At first glance, Listaflow and Todoist both seem similar– they both give you a set of tasks to complete, track your progress and help you organize your work. However, their focus and use case is quite different. You might even use both. Let’s look at some of the ways these two tools are alike, and how they differ.
Listaflow and Todoist are both productivity apps. They help you keep track of your tasks, but with very different focuses.
Todoist is an app that makes it easy to create tasks and check them off. It has a great deal of flexibility in how you create these tasks, schedule them, and categorize them. This can make it very handy for individuals trying to track all of their work.
Listaflow, by contrast, is oriented around building checklists, scheduling them, and completing them. You can provide checklists to your team members so they and you know that essential tasks have been completed. You can also track trends with the checklists over time.
Todoist allows you to create ad-hoc tasks under different categories. You can create categories at will, and tasks under them. At first blush, this looks a lot like Listaflow’s checklists– each checklist has its own list of tasks to complete.
Categories in Todoist aren’t checklists, though. Checklists are a set of tasks that go together as part of a process. That means that in a checklist, the tasks are predefined, acting as a reminder for all work that needs to be done as part of a standard process.
For example, your company might require you to perform several tasks before you go on vacation. You might have to:
…and any number of other preparation tasks. Having these repeatable, predefined tasks in a checklist is handy. You can start preparing for your vacation in just a few clicks! In Todoist, you would have to create these tasks individually each time. You also wouldn’t have assurance that employees are consistently following the same standard set of required tasks.
If your team has tasks they need to complete on a specific, recurring schedule, they could set up each task on a recurring basis individually using Todoist. However, if you need to ensure that several tasks are consistently done together on a repeating schedule, then Listaflow Checklists may be what you’re looking for.
In Listaflow, checklists can be set up as recurring for a team. This allows team members to go through standard checklists like sprint planning, monthly reports, security questionnaires, or other compliance checks when needed. No additional admin. It’s all automated!
Todoist’s ad-hoc creation of tasks is great for keeping track of work anytime and in any category for your team. This allows you to see all open tasks across your team, which is pretty handy. But if you have checklists, you may benefit from consolidated reporting. Since Todoist doesn’t have an understanding of ‘which tasks go together as part of a larger, repeating process’, it can’t give you data on compliance over time, or show you trends in the data.
Listaflow comes to the rescue here. You can tell who has completed their checklists, and who hasn’t. Listaflow also gives you compiled reports on how things like team sentiment are moving over time!
If you have processes that could be handled by either Listaflow or Todoist, there’s one additional reason to choose Listaflow: It’s Open Source. Open Source applications allow you to examine the ‘source code’-- the code programmers use to make a program. That means that you can modify Listaflow and make it your own, or pay someone to make a change for you.
You aren’t beholden to the team behind Listaflow if you need something unique from it. Not only that, but it means that if you have the means, you can run your own copy of it and not pay any licensing fees. Open Source applications also protect your privacy by giving you more control over how your data is stored.
| LISTAFLOW | TODOIST | |
|---|---|---|
| Tasks | Built into checklists, which you define | Created on the fly |
| Team Reports | Listaflow provides reports on checklist completion, responses, and sentiment | Todoist allows you to create a ‘team overview’ of all open tasks for the team |
| Open Source? | ✓ Yes | × No |
| Pricing | Free if self-hosted, $3/month for individual accounts, or $9/month for team members on team accounts. | $4/month for individuals, $6/month for team members on team accounts. |
| Recurring Tasks | Defined at the checklist level– checklists can be repeated at specific intervals. | Defined at the task level– each task must have its recurrence set individually. |
| Customization | Full – you can edit the source code directly if you like. | Todoist can only be customized through its designed features. |
| Community | Community-built project that allows you to meet other users and developers directly. | Users have built their own forums to discuss the app on Reddit and similar places. |
Picking between Todoist and Listaflow depends on your needs. If your team needs a general to-do list application that lets you create tasks on the fly, Todoist may be the better choice. But if you want to make sure that your team’s checklists are consistently filled out so no task is overlooked, come take Listaflow for a spin!
