I've been a Sunsama ambassador for over two years now, and they've been incredibly supportive of my content; sponsoring videos, featuring my work, and giving me early access to new features. But despite all my enthusiastic walkthroughs, I kept getting the same pushback from my audience: "This looks amazing, but $20/month? Really?"
As someone who believes productivity tools should be accessible, those comments bothered me. So I did what any productivity nerd would do: I challenged myself to build a Notion alternative that could deliver some of Sunsama's core functionality without the recurring cost.
After all, how hard could it be? Sunsama is just task management plus calendar integration plus time tracking, right? Notion has databases, formulas, and buttons. I figured I could create something that gave my audience 80% of the value and save them $240 per year.
3+ hours and countless formula sessions later, I had my answer.
The Goal: Sunsama's Best Features, Notion's Flexibility
My goal wasn't to perfectly replicate Sunsama, that would be impossible. Instead, I wanted to capture the essential workflow: daily planning, time tracking, task organization, and basic reporting. Something my audience could use to test whether Sunsama's approach worked for them before committing to the subscription.
I built a system: one master task database with multiple views mimicking Sunsama's layout: Today, Calendar, Backlog, and Braindump. I added goals tracking, analytics dashboards, timer functionality, and even tried to recreate that satisfying daily planning ritual that makes Sunsama special.
The result was a messy, complex system that technically worked but felt like driving a race car with square wheels.
Where My "Alternative" Started Breaking Down
Time Tracking Became a NightmareSunsama's elegant one-click time tracking? In Notion, I needed two database, three button clicks, manual time entry, and rechecking to make sure sessions were actually saved. Sunsama automatically aggregates your time into beautiful, actionable reports. My Notion setup required separate databases, complex rollups, and still couldn't match Sunsama's insights.
Despite the clunky time tracking, I figured I could at least get some automations working to bring tasks into this system.
Integrations Cost More Than SunsamaHere's where my "budget alternative" really began to backfire. Replicating Sunsama's app integrations through Zapier would cost $30+ monthly. Sunsama connects to Todoist, Asana, Trello, Gmail, Slack, and a dozen other tools natively. My "affordable" solution suddenly became more expensive than the original. The plan was not going great, so I skipped automations for the time and decided to try my hand back in the time tracking area…
The Pomodoro ProblemSunsama's built-in focus timer with break reminders and session tracking is beautiful. I spent hours trying to recreate this with Notion buttons and date formulas. After wrestling with calculations that should have been simple, I gave up and opened a separate Pomodoro widget. Sometimes simple wins.
Calendar Blocking Reality CheckSunsama's drag-and-drop calendar blocking is seamless, grab a task, drop it on your calendar, boom. In Notion I'd need to use the separate Notion Calendar app and manually drag the tasks into my day or add times to each task, which is a clunky process. Sunsama gets major points for having everything live in one place instead of juggling multiple apps.
Subtasks and DependenciesSunsama handles subtasks without a second thought; creating them, checking them off, calculating the parent task and time progress is all simple and automatic. In Notion, I added sub-tasks that technically worked but felt like solving an ugly puzzle every time I wanted to break down a project and try to track the parent task as a whole. The functionality is just not there yet.
The Features I Didn't Even Attempt
After struggling with the basics, I realized there were entire categories of Sunsama features I couldn't even begin to replicate, these were just a few:
AI-Driven Daily HighlightsSunsama automatically generates smart daily summaries based on your completed tasks, integration data, and productivity patterns. Building this into Notion? Not happening. I'd need to manually write my own daily recaps, which would provide good reflection but is more journaling than feature.
Team Settings and CollaborationSunsama's team features: shared channels, team time tracking, collaborative planning, are impossible to recreate in Notion. I won't even begin to explain the database permission nightmares involved in trying to build multi-user productivity workflows in Notion.
Smart Suggestions and AutomationSunsama learns your patterns and suggests optimal scheduling, recommends break times, and automatically adjusts based on your productivity data. My Notion template just sits there, waiting for me to manually input everything.
The Cost of "Free"
After using both systems for a week, I realized my Notion template had a major expense I hadn’t considered before: time. Setting it up (even if it was a templated version) took hours with automations. Maintaining it required weekly tweaks. Adding new features meant rebuilding formulas and testing edge cases. Even simple task management required more clicks than I’d prefer in an “easy” task system.
Sunsama works beautifully out of the box. Updates happen automatically. The mobile app doesn't require it’s own database or formula debugging for each screen size.
Most importantly, Sunsama's design focuses on healthy productivity habits. The daily planning ritual, automatic rollover of incomplete tasks, and gentle end-of-day reflection are productivity philosophies built into the software that I simply cannot replicate in Notion.
When Alternatives Make Sense (And When They Don't)
My Notion experiment wasn't a complete failure. It taught me exactly why Sunsama costs what it does, and it gave me something valuable to offer my audience who wanted to experiment with the workflow before committing.
But here's the thing: some people genuinely prefer the control and customization Notion offers. If you're someone who enjoys tinkering with systems, wants to track metrics Sunsama doesn't offer, or simply can't justify the subscription right now, a custom Notion setup might work as a stepping stone.
The Verdict
I still use and recommend Sunsama daily and after trying to recreate it, I appreciate its thoughtful design even more. Those seamless integrations, automatic reporting, and polished UI represent thousands of development hours I could barely begin to replicate.
That said, my experiment wasn't wasted. If you're curious about Sunsama's approach but don’t need the automations or reporting, you can grab my failed Notion template here. Consider it training wheels… a way to see if daily planning and intentional time tracking work for you before investing in the real thing.
Sunsama isn't expensive because of what it does, it's valuable because of how effortlessly it does it. Sometimes the best productivity hack is just paying for tools that work.
Ready to try Sunsama? They offer a free 30 day trial (affiliate link). Fair warning: after comparing it to my homemade version, you might appreciate good software design as much as I do.