Let's explore Todoist and Any.do.
These are both to-do list applications that have expanded into the team management space. We're going to give you a breakdown of everything from the key differences to whether they're good for you and your team, personal use & pricing.
This feature will be your ultimate guide to choosing between the two.
Table of Contents
Let's use these key areas to cover whether Todoist or Any.DO is right for you.
- The Basics
- Key Differences
- Personal Task Management
- Team Management for Small Teams
- Pricing Breakdowns
The Basics
It is important to begin with key backgrounds about both of these applications and why they're in the to-do list space.
- Primarily, Todoist has been in the to-do list space for over 10 years, and much like Any.do, they've been in the space long enough to have evolved into a different application from where they started.
- The aim of Todoist is really to provide an all-around to-do list experience, but with some lightweight team features for smaller teams looking to manage their workload, bolstering the to-do list application with upcoming calendar abilities.
- Any.do started as a very popular mobile application and has evolved into a really well-rounded product. It now presents an interesting lineup of calendar and team functionality, as well as other views that allow teams to manage their workload.
- It has really adapted and evolved in the last few years in particular. At its core, this is a to-do list application with added team functionality.
Key Differences
Let's take a look at how both of these applications differ, just to skip through all of the core features and really focus on the key differentiations between the apps.
Todoist
- Todoist is a really popular all-around to-do list application because it is applicable to a wide variety of people, from those using it to manage their new garden project all the way to small teams trying to coordinate tasks. It has a wide variety of abilities that a lot of people like inside the application and can apply to a lot of real-world situations.
- The ways that Todoist differentiates from Any.do is by presenting more of a traditional to-do list experience. As of the time of doing this feature, Todoist focuses primarily on how to express your tasks; at the moment, that is through lists, sections, boards, and an upcoming calendar view, which will help people to express their tasks associated with a date.
- They also have some advanced filters, labels, and abilities like reminders to keep you updated with what your tasks needing to be done, but it's a very general to-do list experience that Todoist offers.
Any.DO
- Any.do is on a similar mission by presenting a way to capture your tasks and assign them to a day, but also to bring together lists for important projects you're working on. It also allows you to do all of the regular stuff, like attachments, subtasks, and much more detail, but lacks abilities like prioritization, which is available in Todoist.
- Any.do focuses more on bringing the team experience a lot closer together by allowing for a better way to collaborate with team members inside of team workspaces, which can be available through a premium upgrade.
- However, the core focus that it has many years of experience in is the daily planner capabilities, allowing you to import your items and have that ability to see what events are coming up alongside the tasks that you need to do for the day. This is something that Todoist is only getting availability for more recently and is still not fully shipped.
For Personal Use
Here's how both of these stack up with personal task management.
Todoist
- When it comes to personal use, Todoist is a really nice all-around experience and presents a good way to start adding tasks, assigning them to a day using natural language input, and organizing them into a project. Inside of that project, you can organize those tasks into a board view or, more recently, a calendar view to express what's coming up.
- Now, Todoist has a wide range of custom view abilities, which are a real help in fine-tuning how you want each of your different areas to look. For example, inside of Todoist, if you're looking to plan your time ahead for the week, including all of the tasks that you do for work and life, then it is a great option to go to "Upcoming," which will allow you to see that in a board or a list view for all of the tasks that are coming up in your work list. This is perfect for looking ahead and managing what you want to do.
- Now, Todoist also has lists where you can organize your tasks into them. Both of these applications have fantastic mobile applications, which allow you to capture tasks really quickly for day-to-day management. Todoist also has an inbox area, which will allow you to see your captured items and organize them into the correct areas.
Any.DO
- Any.DO is really popular for personal use because it organizes your list as a very visual canvas and has a clean user interface, allowing you to add items, including tasks, which make it perfect for not just your work but also grocery lists, movies you want to watch, and a wide variety. This is why 40 million people are using it, and it's becoming very popular among families for organizing ahead. One of the standout features for personal use is the calendar abilities.
- This has long been available in Any.do and has had this feature for a very long time, allowing you to see all of your events that are potentially in Apple Calendar or on Google Calendar, and be able to see them alongside your tasks. For a lot of people, this is probably the original daily planner application that allows you to see what's ahead and start working on tasks.
- It also has a killer mobile application, which a lot of people like for iOS and Android, with great widgets to see what your events and tasks, as well as conference calls, are coming up, and reminders for time-based locations and recurring reminders as well. It also has good sync, which means you can get it not just on all of the mobile devices, but also on your Apple Watch and Google Wear devices.
