Sunsama vs Motion Explained: Which One is Best for You? (2023)
If you’re looking for an app to help plan and organize your days, Sunsama and Motion are two top 2023 contenders.
But which one is right for you? While the two use the same principle of time-blocking technique to schedule and organize your daily activities, the way Motion and Sunsama go about it is very different.
Their differences are reflected in the benefits and features they offer, which serve different purposes and cater to different individuals. So ultimately, it comes down to understanding your scheduler’s role in enhancing your productivity techniques and overall efficiency.
I’m here to share my personal experience and guide you through the different benefits offered by each productivity tool and the purposes they serve, so you can easily decide which one suits your needs the best.
Key Takeaways
Sunsama encourages mindfulness, while Motion aims to maximize efficiency and flexibility.
Sunsama excels at personal workflow optimization. Motion shines when coordinating teams.
Sunsama is better for those with a personal preference for guided, manual daily planning. Its rituals and focus features help you stay intentional.
Motion uses AI to fully automate scheduling tasks and meetings. It’s great for hands-off calendar management.
Sunsama rules short-term planning. Motion brings long-term project management power.
Sunsama integrates your existing apps into one smooth productivity hub. Motion consolidates tools as an all-in-one solution.
Sunsama has transparent, simple pricing with a generous free trial. Motion can cost more but may replace other tools.
The “best” productivity app depends on your personal preferences and workflow needs. Consider your needs – individual vs team, manual vs automated, daily vs long-term.
Still undecided? Take them for a spin with their free trials.
Sunsama vs Motion: Individuals or Teams?
Let’s start by thinking about whether you’re planning to use it on your own or share the productivity tool with the team.
Individuals
Sunsama is designed with an individual in mind. This great productivity tool offers guided daily planning rituals aimed to help you build realistic schedules. While it has some basic collaboration features like shared calendars and assigning tasks to team members, Sunsama’s primary focus is on optimizing the individual workflow.
Its founders built Sunsama to help each user mindfully prioritize and stay on top of their own scheduled tasks and calendar through features like backlogs and focus mode. So if you want an intuitive, personalized daily planner, Sunsama is a great choice. It excels at individual task management while still letting you collaborate at a basic level or through integration with other task and meeting apps.
Teams
Though individuals can use Motion, its AI scheduling and collaboration features make it an ideal productivity app for teams. Motion optimizes workflows across organization and team collaboration by:
Creating workspaces – dedicated spaces for teams, departments, or specific projects.
Creating shared project views, Kanban (Board view), and Project (List view).
Auto-assigning project tasks to your team’s calendars
Providing an estimated time it will take your team to complete tasks or project
Scheduling team meetings
Synchronizing the team’s calendars
So while Motion helps individuals prioritize and manage their own tasks, the tool really shines when facilitating task management, communication, and scheduling for entire teams.
Motion vs Sunsama: Automated or Manual?
Automated
Motion’s AI-powered auto-scheduling makes it the top choice for hands-off calendar and project management.
Motion will automatically slot tasks into your schedule based on your due dates, priorities, and time estimates. Its task manager eliminates the tedious manual planning that often consumes our days.
Ok, next is one of my favorite features! Not only it saves you time, but Motion’s algorithms continually optimize your schedule, adjusting on the go as tasks evolve and taking into consideration things like a missed deadline. It seamlessly accommodates changes without disrupting your workflow.
Auto-scheduling reduces mental stress by providing an ever-evolving roadmap, you can finally focus on execution rather than planning and task prioritization. With Motion automating up to 90% of planning, you can focus on execution and achievement. So, if you want to free yourself from the burden of manual scheduling, Motion is the ultimate solution.
Manual
Sunsama is the ideal productivity app for those of you who prefer a more mindful, hands-on approach to planning your day. With guided daily planning rituals, Sunsama prompts you to prioritize and allocate time for each obligation intentionally.
Unlike the autopilot scheduling in Motion, Sunsama invites you to create tasks manually or drag and drop, offering a tactile engagement with your day’s layout. This hands-on approach ensures you are in control instead of passively allowing an artificial intelligence to book your time.
Sunsama’s founders believe that such a manual process promotes focus, awareness, and control over how the day unfolds. They designed the app to facilitate deep work by avoiding passive, fully automated scheduling.
So if you want to maintain focus while intentionally planning your day, Sunsama’s thoughtful approach will resonate with you.
Project and task management: Daily Focus or Long-term planning?
Daily Focus
If you’re looking for an easy way to plan your day, Sunsama is a great pick. This productivity app is purpose-built for short-term daily planning needs.
Sunsama lets you schedule tasks up to two weeks out. You can also use its Backlog to jot down tasks without deadlines or too far in the future. This ensures you won’t forget them but can stay focused on the day’s tasks. When you’re ready, go back and drag tasks from the Backlog onto your calendar to schedule them.
A guided routine walks you through a series of steps to help you set a schedule for a day. Sunsama offers a set of efficient and easy-to-use features as a way to manage and really stay on top of your daily to-do list.
