your team's project manager.
While some people may say that Asana is a main competitor, we'd probably say that your product/engineering team is trying to fit into the more general project management needs of the rest of the organization.
It's not uncommon for much larger companies to use a general project management tool like Motion or Asana, along with Linear. Heck, even the engineering/product team at Motion uses Linear internally (alongside Motion of course).
The main competitor in this area is really the Atlassian suite (mainly Jira), and, well... Linear is just better and more modern in just about every way. Teams that use Linear often greatly enjoy using it, and have an appreciation for it (hugely advocating it). Whereas teams that use Jira when asked what they think would typically respond with an "it's fine, I guess".
Linear also integrates quite well with modern software like Slack via Dispatch. Their API is a joy to work with, and we're actually starting to see modern teams integrate their software with Linear before even that of Jira. That said, most any enterprise tool will integrate with Jira more likely than Linear. So it really depends on the size of your team and the accompanying stack that you're using.
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A shared documentation and note taking tool that tip-toes the line of a flexible no-code platform (for teams of all sizes).
Notion positions itself as an "all-in-one" workspace tool, but that doesn't mean it's ideal for "everything."
At its core, Notion is a knowledge base or wiki, designed for documenting company processes and notes. Over time, Notion has expanded its capabilities, allowing users to link notes, create databases with formulas, and more.
Notion's versatility allows you to customize it into almost anything you need. This flexibility has led teams to use Notion as a CRM, project management tool, task manager, knowledge base, and more. However, just because Notion can be adapted for various purposes doesn't always mean it should be. We often receive feedback from teams who've tried using "Notion for everything", only to find it becoming overwhelming and messy.
If you want to use Notion, use it as a knowledge base/company wiki (or use Slite, our top pick and what we use 😉). For specific business functions like project and task management or CRM, it's usually better to opt for dedicated tools built for the job.
A huge drawback of using Notion for CRM or project management is that you're now building your system from scratch. Even with available templates, you'll find yourself investing a lot of time in learning to configure Notion and tailoring it to your processes.
In contrast, a project management tool that is developed by a team focused solely on creating the best product in that niche, will much more quickly set you up for success.
Just think about it: when you're using a project manager that was built for that function, this means that their entire team focused on building the best project manager out there. So you're already getting a tool with project management features that are useful to thousands of other businesses. While with Notion... well guess who is going to be building said features? YOU 😅
The reality is, we often hear people say "but my business is unique so I need a custom solution, which is why Notion is appealing".
After helping teams of all sizes and in many industries for over a decade, we promise you that business processes are not that unique and 95% of the time can be (and should be) mapped to the structure of existing tools.
Oh and if you're considering using Notion as a CRM, make sure to read this dedicated article as to why we don't recommend that either.
Notion offers a free tier for up to 10 guests, making it accessible if you're curious about its capabilities. Notion has a free tier for up to 10 guests, so if you're curious as to what the hype is about, you can easily sign up and start playing with it yourself. If after a day you start feeling overwhelmed, you're not alone, it's more or less a blank slate after all.
An intelligent habit and task time-blocking and event scheduling layer atop your calendar.
Reclaim AI is a unique tool sitting in a bit of an in-between product category. It's a lay on top of a calendar that utilizes AI to help you better manage your time by finding the ideal times for your daily habits, meetings, and focus work.
It's a layer on top of your Google Calendar, but it's not a replacement for a project or task manager (you'd integrate your existing task manager or project manager in with Reclaim).
You enter in your habits into Reclaim, like "lunch" and you tell it to schedule your lunch between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Using AI, Reclaim will make sure to schedule your lunch break everyday between those hours, depending what you have to get done. If your schedule shifts, Reclaim will make sure you still get a lunch break.
If you're working a corporate job, are in constant meetings and want to protect your time from getting pulled into meetings, then Reclaim can help you get more focus time and, well, simple things like a lunch break. Engineering, product, or marketing teams that need heads down focus time will benefit the most from Reclaim.
You've probably heard people comparing Motion vs Reclaim, but to be honest, Reclaim is competing more with something like Clockwise, not really Motion. Reclaim isn't your go-to for project management or even for detailed task management (while Motion excels at both these aspects).
You might like Reclaim if you fit into one or all of the below categories:
Using Reclaim as your scheduler leaves a lot to be desired—you can't add basic questions for someone to answer upon filling out the booking link. This makes it impossible to replace other scheduling tools like Calendly and Motion (learn more in the full Motion App Review) unless your booking needs are quite simple (e.g. internal meetings or meeting with friends).