- Todoist also has a great personal feature, which is WhatsApp integration with Any.do, locked under the premium. This will allow you to communicate with Any.do and manage tasks and reminders just from using their WhatsApp chat function, which is much more of a time-saver when going about your workday.
For Team Management
Unlocking how both of these work for managing your team's tasks.
Todoist
- When it comes to using Todoist for managing your work, the experience is one that is very popular. More recently, they've upgraded this with a shared team workspace that is separate from your personal account, meaning you can create, in the business pricing plan, up to 500 team projects, as well as get access to the newer calendar layout for team projects.
- This account does allow you up to 1,000 team members and guests, which is, obviously, paid per user but does allow you better ways to manage team roles and permissions, as well as centralized team billing. You get all of the traditional features you expect to find inside of Todoist.
- Using Todoist for teamwork spaces is really simple, and it's sort of like an extension of what the original to-do list experience is like. There are no bells and whistles that really take it beyond anything that you don't get in the original Todoist, but what it does do is allow you to separate some of your work and create a cushioned area for you and your team to organize what you need to do. You can assign tasks to other people, have commenting abilities, and even dive deep with the custom view functionality, which allows you to create the perfect look for you and your team's tasks for the coming week. You can utilize filters and labels, which means you and your team can have a really advanced look. It also is a really nice extension of using your Todoist account for not just personal use but also work use as well.
- This is something that I personally use every single day when it comes to managing a combination of work and personal tasks, and I've found that switching between them is actually quite nice in terms of being able to switch between work and personal mode, which has long been unavailable inside of Todoist.
- So, team workspaces are actually really nice for utilizing Todoist, but it does come with some limitations that project management software will only be able to bring, including a wider variety of views like timelines, more detailed Gantt views, and also board views that Todoist lacks. Naturally, it is more of a task management experience that teams can plug into.
Any.DO
- When looking at Any.do, it comes with a really nice setup for using it for team experiences, and it's more recent that they've focused on this. You can create unlimited boards, allowing you to manage your team project, client workflow, and more.
- You can do all of the regular stuff like assign tasks to other people, as well as jump into Kanban view for organizing, and it also has a calendar view which is easily switchable and, in my opinion, much better than Todoist's, at least in the current early stages.
- This allows you to track anything like due dates, deliverables, and has a wide range of filters. It also has a table view which serves as more of an action view for seeing all of your tasks and their relevant attributes as well, which makes it perfect for being able to plan ahead.
- There are also a wide range of templates—100, apparently, according to them—that allow you to custom-make your experience and make it much better, as well as over 6,000 integrations that can help automate your work using Zapier integrations. You can also create custom views so you can see what you and your team are working on, which can be created in Todoist as well. There's also a chat feature that allows you to see and leave comments for other people when focusing on tasks, as well as a better way to collaborate on personal tasks too.
- In terms of a team experience, Any.do is fairly new to this market, very much like Todoist, but lately, the user interface is really clean. The combination of templates is very good, and also the ability to track progress within tasks is very good as well. I can see this being used by many people who want to be able to manage their workload alongside their tasks in a clean environment with a solid mobile app.
Pricing Breakdown
Here's a breakdown of the pricing between Todoist and Any.do:
- Todoist charges $8 per member per month when billed monthly. For annual billing, the cost is reduced to $6 per member per month.
- Any.do charges $7.99 per user per month. For those opting for annual billing, the cost is slightly cheaper, effectively reducing the monthly expense by one dollar compared to Todoist's annual pricing.
Verdict
Let's help you pick the best to-do app:
- He's undecided when it comes to Todoist versus Any.DO for managing his laundry tasks. Both of these applications target similar markets. If you want to use this for personal use, both have great mobile apps and are reliable resources, with Any.DO currently edging out Todoist with a focus on managing your tasks and calendars alongside each other. However, Todoist has a really nice user interface. It really depends on your preferences for design when choosing between them.
- My experience is that Todoist is a bit more robust in terms of its stability than Any.DO, from our experience testing, and the applications look more consistent across devices than Any.DO does.
- When it comes to using these two applications for work, Any.DO packs more into their package than Todoist, offering a table view and better commenting abilities, with more doses of artificial intelligence within the application than Todoist is currently offering. The calendar views are also more robust in terms of their offering for teams. So, largely as a whole, although it's early days, Any.DO does present better team management abilities for groups.
- Todoist has a strong record of producing a fantastic experience once it gets started with them, more recently released teamwork spaces.