Background
We're a group of students who cannot afford fancy tools.
We need to collaborate with each other, something simple like comments, attach files, complete tasks, track progress, etc.
We are not tech-savvy.
Personally, I've tried Evernote and I love it.
Pros: I can take note everywhere at anytime I want. One of the greatest features is that they have OCR technology.
The reason why I stopped using Evernote is because they have poor storage space and tbh it's a bit pricey. Some of the students in my group cannot afford $8/month for a tool.
So I've done some research and found Quire. I haven't really dived into it so I'm not sure if it's a good choice for me. I just love the way they have the infinite task list so I can actually list everything out and let other team members collaborate.
Since they're completely free, my team is starting to use this tool, but they don't have a built-in messaging feature. They only have Slack integration and tbh I personally found Slack a bit annoying and hard to use.
Any recommendations from you would be very much appreciated. We are still testing the water to see if there's any better tool out there.
Top comments (19)
Notion is awesome
The mobile (Android) experience with Notion was waaay too slow for me to effectively use it during my workday. I wanted to love it because of its capabilities, but I just don't sit down at my home desk everyday, so responsive mobile experience is an absolute must.
I'm not sure when you tried it but it works nice and fast on my OnePlus 5T with Android
I stopped using it within the past 4 months using a OnePlus 5. It seemed no matter what I did, the app had to completely reload if it stayed in the background for more than a couple of minutes.
During these instances, I could have opened Google Keep, made the note I needed, and been back at the home screen before Notion would even let me type.
that's too bad, I haven't seem to run into these friction points. I use it on my phone as a workout tracker, todo-list, hour log, recipe book, etc.
I do really want to love it. Maybe I'll have to give it another try just as my home planner, then just stick to Keep for quick thoughts during the day, and be more intentional about importing those quick notes into Notion at the end of the day.
I was the same way. I am huge on knowledge management, have probably tried every program out there. I thought Notion was going to be my savior, but it seemed like most features were 80% of what I wanted and I wasn't going to get that last 20%. They've been talking about releasing the API for at least a year, and I have repeatedly told them if they added a plugin system or open-sourced it I would spend a substantial amount of time working on it.
I use Bear on OS X for note-taking now. It does notes very well. I like asciidoctor syntax too, but the editing environments leave something to be desired. I like ClickUp for project management, and it has a limited free tier. It runs circles around Notion for PM.
I'm not sure if you're looking for a to-do list app or you're actually looking for a project management app.
Some days ago there is a thread on dev.to that discuss the best project management, maybe you would like to take a look? dev.to/vicky209/what-is-the-best-f...
There are definitely some good to-do list apps out there, you just need to decide which features you would like to see in the app first.
I second notion -- it's got a ton of customization, different types of pages and is overall pretty awesome. Also, if you want a project management tool rather than a to-do app, try trello.
Second Trello, I used it in college, work great (and still use it for personal stuff) !
Just out of curiosity, if you think Quire is a good tool, why not continue using it?
I'd second Notion, but the storage for the free account is pretty slim and I'm not sure more than one person can connect to a single workspace on the free tier.
I'm also pretty happy with Asana. The free offering has everything you mention wanting, including a shared workspace.
Asana is a pretty pricey solution and tbh Quire has most of the things that Asana has to offer for free. But I'm not quite sure about Quire pricing in the future.
Heh, now that you mention it (and I look at the pricing), we're getting some kind of a break as an educational organization on Asana (we're getting Premium's features, but I know we're not paying for them).
Being a group of students, your school may qualify for the same deal. Worth asking if you're interested -- heck, it's probably worth asking Quire as well.
For some of the paid tools, I'd encourage you to evaluate them and if you like them, contact them and explain your situation. You're in a great position to promote their product to an audience they probably haven't connected with at all and in exchange for you being a mini-evangelist for their system, I would think they were fools if they didn't give you at least a year for free.
When I worked for a non-profit, I got some sort of discount that was unadvertised about 50% of the time just by asking, it never hurts!
I recommend ClickUp though. Coolest PM tool ever and I normally hate PM tools.
My vote is for Restya. Restya(restya.com/board) is an excellent free Trello alternative, especially if you want to have Kanban and Gantt in a single solution. Here is the comparison between Restya and Trello restya.com/board/comparison.
Another possibility is TickTick. Simple and useful personal/shared task lists.
I like Trello for this purpose, easy collaboration and you can add checklist to cards.
As always I'd like to recommend my own baby: super-productivity.com/
Not sure if you really need a to-do app, but if so, the app could be pretty useful.