The first tool to consider (and what we use, as we don't have time for daily planning rituals when running the business), is Motion. Similar to Sunsama, Motion allows you to add in tasks but instead of you needing to manually plan your day, you just tell Motion the priority, deadline, start date, and it will automatically schedule the task into your day. What is this experience like? Well, you wake up, look at your calendar, and you see what you need to work on for that day. It's the closest thing to having and assistant. For us as a team, it more than pays for itself in the time it saves us.

Another popular Sunsama alternative for professionals is Akiflow. Akiflow is what we'd call a task consolidation tool. Basically, it's a task app, for all the tasks you have across every single software that you use. Have an email to answer? Task in your project management software? Message from Slack? Well, integrate all those apps to Akiflow so you have one master to-do list. Similar to Sunsama, you still need to manually time block tasks on your calendar, but you can also just keep them in a list format and triage through them that way. It's similar to Sunsama but with less of the "ritual planning" and "intentional planning".

Then you have your more barebones Sunsama alternatives like Morgen Calendar, Amie Calendar, Routine, and Todoist. All of these apps have a free tier, which might sound appealing, but you will be asked to upgrade at a point to unlock certain useful features.

Morgen & Amie are more so calendars first (rather than daily planners first). They allow you to add basic tasks or reminders on your calendar in time blocks, but they are both way more barebones than Sunsama. If you're looking for a more simple version of Sunsama, either apps are worth trying (heads up, Amie is iOS only at the moment, Morgen is Android + iOS).

Routine is a basic daily planner where you can add tasks and drag them onto your calendar, although it's still more basic than Sunsama. They are in building mode so they currently have a free tier, but unsure how long that will last.

Finally, Todoist is a Sunsama alternative if you just want an app to throw tasks in. While Todoist has a calendar view available on their Pro plan, it's also quite barebones compared to Sunsama. Todoist was always known for their simple tasks lists, and they recently introduced a calendar view due to popular demand from their customers. That said, it's a secondary feature rather than the main way folks use Todoist.