I have been a premium user of Todoist for many years. I promoted it heavily in a former blog, Web2 and More, which had a Google Page Rank Four status and apparently had 15,000 visitors a month. Earlier this week I decided to dump Todoist and look for an alternative.
The reason for this is that I used the Upcoming feature in a board format which was practical and more visually attractive that the straightforward list module. The issue I was experiencing is that when the week came to Sunday, the days of the following week were blank. Not exactly an upcoming view.
I tried to raise this twice in the Todoist sub-Reddit. Both posts were removed. I may be cutting my nose off to spite my face but I am not prepared to support a company that censors its users. So the hunt is on for a replacement.
Over the years I have checked out many task management services including Remember The Milk, Toodledo, Asana, TickTick, Trello and Todoist. One of the best, Wunderlist, was bought out by Microsoft and butchered and mutilated into Microsoft To Do, now a shadow of its former self. I gave up on TickTick because of its links with China. After all, I didn’t want to have a task called Research Killing Xi Ping to have my door kicked in by assassins controlled a world away!
Searching the web revealed a host of possibilities, but I have narrowed it down to two — Any.do and Superlist which are now running in parallel. My thoughts on Superlist can be seen here. I don’t know why, but for a team that developed the excellent Wunderlist, there are areas that I am not gelling with Superlist. I will, however, persevere.
Any.do has been around for years and from previous experience, it is two services — web/desktop and mobile. Let me explain.
In the Android app, it has an option to create a smart grocery shopping module. Inserting milk, for example, places it into a pre-set section called Eggs and Dairy. Potatoes, etc, are automatically placed into their respective sections. If you view the list in the web app, there are no sections, just a list of items to be bought.
Similarly, if you create the list in the web app, if you create a section for vegetables and you create purchases such as potatoes as sub tasks, this is not mirrored in the Android app. A mobile only function called Moment is not available in the web app. I am not a coder so I cannot understand this omission.
Because I use Proton Calendar, both Any.do and Superlist will only link with Google Calendar so the calendar and My Day modules cannot be used.
As free options are limited in their functionality, I have subscribed to the Any.do premium service which gives me advanced recurring reminders, customised themes, WhatsApp reminders, colour tags, mobile location reminders and an unlimited daily planner.
So, as it stands, Any.do looks like it will end up as my task management app, but watch this space.
Edited to add: At the time of writing, I was unaware that the sub-Reddit was not run by Todoist. When I contacted Todoist support I did mention to the tech support chap that it was risky for Todoist to have its reputation held by a third party. The Todoist customer support chap did say that it was Todoist that blocked my account and I have had a refund for the remaining months.
