Morgen Calendar and Akiflow are the two daily planning tools that are compared the most. They are quite similar in that they allow you to integrate third party task and project management tools and then schedule them onto your calendar in time blocks.
But when it comes to integrations, Akiflow offers a lot more options from Gmail to Asana to Trello to Jira to Github. With Akiflow, you get a powerful command bar that allows you to easily snooze tasks or assign labels to your tasks. Further Akiflow is more so made for tasks (opposed to being a calendar first), so they give you better views for seeing all of your upcoming tasks. Akiflow is more powerful for professionals looking to efficiently triage through tasks.
While Akiflow is more expensive than Morgen Calendar, they are serving more of the professional market rather than Morgen Calendar and they have more powerful features to match.
Morgen Calendar on the other hand is a calendar first and gives you the basic ability to add tasks and reminders to your calendar. It's to be used more so for basic task management and reminders.
We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
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.
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.