REVIEWS / TASK MANAGEMENT / OWNER INSIGHTS

🦉 WE READ 201 OWNER COMMENTS

Todoist Premium: what owners actually say

Owners genuinely love Todoist's simplicity and flexibility, but repeatedly gripe that core features like reminders and task comments are locked behind the premium paywall.

HACKERNEWS · 75 LEMMY · 54 YOUTUBE · 41 PRODUCTHUNT · 20 REDDIT · 10 STACKEXCHANGE · 1

What owners complain about

  • Reminders behind paywall COMMON

    Multiple owners find it baffling that reminders are a premium-only feature, calling them 'basic and necessary' and something that should be in the free edition.

  • Team project sharing is painful SOME

    Sharing projects with a team is described as a PITA — there's no easy way to give a team access to all newly created projects, and the project structure isn't shared, so sharing subprojects causes friction.

  • Missing swipe-to-complete on iPhone FEW

    iOS users specifically want a swipe gesture to mark tasks done, which is absent from the iPhone app.

  • macOS app sluggish, Windows sync issues FEW

    The macOS native app works 'a bit sluggishly,' and on Windows, task syncing sometimes stops working entirely.

  • Task comments and notes not free FEW

    Users note that task comments and notes are premium-only, forcing free-tier users to cobble together workarounds like IFTTT linking to Evernote.

What owners love

  • Simple, intuitive UI

    Owners consistently highlight the clean, easy-to-learn interface and how fast it is to add tasks and get going.

  • Flexible for any productivity system

    Users praise that Todoist adapts to whatever workflow or methodology they use, with boards, subtasks, and projects that can be structured flexibly.

  • Email-to-task workflow

    Forwarding emails to a special project alias to create tasks is called out as a genuinely useful feature owners rely on.

  • Solid Asana replacement

    Multiple users report switching from Asana to Todoist and being very happy with the move, finding it easier to use.

  • Integrations and cross-platform

    Owners value integrations with Google Calendar, Twist, and Spark, plus native apps across platforms that keep tasks in sync.

Surprising patterns

  • Several owners question whether Premium is even necessary for individuals, saying the free version is 'sufficient for most' — suggesting the value gap between free and paid isn't always obvious.
  • Users pair Todoist with separate time-tracking tools (like TMetric) because Todoist lacks built-in time tracking, and others chain it to Evernote via IFTTT to work around the lack of free task notes — indicating owners build their own feature patches.
  • One owner found daily email digests not actionable enough that they wrote a published blog post suggesting specific improvements to Todoist's email design.

WHO SHOULD SKIP IT

Team managers who need seamless, granular project sharing across many projects and subprojects will find the sharing mechanics too painful, per owners who tried it.

6.9/10 GYIBB verdict
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Synthesised from 201 real owner comments across 6 platforms. Every point is grounded in the comments — no marketing, no AI guessing. How we do it →