Not all daily planner applications are created equal, but on the surface it can be a bit difficult to differentiate between them. We'll help! Below you'll find a summary of our thoughts on Motion, Akiflow, Sunsama, and Routine, but if you're craving more, make sure to keep reading a deep dive on each tool below ⤵
In terms of the similarities, Motion, Akiflow, and Sunsama are all daily planner apps that were built for professional use, with a focus on time blocking (where you add and schedule tasks onto your calendar as blocks of time).
Motion is the best daily planning app for busy professionals and teams who are looking for a full-fledged project management solution, along with the ability to take tasks that are a part of your project and directly schedule them on your calendar.
And if you don't get a task done on time, Motion's AI tool will reschedule your tasks for you for the following day, or your next availability.
More than that, Motion has accounted for the fact that you schedule is always changing. Have a last minute appointment or meeting that has popped up? No problem, simply add it to your calendar and Motion will *automatically* rearrange all your tasks for you to accommodate the changes.
Adding tasks in Motion is super easy. A quick keyboard shortcut opens up their AI scheduler where you can simply type "Review presentation ASAP" and Motion will know what to do, pushing all your existing tasks down the priority list for the day. If you're on the road and using the iOS app, you can also ask Siri to add a task in Motion for you, making it truly feel like an integrated personal assistant.
Motion's ability to help you manage your projects and replace project management tools like Asana and ClickUp combined with their AI scheduling capabilities is really what differentiates them in this daily planner app category.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
Akiflow and Sunsama are very similar daily planner apps. You can use them as standalone task managers/daily planners, although they only allow you to add tasks to your calendar manually. This means that while you have your list view, you still need to drag tasks onto your calendar one-by-one. Miss a deadline? You are still left rearranging your schedule for the next day, while Motion does it automatically.
If that doesn't bother you and you perhaps prefer the manual scheduling, Akiflow and Sunsama are both great tools to consider.
Akiflow and Sunsama are both great tools to also consider if you are already using a project management tool like Asana or ClickUp and are craving a daily planning feature. Perhaps your team heavily relies on multiple tools at work like Gmail, Notion, Asana and Slack and you wish there was a central place where you can store all of your tasks that you need to get done and add them to your calendar.
Both Akiflow and Sunsama have native integrations with numerous business tools and can serve as great digital planners that centralize all of your to-dos.
If you're looking for the best daily planner app that has powerful integrations with other tools, Akiflow is the winner in this category as they have the most robust API. You can create powerful workflows, like for example, if a new lead is created in your CRM, you can create an integration between your CRM and Akiflow using Zapier, so that a task is created for you in Akiflow to follow-up with the lead.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
If you fit into the category of enjoying mindfully planning your day and don't mind spending 10 or so minutes at the beginning and end of everyday to plan with Sunsama, then you might find it the best tool of the bunch. If you are someone who used paper planners for task reminders, Sunsama would be a nice transitional tool that would feel super powerful in helping you get more work done.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Routine is the best free daily planner app, but it's only for personal use. It's good for routines, tracking habits and basic task management. That said, for professional use, we'd skip it at the moment as it lacks integrations with other tools and is a bit difficult to use if your schedule is changing a lot as you manually need to shift each task for the day if you want to make room for a new task.
Join the Routine waitlist for free here.
Ready to dive into each of these daily planner applications more deeply? Keep reading ⤵
The daily planning app category is relatively new, really only emerging in the past 5 years as an evolution to the tools coming out of the 2010's such as Todoist, Wunderlist (later acquired by Microsoft) and more advanced project management tools like Asana, Monday, and ClickUp.
While these tools allow you to put all your tasks in one place, when it comes to getting things done, there wasn't really anything that allowed you to actually plot your tasks on your calendar prior to the daily planner software category.
