Maybe you're already using Sunsama but would like a more straightforward daily planner app, or you're looking around and seem interested in Sunsama but would like to know your options. We have gathered other similar daily planner and to-do list apps that act as a great Sunsama alternative to explore from our selection of productivity tools on Tool Finder.
Daily planners can come in all shapes and sizes, apps like Sunsama allow you to integrate other apps, and planners are pretty much an all-round application.
Other applications can have a more simpler outlook, just for creating a list for the day and combining that with your calendar.
Best Sunsama Alternatives: Summarised
We have carefully selected the best top 5 Sunsama alternatives to help you choose the best daily planner app. Here's the full list summarised for you to get started:
- Routine - An up-and-coming calendar/tasks app designed for planning your week.
- Ellie Planner - A lightweight alternative to Sunsama with brain dumping & more.
- Motion - An AI-based tasks and calendar experience with auto-scheduling.
- Todoist - A classic productivity tool for managing lists and boards of tasks.
- Akiflow - A new way to balance tasks and calendar from your list & other apps.
Before choosing an application think about how in-depth you want your daily planner to be. You might just want a simple app to plan each day, or maybe you want to include your emails, consolidate apps into one place, and effectively plan your workday using time blocking.
Considering the price of daily planner apps is also important.
Sunsama comes in at around $20 per month with a 30-day free trial, so keep that in mind when searching for an alternative. Like any daily planner app, things are bound to change with updates and new releases, so keep that in mind for newer apps.
Let's dive into it.
Sunsama Alternative #1: Routine
Best For
Calendar Organisation
Availability
Pricing
Type of Tool
Routine is an excellent Sunsama alternative. They both hold some very similar qualities and have a few differences.
Routine is also a very aesthetically pleasing application, its easy to get started with and doesn't feel too overwhelming. You can organise your days using time blocking, choosing important tasks to focus on, and even having a place for all your ideas and notes.
Using Routine
Routine is an advanced calendar tool, you can integrate all calendars and other task applications into Routine to help refine and plan your perfect day. Routine aims to help you make the most of your time, and get things done.
It has a great little feature for adding all ideas and notes pre-planned and organised into time-blocking slots. For example, you may have an idea to film a new video, you can leave this in your inbox until you're ready to plan it.
Routine also uses a feature called Today, this is where you can plan your perfect day, dragging in calendar elements and selecting the most important tasks.
Pricing & Limitations of Routine
In terms of pricing, Routine does come in cheaper than Sunsama. You can request free access to Routine allows you to connect one Google account, or you can subscribe monthly for around $15 per month.
Something that may be a limitation is the fact that Sunsama does allow you to plan more in advance, whereas Routine gives you a daily or weekly view to allow for planning. However, having the space inside Routine to inbox ideas is a positive.
Is Routine a Good Sunsama Alternative?
Routine is a very good Sunsama alternative, they pretty much have a very similar interface, you can add to your calendars, drag tasks into your day and effectively create a good plan for the week to get things done.
Sunsama Alternative #2: Ellie Planner
Ellie Planner is a free, simple daily planner app perfect for anyone who already enjoys using their Google calendar, but wants a bit extra.
Ellie also has the feature of inboxing your ideas in a section called Brain Dump, you can also use time blocking to plan your day and week, set recurring tasks and see analytics of how well you're doing with planning time and finishing tasks.
Using Ellie Planner
Ellie Planner is probably one of the more simpler applications to use. Having the brain dump feature is great for anyone on the go who wants to jot down ideas and events before adding them to their schedule.
To use this app, brain dump your ideas, then drag them into a time block for a specific day, you can also integrate your calendar, and Google calendars to automatically update the app to further save time and help with daily planning.
Like Sunsama you can set time limits to tasks to see an overview of how long your day will be, this is perfect for better time management. Inside Ellie, if a task isn't completed, it will automatically move over to the next day so you don't need to worry about missing anything.
Pricing & Limitations of Ellie Planner
Ellie Planner is free to use, which is great, especially when you are still looking for the perfect daily planner app.
You can upgrade for $4.99 per month to receive better and more features, however, the free version of the app is good enough to begin with. Ellie Planner also allows for a one-time purchase to unlock all features.
In terms of limitations, the main difference is the price, the feature-rich iOS app you get with Ellie and the fact Ellie Planner is more suited to personal daily use, as opposed to Sunsama which can be used for bigger projects and teams.
Is Ellie Planner a Good Sunsama Alternative?
Ellie is a great daily planner app for someone who just needs an easy-to-use space to plan their time, not just for bigger projects, teams, tasks and so on.
Ellie Planner provides a simple streamlined place to begin creating a better daily routine and managing time, without any extra fluff that may confuse some beginners.
Sunsama Alternative #3: Motion
Best For
Great for team tasks
Availability
Pricing
Motion offers a new level of daily planning with its AI and automation features. Many people are moving over to applications like this purely because they save so much time, and they're so clever. Motion claims to give you a whole extra month per year from the time it helps you save through planning and getting things done.
Sunsama doesn't currently use features like this to help speed up the planning and organisation process, so this could be a huge difference and a decider.
Using Motion
Motion is a very powerful planning tool using AI and automation to enhance your experience. It does have an easy-to-use, streamlined interface much like the other apps we have covered, although Motion has a few more advanced features, it doesn't feel too overwhelming inside the app.
Motion helps you build a to-do list, keeping an eye on your priorities, it also automatically prioritises work and tasks within your plan, to make sure you get things done.
Overall, Motion uses AI to create a perfect daily plan to make the most of your time, allows you to focus on important work, and automatically reschedule, so you save time messing around there too. Recently they improved their desktop and mobile apps too.
