Todoist vs Pokobot
A task manager, or a text message.
Todoist is one of the best task managers ever built. Projects, labels, filters, a quick-add box that understands “every 2nd Tuesday”: if your work needs structure, it has more of it than almost anything else.
Pokobot is not a task manager. It is a reminder that arrives as a WhatsApp message. That difference sounds small on a feature list and turns out to be the whole thing, because the failure people actually describe is rarely “I couldn't organise it”. It is “I organised it and still missed it.”
The short answer
Todoist and Pokobot solve different halves of the same problem. Todoist is a full task manager: you install the app, create an account, and get projects, labels, filters and priorities to organise work that has structure. Pokobot has none of that. It lives inside WhatsApp as an ordinary chat, you text it in plain English, and the reminder comes back as a WhatsApp message rather than a push notification. If your problem is keeping a hundred tasks in order, use Todoist. If your problem is that the notification gets swiped away and the task gets missed, a message in the thread you already read all day is the part Todoist cannot copy.
Head to head
| Todoist | Pokobot | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the reminder landsPokobot | A push notification from an app you installed, in the same tray as everything else | A WhatsApp message, in the chat list you already open all day |
| Getting startedPokobot | Install the app, create an account, pick a plan | Open a link, send one message. No install, no account |
| Adding somethingEven | Open the app, type into quick-add. Natural language is excellent | Text it the way you'd text a friend, from the app already open |
| Organising a lot of workTodoist | Projects, sub-tasks, sections, labels, filters, priorities, boards | A flat list you manage in the chat. Nothing to organise with |
| Repeating more than once a dayPokobot | Recurring dates, built around a daily or weekly rhythm | Sub-daily repeats, with a daily active window so they go quiet overnight |
| Reminding somebody elsePokobot | Share a project and assign it. They need an account too | Poko messages their WhatsApp, once they've agreed to it |
| Working offlineTodoist | Full offline app. Add and check off with no signal | Needs a connection, like any WhatsApp message |
| Desktop and keyboardTodoist | Web, Mac, Windows, browser extension, shortcuts, integrations | WhatsApp Web, and that's the lot. There is no dashboard |
| Free foreverTodoist | Yes, with a free plan that a lot of people never outgrow | No. 7 days free, then a small subscription (from ₹59/month in India) |
When Todoist is the right call
Plenty of people who land here should stay on Todoist, and it's worth saying so plainly. Pokobot has no projects, no labels, no filters and no board view, and it is not going to grow them: everything it does has to fit inside a chat thread.
If any of these describe you, Todoist is the better tool and a WhatsApp bot would be a downgrade.
- Your tasks have structure worth keeping: projects, sub-tasks, dependencies, a backlog you groom.
- You work at a desk and want keyboard shortcuts, a web app, and a browser extension to clip things.
- You share work with a team and need to assign, comment and track who has what.
- You want a permanent free plan, and you're not paying for reminders.
- You're often offline and still need to capture and tick things off.
When a text beats an app
The case for Pokobot is narrow and it is about one thing: whether the reminder gets seen. A push notification competes with every other notification on the phone, and most people have trained themselves to clear that tray without reading it. A WhatsApp message sits in a list they open dozens of times a day and read every single time.
That is also why the setup is one message. The moment you have to open a different app to write a reminder down, some fraction of your reminders never get written down at all. Poko is a contact in the app already in your hand.
Our own usage data pushed us further in that direction than we expected. More than a third of the reminders set on Pokobot (35.8%) repeat more than once a day: every hour, every two hours, every twenty minutes. Those people are not filing a note to review later. They want to be nagged until the thing is done, which only works on a channel they cannot ignore.
remind me to send the invoice tomorrow at 10amfollow up with the client every 2 hours between 10am and 6pmtake my medicine every day at 9pmWhat people usually mean by “Todoist alternative”
Search for one and you'll get twenty apps with the same shape: a list, projects, a notification. Swapping between them is mostly a change of colour scheme, which is why so many people try three and go back to Todoist.
