Todoist vs. Asana: Why I Dropped Both & You Should Too

If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re relatively new to project management and ready to test out a few tools that are approachable, reliable, and affordable.

Well, Todoist and Asana absolutely meet those requirements, and I’m excited to compare the two for you today!

Todoist is a task management tool, best for individuals needing a simple and intuitive way to organize and track their personal and professional tasks.

Asana, on the other hand, is a more comprehensive project management solution tailored for larger teams and organizations, offering advanced collaboration features and customizable workflows.

By the end of this analysis, you'll have a clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each tool, enabling you to make an informed decision and boost your productivity effectively.

A quick look at Todoist vs. Asana

• Todoist is best for individuals and small teams looking for a straightforward task management tool with great cross-platform support and natural language input.
• Asana is best for larger teams needing advanced project management capabilities like workflow builders, approvals, integrations, and team collaboration features.

	Todoist	Asana
Standout Feature	Natural language input for easy task entry	Advanced team collaboration tools like dependencies, approval workflows, etc.
Pricing	Free plan available. Paid plans start at $4/month for Pro, $6/month for Business.	Free plan available. Premium plans start at $10.99/user/month.
Best for	Personal task management and simple team collaboration	Complex project management for teams and enterprises

A better solution for task management

Honestly, we’re reviewing two TRIED and TESTED tools in this article.

Both Todoist and Asana are excellent task/project managers.

But there is another tool on the market that I find accurately understands capacity and productivity in a way I don’t think any tool can match.

The product I’m referring to is called Motion, and whenever possible, I’ll be lining it up alongside these two tools.

Created teams juggling challenging schedules, Motion is an AI-driven tool that masterfully blends calendar, project, and task management.

While Motion shares some features with Todoist and Asana, it truly outperforms them both when it comes to team capacity planning, calendar optimization, and AI assistance.

Let’s explore why, below!

Todoist vs. Asana: A feature-by-feature comparison

Now that you’ve read all about Motion, and reviewed a quick deep dive on how both Todoist and Asana work best, it’s time for a feature-by-feature comparison.

To evaluate both tools, I tested them within a content production workflow.

Additionally, I evaluated their features, free and premium plans, and also, read numerous user reviews from Reddit and G2Crowd.

Overall in my research & as an ex-user of each platform, I saw positives and negatives to both applications, but ultimately, between Asana and Todoist, Asana was the option I felt worked best for my specific needs at the time.

We’ll get more into the why and how, below.

Todoist is better for personal task management

Todoist is more of a “personal task manager.” This means it was created to ideally just manage individual work and personal activities.

With that being said, Todoist has project management and team collaboration features, they’re just extremely limited compared to Asana’s.

Todoist is perfect for housing a streamlined list of habits and routines that I want to track each day.

You can ask it to create tasks, assign due dates and priorities, and organize them into projects and subtasks.

It also provides various productivity features, such as recurring tasks, reminders, labels, and filters.

With that being said, neither tool can dynamically adapt to shifting schedules in the way Motion does.

This is one of my favorite features of this product. While most project and task managers don’t account for things like meetings, and appointments, Motion does.

Meaning, it can actually understand your true capacity. And, it automatically rearranges your tasks and priorities when a meeting is canceled, or a due date is missed.‎

Asana is better for team project management

Asana is one of the top team project management tools available.

It’s also usually the tool that tons of companies start with because it’s so easy to learn and master.

Some of Asana’s incredible team features include deeper views and easy-to-duplicate templates, quick reporting, and the ability to create custom forms, set goals, and track milestones.

With that being said, there are teams that use and love Todoist.

They just likely need limited features. An engineering or product team would probably find their team features limiting.

Motion, however, has some team functionality that Asana and Todist just can’t beat.

For example, project managers are easily able to assign tasks to team members at the ideal time for them.

They just need to provide the task with information on priority level, subsequent tasks, timing, etc - and Motion’s AI will then schedule that task at a time that works best for that team member.

With Motions AI functionality, tasks will constantly shuffle to make time for tasks with higher priority levels, changes in schedules, and more.