Use the 7-day free trial to see if this method of planning works for you. AI is growing rapidly so it's not a bad idea to start getting used to it.
Pricing & Limitations of Motion
Motion is more expensive than Sunsama at around $30 per month and less for teams. However this will be because of its more advanced features and the fact you can have everything you need in one place with Motion, you can also plan your meetings here too.
It can be said that Sunsama allows you to track how well you spent your time alongside completing tasks, whereas Motion is more focused on time spent in meetings and time saved on tasks. It really depends on your preference for what you want and how you want to track your time.
Is Motion a Good Sunsama Alternative?
Motion provides a different spectrum to Sunsama, but still gives a good daily planning experience. Motion is of course a more advanced AI application, so if you are already using Sunsama and are looking for a better alternative with extra features and automation, Motion could be a good choice.
Sunsama Alternative #4: Todoist
Best For
Simple task management
Availability
Pricing
Todoist is a well-known task management application, users love how you can write down ideas and then add them to your list of todos.
As a Sunsama alternative, this one is probably the most different, it sways away from just being a daily planner app to being a place for planning all todos, rescheduling tasks, organising notes and more.
Using Todoist
Todoist first gives you a space to jot down notes, todos, events, projects, tasks and whatever you want. You can then organise these notes with tags, colours, dates, times and more.
Start each day by jotting down your to-dos within any priority level. From here you can use the Kanban boards to organise tasks, give them labels and even assign tasks to others.
Todoist also has many time-saving features such as setting recurring tasks, adding in tasks from emails, and linking the application with other productivity apps to have everything you need in one place.
Teams can use Todoist to work on tasks together by commenting on tasks, adding files, viewing calendars and tracking task completion progress.
Pricing & Limitations of Todoist
Todoist is free to use unless you want to upgrade to premium features such as reminders and using themes, however, you can get a good grasp of the app by using the free version itself. As one of our Sunsama alternatives the price is a lot cheaper, at around $5 per month to access premium, and only a little bit more for teams and business purposes.
Although Todoist is a good daily planner app, it doesn't have as many easy-to-use daily planning features as Sunsama and it definitely works better as a to-do list app where you delegate tasks each day.
Is Todoist a Good Sunsama Alternative?
Todoist is a good Sunsama alternative if you want to step away from the more daily planning area, to a more flexible to-do list app you can manage. Also, the price can be a big decider for some since it is a lot cheaper, and a good simple way to manage daily tasks using Kanban boards.
Sunsama Alternative #5: Akiflow
Best For
Advanced Daily Planner
Availability
Pricing
Akiflow is more than just a daily planner app, it's here as one of our Sunsama alternatives because it provides more of a consolidation app, with the abilities for planning your week, organising your calendar, and work alongside others in multiple applications, all in one place.
Akiflow links with other productivity apps which allow you to manage all tasks and projects in one place, saving you and your team time from switching between applications.
Akiflow then also presents the ability to time block your calendar, manage events and plan your day. All you need to do is drag and drop tasks from the universal inbox to get started.
Using Akiflow
Akiflow is used as a consolidation tool and a planner for individuals and most teams. You can connect other applications to keep everything in one place, saving time and making things just make more sense.
Start with your Universal inbox, this is where all tasks from all apps are found. From here you can drag and drop tasks into open spaces in your calendar using time blocking, you can also set focus time inside the calendar so you are not disturbed and time for when you are free to arrange meetings with others.
Akiflow overall provides a centralised inbox, labels for organising, calendar sync, progress tracking, time blocking, keyboard shortcuts and a command bar for quick adding tasks.
There's a whole lot to this application and a small learning curve, but worth it for those using multiple apps and needing to plan their time.
Pricing & Limitations of Akiflow
Now Akiflow has many many features, and a price tag to come along with it. Around $25 per month and you can use this consolidation tool, after a 7-day free trial. So not too different from Sunsama.
The difference/limitation with this app is the fact you need to do more manual work than you would with Sunsama. Sunsama can help you plan your perfect day and suggest where to complete tasks and so on, whereas, with Akiflow, you need to manually organise this for yourself.
Is Akiflow a Good Sunsama Alternative?
Akiflow is a good Sunsama alternative if you are looking to consolidate more applications into one place. This is probably more beneficial to teams who need to communicate and organise tasks across many people. Our getting started guide to Akiflow for help.
However, in terms of daily planning, this might be a little too much to learn or begin with.
Are You Still Looking For a New Daily Planner Application?
That was 5 of our hand-picked Sunsama alternatives for daily planning applications, but there are many more daily applications to choose from.
Take a look at our Best 5 Daily Planner Apps for 2023 to see which apps we recommended this year, or our list of Daily Planner Apps added to Tool Finder.
- Best Sunsama Alternatives: Summarised
- Sunsama Alternative #1: Routine
- Using Routine
- Pricing & Limitations of Routine
- Is Routine a Good Sunsama Alternative?
- Sunsama Alternative #2: Ellie Planner
- Using Ellie Planner
- Pricing & Limitations of Ellie Planner
- Sunsama Alternative #3: Motion
- Using Motion
- Pricing & Limitations of Motion
- Is Motion a Good Sunsama Alternative?
- Sunsama Alternative #4: Todoist
- Using Todoist
- Pricing & Limitations of Todoist
- Is Todoist a Good Sunsama Alternative?
- Sunsama Alternative #5: Akiflow
- Using Akiflow
- Pricing & Limitations of Akiflow
- Is Akiflow a Good Sunsama Alternative?
- Are You Still Looking For a New Daily Planner Application?
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Francesco D'Alessio
Charlotte Dawson
Francesco D'Alessio
Francesco D'Alessio
Francesco D'Alessio
Charlotte Dawson