Daily planning apps provide a centralized platform to organize tasks, appointments, priorities. Create to-do lists, set deadlines, plot them on your calendar to help you visualize what needs to get done when. If you're anything like us you might have been already doing this on your calendar (for example in college or university), but it was a manual chore 👀
Daily planner apps help increase productivity, as you can plan out everything you need to get done a week or more in advance. They also reduce the cognitive overload that comes from wondering "what needs to get done next".
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For Small + Mid-Market teams looking to for an AI-powerd time management platform (Calendar + Scheduling + Tasks & Projects).
We believe that Motion is creating a new software category entirely. While you'll see us compare it with the best project management software on the market, you'll see that it isn't just a traditional project manager, nor is it just a daily planner app. By the end of reading this Motion App review, you'll know for certain if it's a tool worth trying out for your team. And with that, let's dive in ⤵:
Motion is for small to medium sized teams looking for an innovative way to manage their projects and time (think 1-50 employees).
If you've tried Asana, Jira, ClickUp, or Monday and found that you were spending way more time managing your work than, well, working, then Motion might be a breath of fresh air. Motion's mission is to help teams get more work done instead of just helping to manage work.
After 7 years of using Asana, we actually switched entirely to Motion App because of the drastic time-saving component. With Motion, you create tasks and group them into projects. From there, you simply set the deadline, priority, and any blockers. That's where Motion uses AI to automatically schedule the tasks required to complete the project on each team member's calendars, all while taking into account any meetings and calendar schedules. No other project management tool on the market does this!
Oh, and whenever things don’t go according to plan (which they never do), Motion automatically re-prioritizes everyone’s tasks and calendar so that everything gets done, on time. Helping de-stress teammates by offloading all of the cognitive processing surrounding what should be done next.
Just like other project management tools, you can use Motion to organize projects in different workspaces then view your to-dos as a list view or kanban board, set task dependencies, track tasks and collaborate with team members.
So if you are wanting an innovative tool to help you manage projects, get more done and help you plan your day, Motion is an excellent choice 🙌
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
If you are a busy professional that is more so looking for a daily planner instead of a full project management tool, Motion is also an excellent choice.
Compared to other daily planner alternatives Motion is pulling this entire category forward by leveraging artificial intelligence, tasks mixed with calendar events, time blocking, and prioritization, to build an app that feels like more you have a personal assistant helping you manage your time. Motion is great for soloprenuers, freelancers, contractors and students.
If you're working for a large company that's already using a dedicated project management tool (e.g. Asana, ClickUp, or Jira), then you might be seeking Motion as a more simple tool to help you manage your workload (since those tools don't allow for tasks to be scheduled on your calendar). While you could technically integrate your project management tool with Motion for the AI scheduling component (we know many individuals who have done this), you'd need to know how to use Zapier to do so and can end up being a bit much to manage since you're now using two project management tools.
Instead, you might want to consider a tool like Akiflow or Sunsama that are both simply daily planning tools. Both Akiflow and Sunsama have native integrations with most of the main project management tools that will make it easy for your to pull your tasks in and schedule them onto your calendar for the day. That said, both Akiflow and Sunama lack AI capabilities to help you plan your day and reschedule tasks and would require more of a manual planning process.
One of the Motion cons is that the tool lacks "upper management reporting features".
Why? Motion project management is a new tool on the market and their current focus is developing their AI features for task prioritization and scheduling, therefore reporting and dashboards are on the back burner.
If you're a team who places a lot of importance on project management reporting, dashboards, timeline views, progress reports and more, then Motion won't be suitable as they aren't currently building these features (yet!). In this case, consider Asana who offers top of the line project management reporting and might be a better project ma
If you're an individual that is price sensitive and is wanting to use Motion for general low-value daily tasks like reminders to do the laundry, to take supplements, or practice your latest habit for the week, you'd might be hard-pressed to find Motion worth the price. While Motion does work for this (and quite well at that), it's primarily a tool to help you manage work and complex projects and that's where individuals and teams see the most value.
In this case, a more personal–focused tool like TickTick, Todoist, or even Reclaim might fit better for your non-professional use-cases.