I love how simple Sunsama makes it to create a new task. Just click the plus button to add a new one, or add tasks to your calendar or list by dragging them in from other apps like Asana or Trello.
You can break bigger, more complex tasks into subtasks too. I found subtasks to be a lifesaver for those layered tasks— helping keep track of the task progress and roll over any uncompleted bits to the other day. Sunsama also allows adding notes and attachments to each task, so you can keep everything together in one spot.
Another useful feature is Sunsama’s ability to track “Planned vs. Actual” time spent on tasks. You can set estimated timeframes for each task and then compare that to the actual time it ultimately took you to complete tasks. This is super helpful for:
Seeing if my time estimates are realistic or need adjustment. At first, I’d plan way too little time!
Improving time plans for repetitive tasks. Now I know how long things actually take.
Tracking progress over time. I’ve gotten faster at certain recurring tasks thanks to practicing them consistently and the ability to monitor time spent. It keeps you motivated to keep honing skills!
The Planned vs Actual time tracking feature has really leveled up my time management skills. Sunsama gives you the data you need to set timeframes that work for your real work pace. No more unrealistic schedules making you feel behind.
Seeing the time data holds you accountable too. I like timing myself doing tasks and trying to beat my personal best!
To keep tasks organized, Sunsama utilizes customizable Objectives, Contexts and Channels to help you categorize and filter tasks based on the type of work.
Objectives are your week’s stars, highlighting your priorities or main goals. They resemble tasks but play a different game, steering your focus and helping you prioritize tasks that are big on the impact.
Channels are your time-tracker buddies, showing you where your hours are spent. It’s like having a bird’s eye view of your day.
Contexts bundle up several channels under one roof, like family, work, or exercise. It’s all about keeping the related stuff together.
And voila, all these organized pals show up on the left menu in Sunsama, making it easy to hop between them.
At the end of each week, Sunsama also lets you analyze and reflect on all the tasks and projects you completed. Reviewing this helps you see how well your work aligned with your goals and identify areas for improvement. Having a visualization of your weekly accomplishments is really motivating and gives you a great sense of progress.
With its straightforward, friendly user interface, Sunsama simplifies daily planning and task management. If you’re looking for an app focused specifically on short-term daily productivity rather than robust project management, Sunsama is a powerful productivity tool worth checking out.
Complex Long-term Projects
For those managing large, complex projects spanning multiple months with a team, Motion is the best project tool available. Going far beyond weekly planning, Motion also offers a myriad of powerful features purpose-built for collaborating on and executing major long-term projects seamlessly.
One of Motion’s standout features is the ability to create dedicated workspaces for specific teams, departments, or business areas. For example, you could have an isolated workspace for your marketing team, another for HR tasks, or dedicate separate workspaces to the different sales activities such as Leads and Prospects and Customers. Workspaces allow for easy task assignment to certain team members as well as efficient communication and collaboration within each group.
Motion’s Projects & Tasks section shines for organizing intricate multi-layered projects. Here are just a few examples of what you can do:
add a limitless number of tasks and subtasks,
set dependencies across them,
assign owners,
set deadlines,
add statuses to track progress,
and much more.
It provides a centralized hub to stay on top of all moving parts and details related to large ongoing projects.
Motion allows you to toggle between the Projects and Kanban views, which I find extremely helpful. The Projects tab gives you a clear picture of each project’s status independently, while the Kanban view neatly visualizes the overall workflow and task distribution across projects in one board. You can also create and save custom views based on various sorting and filtering options.
Motion’s calendar tool is easily users and certainly my favorite part. It has its own dedicated page, making it super comprehensive for you to schedule meetings and tasks.
But the real dazzle is Motion’s AI-powered smart meeting scheduler. No more endless back-and-forth emails rescheduling things! Motion’s AI takes into account your tasks, deadlines, and time blocks. Then it automatically recommends the best meeting times for you, so you can still get work done.
This makes scheduling a game changer if you juggle lots of meetings. As far as I know, no other project manager does this – it’s awesome!
Motion also perfectly integrates your Google Calendar (or Outlook), pulling in everything you already have scheduled. And since it’s built for long-term planning, you can view meeting slots 30, 60 days, or any specific day ahead. Super helpful for arranging far in advance!
Motion takes the cake in the feature comparison of project manager and calendar productivity apps, effortlessly integrating my hectic schedule. If you’re looking for a tool that smartly juggles meetings and enables team collaboration on long-term complex projects, Motion is the best choice.
Integration: All-in-One or Integrated Hub?
All-in-One Solution
For substantial long-term team projects, Motion is a robust project management tool. Its automated scheduling, task boards, and collaboration features help coordinate complex multi-month workflows.
Unlike Sunsama, you don’t have to rely on integration with other project management tools like ClickUp and Asana or integrate with meeting scheduling apps.
