TickTick tries to be everything. Task manager, calendar, habit tracker, Pomodoro timer, Eisenhower matrix, Kanban board — all in one app. For a lot of people, that ambition is exactly the appeal. For others, it’s exactly the problem.
The complaints tend to cluster around three themes. The UI is busy — toggles, tabs, and side panels competing for attention, making the simple act of checking off a to-do feel heavier than it should. The calendar integration, while present, feels like it was added after the core product was designed rather than woven into it. And the habit tracker, while nice in theory, adds noise for anyone who doesn’t want to track habits alongside their project tasks.
None of this makes TickTick bad. It makes it opinionated in ways that might not match your opinions. If you’ve started fighting the tool instead of using it, here’s what else is out there.
Quick Comparison
| Alternative | Price | Best For | Key Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Todoist | Free – $5/mo | Clean, fast, cross-platform tasks | Does less, but everything it does is polished |
| Things 3 | $49.99 Mac / $9.99 iPhone | Design-obsessed Apple users | One-time purchase, best-in-class UI |
| Microsoft To Do | Free | Simple lists in Microsoft’s world | Free, integrated with Outlook |
| Any.do | Free – $4.99/mo | Minimal task + calendar combo | Cleanest design in the category |
| Google Tasks | Free | Gmail/Calendar users who want basics | Lives inside tools you already use |
Deep Dives
Todoist
Todoist is the anti-TickTick. Where TickTick packs in every feature it can imagine, Todoist picks a smaller set of features and executes each one with precision. Quick-add with natural language. Projects, sections, labels, filters, priorities. Comments and file attachments on tasks. And that’s… mostly it.
Pro costs $5/month ($4/month annual). The free tier handles five active projects — enough for personal use. The design is clean without being sterile. The apps are fast on every platform. The API is the best in the category, which means every other tool integrates with it.
What you give up from TickTick: no built-in calendar view (though calendar feeds work), no habit tracker, no Pomodoro timer, no Eisenhower matrix. Todoist has an opinion: those features belong in separate apps. If you agree, Todoist feels like relief. If you disagree, it feels like it’s missing half the picture.
Things 3
Things 3 goes in the opposite direction from TickTick — radically less. No habits. No calendar. No Pomodoro. No collaboration. No web app. No Windows. No Android. Just tasks, projects, areas, and headings, wrapped in the most carefully designed interface in the category.
Mac is $49.99, iPhone is $9.99, iPad is $19.99 — all one-time purchases. No subscription. Things Cloud syncs everything for free.
If TickTick’s clutter was your breaking point, Things 3 is the antidote. Every pixel is intentional. Every interaction is smooth. The trade-off is brutal, though: Apple only, no collaboration, no web access. If those constraints work for your life, Things 3 is the most enjoyable task manager you’ll ever use. If they don’t, it’s a non-starter.
Microsoft To Do
Sometimes the answer is the boring one. Microsoft To Do is free, works on every platform, and handles the basics: lists, tasks, due dates, reminders, recurring tasks, and a “My Day” view for daily planning.
If you came to TickTick for simple task tracking and ended up buried under feature panels you never asked for, Microsoft To Do strips everything back to the essentials. Flagged Outlook emails become tasks automatically. Shared lists handle basic collaboration. The design is plain but not ugly.
The limitations are real. No tags or labels. No custom filters. No project nesting beyond lists and tasks. No calendar view. No integrations beyond the Microsoft ecosystem. But “free and simple” solves more problems than most people admit. If TickTick was overkill for your actual needs, Microsoft To Do might be exactly the right amount of tool.
Any.do
Any.do occupies a middle ground between TickTick’s feature density and Microsoft To Do’s minimalism. It has a calendar view that shows tasks and events together. It has recurring tasks, tags, and location-based reminders. It has a clean, white-space-forward design that doesn’t assault you with options.
The free plan covers basic task management. Premium at $4.99/month adds the advanced features. The Family plan covers up to four members, and the Workspace tier adds team functionality at $5/active user.
Any.do is best for people who want some calendar integration without TickTick’s level of feature overload. The built-in calendar shows tasks as time blocks alongside your events — similar to what TickTick offers, but in a cleaner frame. The downside is depth: Any.do’s filtering and project structure can’t match Todoist, and the development pace can feel slow.
Google Tasks
Google Tasks is barely an app. It’s a sidebar panel in Gmail and Google Calendar that lets you create tasks, set due dates, and check them off. That’s approximately the entire feature set.
And for a specific use case, it’s perfect. If your workflow is “see an email, need to do something about it, mark it as a task, see it on my calendar” — Google Tasks does that with zero friction because it lives inside the tools you’re already using.
No habit tracking. No Pomodoro. No Eisenhower matrix. No Kanban view. No desktop app. No power-user features of any kind. Google Tasks exists for people who want task management to be invisible — something that happens inside Gmail and Calendar rather than requiring its own app. If TickTick felt like too much app, Google Tasks is the minimum viable alternative.
Who Should Switch (and Who Shouldn’t)
Switch if:
- TickTick’s UI density makes you dread opening the app — you spend more time navigating the interface than doing your work
- You don’t use the habit tracker, the Pomodoro timer, or the Eisenhower matrix, and you’re tired of them taking up space
- The calendar view frustrates you — it works but never feels like a real calendar app
- You want something that does one thing well rather than seven things adequately
Stay with TickTick if:
- You actually use the habit tracker, Pomodoro timer, and multiple view types — the all-in-one approach saves you from juggling separate apps
- The $35.99/year price point matters to you — no alternative matches that feature-to-price ratio
- You’ve customized your TickTick setup (smart lists, filters, tags) to the point where migration would lose meaningful structure
- The UI density doesn’t bother you because you’ve learned to ignore what you don’t need
TickTick’s greatest strength is also its weakness: it tries to be everything so you don’t have to use multiple apps. If that trade-off still works for you, nothing else gives you this much for this little money.
FAQ
Is Todoist really better than TickTick, or just different?
Different. Todoist does fewer things with more polish. TickTick does more things with less polish per feature. Neither is objectively better. If you want a task manager that stays out of your way, Todoist. If you want a task manager that replaces three other apps, TickTick. Your frustration level with TickTick’s UI complexity is the deciding factor, not some abstract “better” metric.
Can I import my TickTick data into Todoist?
Todoist supports CSV import, and TickTick can export to CSV. The basic structure (tasks, due dates, projects) transfers. Tags, priorities, and subtask hierarchies may need manual cleanup. Habit data and Pomodoro statistics won’t transfer — those are TickTick-specific features. The process takes about 15-30 minutes for a typical setup.
What about Notion or Obsidian for task management?
They can do it, but neither is a great task manager. Notion lets you build custom task databases with views, filters, and relations — but it’s slow, the mobile app is heavy, and you’re building a system from scratch rather than using one. Obsidian has task plugins, but it’s a note-taking tool at heart. If you’re leaving TickTick because it tries to do too much, replacing it with a tool that requires you to build your own task system from raw materials is moving in the wrong direction.
Is Google Tasks too basic to actually use?
For complex workflows, yes. For “I need to remember to do five things today and see them on my calendar,” it’s exactly right. Google Tasks is best understood as a capture tool, not a planning tool. If your daily task count is under 20 and your project structure is simple, Google Tasks genuinely works. If you’re running multiple projects with dependencies and deadlines, you need Todoist or something with actual structure.