Rating: A+
Motion isn't just a calendar, scheduler, or task manager. It's really an AI assistant that takes all of this unique information, and uses it to build your perfect day:
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here
Other project planning software requires you to spend chunks of your day re-evaluating deadlines and shifting back work. Not to mention, they have no actual reference of your calendar, so actual focus time available doesn't even take into account when you're in meetings... 😅
That's where Motion is different, and in some ways, in a category of its own. What they are doing is unmatched in the project management software space, and when you compare Motion alternatives like Motion vs Asana amongst others in the category, you see how outdated traditional task management tools truly are.
They've also taken this whole time management category and leveled up your project management software with a baked in calendar scheduler that takes into account all of your tasks and hard deadlines, along with time blocking to only recommend the best times for you to meet with others, ensuring that you can still get your work done on time. Something that no other project management software can do.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
Rating: B-
Motion has a functional calendar/task interface that has your most important tasks on the side, and your calendar events along with your tasks in the main area. It might not be the prettiest tool on the market *yet* but that's because the team is focused out on building out the AI functionality of the tool to help with managing your work. While we love tools with a beautiful UI, in this case we find that with how much time we save with Motion, it's worth the trade-off.
We have faith that the team will make the much needed improvements here, and since it would require such minor modifications, we can't weigh this section too heavily against Motion. With some modifications to their UI, we feel Motion can pretty easily get to a B+ rating in this category.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
When comparing the calendar view of Motion and Cron, you start to see where the UI could be improved:
Rating: B
The main benefit of Motion, and how it differentiates from every other project management tool on the market is it's AI features: you add your tasks to it, then you forget about it. It will automatically schedule your tasks into your Motion calendar to ensure that you get them done by the time they need to be completed. You don't have to constantly manually plan your day, you just show up, look at your daily schedule and get to work 💪
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
With Motion app, not only do you get project and task management, a calendar and AI scheduling features, but you also get a meeting scheduling feature. This meeting assistant easily allows you to share your availability with others and will indicate "Preferred" scheduling times around your other meetings so you can have larger times of focus-time instead of being in and out of meetings.
In terms of your project management features, you'll get unlimited projects, task management, task views, list views, kanban boards, task dependencies, the ability to track tasks and team collaboration features. You can set custom filtered views so if you want to see your tasks in a kanban board or list view, both are options.
With other tools like Asana, you need to manually reschedule your tasks manually on a daily basis, wasting anywhere from 20–60 minutes per day—something you rarely need to think about with Motion.
Motion is always a keyboard shortcut away (OPT + C to view the calendar, OPT + A to quickly access your meeting scheduler, and finally OPT + SPACE to quick-add a task from anywhere on your computer. These shortcuts are one of the reasons we love using Motion. Whether you're in the browser and need to check your availability quickly, are curious if you have any upcoming meetings and then want to get right back where you left off, or simply think of a task you need added (for yourself or your team member), it's all just one keyboard shortcut away.
Calendar: There are a few times where you'd actually want to open back up Google Calendar for certain things, like proposing a new time for example, or editing a team's calendar event (even if you're invited to it), so fixing these things will greatly improve the UX. It would be nice to be able to have all of the normal Google Calendar functionality within Motion. We're confident that they can actually get this up to an in the next 6–18 months.
Project Management Features: At the the time of writing this Motion review, Motion still has a bit more to go on some core functionality for the project management side of things like super robust searching functionality and custom fields, but this is something that is definitely coming in time.
Reporting: What you also won't get with Motion though is customizable reports, or any reporting dashboards for that matter. That's not to say this won't come in the future, but for now the Motion team is focused on improving productivity for small + medium sized businesses and often times reporting features are required more at the enterprise level.
Rating: B-
Motion has an iOS and Android app that is fully-featured, including the full calendar functionality, along with your complete project task lists, and quick access to booking links while on-the-go.
