The 3 best todo lists for staying productive: Todoist… Wunderlist… SquidHub…
By Andreas Overbeck, Productivity Expert
The King is Dead!
With Microsoft announcing that they are laying off Wunderlist, who’s going to take over the throne as the King of todo lists?
Usually, Todoist and Wunderlist have pulled out as winners in the on-going debate about which todo app is the best. But recently, Todoist has seen competition from the new boy in class: SquidHub.
So which is better? Established Todoist? Or mysterious SquidHub?
In this post we’ll look at Todoist which is tailored more towards personal use whereas SquidHub is bridging into the collaborative space.
When should you choose one over the other?
Let’s break it down…
Nailing the core things of a todo list…
A todo app only needs to get a limited number of things right. It’s all about core features, psychology and ease-of-use. Nailing these things differentiate the best todo apps from the rest.
Core things to get right boils down to the following 4 areas:
- Easy and fast to create todos
- Easy to add details
- Reminders
- Ease of getting started
In the following sections we’ve included Wunderlist as a reference point, but we’ll only go into details with Todoist and SquidHub.
Easy and fast to create todos
Both Todoist and SquidHub provide an efficient way of creating todos. Creating todos feel natural and they are both intuitive across platforms (mobile apps and web).
Easy to add details
Adding details to a todo is equally easy in both Todoist and SquidHub. However, you’ll soon bump into limitations in the free version of Todoist. Unless you purchase the Premium version of Todoist you’ll miss out on essential core features such as reminders, labels and attachments.
On the other hand, SquidHub offers the same features as Wunderlist except for subtasks and priority. Talking about subtasks, this is one of the less intuitive features in Todoist. You may have to play around for a while before you see that this feature exists. I admit it… I had to look in the FAQ in order to figure out to how to create subtasks in Todoist.
Attachments is implemented differently across Todoist, SquidHub and Wunderlist. In Todoist you’ll have to go to the comments section in order to add an attachment (Premium feature). If you’re having a lot of comments, the attachments will soon drown in the thread.
In SquidHub the user has to upload a file to the the Files board before it can be added to a todo. Hmm… A bit clunky, but it’s possible. Let’s hope both Todoist and SquidHub tighten up and learn from Wunderlist!
Thinking about using your todo list for collaboration? Then SquidHub clearly trumps Todoist showing off as the more flexible platform.
SquidHub doesn’t limit how many friends you can invite to collaborate on a list. You can also assign multiple persons to a todo in SquidHub, whereas Todoist restricts you to only assign one person to a todo. Beside this SquidHub provides a separate message board. On the contrary Todoist offers comments on the individual todos (as a paid feature).
Are you in need of integrations and more sophisticated features in your collaboration efforts, Todoist will probably be your best bet. More on this later…
Reminders
What’s a todo list without reminders? Reminders is one of the most essential features for all todo list lovers. After all, you add todos in order to remember them!
Setting reminders is truly a breeze in SquidHub, as they are automatically set when you add a deadline. Great job! And it even comes for free.
Reminders are not offered in the free plan of Todoist. This is quite a dealbreaker if you just want to test drive Todoist as your new todo list.
Ease of getting started
Both apps are simple and elegant with a clean interface. The design of Todoist is more minimalistic and seems more suited to businesses with it’s almost clinically clean UI. SquidHub is also clean and minimalistic, but feels a bit more playful.
Both apps are intuitive so it’s straight forward to get a head start, and the navigation is pretty self-explanatory. Todoist offers different views including Day and Week so you can stay on top of what’s coming up. SquidHub is lacking these two views unfortunately.
Digging a bit deeper… Once you get started with your todo list, you probably know what happens. The list grows longer and longer. The longer it gets, the less you want to look at it, and in the end people often give up. Long todo lists don’t get done. SquidHub has really understood this issue — and nailed it.
By using categories in SquidHub, I’m finally able to handle my long lists by breaking them up into smaller smaller sections. It gives me a killer overview, that I haven’t come across in any other app. I’ve tried to manage this with several lists in other apps, but for me it’s way faster to have a single list divided into sections. It requires a few extra clicks in the beginning — but all worth it, when you get back to the list.
Todoist has a powerful search engine, which goes across all lists — and is available on both web and mobile. Really powerful if you are managing many and long lists. Search in SquidHub is currently only available on the web version. However, in real life I typically forget Search and how powerful that feature is… I even see power users who tend to forget it. Navigating lists just seems to be a deeply incorporated habit.
Sorting of todos is really neat on Todoist. If you want to setup custom filters, however, you’ll have to opt-in for Premium. SquidHub also provides sorting, but only on the web version.
Both apps also works seamless across devices, but with Todoist pulling out as the winner since it is present at more platforms than SquidHub.
What about the power users…?
We covered the core features so far. If you don’t get those right, the power features don’t really matter. For the power users, Todoist offers more to the user than SquidHub if you go for the Premium package.
Todoist comes with the Grand Package of integrations while SquidHub comes with integrations to Google Calendar and Google Drive. Besides that, we’ll let the table speak for itself.
And the winner is…
It really depends on your needs. Both todo lists works credibly well.
The best free option would be SquidHub. No doubt. SquidHub simply outperforms Todoist, and is the best of the two in mastering the simple functions. So if you’re looking for a simple todo list, SquidHub would be your best bet.
However, if you’re a true power user Todoist would be your obvious go-to choice. It offers the most extensive feature set including many integrations. But you really need the Premium version (comes at 29 $/year). Without the Premium plan Todoist feels ineffective (even for the basic users) since key features such as reminders, labels and comments are left out.
With these words. Thanks for all the good moments Wunderlist. It’s been a lovely ride. May you R.I.P.
Try SquidHub: www.squidhub.com
Try Todoist: www.todoist.com
DISCLAIMER: this post is written by one of the founders of SquidHub. We’ve tried to be strictly observant and neutral in our comparison. Hopefully, you already noticed this as the post describes how Todoist beats SquidHub on certain aspects. And vice versa.