If you're thinking of using Reclaim for task management, be prepared for something pretty basic. Reclaim more so wants you to integrate your project management tool. It's going to allow you to set task priority and deadline, but it won't let you manage greater projects, collaborate with your team, or get a bigger picture of all of your tasks at hand. Read our full Reclaim AI review.
A to-do list to organize your work & life.
TickTick is a basic personal task management app, useful for jotting down quick household/personal tasks. You can easily add to-dos, notes, priorities, and deadlines. You can also categorize tasks via labels into categories. Think of TickTick as one level up from Apple Notes or Google Keep.
That said, not much TLC is going into TickTick these days. The user interface is quite dated and the calendar sync integration works every 15 minutes or so (while with more modern apps, it's instant).
A to-do list to organize your work & life.
Todoist is one of the longest-standing task management apps (founded in 2007!). You get exactly what you'd expect from Todoist — the ability to create tasks, prioritize them, and organize them with labels. You can view your tasks in a list, kanban view, or calendar view (paid tier).
With the rising popularity of time blocking, Todoist has received immense pressure from it's customers to build a calendar view and allow for task time blocking. That said, time blocking is a secondary feature to Todoist and is quite barebones compared to other daily planners. Many folks integrate Todoist with Sunsama or Akiflow for the full daily planning experience.
If considering Todoist for business, whether you're an individual or a team, there are better task management apps available that will give you more productivity power (e.g. other tools that will allow you to schedule meetings, time block tasks, manage projects, see your workload, and collaborate with team members), so as a heads up, make sure to consider those before diving head first into Todoist for business.
Trello brings all your tasks, teammates, and tools together.
Trello is probably a project management tool that most people have heard of. It was one of the first project managers to hit mainstream popularity because it was the first project manager to allow for kanban board view from a web app, bringing with it a super user friendly interface.
This was an incredible feat back in 2011 and what resulted in its rise to popularity, especially in the B2C space (general consumers, not majorly breaking into the B2B space). For example, you'd use Trello to manage your personal tasks, maybe more as a prosumer, and less as a business owner.
We used Trello here at Efficient App for years, before ultimately switching to Asana, when they too added kanban functionality, as we felt that Trello sort of got a bit stuck, while their competitors were evolving and working to further innovate in the project management space.
Rating: D
The main differentiation that Trello had was kanban board functionality, and that's about where it started and ends. Thing is, kanban view is now a staple of any modern project manager on the market in this day and age.
Feature set wise, since Atlassian now owns Trello, they've prioritized integrations within the Atlassian suite.
Rating: C-
Let's just say, here's a screenshot of Trello from 2011:
And here's Trello today:
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If this is how much Trello has evolved over the span of 12 years, do you genuinely think that Trello is a leader in the space? To us, it feels more like a relic from the past. There's been huge strides in web development technologies, design esthetics, and more over the past decade, just seems like Trello has failed to get the memo.
Rating: C
Trello does board view well, but that's about the bulk of it. As they haven't really seemed to update Trello much in the past 6+ years, the bulk of the credit that we can give Trello comes from it having incredibly deep integration with the Atlassian suite of tools (e.g. Jira,Confluence, and Bitbucket).
With Atlassian's acquisition of Trello, came with it more of an integration with Atlassian's tooling.
Rating: B+
Trello actually has a pretty solid mobile app on both iOS and Android. This is in part to how much time they've had to perfect it. Early on, being more in the B2C space, and coming out more when the iPhone was gaining major traction, a solid mobile app is something that the general consumer wanted. So this is something they've spent a lot of time perfecting.
Rating: B+
We also have to give Trello credit in this area. They have a super robust API and powerful Zapier connector. If their Zapier connector doesn't have quite what you're looking for, you should be able to do chat you'd like to do using their developer API.
If your team is heavily relying on the Atlassian software stack, then Trello is likely to bring with it some native integrations to help your team out as well.
When looking at the best project management tools on the market, we just can't put Trello that high up on the list. They feel like a very safe solution that hasn't seen any innovation since it was first created.
If you're looking for a modern tool, you'd probably be better off looking at something like Motion vs Trello. If you're looking for something that is solid and stable and has all the project management basics, we'd just be hard-pressed to not recommend Asana over Trello in about every category.
Trello is nowhere the best project management solution on the market, but it is one that most have likely used in the past, or have at least heard of.
We feel like Atlassian acquired Trello to have some type of solution in the project management space, so that they can try to get teams to use and rely on the entire Atlassian suite. Essentially, turning the parent company more into an all-in-one solution, by leveraging many different software solutions, along with native integrations.
We're hard-pressed to recommend Trello for that reason, unless your team is heavily reliant on the Atlassian software stack. If you're not, then pretty much any project manager on our top project management list will serve you better.
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