With workspaces, invaluable task management, and an all-in-one smart calendar app that automates scheduling, Motion has all the features you need to collaborate and execute projects seamlessly.
When it comes to having a well-rounded solution for project management and calendar productivity, the spectrum of capabilities in one unified solution in one unified solution makes Motion one of the best offers on the market. For organizing complex goals over months or years, Motion is the clear choice. Give it a spin with a free trial to experience the next-level productivity for yourself!
Integrated Hub
Let’s just say, Sunsama takes integrations with many productivity apps to the whole next level!
The solution seamlessly integrates with many of the widely used messaging, task management apps, think Asana or Trello, and calendar productivity tools, like Google calendar or Todoist. Below is the full list of integrations available in Sunsama:
Todoist
ClickUp
Trello
Asana
Notion
Jira
GitHub
Gmail
Outlook
Slack
For instance, Sunsama lets you turn Slack messages into actionable tasks. Just click the “…” next to any message and select “Create task”. Sunsama will prompt you to add details like start date and title or notes. How cool is that?
Connecting apps is intuitive through Sunsama Workspace settings (which I personally prefer) or the tool you’re integrating. But the magic lies in the two-way syncing. When you check off a task from Asana, Trello, or Notion (you name it) in Sunsama, it automatically marks it complete in that task management tool too.
This eliminates duplicating actions across many productivity apps. Finish an imported task in Sunsama, and it updates the source. Archive an email in Gmail or Outlook, and it archives in Sunsama.
Once connected, Sunsama provides easy access to all your apps in the right sidebar, so you always have everything you need at hand. This extensive integration network makes Sunsama a central hub for all your tasks, calendar, communication, and content. Everything is brought together into one unified productivity platform.
If you want to unify the platforms you already use, Sunsama is a great task manager, thanks to its robust two-way integrations.
Sunsama vs Motion Pricing
Sunsama Pricing
Sunsama’s transparent pricing model won me over during my search for a task manager and calendar productivity app.
They start you off with a generous 14-day free trial – no credit card required. This lets you fully experience Sunsama before committing.
Pricing is simple: $16/month if you pay annually. Not ready for that level of commitment? No worries, it’s $20 on a per month basis.
Here’s a part that really resonated with me. I appreciate Sunsama’s integrity around their pricing model manifested in charging in whole numbers. No mind games of $19.99 instead of $20.00 despite the fact that could convert more people.
Sunsama is also upfront that they don’t offer a free plan. They believe this incentivizes the wrong behaviors and prompts requests that can steer product development and upgrades in a wrong direction.
Motion Pricing
Many of you might be on the hunt for a standalone app that doesn’t break the bank. So let’s dive into what your wallet’s up against with Motion.
First off, like Sunsama, Motion offers a taste-test in the form of a free trial. However, the sampler lasts for a mere 7 days, half of what you’d get with Sunsama.
And oh, they’ll want your credit card details to kickstart the trial. So, if you’re a tad forgetful like me, setting a reminder to cancel (if it’s a no-go) before the trial ends is a smart move.
After testing, consider Motion’s two paid plans:
Individual is $19/month billed yearly or $34 month-to-month
Team is $12 per user/month billed yearly or $20 month-to-month
Now, here’s a penny for your thought. At first glance, Motion may seem pricier compared to Sunsama.
However, here’s the silver lining. Sunsama is a standalone app for daily planning. Having said that, you’ll probably need additional integrations that Sunsama requires with apps like Asana, ClickUp and so on to make it a well-rounded project management solution.
Motion, on the other hand, consolidates multiple apps’ functionality, making it a robust project management and team collaboration tool. It’s a one-stop shop, potentially slashing that extra cost of other apps.
So, before dismissing Motion’s pricing, factor in what you currently spend on productivity apps. If Motion can replace a couple of other tools while making your workday smoother, it might just be worth the extra pennies.
Plus, fewer apps, fewer tabs, and fewer headaches, right?
Wrap-up
As you can see, Sunsama and Motion are great tools, but which one is best for you depends on your needs and preferences.
Let’s recap:
Solo or small team leader? Sunsama is your pal. Heading a larger squad? Motion it is.
Do you prefer mindful, deliberate planning (Sunsama excels at this)? Or do you want to automate scheduling to reduce mental load (like Motion)?
Does your planning horizon span days or months? Sunsama excels as a digital daily planner, while Motion offers a comprehensive feature set to work on long-term projects.
Adore your app collection? Sunsama integrates them smoothly. Is juggling multiple solutions a nightmare? Motion replaces many apps in one.
Are you a productivity geek who loves all your apps? Sunsama beautifully consolidates everything. Or is juggling multiple apps a nightmare? Motion can replace many tools for you.
Still undecided? Take both for a spin with their free trials to experience the differences firsthand.
For an even deeper dive, check out my complete Motion review guide to understand if its all-in-one power is right for your workflow.
The “best” option depends on your needs and preferences, but whichever option you choose, Sunsama and Motion are both robust solutions – just catering to different productivity needs and styles.
