Vs subscriptions
Retrospective vs the monthly bill
On Retrospective:
The productivity tool aisle is stacked with subscriptions: Todoist at $60 a year, or $7 a month, and Things 3 at $49.99 once. The Retrospective is one HTML file that does the honest working core of what those tools sell, once, for the price of a Swiss Knife.
The bill you were quietly paying
Name the actual products and the arithmetic stops being abstract: Todoist ($60 a year, or $7 a month: tasks with reminders behind the tier), Things 3 ($49.99 once: sold per platform, bought once), Sunsama ($204 a year, or $22 a month: daily planning as a service). An average productivity stack lands at $5 to $17 a month, forever.
Run that out five years and Todoist costs $300, Sunsama costs $1020. A Swiss Knife, with the Retrospective folded in beside up to eleven other tools, is $95, once.
19 months of Todoist at $60 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. Every year after that is pure savings on this category.
What the Retrospective replaces cleanly
The project ends, everyone exhales, and the lessons quietly evaporate before the next one begins. That is the working shape most subscriptions in this category are wrapped around; the Retrospective delivers it without the wrapper.
Concretely: Todoist would keep week / project, what went well, what could improve, and actions on its own servers, behind its own login, on its own pricing schedule. The Retrospective keeps the same fields in a file on your disk — same shape of work, no monthly line on the card.
You keep the workflow. You lose the login, the sync outage, the price hike email, and the export deadline.
What you honestly give up
Team collaboration in real time. Auto-import from third-party APIs. A mobile app that pings you. Todoist does those things and does them properly; if any of them are load-bearing for how you work today, keep paying Todoist — the Retrospective is not trying to compete on those fronts.
Most people, honestly, were paying for features they did not use. The Retrospective is what remains when you strip that back to the tool.
What you stop renting
- Todoist: $60 a year, or $7 a monthTasks with reminders behind the tier. $60 a year, every year.
- Things 3: $49.99 onceSold per platform, bought once.
- Sunsama: $204 a year, or $22 a monthDaily planning as a service. $204 a year, every year.
Questions people ask
How does the cost compare to Todoist?
Todoist runs about $300 over five years and Sunsama about $1020. 19 months of Todoist at $60 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. A Swiss Knife folds the Retrospective in with up to eleven other tools for $95, once, and there is no year two.
Is the Retrospective a like-for-like replacement for Todoist?
For the working core — week / project, what went well, what could improve, and actions — yes. For tasks with reminders behind the tier, no. We would rather say that plainly than sell you a switch you'll regret in a fortnight.
What if my needs grow past a single file?
Excellent problem. Keep the Retrospective for what it does well; add a specialised SaaS on top only when you have a specialised need. Nothing here locks you in — it is a file.
Can I import my current data?
The Retrospective is deliberately hand-entered. Two minutes of typing on Monday keeps you closer to your own productivity tool than an integration ever will.
The subscription was renting the arithmetic. Buy the arithmetic instead.