The Clash of Productivity Apps: Wunderlist vs Todoist vs Any.do

Productivity is all about getting more tasks done and achieving goals.

You’ll agree with me that distractions are ever present in today’s world, and they may come in the form of a new trending topic on Twitter, new celebrity gossip on blogs, or a viral photo on Instagram, you name it. These distractions eat up our time and prevent us from being focused, which ultimately leads to a decrease in productivity.

But when we use productivity apps on our mobile phones or computers, it’ll be a lot easier to stay focused and also remember all the tasks that we have to execute in a day or in a week.

To help you find the right productivity app that is the best fit for you in an oversaturated market, we’re reviewing three of the most competent ones: Wunderlist, Todoist and Any.do.

These productivity apps will help you get more tasks done on the go.

So keep on reading this article.

Wunderlist Review

Wunderlist allows you to manage tasks and share shopping lists easily. The cool thing about this app is that it is dead simple.

With this app, you can edit and rearrange your to-dos according to changing priorities, assign due dates to your tasks, add a note, assign a star to your tasks, set reminders for your upcoming events, and share your lists with family members or other collaborators.

It also has the drag-and-drop feature which enables you to drag tasks to any list groupings that you want ( windows, Mac OS x, and web versions). Additionally, you’ll find a set of filters at the bottom of the desktop and web apps that show you the status of your tasks such as all tasks, starred, completed, due today, tomorrow, next 7 days, later, without a date.

Cloud syncing is another interesting feature of the Wunderlist app. It gives you the choice to easily synchronize all your data to the Wunderlist cloud when you set-up a Wunderlist account. And this allows all of your data to be synced up, thus increasing productivity.

You can also upload your list to the cloud after which you’ll be given a private URL that you can share with your family, friends, or colleagues.

It may interest you to know that Wunderlist is a cross-platform app. It works on Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, and Linux, with all the versions of the app having almost the same look-and-feel.

Wunderlist is a very useful productivity app for task management, especially if you’re on a budget. Though it has both the free and paid pro accounts, the free account gives you all the essential features to get your stuff done.

Wunderlist Pricing

You can use Wunderlist for free but you won’t have access to all the features that it comes with. If you want all the features, then you’ll need to upgrade to the paid pro account with a subscription fee of $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year.

The pro account allows you to upload files of any size whereas the free account limits you to just 5MB per file. While pro users can assign an unlimited number of tasks per shared list, free users are limited up to only 25 tasks per shared list.

Wunderlist Pros and Cons

To summarize, let’s check out some of the pros and cons of Wunderlist:

Pros

• Cross-platform support: it runs on Windows, Mac OS X, web, Android, iOS
• Fast cloud synchronization
• Email and cloud sharing available
• Aesthetically pleasing and customizable background
• It’s free

Cons

• Location-based reminders are absent
• Expensive pro plan
• No separate due dates for sub-tasks
• Synchronization on mobile devices is not 100% reliable

Todoist Review

If you find yourself combining to-do-lists, calendars and reminders to organize your day, then Todoist is the task manager app that you need. It supersedes conventional to-do lists, fully packed with advanced features and collaboration options to supercharge your productivity.

It is a cross-platform app that can be used on Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, Chrome and Gmail.

Todoist has a neat, no-fuss look-and-feel that focuses on your task. Its two broad divisions are inbox and projects. The inbox houses your personal task. You can configure it to show only today’s tasks or the entire week’s. Projects, on the other hand, are for collaborative lists. When creating a task, you can choose which list you want to add it to.

Also, you can drag tasks around and rearrange them in any order that you want. This makes Todoist very flexible. But care must be taken when dragging tasks around to avoid deleting a task mistakenly because clicking different areas of a task brings up different options.

Having Todoist in your workplace is a plus because it is a collaborative tool. Free users can add up to 6 people to a project while premium users can add up 26 people to a project. Before these collaborators can access your tasks, they’ll need to sign up for a Todoist account, this can be a free account. This makes it possible for you to assign tasks to these collaborators or vice versa. And if you have any comments or information that may be beneficial to you or your collaborators, you can also add it to your tasks using this app.

Todoist has good reminder options but unfortunately, this feature is reserved for premium users. It also has a few notifications that are specific to mobile devices. These notifications include SMS based notifications, location-based reminders and push notifications.

These notifications are activated for everything by default so if you’re not comfortable with it, you can easily change it upon setting up the service.

I also appreciate that Todoist keeps an automatic backup of your settings and data. So you don’t have to worry about losing your changes or data.

A unique feature about Todoist that I like very much is called Karma. It’s a small report that shows you your Productivity ( the number of tasks that you checked off).

