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 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.
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.
Curious how this app compares to others?