Things we'd love to see to bring Motion up to an A is a proper widget to replace the need for Google Calendar entirely. Some quality UX improvements could be made with having a way to more easily create tasks from other apps, by say sharing a screenshot to Motion, or highlighting text and sharing it with Motion.
A fun feature Motion recently added to the iOS app is being able to use Siri to create tasks while on-the-go. Simply ask Siri to "create a task in Motion to review that presentation ASAP" and it will pop it on our calendar, rearranging all your other tasks. Now they just need to bring the feature to Google Assistant users too!
The Motion project management tool on the mobile app is still in it's early phases. You can see your tasks in list view, but not on your kanban board for example. For this reason, we prefer to use the mobile app for tasks on the go but we prefer to use the desktop app and web app for project management and actually organizing projects/tasks and for getting work done.
One little knit-pick is the time it takes for the mobile app to load, although this is something that the team is aware of, and we feel pretty confident that the mobile app will hit B+ category in the months to come.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
Rating: B-
We have to hand it to the team at Motion on this one—they launched an API, and then almost immediately spun up a Zapier integration to make their API even more accessible to others, something that newer tools in the space haven't invested in which makes Motion stand out, and something we greatly appreciate.
The API is surely to improve with time, adding in more functionality, although it does allow for the major things you'd want to use it for already, like create/find/update of tasks, and most importantly, creating the magic auto-scheduled task.
When comparing Motion's API with some of the leaders in project management like Asana, Motion does about 85% of what it needs to do for most integrations. We also know it'll get closer to 90–95% once they allow for custom fields, as functionality around "search tasks by custom field value" is surely to come with it.
The one thing to note though is that the API does not currently work with the appointment scheduling side of things. For example, it does not allow for the same API functionality that a standalone scheduler tool like Calendly will give you on that front. That said, you can build some of this functionality by getting creative using a tool like Mailparser alongside Zapier (e.g. logging new appointments into your CRM upon booking), although I will say, it's not all that straightforward. 😅
All-in-all, Motion's API is getting there, and is likely to do what you'd need it to do on the project management front. We'd only say be aware if you're planning on building robust integrations based on their meeting scheduler, because if so, you might be better off using one of the best appointment scheduler apps in that case instead.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
If you're anything like us and are just starting the quest of your own (or in the middle of it), let us save you some time: you'll likely stumble upon calendar tools like Cron, Vimcal, Magical, Fantastical, Woven (acquired by Slack), and many more scheduler-focused tools like Calendly, ChiliPiper, and Cal.com (amongst many others), along with no shortage of all-in-one task management tools (e.g. Sunsama and Akiflow), heck, even "time management" tools like Clockwise and Reclaim. Not to mention extensive project management tools like ClickUp, Asana and Monday.
Well we're here to tell you that we've tried them all—extensively.
Each and every tool mentioned does some aspects to time management well, but fall apart when done together.
And that's where Motion is different. Motion is more than just a calendar, scheduler, or task/project manager—it is a platform for time management. Because at the end of the day, we're all just managing time—sometimes by way of projects and tasks, and at other times meetings and events. Motion understands this fact first-and-foremost, and with a small sprinkle of AI, you're given your perfect day planned out for you, no rescheduling or rearranging necessary.
Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.
Motion pricing is totally reasonable for all that it can do. Priced at $19 per month for individuals (on the annual plan), or $12 per user (team plan). Keep in mind the fact that the tool also includes a project management tool, calendar and meeting scheduler which makes Motion worth it.
You can also pay monthly on either the individual plan ($34/m) or team plan ($20/m), but in general if you do, consider upgrading to the annual tier after 2-3 months of use as you'll save nearly 40% on the price by doing so.
Whether you're a busy professional or a team, we think Motion is worth the price.
Our overall Motion app review? Well hopefully this says it all: we've actually fully switched to Motion from Asana after using Asana for 7+ years 😄
Motion app has been a game changer for our team and has allowed us to remember tasks we would have otherwise forgotten, manage projects and better collaborate as a team. Motion is definitely worth giving a try, especially if you have under 50 or so employees and are looking for a tool that is simple to use for everyone.
