Pros

Available everywhere. No matter what device you have, as long as it can run Electron apps, your device can run it.
Location-Based Reminders. This is something that not many task management apps have. There are only a handful that we have reviewed that have them like Apple Reminders and TickTick.
They have the nicest, fastest, support that I have seen from anywhere. Only other support I've had like that is with Apple. You can contact them on their website (they use a Zendesk ticketing system). Refunds are processed automatically as long as you purchased within 30 days otherwise they get back to you (during normal business hours) extremely frequently. As opposed to Microsoft To Do which doesn't have support (besides from the community) and Things 3 that as limited email support.
Natural Language Processing. This is, by far, the easiest way to enter tasks into any task management app. You can write "Water the plants every thursday, friday, and saturday at 3pm !!1 !10mb @chores" and that will create a task that repeats weekly on those days at 3pm and remind you 10 minutes before and set the priority to the highest priority of 1 and give it a label of "chores" (or create the label if you don't already have one).
Speaking of priorities, Todoist has several. There are 4 levels of priorities which means you have greater ways to organize your tasks.
Attachments are supported in the comments of the tasks. This is useful for adding the most detail to your tasks. I have used this several times with my tasks.
You can have an almost infinite amount of sub-tasks. You can have Tasks and Sub-tasks (1 level deep) and also Tasks and sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub tasks (8 levels deep) and all tasks (regardless of how "sub" they are) function exactly the same with their own comments, notes, priorities, reminders, etc.
Markdown is supported. Unlike the way Things 3 handles it. If you write **bold text** it shows up like: bold text.
You can have a Kanban View, List View, and (coming soon - currently in alpha testing) Calendar view for each project (or all projects). This means you can also have headers in every project which are separate sections to help organize your tasks.
You can see all details like the project/section a task is in, any notes, any sub tasks, as well as labels in the today, upcoming or any other view without having to click on the task like you would in Things 3 or Apple Reminders or Microsoft To Do.
Filters give a unique look to your tasks. Meaning you can customize which tasks you can and cannot see in your filter sections and these are way more customizable than Apple Reminders' Smart List feature.
They offer a free plan. It is limiting, especially since they don’t offer notifications/reminders on the free plan, though they do offer one.

Cons

The app is a lot buggier than other apps. They are so focused on putting out new features (like a new look to their app and a calendar view) that things like MacOS widgets, iOS widgets and the iPad app are being left in the dark. I have more information in the review below.
It is pricier than it's competitors. $48/year (or $36 if you were able to lock in the old pricing) is steep over time when you think about how Things 3 has a 1 time cost, Apple Reminders & Microsoft To Do are free, and TickTick is cheaper.
Karma system is gimmicky and annoying.
When you have overdue tasks (just like in Apple Reminders) the date turns red and negatively affects your karma when you have to reschedule tasks.
There is no "Someday" or "Anytime" views though you can recreate those with filters fairly easily.
iOS does not have background syncing so this means if you tick off a task on your iPad or Windows PC or Android and don't open the app on the iOS device, you will get notifications from tasks that you already marked as complete which can cause notification fatigue.
The iOS widgets are the worst out of the bunch of task managers I have tried. None of the widgets allow you to check off tasks.
- The standby widget has a weird background to the list name.
- The widgets don't share as much information and do not update as frequently. Currently, there is a bug where most people using iPads or iPhones can't use their widgets at all cause they are blank.
They are focused on becoming the “all in one” app so they are focused (right now) on adding a calendar feature (with different views) to the app instead of fixing bugs or focusing on adding more task specific features.
Reminders (location based and otherwise) are only available in their Pro plan ($48/mo) and you are limited to 5 Projects which is extremely limiting in their free plan.

Our Review

Todoist has been around for almost 17 years (as of this writing). They are used by 30+ million people and teams (according to Todoist's website) and is very popular online primarily for its customizability and ease of entering tasks via its quick entry window and natural language processing.

As you can see from my pros and cons list above, I have some strong feelings about Todoist and that is because I find that it can be worth it due to the complexity you can give to tasks and the ease of entering tasks from any device thanks to the natural language processing.

Why are you so harsh on Todoist?

Well, it is 2 fold. They say on their website "Rest assured that we'll never sell out to the highest bidder" though it seems like they have: their business customers. They are adding a calendar view to the app and in the future we have a weekly view coming though these features are not what their individual customers are asking for.

Screenshot 2024-04-03 at 9.36.51 PM.png

As an individual customer I would love to have:

MacOS Widgets that work like iPhone Widgets. As of March 13, they took away the “from iPhone” widgets that you could have and now you have the old widgets before you could interact with them. They said the new widgets were coming soonTM.
Better Siri integration. Using Siri with Todoist is very hard cause Siri always thinks you are saying “to do list” when you say “todoist” so you have to create a custom shortcut OR annunciate perfectly for Siri to understand.

I use a Windows PC for web development (and work on a MacBook Pro) but my primary PC is actually an iPad Pro M2 12.9" and it works really well for me. I use a USB-C to HDMI adapter and I get a dual monitor setup with stage manager. I also have an iPhone & Apple Watch.

This means most of my devices are Apple.

Next feature I’d like: better Apple device support. Apple devices are known by the subreddit community to be left in the dust and not updated as much. The biggest example I have of this, is with the MacOS.

MacOS App

MacOS Widgets

The MacOS App has some strange things that they choose to do with it. For example, in order to get the widgets where you are able to change the filter and such, like the image on the left, you have to use your “From iPhone” widgets. The problem with using those is that they take anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 hour to update. Generally, I have found Todoist’s widgets update around the 10 minute mark but that is not guaranteed.

Also, when you click on them, you cannot open the Todoist app. It directs you to pick up your phone.

iPad App