Here is my Omnifocus and Todoist comparison

I'm a heavy user of GTD and to me it's important to have a tool, a system that you feel comfort with. I've been using a lot of different systems and apps during the years, and I have even made my own system based on many different services. But the last years I have been using the very well known service called Omnifocus. I believe it's the rolls royce when it comes to task management.

But recently I've been annoyed with the syncing. My iPad and iPhone Apps is very often not synced when I open them and sometimes I have to manually hit sync in Omnifocus to have the apps in sync. That's annoying.

So I decided to test another task management system called Todoist. I have now tried it for a quite long time so I could do this comparison.

But I decided to stay with Omnifocus, so I won't switch to Todoist.

The top three reasons why Todoist is not for me:

  1. Subscription-based. I don't like that. It get quite expensive over time.
  2. No review feature.
  3. No defer dates.

Here is my complete comparison. Also see the video and mindmap below.

Omnifocus vs Todoist

Omnifocus

  • The review feature is excellent to have if you follow GTD
    • The review feature is one of the features that makes Omnifocus stand out from the competition
    • To me it's the most important feature to be able to succeed with GTD
  • Terrible sync. My devices is never in sync when I open the app
    • Hopefully they will fix that in the next update. They are saying that they are working on it
  • Excellent calendar integration. I like to have my schedule below my tasks.
    • You can also get your due date tasks syncing with your preferred calendar as its own calandar. Works great but the calendar app you use has to support subscription based calendars and not all calendars do that. Apples calendar, Google Calendar and Tempo does but not Sunrise unfortunately
  • Exchange support . Sort of.
    • You can sync Outlook tasks with a iOS reminders list that in return syncs with Omnifocus. It's much easier than it sounds
      • I use it a lot to empty my head at my daywork. A really fast way doing it. All the things I put in there gets into my omnifocus inbox. Exactly how I want it.
  • I really like the start date (defer) feature
    • That together with the flag feature makes me follow GTD strictly. Together it becomes Actions and Next Actions. See my GTD mindmap in more detail on how I use this.
    • If you follow GTD strictly then you shouldn't set so many due times. That's what calendars are for
      • You should use defer instead
  • Only works on iOS devices and Macs

Todoist

  • has an Outliner feature built-in sort of.
  • a lot better sync than Omnifocus has. It's instant
  • has a web app
    • Pretty nice one too
  • a Chrome plugin
  • Outlook plugin
  • Works on all devices and computers
  • natural language
    • Even supports my native language Swedish!
  • Doesn't support start dates (defer). Personally I think thats more effective than due dates, and if you strictly follows GTD then defer is what you should use
  • Subscription based
    • I don't like that. Too many subscriptions for the same person can be way too expensive
    • Yeah you can use the free version but then you don't get important features like notifications

Here is my video where I talk about these two systems: