Earshot
Field Report — July 2026
The crowd’s verdict · to-do apps

Todoist wins on simplicity and loses on the same thing

Ease of use and natural language input lead the praise, but the top complaints split between "too simple" and "too complex," and the free plan's project limit and thin task-assignment options cap how far teams can push it.

Earshot
624
Reviews read
9
Brands
+75
Net sentiment
8%
Top complaint share
Report 01

The Word

What the market keeps saying

Todoist's users love it for being simple, and that's exactly what some of them are complaining about.

▲ Praise — what recurs
Easy to use
5 reviews · 10% of same-valence
Task management
4 reviews · 8% of same-valence
Natural language input
3 reviews · 6% of same-valence
Simple and easy to use
5 reviews · 10% of same-valence
Collaboration features
2 reviews · 4% of same-valence
Integrations
2 reviews · 4% of same-valence
▼ Complaints — what recurs
Too simple for complex projects
1 reviews · 8% of same-valence
Too complex
2 reviews · 17% of same-valence
Cannot assign task to multiple people
1 reviews · 8% of same-valence
Limited task assignment
1 reviews · 8% of same-valence
Free plan project limit restrictive
1 reviews · 8% of same-valence
Too basic
1 reviews · 8% of same-valence
too simple for managing complex projects
Verbatim · Todoist
Net sentiment over time
Todoist+75
TickTick+87
Things 3+65
Where the reviews came from — coverage honesty
G2 & Capterra
52
Reddit & forums
12
Report 02

The Switch

Who moves, and why

▲ Gaining from

No switching mentions cleared the evidence threshold.

▼ Losing to

No switching mentions cleared the evidence threshold.

Where Todoist wins & loses vs the category median
Too complex
−17
Too simple for complex projects
−8
Cannot assign task to multiple people
−8
Limited task assignment
−8
Free plan project limit restrictive
−8
Too basic
−8
← worse than rivalsbetter than rivals →
Report 03

Steal This

The market’s own words

The language your buyers already use — lift it straight into your copy.

The pain they name
“sometimes it gets confused and doesn't get it right”
G2 & Capterra · ×1
“project limit on the free version”
G2 & Capterra · ×1
“it felt pretty restrictive”
G2 & Capterra · ×1
“too simple for managing complex projects”
G2 & Capterra · ×1
The moment they switch
“After Years of App-Hopping, Todoist Finally Stuck”
G2 & Capterra · ×1
“After trying literally every task management app out there for years”
Reddit & forums · ×1
The payoff they feel
“Easy to use”
G2 & Capterra · ×2
“configure my dashboard in a way that works for me”
G2 & Capterra · ×2
“Simple, reliable, and helps you stay consistent”
G2 & Capterra · ×2
“the best task manager”
G2 & Capterra · ×1
Report 04

The Room

How buyers read the same evidence
Interpretive layer. Synthetic personas reacting to the real evidence above — a grounded hypothesis, not survey data. Validate the big calls with real humans.
S
The Solo Productivity Tinkerer
An individual professional or student who has tried several to-do apps and evaluates on speed of capture, keyboard shortcuts, and natural-language input. Sophisticated about GTD-style systems, skeptical of subscription price increases, and fears getting locked into a workflow that a future price hike or feature change disrupts.
▲ What lands

"After Years of App-Hopping, Todoist Finally Stuck" is their exact life story, and "configure my dashboard in a way that works for me" plus natural language input (6%) hits the capture-speed and customization criteria they evaluate on. Task management (8%) and the general ease-of-use praise (10%) read as competent-not-flashy, which this crowd respects.

▼ What alarms

"sometimes it gets confused and doesn't get it right" is a direct hit on natural language input, the one feature this persona leans on hardest for fast capture, so any friction there erodes trust fast. "Too complex" is the single largest complaint at 17%, which worries a tinkerer wary of a tool's surface area creeping up over time and threatening the lock-in they already fear.