If you're looking for a deeper dive comparison on the Motion project management tool, you can check out a deep dive project management comparison that covers all of that here.
Motion as a project management solution works well for teamwork projects, busy professionals, creative teams, remote teams, professional services and development teams. They don't have a free plan available but definitely give the free trial a shot before committing to a Motion alternative.
That said, we finally found what we've been looking for in terms of the perfect tool for our team (Oh and there's actually quite a bit more to the story if you're interested in hearing more).
There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
While there's currently no promo code available, if you use the link above and you let their team know that we sent you, they might even extend your free trial (if you write into support) 😉
A daily planner tool to help you centralize your schedule.
Akiflow falls into the daily planner app + productivity app category. It helps individuals that have tasks in multiple different tools (e.g. email, Asana, Slack, Google Calendar, Notion) and want task consolidation. Akiflow's integrations allow you to build workflows from various apps to add to-do list items in Akiflow, and within Akiflow you are able to arrange the tasks into a calendar view. It aims to be your personal task manager.
Akiflow as a task manager is great if you are using many different tools (Gmail, Outlook email, Google Calendar, Asana or ClickUp, Slack, etc.) and you want one tool to help with the task consolidation and daily planning of your tasks. If you are a part of a team that is using a project management tool and you feel like you are constantly consolidating your to-dos from different channels, with Akiflow's integrations you can automatically have a running list of all of your task list items which can be helpful.
Akiflow might be well suited for you if you're working at an organization where you have little say about the number of tools used for the team to communicate internally, and you want to have more control over organizing your tasks and planning your day.
Akiflow has a powerful command bar and keyboard shortcuts, so if you are more of a power user who enjoys this level of productivity it's worth giving a shot to help with time management and using it as a personal task manager.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
If you are looking to reduce the number of of productivity apps you use, then there might be better tools out there for you. The whole problem Akiflow is trying to solve is that some teams have become reliant of using so many tools to manage projects that we now need another tool to have a central place for all of our tasks 😅 For example, 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).
On the other hand, if you don't need integrations with other tools and just want a task management app that can help you act as your personal task manager, then you can even consider something like Routine and Sunsama which are both beautiful more minimalistic time management apps.
Finally, if you are easily overwhelmed at the thought of spending 10-20 minutes per day organizing your tasks, then Akiflow won't be a great task management app as it requires you to manually drag tasks onto your calendar.
Rating: B
Akiflow was created as a response to the cognitive overload from using a lot of different tools to communicate and plan our work. They've invested a ton in their integrations with the goal to help you centralize your schedule and have one tool that answers the question of what you need to work on next. Their calendar experience allows you to drag tasks straight onto your calendar view so you can visualize your day.
You can label your tasks into categories like "personal" "marketing" "bugs" "school" so you can easily view groupings of your tasks. Their progress visualization is also great to keep track of how many more tasks you need to complete for the day. At the end of the day, their daily shutdown feature will show help you reflect on your current day and plan tasks for future days.
While Akiflow is impressive, there is a lot of Akiflow alternatives on the market with similar features. Sunsama and Routine are two of the main competitors along with Motion, although Motion stands out more as they have AI capabilities to help auto-schedule your tasks (including rescheduling your tasks for you if you don't complete them).
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
Rating: B-
While Akiflow's interface has improved time, compared to other daily planning tools, it's more clunky to use. It looks similar to your email inbox with a calendar on the left hand side where you can drag and drop tasks. But when viewing all your tasks that have come through from your integrations, it's easy to feel overwhelmed and cluttered.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
Rating: C+
The truth of the matter is just because you can consolidate all of your tasks in one place, doesn't mean you should. For instance, just because you need to respond to 5 Slack messages and answer 3 emails, should you add it to Akiflow and then manually drag the items onto your calendar as a part of your daily tasks? We'd say probably no.
