Notion and Todoist are two of the most popular organization and task management apps for individuals and team members. They are also an excellent choice for personal use. However useful, they present significant differences in the way they manage tasks, organize your to-do lists, and store your data. In this blog post, we’ll compare Notion vs. Todoist so you can identify which is better for your particular needs, taking into consideration features, user experience, customization, and pricing, among others.
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Table of contents
Reasons to choose Notion
- Superior note-taking functionality, with options similar to advanced word processors
- Highly customizable features adapting to any task and page
- Multiple views of data, including lists, tables, calendars, and Kanban views
- Offers a comprehensive toolkit fulfilling multiple functionalities that usually require distinct apps
- Huge variety of templates and customization options
- AI feature
- It works and syncs on all platforms
- Free version for single users
Reasons to choose Todoist
- Optimal focus on task tracking
- Natural language feature for better management
- Clean and simple user-friendly interface
- Low learning curve
- Easy collaboration
- Lots of integrations
- Low cost
What is Notion?
Notion is an all-in-one productivity software launched in 2016. It combines note-taking, task management, and document sharing, leading to better user and team efficiency. Geared towards comprehensive project management, Notion seems ideal for individuals who want advanced features and more complex workflows and teams that need an all-in-one productivity suite.
What is Todoist?
Todoist is a sleek, intuitive task management app for organizing projects and daily tasks. It’s less flexible than Notion but has a highly customizable and clean interface and offers a more streamlined experience for task tracking. Professionals needing a more structured approach to managing tasks will appreciate Todoist, while Notion caters to those preferring a fluid, note-centric workflow.
Notion vs. Todoist: What are the differences?
Let’s thoroughly compare Notion vs. Todoist feature by feature to identify which app will suit you best.
Mission
Notion’s mission, focusing on making work more productive and less strenuous, resonated with the need for coordinated tasks at work.
On the other hand, Todoist’s mission, aiming to free the mind from remember-task pressure, struck a chord with the objective of stress-free productivity.
Notion appears best for group settings requiring structured work systems and individuals that need more customization, while Todoist seems most suitable for those yearning for mental peace amidst task handling.
Databases
Notion offers fully customizable workspaces with advanced databases that allow easy information surfacing via filters, rollups, relations, and linked views. It supports numerous integrations and facilitates document editing/sharing.
Todoist provides more basic functionality aimed at task management in note-like pages and lacks complex functions such as timelines and custom fields.
While Notion seems ideal for those seeking a one-stop shop for project management and workflow consolidation, Todoist appears better suited for individuals or teams requiring a simple, structured document management tool.
Interface
Notion’s interface is capable of almost everything, efficiently catering to a variety of work needs. With a clean design, easy-to-set-up pages, and the option to embed other websites and applications, it’s a boon for note-taking and organizing information. However, the interface can easily look crowded when the workspace grows.
Conversely, Todoist generally offers a more straightforward and task-focused beautiful interface designed for quick task management and tracking. It certainly looks cleaner than Notion, but it lacks all the features this app can offer for project management.
Task management
Notion’s task management caters to note-taking, event planning, and content creation, while Todoist excels in organizing daily to-dos and setting project deadlines.
While Notion suits content creators and project management, Todoist may benefit individuals with straightforward task-planning needs.
Templates
Notion and Todoist offer free and paid customizable templates to personalize tasks and project views.
Firstly, Notion provides a wide variety of native views, like tables, calendars, lists, Kanban, timelines, and galleries, including the possibility to further customize them at will. Notion also has an extensive template collection with thousands to choose from covering work, school, personal, projects, wiki, and docs templates.
Todoist templates are designed to guide the user in a series of steps for a specific task, such as a meeting agenda, looking for a job, or fitness goals. They cover yearly goals, marketing & sales, creativity, personal, support, design & product, boards, development, education, work, and management.
Customization
Notion excels in customization, offering diverse features like advanced databases, grouping functions, and a user-friendly UI. Its features outstrip similar tools, and the app is perfect for creating complete workspaces and databases customized down to the smallest detail.
👉 Learn more: 18 Best Notion Widgets in 2024 (For Free!)
On the contrary, Todoist lacks richness in customization but is simple and straightforward. This app’s simplicity is preferable for users who want a task manager without too many complications.
Filters
Notion makes surfacing information easily with filters and has features like grouping functions, rollups, and linked views working to its advantage.
Todoist offers advanced database query filters that are easily accessible and customizable. It even allows the creation of or/and statements, the removal of certain results from queries, and the saving of queries as color-coded filters for easy reference. Lastly, it can use AI to create powerful filters.
Collaboration
Both Notion and Todoist offer collaboration tools, including task assignments, commenting, and real-time updates. While Notion enables unlimited file uploads, rich text editing, block-building systems, reminders, and shared workspaces, Todoist provides simpler collaboration features centered on task sharing and comments.
For small groups that value simplicity, Todoist’s free version supports up to five users and is a worthy choice. However, larger teams undertaking intricate projects would benefit from Notion’s robust feature set, with a paid version to include up to 250 users.
Recurring tasks
In Todoist, setting up recurring tasks is handy, albeit a bit finicky, with its natural language syntax support. You can use phrases like “every 3 days,” and “next week”, which feels organic yet occasionally unreliable without enough feedback.
Notion has recently introduced native recurring tasks, although the system to set them up, yet powerful and with multiple options, is a bit complicated since it is needed to create a new template first. For someone requiring heavy recurring task tracking, like in personal productivity or goal tracking, Todoist’s approach might be more accessible despite its slight drawbacks.
Learning curve
The power of Notion and its capabilities resides in its many features, views, relations, formulas, integrations, customizations, and templates, making it more challenging to master than Todoist. For this reason, the software has an initial steep learning curve due to its broad functionality, but its flexibility is invaluable once mastered. Once you understand it, everything becomes much more straightforward to use.
Todoist has a straightforward interface similar to many other note-taking and task-management apps, making learning easier and beginner-friendly. However, it lacks some complexity, has fewer features, and is less customizable than Notion.
AI
Notion and Todoist both offer appealing AI features.
Notion AI stands out in assisting with creating to-do lists, summaries, blog post outlines, essays, action items, and much more. For instance, Notion AI can summarize a lengthy report and highlight the key actions required.
Todoist offers its AI Assistant to help you create and suggest tasks, make your ideas more actionable, break them down, and even give tips.
👉 Learn more: Notion AI vs. ChatGPT: Which AI Tool Is the Best for You?
Pricing
Notion has a free plan and three paid plans:
- Plus: $10/month
- Business: $15/month
- Enterprise: by request
Todoist also has a free plan and two paid plans:
- Personal Pro: $4/month
- Team Business: $6/month
Conclusion
In conclusion, Notion and Todoist are two formidable productivity tools, each catering to specific user needs. Notion is a comprehensive all-in-one workspace that offers a plethora of features ideal for individuals and teams that crave customization, intricate project management, and note-taking prowess. Todoist, on the other hand, shines in its simplicity, making task management seamless and straightforward for those who desire a clear, user-friendly experience.
One might think that choosing between the two is challenging. However, the beauty lies in the fact that these tools, while distinct, can be integrated and automated to work together. Our service at 2sync offers the unique advantage of merging different tools with Notion, like Google Calendar, Todoist, and many upcoming automations.
With our expertise, users can benefit from the robustness of Notion and the simplicity of Todoist, all within a streamlined environment. Try 2sync today!
