8 Best Scheduler Software & Tools 2023

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 ⤵:

Who is Motion For?

Project Management

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.

Daily Planner

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.

Who Shouldn't Use Motion?

Already Using Project Management Tool

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.

Reporting & Dashboards

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

Habits and Routines

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.

Features & Differentiation

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.

User Interface (UI)

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:

User Experience (UX)

Rating: _B

Automatically Plans Day

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.

Scheduling Feature

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.

Project Manager

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.

Keyboard Shortcuts

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.

Improvements

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.

Mobile App

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.

Calendar

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.

Task management

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!

Project Management

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.

Improvements

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.

API & Integrations

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.

Competition

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.

Pricing

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.

Final Thoughts

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).

Start your 7 day free trial of Motion here.

Calendly is a good scheduling tool especially for non-technical users. The best thing it has going for it is native integrations and connections with tools like Outfunnel.

There has been many more modern solutions in the market, even with Google Calendar recently adding a free basic scheduler tool.

If you're looking for the most robust and modern scheduler on the market though, you'd be better off with Motion which also brings with it additional task time blocking tools and priority scheduling.

While we don't recommend other schedulers like Vimcal, if you were to pay for a scheduling tool, we'd recommend even that over Calendly. Unless you're looking for some out-of-the-box integrations and a solid API. In that case, Calendly shines.

Another area where you might want to use Calendly is if you want to require payment before allowing to schedule. More niche features like that exist with Calendly over others.

We personally use and love Motion for all our scheduling needs, and you can read more reasons as to why here.

Chili Piper has made their mark in the enterprise scheduling and lead routing space.

We were actually using them back in our search to find the best calendar scheduler on the market, and actually replaced Calendly with Chili Piper.

Since we were quite early on in using it though, we didn't realize that they were building every product decision for that of enterprise companies. So never would they integrate with a non-enterprise CRM like Copper, they focused only on Salesforce.

Competition

The long and short of it is that if you're looking for a deeply integrated Salesforce meeting scheduler, and terms like "round robin" come up regularly for your team, Chili Piper is probably the solution for you.

If you're instead looking for deeper integration with your CRM and you're using something like Copper or Pipedrive or HubSpot, you might consider Calendly instead. Especially if you're up for using a tool like Outfunnel to deeply integrate it with your CRM.

If you're just looking for the best calendar scheduler on the market, and thinks like speed of scheduling, spinning up a new scheduling link, and priority/focus time blocking are important to you, Motion is definitely the winner in this category.

Final Thoughts

If you are an enterprise company, using Salesforce, and robust lead routing + your company is sales-heavy, you might consider Chili Piper.

That said, when I was first using Chili Piper, I was really just looking for a low-friction scheduler that was super flexible. It wasn't until finally stumbling upon Motion, that I could finally end the hunt.

If you're a smaller team, or not using an enterprise CRM like Salesforce, we'd highly recommend you taking a look at Motion vs Chili Piper, as Motion is likely to check more boxes, as it also has a baked in tasks right inside of your calendar.

Clockwise is clear in their focus on helping teams find focus time. This means that if you're an individual, or a small team that doesn't have many internal meetings, Clockwise is not right for you.

If the main goal that you have is getting your team to have all of their internal meetings optimized to give everyone a calendar that is optimized for focused time blocks, that's exactly where Clockwise excels.

The piece that is most confusing to me when using Clockwise is that they have a "planner", which looks like a calendar:

But when you actually dive in to use it, you realize that it has no actual calendaring functionality. While it allows you to create a one-off event, you can't even edit after creating it—it's literally read only. So there's no editing the title/description, adding additional guests, etc. you'll have to go to a separate calendar app like Google Calendar to make any of these changes.

What it does allow you to do is tag existing events (sort of like an over-encompassing category of the event), update internal meetings as "flexible"—AKA you're allowing Clockwise to reschedule them automatically, and manually reschedule meetings to others based on some recommended schedule times:

This is all fine, it's just something that I continually get frustrated by when using these time management tools. Just like Reclaim, it's essentially requiring you to either keep Clockwise open in another tab, or you're restricted to using Google Calendar along with the Clockwise Chrome extension.

