Nozbe just launched its brand-new app Nozbe Teams, which is now in open beta phase. It’s a cloud-based task management tool available for all major web browsers, iOS, and Android.
With this release, Nozbe gently shifted towards a two-product company, according to Michael Sliwinski, CEO of Nozbe. Nozbe Teams is a completely new product aiming to “help small businesses and teams focus on performing efficiently.”
The company will also continue to support its first product, Nozbe 3. If you want to learn more about Nozbe 3, you might find my review interesting. From this point on in this Nozbe Teams review, I’ll refer to the “old” Nozbe as Nozbe 3.
The saga continues…
Nozbe power users have long awaited the new app just like Star Wars fans anticipated the new Skywalker saga. On April 4, 2019, the company announced that they’re working on Nozbe 4. Subsequently, in line with the message that the new app will serve team productivity and it won’t replace Nozbe 3, they changed the name to Nozbe Teams.
The developers aimed to reach a new audience while offering something valuable to Nozbe’s existing customers. They wanted an app that preserves Nozbe’s vision to help people get things done while offering a completely new product in the competitive landscape of project management apps.
Just like in the new Star Wars trilogy, Nozbe Teams features some legendary characters from the old Nozbe app, along with a bunch of new functions, which are likable. More on those functions later.
Let’s begin our Nozbe Teams review with the anatomy and look.
Anatomy of Nozbe Teams
The Nozbe Teams interface inherited the three-panel look from Nozbe 3. On the left panel, you’ll find your dashboard:
- Priority: Once you mark a task with a star, it will show up in your priority list.
- Incoming: This is your main workplace where you’ll find the tasks that have been assigned to you as well as those that mention you. Overdue tasks and reminders also show up here.
- Activity: The activity tab shows what’s going on with the projects you’re involved in.
- Projects: This is the list of projects that either you created or you’ve been invited to. You can decide whether anyone in your team or just invited people will see your projects.
- Tags: Tags work the very same way as categories in Nozbe 3—you can batch tasks from different projects. This function is perfectly compatible with the GTD contexts.
- Team: Here you’ll find your teammates. You can invite new members by sending them an email.
The second panel displays your tasks in any of the categories listed above. By clicking on a single task, a third panel will open up, showing the details of the corresponding task.
With this plain three-panel interface, Nozbe preserved its manifesto for getting things done.
Getting started with Nozbe Teams
Tasks are the building blocks of Nozbe Teams. Every task can belong to a project, which is the second level of the hierarchy. The drag-and-drop function allows moving single tasks up and down on your list.
Just like in Nozbe 3, tasks can have assignees, due dates, tags, and reminders. What’s new in Nozbe Teams, however, is that you can create sections within projects just like in Asana. Sections make it easy for you to group related tasks. This single function has long been anticipated in the old Nozbe versions. Individual tasks can then be placed from one section to the other.
Custom reminders are also a new feature in the new version. While the old Nozbe supported reminders, they were not nearly as customizable as they’re now in Nozbe Teams.
What I miss, however, is the good old “time needed” function: in Nozbe 3, you can allocate the estimated time of completion to your tasks, which will then show up as a time block in your Google Calendar (provided you have Nozbe synced with your Google account).
In your task view, you can mark any task as unread (another super-cool new function) and move selected tasks into your priority list by marking them with a star. Similarly, you can simply unstar tasks to remove them from your priorities.
At the heart of Nozbe is team communication, which happens in the comments section of individual tasks. Beyond plain text, comments can have bulleted lists, numbered lists, as well as checklists. Mention a @teammate in your comments and she’ll receive a notification in her incoming section.
Projects now can have a defined purpose, which will show up at the top of the screen. Both projects and tags come with a bunch of optional colors. Tags received the good old icon library from the old Nozbe version: you can choose from 20 beautifully designed icons, which combined with the 15 predefined colors makes it easy for you to leave your footprints.
A handy new function is the Single tasks view on your dashboard. It’s instantly recognizable by the Asana-like icon. Single tasks are dedicated to storing all the tasks that don’t belong to a project. (In Nozbe 3, I’d put such tasks into my Miscellaneous project.) Once you create a task without assigning it to a project, it will appear in your Single tasks view.
Our Nozbe Teams review would be incomplete without discussing what’s the right product for you.
Should I go with Nozbe or Nozbe Teams?
Nozbe Teams lacks some core features of its predecessor—e.g. email integration, project templates, integration with Evernote, task dependencies, cloning, time estimation of single tasks—while offering many likable new functions as discussed above. It’s important to note, however, that Nozbe Teams is now in open beta phase, which means that new functions will come. Among these, for example, integration with Google Calendar and third-party cloud services, as well as a calendar view are scheduled.
Unlike Nozbe 3, Nozbe Teams currently lacks a dedicated desktop app.
Time will tell whether Nozbe 3 and Nozbe Teams as two separate products could position the company into the forefront of the already crowded landscape of task management tools. I think the Nozbe company could have better served its customers by launching Nozbe 4 as a standalone product, integrating all the core features of Nozbe 3 and Nozbe Teams. With two separate products of slightly overlapping functions, the delivery of Nozbe’s unique values seems now somewhat inflated.
Anyway, you might choose Nozbe 3 for personal use, or go with Nozbe Teams if you’re working in a team. (Nozbe 3 also excels at teamwork.) Unfortunately, Nozbe Teams doesn’t offer solo plans. That leads us to pricing.
Plans and pricing
Nozbe Teams will be free to use up to 5 team members and up to 5 projects. Unlike many apps on the market, the free plan features all functions, so you can test out everything before you commit to a paid plan.
Business plans will start at $29 per month for 5 people and with an unlimited number of projects.
Nozbe 3 currently has 3 plans:
- Solo/duo plan for personal productivity
- Small business plan for up to 8 users
- Business plan with unlimited number of users
Each plan comes with an unlimited number of projects. Charging begins with $10 per month for a single user, while a Business plan with 10 users costs $99 per month. Within each plan, it depends on the size of your team how much Nozbe will charge, but your payment will decrease gradually as your team grows. If you choose a yearly payment, you can save some 20-30 percent on your purchase.
This pricing model is comparable to Asana’s annual Premium plan (charging $10.99 per user per month) and Trello’s annual Business plan ($9.99 per user per month). Todoist, however, charges only $3 per user per month for its annual Premium plan.
Importantly, with an annual Nozbe 3 subscription, you’ll get a free book, 10 Steps to Ultimate Productivity by Michael Sliwinski, CEO of Nozbe. And this is where Nozbe outperforms its competitors. More on that below.
Nozbe Teams Review: The verdict
I’d put Nozbe somewhere between Todoist and Asana in terms of look and functionality. Nozbe has been developed by a small team in Central Europe, which, I assume, has been the driving reason why it isn’t a mainstream app… yet. I believe Nozbe will soon earn its deserved place in the hall of fame of task management tools.
What sets Nozbe apart from its competitors, I think, is:
- The small and dedicated team behind the app
- Its fantastic customer service
- Its vision to help people get things done
- Its business model to withstand corporate interest
- The simple yet feature-rich interface
- The versatile mobile app
- Full support of David Allen’s GTD methodology
Despite the diverging products which resulted in a compromise on functions, I still recommend Nozbe 3 and Nozbe Teams from the bottom of my heart for personal as well as team productivity.
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