Sunsama vs Ellie Planner: Full Breakdown

Ellie Planner and Sunsama are both applications that allow you to manage your tasks and calendar in one.

However, there's a wide variety of differences between them.

We're going to help you choose between these two daily planner applications and decide which one to choose for your work or for your planning schedule. There are lots of differences between these apps, so let's make sure to get the right one for you. We'll be touching on some key areas like managing them for yourself, managing them for you and your team, and coordinating with integrations.

Full Comparison

Here's how they both compare to each other:

The Basics

The basics of each tool

• Ellie Planner is a daily planner application designed to manage your tasks, lists, and calendar. This is a very simple application, which is independently developed, but a lot of people are liking it for the clean, simple nature of the application, and the manner of planning your tasks ahead, as well as the premium features for time boxing, which allows you to see your day ahead. Many people compare this to Sunsama as a lightweight addition to their application suite.

• Sunsama on the other hand, has been around on the market for a fair amount of years and is arguably the original daily planner application. Its main focus is to keep you calm and stay focused at work. It has tasking and calendar abilities as Ellie Planner does, but it has a range of applications you can connect with, allowing you to consolidate your tasks in one location. The application has been around much longer and provides a credible history in the market that a lot of people have enjoyed for many years.

What makes Ellie different to Sunsama?

Ellie Planner offers a convenient way to capture tasks in a list.

There are some limitations in the applications that allow you to quickly capture tasks as well as you can inside of apps like Sunsama and Todoist. For instance, launching lists and providing you with a quick action function are features not found inside of Ellie Planner.

The application excels in managing your tasks; you can view all your tasks in a list, drag them into the calendar, and even time block them into your calendar, which is very straightforward within the application.

More recently, some abilities, like power features in the premium version, including due dates, help you coordinate your tasks better. Email forwarding is another feature, and more are planned in the future.

Currently, there's only one integration for Slack, but soon there will be one for Notion and Todoist, allowing you to import your tasks into Ellie Planner from those applications. Overall, Ellie Planner is really lightweight and takes some calendar functions into account, making it simpler for organizing tasks in a Kanban-type view and your list, as well as utilizing time boxing techniques.

What make Sunsama different to Ellie?

On the other hand, Sunsama is typically recommended for organizing oneself, as it excels in combining a wide range of features like task consolidation, which spans a wide range of applications, and mindfulness elements that have been woven in, such as guided planning, focus meetings, and focus mode, as well as weekly objectives.

The general build of the application for organizing oneself in Sunsama is considerably more thought-out. This is because Sunsama has a full team behind it, whereas Ellie Planner is currently independently developed by one person, meaning it cannot keep up with the range of features and the longevity that Sunsama has been known for.

Thus, for an all-around experience, Sunsama is probably recommended. However, if you're considering cost reduction or a budget-type application, then Ellie Planner will work well but will likely have about 40% of the features that you would find inside of Sunsama.

Which is best for teams?

We're looking at Sunsama and Ellie Planner for managing a team. You won't get much function from Ellie Planner because there are no ways, at the moment, to coordinate tasks with other people. Meaning, it's really off-limits if you're looking for collaborative-based work. Now, one of the things that Sunsama offers is a way to pick an admin for a shared workspace and then organize in a collaborative workspace.

This is great for assigning things to other people in channels, also for meeting notes in private channels, and managing a backlog as well. But obviously, there are elements of the experience that are private. For example, if you've got any task assigned in a private context or your calendar, and Sunsama calendar is all locked away inside of your own Sunsama account.

Task collaboration is actually very helpful because there are views for each team member, which means you can drag and assign different tasks to other people. Meaning, you can utilize a Kanban methodology for that. So, Sunsama is typically decent in comparison with Ellie Planner for managing a team and their tasks together.

Ellie or Sunsama?

When looking at Sunsama and Ellie Planner, both of these applications are good.

However, the typical verdict is that Ellie Planner is much better for individuals looking for a lightweight experience managing their tasks and calendar.

• This isn't going to be a comprehensive system like Sunsama, or other applications in the caliber of Notion and Akiflow. It's going to be a good system to organize your work, and it is something that is naturally and incrementally built upon by the development team. They typically listen to feedback quite commonly.

• So, don't expect Ellie Planner to be on the same level as Sunsama, since Sunsama has been in the market for much longer. We would typically recommend Sunsama for those who are looking for a more mindful approach to daily planning and those who need the likes of task consolidation and guided planning systems to implement inside their daily productivity.