Leans inthe app-hopping-stopped narrative is compelling enough to outweigh the NLP quirk, but they'll test the natural language parser hard before committing.
S
The Small Team Lead
Runs a team of 3-15 people and needs shared projects, assignments, and basic visibility without the overhead of full project management software. Cares about onboarding speed and integrations (Slack, email, calendar) and fears the team reverting to spreadsheets or Slack DMs if the tool feels clunky.
▲ What lands

Collaboration features (4%) and integrations (4%) are exactly what this persona screens for, and the 10% ease-of-use share suggests fast onboarding, which matters when rolling a tool out to 3-15 people who might otherwise resist.

▼ What alarms

"Cannot assign task to multiple people" and "Limited task assignment" together account for 16% of complaints, and that's a direct strike against the core reason this persona buys: shared accountability across a team. "Free plan project limit restrictive" also signals the team will outgrow the free tier fast, and "too simple for complex projects" (8%) raises doubt about whether the tool scales past a small pilot.

Walks awaythe assignment limitation isn't a nice-to-have gap, it's the specific capability this persona needs most, so it undercuts the buy case even though onboarding and integrations look fine.
A
The Apple-Ecosystem Minimalist
Deep in iPhone/Mac/iPad, values a clean interface and native feel over cross-platform breadth. Often weighing Todoist's subscription against a one-time purchase like Things 3, and fears paying recurring fees for features they don't use.
▲ What lands

"Simple, reliable, and helps you stay consistent" and the 10% share for "Simple and easy to use" match the clean, low-friction feel this persona wants from a native-feeling app, and "configure my dashboard in a way that works for me" suggests some personalization without heavy setup.

▼ What alarms

"Too complex" is the largest complaint theme at 17%, which is a bad sign for someone explicitly optimizing for minimalism. The praise going to collaboration features and integrations reads as evidence the app is built breadth-first for teams, exactly the kind of paid-for-but-unused feature surface this persona resents in a subscription.

Hesitantthe simplicity language is attractive on its face, but the 17% complexity complaint and team-oriented feature set make it feel like paying for more app than they need.
H
The Habit-and-Calendar Unifier
Wants one app to hold tasks, habits, and a calendar view together rather than juggling separate tools. Less technical, price-sensitive, and fears fragmenting their planning across multiple apps that don't talk to each other.
▲ What lands

"Simple, reliable, and helps you stay consistent" speaks directly to the consistency and habit-formation framing this persona cares about, and the general ease-of-use praise (10%) suggests a low learning curve for a less technical buyer.

▼ What alarms

Nothing in the praise set mentions habits or calendar view at all, so the one thing this persona most wants unified has zero supporting evidence. "Free plan project limit restrictive" is a real problem for a price-sensitive buyer, and "Too complex" at 17% is a risk for someone who explicitly isn't technical.

Hesitantthe consistency phrase is a genuine hook, but the total silence on habits and calendar means the core need is unverified rather than confirmed, and the free-tier restriction stings for a price-sensitive buyer.
▲ Where they agree

All four read the "Easy to use" / "Simple and easy to use" praise (10% each) and "Simple, reliable, and helps you stay consistent" as genuine and credible, and none dispute that Todoist handles core task management competently (8% praise share). The "After Years of App-Hopping, Todoist Finally Stuck" story lands as a believable retention signal across every persona open to switching tools, so it's safe to lead with simplicity and reliability messaging, and with the switching-story as proof the tool holds up past the honeymoon period. None of the personas treat the natural language input or integrations praise as a liability on its own.

◑ Where they split

The complaint set forks along a single axis: "Too complex" sits at 17%, the largest complaint of any theme, while "Too simple for complex projects" and "Too basic" together account for 16%. That's the same product read as bloated by one segment and thin by another. The solo power user and small team lead experience Todoist as capped, wanting more depth (assignment, filtering, project structure), while the Apple minimalist and habit-and-calendar unifier experience it as already too much surface area for what they need. Pitch depth and extensibility to power users and team leads while being upfront that assignment features are basic, and pitch stripped-down consistency to minimalists and habit-unifiers while not overselling collaboration or integration breadth they'll never touch. The team lead's segment is the one place a single complaint theme (task assignment) is close to disqualifying on its own, since it maps directly onto their core requirement rather than a peripheral one.