It can be easy to over engineer your schedule with Akiflow. When we used it, we found this is exactly what happened. We found ourselves slightly overwhelmed with the number of tasks in Akiflow. At the end of the day, you want to be more productive, not spend more time scheduling tasks and planning your day.
More than that, when you complete a task in Akiflow, it doesn't sync back to the app that sent over the task so you can end up having to check it off twice.
To get the best experience with Akiflow, we suggest being highly selective in terms of which tasks you want to be in Akiflow. If they are meaningful tasks that require some planning, then they are useful to add. If they are tasks that are not as substantial, then we say it's best to probably not clutter your Akiflow task list with them.
It also does feel like there's many missed opportunities to automate some of the things you need to do during your daily review (and yes, you need to review your Akiflow daily so that it doesn't fall behind). Why not have an option to automatically reschedule your day for you, why is it such a manual process? The same frustration that we have with a tool like Asana and Sunsama.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
Rating: C
Akiflow's mobile app for Android and iOS is in beta, so it is still relatively new.
Rating: B
This is where Akiflow excels out of all the daily planner applications, with native integrations. They have a super barebones Zapier connector allowing you to build your own custom workflows with Akiflow (although be warned, they only allow for "create task", no search/update functionality, meaning the custom integration you can build will be quite barebones).
That said, you could have a simple integration like: do you want a new task in Akiflow when a new lead is added to your CRM? That is possible with Akiflow and other daily planning tools lack. Although we would recommend keeping CRM and relationship-focused tasks outside of your project manager and use your CRM task section instead.
All this being said, Akiflow is the best daily planner app if integrations with other tools is important to you.
If you use a ton of productivity apps and are craving one tool to help you with daily planning while continuing to use all the other tools for different reasons, then we'd recommend at least signing up for a Akiflow free trial to see it in action.
Start your 7 day free trial of Akiflow here.
Is Akiflow worth it? If you identify as a professional power user who wants one tool to help with task consolidation, then it's worth signing up for a free trial. Just remember you will still need to manually plan your tasks into your day and falling behind on this won't allow you to get the most out of the tool. That said, it's a much better daily planner alternative than using paper planners and certainly beats out Google tasks as well!
If you're not already using and loving another project management tool and would prefer one solution that offers daily planning, time blocking, meeting scheduling and project management capabilities, we'd recommend simply using Motion, as when you compare Motion vs Akiflow, you really need Akiflow and a project management together (2 separate tools) to get what Motion gives you out of the box.
Akiflow could be a good personal task manager with an improved calendar experience to reduce cognitive overload, but prepare to invest sometime in learning how to best use it to get the most out of it.
There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
7-day free trial + $10 off your next billing by using the link above.
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.
There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
The digital daily planner that helps you feel calm and stay focused.
Sunsama fits into the day planner app category, acting as a digital planner helping with task management and time blocking.
It can help with planning your daily work, time blocking and scheduling your important tasks each day. It takes a zen-like approach to helping you intentionally plan your day, allowing you participate in the planning process of your day all while giving you a calendar view of your tasks. Many people that struggle with focusing claim that it helps them better schedule their day, allowing them to get more work done.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
If your organization uses a full project management tool like Asana, ClickUp, or Trello and you want another tool to help you schedule tasks onto your calendar view and plan when you'll do each specific task, then Sunsama can be a great addition to your productivity tools.
If you don't have a need for a full project management tool and are more so looking for a task management app to get your daily work done, then Sunsama is a great choice. Just keep in mind that Sunsama only allows you to plan your schedule a few weeks in advance so if you have larger projects at hand, it might be a bit frustrating since you'll need to backlog most of your tasks until the time to actually work on them gets closer.
If you like to take an intentional, zen-like approach to planning your day, and can see yourself carving out 15-20 minutes a day for planning, then Sunsama could be the best day planner app for you.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Sunsama is not a project management tool, it's very much a task management software. It allows you to only plan only up to two weeks in advance. So if you are looking for a way to manage larger projects or collaborate with team members then you might find yourself looking for 2 tools to accomplish what one tool should be able to do (e.g. Motion vs Sunsama). So re-iternating again, if you are in the market for a new project management tool, and are considering Sunsama, you will be disappointed as this is not what it was made to do.
