Optimize when you work, or find what needs doing.
Motion is one of the best AI calendars out there. Its AI Employees now read your inbox and calendar too, organizing email, drafting replies, and shaping your day around time and email. this+that starts somewhere wider: the whole message stream. It reads Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram, pulls out the work hiding in them, and runs message-triggered workflows so that work actually gets done.
Email and calendar vs. every channel
Motion's thesis is that the calendar is the right place to manage everything. Tasks, projects, and meetings live in one intelligent schedule that the AI optimizes continuously, and its AI Employees now read your inbox and act on it. That works well when your work runs through email and a well-defined calendar. We see the problem differently. For most knowledge workers the work is scattered across far more than email, buried in Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram threads, untracked and unassigned. this+that reads every channel, surfaces what needs action, and runs message-triggered workflows to handle it. If you need a smarter calendar, Motion is excellent. If your work spans every channel your team uses, this+that is built for that.
Feature by feature
How the two products compare across the things that matter most.
| Topic | Motion | this+that |
|---|---|---|
| Core philosophy | Calendar-first AI, now with AI Employees. Email and meetings are read and organized automatically, and the AI optimizes your day continuously as things change. | Communications-first AI across every channel. Read messages in email and chat alike, extract the work hiding in them, and run message-triggered workflows so nothing falls through the cracks. |
| Task creation | Motion's AI Employees monitor your inbox and calendar and surface work automatically, then schedule and prioritize it. Strongest around email and calendar. | Automatic across more channels. DoBox reads every conversation in Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram and extracts requests, commitments, deadlines, and follow-ups as trackable tasks. |
| Calendar intelligence | Best-in-class. AI auto-schedules tasks around meetings, respects deadlines and priorities, and reschedules dynamically when your day changes. | Calendar automation as a workflow action: RSVP, create events, reschedule, manage attendees across Google and Outlook Calendar. Powerful in automation context; not a scheduling optimizer. |
| Channel reading | AI Employees read your inbox and calendar in real time and act on them: organizing email, drafting responses, and prepping for meetings. Centered on email and calendar. | Reads Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram continuously, with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger coming soon. Built for breadth across chat as well as email. |
| Workflow automation | AI Workflows transforms written SOPs into automated processes. Useful for structured, repeatable work, less suited to dynamic, message-triggered automation. | Full workflow builder with 32 action types. Plain-language creation. Conditional logic, loops, sub-agents. Triggered by incoming messages, not just manual SOPs. |
| Team features | Task assignment, team project tracking, capacity analysis, and predictive project completion. Strong for project management teams. | Shared task view, task assignment, and workflow delegation. Work-level coordination across channels, not tied to a calendar-based project model. |
| AI capabilities | Pre-built AI Employees (EA, sales, support, and more) plus a custom-agent builder. AI Project Manager generates and forecasts projects, AI Meeting Notetaker records and transcribes, AI Docs drafts content. | AI reasoning as a workflow decision step: classifies, routes, and acts on incoming work. Not a notetaker or document drafting tool. |
| Meeting notes | Built in. AI Meeting Notetaker records, transcribes, and generates action items from meetings. | Not included. this+that focuses on message-based work extraction, not meeting recording. |
| External integrations | Zapier, HubSpot, Salesforce, and 100+ tools via API. No open integration standard. | Open MCP standard. GitHub, Notion, Jira, Dropbox, HubSpot, and any tool with an API. Not limited to a fixed integration catalog. |
| AI writing | AI Docs can draft content and convert notes to tasks. Not focused on email composition or voice-matching. | Interactive AI reply button drafts from your direction and your brain, and draft-reply also runs as a workflow action. Lighter on trained voice-matching. |
| Pricing | $19-$29/seat/month billed annually depending on tier (Pro AI $19, Business AI $29). | Free during beta. |
- Calendar intelligence is genuinely best-in-class: AI auto-scheduling that respects deadlines, priorities, and meeting constraints is hard to beat.
- AI Employees read your inbox and calendar in real time and act on them: organizing email, drafting responses, and prepping for meetings, with pre-built roles and a custom-agent builder.
- AI Project Manager is powerful for teams that run structured projects: generates plans from descriptions, tracks status, and forecasts completion dates.
- AI Meeting Notetaker eliminates the need for a separate transcription tool: recording, transcription, and action item extraction are built in.
- Capacity analysis and predictive completion give managers real visibility into what their team can and cannot take on.
- Positions itself as a replacement for multiple tools (Asana, Monday, Notion, Calendly, Otter), genuinely consolidating the project management stack.
- Deep Zapier and CRM integration (HubSpot, Salesforce) makes it practical for sales and ops teams already using those tools.
- Channel breadth: Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram are read natively alongside Gmail and Outlook, where Motion centers on email and calendar.
- DoBox extracts work from every conversation across those channels and tracks it with per-person assignment, lists, priorities, due dates, and recurrence.
- Workflow automation is message-triggered and dynamic: 32 action types with conditional logic, loops, and sub-agents, not SOP-based process templates.
- Open MCP standard: connect any tool with an API, not just a fixed integration catalog.
- Communications-first design means the starting point is what people are actually asking you to do, wherever they ask it.
- Works across Gmail and Outlook equally, not tied to a single email provider or calendar ecosystem.
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