This allows team members to constantly prioritize their most impactful work - no matter what.‎

Asana offers more integrations

In terms of third-party app integrations, Asana blows Todoist out of the water with hundreds of options for connecting to other workplace tools.

Asana also integrates with major tools like Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Outlook, Slack, Google Drive, and more.

However, when it comes to a Google Calendar integration — something I consider absolutely critical for personal productivity—Todoist is the superior option.

With Todoist, I can very easily sync individual projects or my entire task list bi-directionally with Google Calendar, with options to customize how tasks appear and whether they stay on the calendar after being completed.

With Motion, calendar sync becomes a non-issue, as your tasks are natively scheduled on your calendar using advanced AI algorithms that account for your true availability and priorities.

It also connects with Google Calendar, iCloud Calendar, and Microsoft 365.

Todoist is more affordable, but Asana has an excellent free plan

When it comes to pricing, Todoist is the clear value winner for individual users.

Starting at just $4 per month, the pro plan is easily affordable and still includes options like 300 personal projects, a calendar layout, 150 filter views, task reminders, and AI assistance.

Asana's paid personal plan will set you back $10.99 per month—over four times as much annually.

But, with that being said, their free option is more comprehensive than Todoist’s, allowing you to collaborate with up to 10 team members, create unlimited tasks and projects, access 100+ integrations, store unlimited files, and more!

Todoist's free plan has restrictions in regard to personal projects (up to five,) and most importantly, activity history.

Todoist only saves a week of history for free users, which can be a huge disadvantage.

Both tools have highly praised AI functionality

AI can be a MASSIVE benefit inside of a tool, but many applications haven’t nailed their AI functionality just yet.

As far as AI for Todoist, it uses Natural Language Processing to create and add details, due dates, and more onto tasks for its users.

This is one of their most praised features and it makes adding tasks an absolute breeze.

Asana AI Teammates is currently in beta but has some promising functionality.

With this new feature, users can do things like automate tasks and orchestrate complex workflows at scale, chat with AI to get deeper details on tasks and updates, draft more effective SMART goals, access and create short summaries, edit content, and more.

While impressive, neither of these can hold a candle to Motion’s AI functionality.

With Motion’s AI, users will feel like they have their own personal assistant.

The tool will automatically plan each user's days based on their tasks, meetings, and priorities. It also consistently updates when things must be pushed back, or extended. And it does this completely on its own.‎

What do other users think of Asana and Todoist?

I didn't want to share only my opinion in this article, so I went to the G2 archives and searched for feedback from users of both products.

Todoist

The Good 🙌

“Everything about Todoist sets it apart from other platforms of its kind, but especially its affordability yet it get's work done in an incredible way. The total cost of acquiring, implementing, and managing Todoist is fairly priced plus the simplified design and well put together UI that makes my personal and team use so easy. The dashboard is perfectly laid out and highly customizable allowing us to design it to our appeal.” (link)

“Extremely easy to use for all levels of technological understanding. I use Todoist several times a day and we have integrated this across our whole team. We've experienced far less chance of tasks being lost or forgotten and people stay accountable because of the notifications received upon completion. Our communication within the team has improved significantly and everyone seems to be managing their time better.” (link)

The Bad 🚫

“I dislike how Todoist does not cater to teams or features a "team view." My manager wanted me to create a holistic view of our boards, so I created different groups to help organize, but my formatting was not reflected in her account. The notifications were also a little spotty; sometimes, we weren't notified of deadlines.” (link)

“The Todoist interface feels very dated, and many tasks which should be arguably simple to do, such as rescheduling tasks, or snoozing reminders can take a large amount of clicks and taps.” (link)

Asana

The Good 🙌

“Robust application has many features, yet as a beginner using Asana, I can set up what I need efficiently with the tutorial videos and training events they offer for users. As a project manager, I manage multiple projects with many deadlines and this will help our teams be able to not only see status but access information on any project all in one place, even linking to our Dropbox account” (link.)

“I started using Asana in 2019. I tried the free version for years because my business budget was tight, and I couldn't afford a robust tech stack. But when I did have some extra money, I ran to Asana to upgrade. Over those two years of using the free version, I loved how easy the platform was to use. Having tried more technical project management tools, Asana was so easy to use—and fun! It's the lifeblood of my business and my number one accountability partner” (link.)