You should also not use Sunsama if you don't think you'd be good at keeping up with the planning process of your tasks. Sunsama doesn't automatically schedule or prioritize your tasks for you, YOU need to do that each day, so if you forget or it falls to the wayside, you might end up paying for a tool that is sitting dormant. There are other productivity tools (Motion) that use AI to schedule your day that might be better for you in this case.
Let's dive in deeper ⤵
Rating: B
Sunsama has invested a lot of time into their ke features such as their daily review, weekly review, and weekly objective functionality. All features that try to get you to plan daily, what tasks need to get done, and how they tie to the actual goals and objectives of the week.
That said, people have complained that they wish there was more of a monthly and quarterly objectives, since weekly is often too short of a time to plan for larger goals.
Sunsama is also a calendar app that integrates deeply with tools like Asana, allowing you to pull tasks from Asana and put them onto your calendar for daily planning. It's a clever idea, especially if you're already using and loving Asana, but just frustrated by the lack of integration with a calendar. Something that Motion actually does out of the box as it's an all-in-one task and time management tool.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Rating: A-
This is one of the areas that Sunsama totally excels. They have a super minimal and beautiful interface. They also have calming features like focus mode and daily shutdown, which allow you to take a deep breath, removing all other distractions, allowing you to focus your attention.
Rating: B-
With such a stellar UI, you'd expect the UX to be fantastic. And it is, in many areas. For example, things function the way you'd expect them to, and they have keyboard shortcuts for most things.
That said, it does feel like there's many missed opportunities to automate some of the things you need to do during your daily review (and yes, you need to review your Sunsama daily so that it doesn't fall behind). Why not have an option to automatically reschedule your day for you, why is it such a manual process? The same frustration that we have with a tool like Asana.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Rating: C-
Sunsama has an iOS and Android app that is relatively basic, and they refer to it as a "companion to the web app". So this means you can add basic tasks to Sunsama while on-the-go, and see what's on your calendar/schedule for the day, but you're not going to actually be planning any work while on-the-go.
You're also not going to have any actual calendar scheduling functionality while on-the-go. The truth of the matter is that it feels a bit rushed. We also experienced a pretty buggy mobile app experience with the app randomly crashing. There's only day view for the calendar for example, and the back gestures on Android don't even seem to work when backing out of tasks.
Let's just say that it's fair in that they are referring to it as a companion (for expectation setting), and you're not going to be replacing your calendar of choice or your primary project management app on mobile anytime soon.
With all of that said, you're going to want to use their desktop app or web app for planning your day and getting actual work done.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Rating: C-
Sunsama does not currently have an API. As it's more focused on native integrations with tools like that of with Asana, ClickUp, or Trello. So with that, you can see that their focus isn't actually on extending Sunsama into a flexible tool outside of what they've decided to integrate deeply with.
If you're using one of the main tools they integrate with, this might be a good thing, but for now, with no API, you cannot integrate it with your team's CRM for example, which leads us to feel they are more focused on being an individual daily planner application instead of a team project manager.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
Is Sunsama worth it? If you need a daily planner application or task management software and are willing to intentionally take the 15-20 minutes to plan your daily work, then we think it's worth giving a shot. Their daily review and weekly review features are meant to help you reflect and better help you with managing your time overall.
Start your 30 day free trial of Sunsama here.
If you're not already using and loving another project manager like Asana, we'd recommend simply using Motion, as when you compare Motion vs Sunsama, you really need Sunsama and Asana together (2 separate tools) to get what Motion gives you out of the box.
There is currently no promo code for this app but we are close partners, so if you use the link above to visit the site and then let their team know that Efficient App sent you, you may just get a little something... extra 😉
There is currently no promo code for this app—we'll update it here if that changes in the future!
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