So this is where you need to essentially forego using a modern calendar app in favor of using Clockwise properly (or you need to have both apps open side-by-side).

Features

Clockwise touts AI for time management/scheduling, and it seems they've actually gone a bit more true to this than that of Reclaim. They've done this by incorporating a ChatGPT-like interface for which you can speak to in-place of a scheduling assistant.

They claim you can use it for things like "I need to meet with our CTO immediately", which will then suggest some shifts in both your calendars, and then you can move forward with it.

The only question I have here is, should everyone at the company really be able to have that level of control? To be able to switch around team member's calendar to prioritize a meeting with you? There's definitely areas where this would be cool and impressive, I'll admit, it's just I wonder how much actual usage this will get on the day-to-day, versus it just being a really cool AI demo type of feature.

Limitations

To be crystal clear (as many don't seem to understand this point at first glance), if you primarily have external attendees in your meetings, you cannot mark events as "flexible meetings" and thus, they cannot take advantage of the automatic rescheduling and focus time optimization that Clockwise allows for.

Clockwise is also not a calendar replacement. So you'll still want to use an improved 3rd party calendar like Cron, Motion, or if you must, Google Calendar (which is actually suggested because of the Google Calendar Chromium extension for Clockwise):

While it has scheduler options, replacing the need for tools like Calendly in most cases, and unlike Reclaim, it actually allows for booking questions, they are just a bit barebones in terms of options:

Competition

Clockwise fits in as the most focused specifically on re-arranging internal team meetings, to optimize chunks of focus time for teams. This means, if you're using Clockwise solo, or with a small team (or just don't have that many internal meetings), the value in which you'll get from it won't be all that high.

This is where we're more a fan of time management tools that also have task management baked in at the core, because really, what is time management without tasks?

While a tool like Motion will actually fit in tasks that need to be done during your focus blocks of time, Clockwise is more about trying to find you and your team focus blocks of time.

Clockwise also just reschedules meetings and focused time blocks once a day, whereas both Motion and Reclaim react to changes on your calendar immediately.

We find it generally difficult to recommend Clockwise if customers actually have any meaningful scheduler needs though, as something like Motion or Calendly allows for far greater control in adding more opinionated parameters around the booking link. Like in Motion, since it also manager your tasks, you can set a scheduler link to be higher priority in that it'll actually book over scheduled tasks, and even over scheduled events (if you wanted a high-priority link set).

Final Verdict

If you have a large team along with frequent internal meetings and you want to optimize everyone's calendars (why wouldn't you want to at that point?), then Clockwise is great!

If you're more looking for a modern time management platform that covers scheduling links, improves your calendar experience (desktop & mobile), and helps you get work done in the focus blocks of time created, that's where Motion is more of the top pick of the category.

We're seeing with Clockwise, just like with Reclaim, that they are trying to hand off the actual task management of getting work done to a proper project manager, which is what makes Clockwise and Reclaim both in a powerful yet narrow sliver to the time management space as a whole.

User Interface (UI)

Rating: _A+

Cron has one of the most beautiful calendar interfaces, it genuinely sets the bar for the entire calendar category. Every shade of color and component was meticulously designed, and for that, we have huge appreciation for the team at Cron.

Although, it's relatively limited when looking beyond the beauty of what it is.

Pricing

Since it is free, it's a no-brainer to use in-place of checking Google Calendar directly (assuming you value getting a bit more enjoyment out of your daily calendar experience).

(They were also somewhat recently acquired Notion—oddly enough—likely because they didn't really have a business model and Notion saw benefit to acquiring their customerbase).

Cron also has a well-built, native iOS app, which is something to consider.

Final Thoughts

If you're looking for calendar + scheduler (to replace something like Calendly), you'll definitely want to check out a more time-management tool tool like Motion.

It's not uncommon for someone to use Cron on mobile, and something like Motion or Vimcal on their computer.