The complaints that actually drive the search tend to be about the last mile, not the features. The task was in there. The notification fired. It got dismissed on a lock screen along with four others, and the thing was still not done. If that's the version you have, a different task manager is not the fix, because the notification tray is the part that failed.
The other common one is quieter: the task never made it in. You thought of it while walking, and opening an app was three steps too many at that moment. Both of those are delivery and capture problems, and both are what a chat thread is unusually good at.
The setup, side by side
Todoist: download the app, create an account with an email and a password, verify it, pick a plan, then start a project. Perfectly normal, and it takes a few minutes.
Pokobot: tap the WhatsApp link, send “remind me to call the bank on Friday at 4pm”. That message is the signup. There is no account to create, nothing to install, and no password, because WhatsApp already knows who you are. Poko reads your timezone from your number, so “4pm” means your 4pm without you setting anything.
remind me to call the bank on Friday at 4pmHonestly, most people should use both
This isn't a page trying to move you off Todoist. The two tools barely overlap, and the split that works is boring: Todoist keeps the work, Pokobot carries the handful of things that must not be missed.
So the client project, its sub-tasks and next week's backlog stay in Todoist, where they belong. The medication at 9pm, the rent on the 1st, the follow-up you promised in a meeting and the “check the deploy every 30 minutes” go to Poko, because those are the ones where being reminded is the entire job and being organised is beside the point.
In practice, that's about five or six live reminders in the chat at a time. If it grows past that, you want a task manager, and you already have a good one.
pay rent on the 1st at 10amlistcancel 2What you give up by moving a reminder into WhatsApp
Worth being straight about the trade. There is no board, no sub-task, no label, no priority flag and no due-date filter. There is no desktop app to live in, and no way to see everything at a glance except sending “list” and reading the reply.
There is also no offline mode. If your phone has no signal at 9pm, the 9pm message arrives when it comes back, the same as any other WhatsApp message.
And it is not free after the trial. Todoist has a free plan that a lot of people are genuinely happy on forever. Pokobot is free for the first 7 days and then a small subscription, because every reminder it sends costs real money to deliver on WhatsApp.
Questions, answered
- Is Pokobot a replacement for Todoist?
- For most people, no, and we'd rather say so. Todoist is a task manager with projects, labels, filters and a desktop app. Pokobot has none of those. It replaces Todoist only if what you were using Todoist for was a short list of timed reminders, in which case the app was more machinery than the job needed. Otherwise the two sit side by side: Todoist holds the work, Pokobot carries the things that must not be missed.
- Can Todoist send reminders to WhatsApp?
- Not on its own. You can wire Todoist to WhatsApp through an automation tool like Zapier or Make, but you are then maintaining a third service, and the message arrives from whatever number that service uses. Pokobot is a WhatsApp chat to begin with, so there is nothing between you and the reminder.
- Why would a WhatsApp message work better than a push notification?
- Because of what surrounds it. A push notification lands in a tray with every other app's notifications, and most people clear that tray by reflex. A WhatsApp message lands in a chat list that people open dozens of times a day and actually read, and an unread badge there means something. Same reminder, different odds of being seen.
- Does Pokobot do recurring reminders like Todoist does?
- Yes, and it goes further in one direction. Daily, weekly and monthly all work in plain English. It also does sub-daily repeats, which is the common case for us: over a third of the reminders people set repeat more than once a day. For those you can add a daily window, so “every 2 hours between 9am and 7pm” stops overnight instead of waking you at 3am.
- Can I import my Todoist tasks?
- No, and importing them would be the wrong move anyway. Pokobot holds a handful of live reminders at a time, not a backlog. If you want to try it, pick the two or three things you keep missing and text those over. Leave the rest where they are.
- What does Pokobot cost?
- Everything is included free for 7 days, with no card. After that it's a small subscription, from ₹59/month in India and priced per country elsewhere. Todoist has a permanent free plan, which Pokobot does not, because every reminder it sends is a WhatsApp message that costs money to deliver.