This is such an important feature because it gives you a clear indication of whether you’re spending time on high priority tasks or on projects that are not important.To enjoy this karma report, you’ll have to upgrade to a premium account.

Todoist Pricing

Todoist is a freemium app that gives you an amazing experience in the free account. But if you want to take your productivity a step further by unlocking other features, then you’ll have to subscribe to the premium account.

With the free account, you’re limited to only the basic features such as creating tasks, adding subtasks, and creating projects. You’ll miss out on task labels, location-based reminders, the ability to add notes and upload files, and the karma report that is unique to Todoist. With the free account, you can create about 80 projects for organizing your tasks and share a project with a maximum of 5 people.

The premium account has no monthly subscription plan. It costs $28.99 per year. It is fully packed with the complete collaborative abilities, labels, location-based reminders and a feature that allows you add tasks via email. Additionally, premium users can organize up to 200 projects with about 25 users in each of them.

Todoist Pros and Cons

Pros

• It has a neat and simple interface
• Neat and accurate productivity chart in the premium account
• Great for collaboration
• Offline functionality
• Presence of location-based reminders

Cons

• The free version has limited functionality
• Reminder snooze is absent
• Cannot import and export data
• Mac mail is not supported even in the pro version

Any.do Review

This is a productivity app that is well designed for writing down tasks and goals. It has a unique feature (Any.do moment) that encourages its users to manage tasks in a more efficient manner.

In simple words, Any.do moment is a recurring reminder that presents to you all the tasks that you have on your list for that day. As you examine those tasks individually, you can decide to either commit to executing a particular task that day or reschedule it for another day that will be convenient for you.

Also, you can configure your Any.do moment to occur whenever you want. Although most users prefer the default setting of every weekday morning. The free users are limited to only 5 Any.do moments per month while the pro account holders get an unlimited number.

This app is easy to navigate. It has different categories for your to-dos and goals. These categories include personal, work, goals, and so on. You can also view your to-dos by due dates. Due dates can be saved as today, tomorrow, someday, or even narrow it down to 5 minutes interval.

Any.do makes it possible for you to add notes to any task, create a subtask, mark any task with a star, and also share your tasks with someone.

The mobile app version has a typeahead function ( this is not available on the web version) that enables you to input new tasks and goals speedily. Any.do can also suggest names of people on your contact list as you start typing.

Any.do is also collaboration tool that allows you to share tasks and lists with other users. Free account holders can share only one task with other users while the premium subscribers can share entire lists or projects with multiple users, add subtasks, notes, attach Large files(PDF files, images, videos) and so on.

As a matter of fact, Any.do ranks high among to-do-list apps for having a very simple, easy to use and a user-friendly interface with a unique morning planning feature that allows you to prioritize and organize tasks daily.

But comparing this app with Todoist, I think Todoist offers a little more than this app. Any.do is just great for personal use and very small businesses looking for a task management app.

This app is free to use but you need to subscribe to the paid pro plan to unlock all of the extra features. Any.do is also a cross-plan app that is available for iPhone, Android, the web, and Chrome.

Any.do Pricing

Free users are limited to sharing only one task and will miss out on location-based reminders whereas pro subscribers are presented with a bunch of additional features such as location-based reminders, advanced recurring tasks, ability to prioritize tasks with custom tags and lots more.

The pro account that can be used on multiple devices costs $2.99 per month or $26.88 if you pay for the whole year up front. The introduction of a monthly subscription gives you the opportunity to use the service for just a couple of months ( unlike Todoist that only has a yearly subscription plan).

There is another subscription plan called the “single device pro subscription” plan that allows you to use Any.do on only one device. It costs $25 per year(billed yearly).

Any.do Pros and Cons

Pros

• Cross-platform support
• Neat and elegant design
• Signature daily review feature
• Task sharing feature available for free users

Cons

• Location-based reminders and other important features are restricted to premium users

The Verdict

Every one of these productivity apps can carry out its function maximally, but choosing the best absolutely depends on the feature that you’re looking for.

If you’re looking for a productivity app to begin with and want something that is very basic, easy to use, user-friendly and looks amazing, then the free version of Any.do should be the best fit. It also comes with a lot of features to help you get more stuff done.

On the other hand, if you need more advanced features such as automatic data backup, good reminders, mobile notifications, and a productivity report, then you should opt for the premium version of Todoist.

Now, if you’re on a budget, Wunderlist is definitely the productivity app for you because It provides almost all of its features for free. So you may not need to subscribe to a premium account.

Conclusion

These productivity apps will help you make the most out of your time and get things done faster and more efficiently while still reaching your goals.

In order to find the one that works best for you, feel free to try each and every one of these apps.