The Bad 🚫

“Getting everyone to actively use and integrate their workflow into Asana is kind of difficult because some folks are averse to new technology, or the way they work doesn't mesh well. Patience and training go a long way toward getting everyone on board. It's not hard, but getting everyone's processes adjusted takes a while” (link.)

“It gets costly very fast and can be difficult to figure out account details and the reasons that things get so pricey. I had quite a few back-and-forths with their support to try to figure it out and I was still confused at the end of it. So, Asana is not that scalable” (link)

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Why I switched to Motion

Both tools are honestly excellent for different reasons — mainly in regards to task (Todoist) vs. project (Asana) management.

For someone like me, who needs a tool like this for work, and collaborating with teammates, Asana was the better option for me at the time.

However, neither Todoist nor Asana can match the game-changing productivity gains that Motion provides through its intelligent AI scheduling capabilities.

I’ll give you way more details on why in the sections below.

Project & task management that actually works

Most project planning tools out there make you waste time rescheduling deadlines and juggling tasks without considering your actual bandwidth.

That's where Motion comes in and changes the game. It integrates with your calendar and automatically schedules tasks around your meetings and deep work sessions.

No more overcommitting and getting buried. When things inevitably go off track, Motion doesn't just leave you hanging.

It re-prioritizes your tasks based on what's realistic, so you always stay on top of your game without pulling all-nighters or weekend work.

Motion has all the functionality you need to collaborate with your team on due dates, priorities, notes, blockers, assignees, and more.

But it doesn't overcomplicate things or overwhelm you with too many bells and whistles. It just works.

Here's how Motion can save you from project management hell.

Imagine your boss assigns you 30 hours of tasks this week.

But you already have 20 hours of tasks on your plate, and you only have 40 hours of actual capacity.

Without Motion, you'd have no clue you're already over bandwidth. You'd just have that sinking feeling that this week is going to be a nightmare.

So you say yes without considering if you can actually take it all on. Come Friday, you have to tell your boss you can't finish everything as promised.

Or let's say you've been staying late at the office a lot recently, but you're not sure why.

It just feels like you're always rushing from one task to the next with no breaks.

Turns out, when you have tasks listed in a tool like Asana or Todoist, it's easy to prioritize the wrong things and end up working on lower-impact items.

So the truly urgent, important work keeps getting pushed, and you fall behind.

With Motion, none of that happens.

It intelligently schedules your tasks based on priorities, deadlines, and your actual availability.

No more overcommitting. No more working overtime on the wrong things.

Just focused, productive work on what really matters.

Seamless calendar integration

This is where Motion truly shines.

Generate meeting scheduler pages that reflect your availability, check team calendars, and even take into account your priorities.

It’s like having an AI scheduling assistant that understands your work hours and most important tasks, ensuring meetings don't derail your productivity.

Motion also allows you to combine your Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud calendars into one view.

You can also add Zoom or Google Meet links to your event invites.

‎An impressive scheduler

Motion’s scheduler (also known as their AI Meeting Assistant) is far more detailed than many tools on the market.

Motion allows users to send custom meeting booking pages, and links to showcase your (and even your team members when needed) availability.

It also highlights your preferred meeting time and allows you to send preliminary questions in advance directly through the booking page.

Team planning & collaboration features

Motion’s AI-driven scheduling and time tracking make planning team workloads a breeze.

It even flags when team members are over capacity, and allows you to notate when tasks are blocked, ensuring that critical tasks aren’t missed due to loaded calendars.

‎

Is Motion worth it?

1,000% YES!

After using Asana for years, we switched to Motion, and it’s been a game-changer.

Motion helps us remember tasks, manage projects, and collaborate more effectively.

If you have a team of 100 or fewer and need a simple, powerful tool, Motion is worth every penny.

Ready to level up?

I've personally reclaimed 12+ hours per week thanks to Motion's intelligent scheduling.

And my team has seen a 35% increase in productivity after adopting the platform.

Stop drowning in to-do lists and missed deadlines.

Start working smarter with Motion's AI co-pilot handling the scheduling so you can focus on your most important work.