When are you better off staying with Todoist?
Todoist is still the best choice if you want a no-nonsense task list that works everywhere. The natural language input works better than any competitor. Type “tomorrow at 2:00 PM grocery shopping #personal” and everything is immediately set correctly.
For teams that want to collaborate simply without a bloated project management tool, Todoist is also hard to beat. You share a project, assign tasks, and everyone understands it within five minutes. No training needed, no lengthy onboarding.
The filters and labels are also unmatched if you have complex workflows. You can retrieve exactly the right tasks with queries that go beyond what most alternatives offer. For power users who want to fine-tune their system down to the last detail, Todoist remains a top choice.
When is an alternative better?
The free version has become a joke. No more reminders means free users literally have to rely on their own memory. For 6 euros per month you get more features with many alternatives than Todoist ever offered for free.
Time-blocking is the other pain point. Todoist doesn’t have a decent calendar view where you can visually plan tasks. You have to constantly switch between your task list and your calendar, or use external tools. For people who want to visualize their day, that’s just frustrating.
Subtasks remain second-class citizens. You can’t filter them, they don’t count in your productivity statistics, and they’re missing half the functionality of normal tasks. For projects with multiple layers, that quickly becomes messy. Alternatives like TickTick or Things treat subtasks as full-fledged tasks.
The conclusion
For most people, TickTick is the best Todoist replacement. You get a calendar view, better subtasks, a Pomodoro timer, and more features for less money. Working on Mac or iOS? Things 3 feels more natural and has better hierarchy for complex projects.
Looking for something free that does have reminders? Microsoft To Do has become surprisingly good and integrates perfectly with Outlook. Is privacy important? Vikunja is open source and self-hosted. For teams that need more project management, Asana is the better choice, even though it’s quite a bit heavier.
