When comparing Google Calendar vs Workflowy, the Slant community recommends Workflowy for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” Workflowy is ranked 4th while Google Calendar is ranked 65th. The most important reason people chose Workflowy is:
Any sublist can be viewed as a top-level list. This sounds simple but makes WorkFlowy extremely powerful. For example, the same line item, "write my book," can simultaneously be a to-do in a task list and the container for an entire working document.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Integrates with Google Maps for directions
The app leverages Google Maps when adding location for an event by offering suggestions as well as offers opening Maps to help get directions to an event via shortcut on a reminder notification.
Pro Comes pre-installed on most Android devices
Google Calendar is a free Android calendar app without ads that comes already installed on Android devices that have stock support for Google Services.
Pro Clean design with 5 different views including an excellent schedule view
Google Calendar has a monochrome base design that's accented with colored-coded events and image banners that separate months in schedule view.
The app has 5 different views - schedule, day, 3-day, week and month.
Day, 3-day and week views split up the days horizontally and hours vertically. Month view lays out all days in a grid and displays up to 3 events in a day.
Schedule view displays an agenda view that allows browsing all events by swiping vertically. Additionally, the way events are displayed in the agenda view is context-aware. For example, adding an event called "gym" will display the event on a background with a dumbbell.
All views except for month view can be split horizontally to display a condensed month view at the top that can be navigated by swiping horizontally.
Events can be added from any view by clicking the red plus button that's available at the bottom-right corner of the screen.
Pro Offers creating events from e-mail messages based on content
Google Calendar integrates with e-mail for quickly creating events from e-mails that contain the word "meeting" or dates or times, or any other information about events or plans that it can understand.
Pro Can set on-screen and e-mail reminder notifications
Google calendar allows setting how many reminders are needed with each having the ability to set how long before the event the notification should remind and if it should be done via on-screen or e-mail notification.
Pro Integrates well with other Google services
Google Calendar is part of the Google ecosystem, it integrates with services like Google Now for creating events, Google Maps for directions and Gmail for pulling information about planned flights.
Pro Color-coding for events and calendars
The app will color-code different calendars in different colors as well as allow selecting a different color for each event.
Pro Straightforward event creation with autocomplete
All views have an option of adding a new event by tapping the plus sign at the lower right corner of the screen. This opens up a form and allows the user to add a location, start/end times, guests, description, color-code as well as choosing if it's an all day event, how often it repeats, how many and what kind of reminders are needed and setting the users availability and privacy settings.
Pro Awesome flairs / images view inside the agenda view / event page
Whenever you enter agenda / event title with the keywords (when available), the event will show up interesting flairs whenever the keyword inside the agenda / title you typed matches the flairs that are available inside the system, examples such as haircut, cycling, swimming, coffee, movie etc.
Pro Allows subscribing to public calendars through web client
Through the Google Calendar's web client, it is possible to subscribe to any public calendar. Google also maintains a list of public calendars for various sports events and holidays in different countries and for different religions.
Pro Supports non-Google calendars (requires accessing web client)
Google Calendar can be integrated with any calendar that support iCalendar format, including Exchange and iCloud, via URL, but it has to be done using the web client.
Pro Lots of third-party widgets
Google Calendar comes with a home screen widget, and there are also many third party widgets developed for this calendar app.
Pro Advanced functionality available through IFTTT
IFTTT offers over 198 channels to plug into the users Google Calendar.
Pro Outline-style hierarchy with zoom
Any sublist can be viewed as a top-level list. This sounds simple but makes WorkFlowy extremely powerful. For example, the same line item, "write my book," can simultaneously be a to-do in a task list and the container for an entire working document.
Pro Minimalistic interface
Interface has no clutter. It allows focusing on thoughts to note down. This keeps things simple and easy to understand, which can help keep everything organized in an intuitive manner.
Pro Easy to see an overview and organize notes
All notes are part of a list, which makes it easy to organize everything. Nested lists allow for organizing notes into hierarchical categories of infinite depth. All lists can be folded. WorkFlowy also has tags and instant full-text search.
Pro Super fast sync between devices
While adding a list of to-do on web, it syncs with iPhone and iPad apps very quickly. This way you can jump between devices with no delay of up to date content.
Pro Quickly focus on a specific topic
Enables users to focus on specific topic area, which is referred to as "hoisting" within Workflowy.
Pro Supports tags
Enables users to search by tags.
Pro Cross-platform web and mobile
WorkFlowy can be accessed from either a browser or their apps, which include a Chrome app for desktops as well as an iOS and Android app. This makes it easy to access ones notes no matter the platform or device being used.
Pro Deep nesting
Workflowy's 'everything is in a tree' interface makes it easy to keep expanding on topics, no matter where, or how deep in the hierarchy they are.

Pro Tasks can be added and manipulated quickly
WorkFlowy allows entering many tasks very quickly – especially useful for meeting minutes or a "brain dump" when you have to type fast. After typing in all your thoughts, it's very easy to organize and sort multiple groups at once.
Pro Import and export via OPML
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is a commonly used standard for text exchange. With two-way support for OPML you are never locked into Workflowy. Importing/exporting via copy/paste of entire outlines is a snap.
Pro Text formatting
You can have bold, italic, and underlined text.
Pro Strong community
There are number of talented coders who help customize WorkFlowy with extensions and styles. It has an active blog and welcomes collaboration.
Pro Daily digest email
WorkFlowy can send you an email with that day's activity. It's a great way to track progress.
Cons
Con No vertical scroll
Like iOS and outlook for Android.
Con Privacy concerns
Google integrate all their services to connect and mine information on an individual to better profile and target advertising.
Con Google tasks do not show on Google Calendar
You can create tasks in your desktop Google Calendar but they will not sync nor show up in your android Google Calendar
Con Setting up non-Google calendars requires accessing web client
There is no ability in the Android app to access other calendars. This limits the usefulness for people that use more than one calendar, such as OSX and iOS users.
Con No weather forecast
The Android app version of Google Calendar does not show any weather forcast information, even if it is added as an extra calendar in the web application. Being that weather is tied into Google Now, the absence is surprising.
Con Setting up CalDAV or iCAL from other sources is not working or not working well
A lot of people share events between different sources: professional, private, family or friends.
Not everybody is on Google and of course a lot of corporations.
Con Month view shows limited information about the event
Month view does not show how many events there are in each given day or color-code them in any way, only informs of their existence.
Con Does not work well with Apple / iCloud Calendar
Apple and Google calendars have syncing issues, which is annoying if you want to have shared calendars with friends / family.
Con Some recurrence options not available
If you want to add a recurring event based on quirky (but normal) calendar rules, it's not supported by Google Calendar. For example, if you set up a financial calendar in Google Calendar and an event falls on a weekend or bank holiday, Google Calendar cannot schedule the occurrence properly. Worse yet, if you submit those calendar occurences via VEVENT details, Google Calendar displays different information if you use the mobile calendar vs. the desktop web calendar.
Con Once you create a event on a Calendar, you can't move to a different Calendar
Con Horizontal Scroll
Does not vertically scroll like ios calendars on outlook calendar.
Con Slow syncing of external calendars
Google Calendar is known to sync external calendars very slowly, takes hours if not a full day before the updated events are reflected.
Con No natural language input support
The Android app has no natural language input support, while it's available using the web client and in a limited capacity using Google Now.
Con Weak default view
Even if month is set as default view, as soon as you touch a day or an event, you have to carefully select twice to get back to month view.
Con Time zone is incorrect no matter what's done
Con Timezone for Moscow is incorrect
Timezone for Moscow is 1 hour off. This makes the calendar unusable in Russia.
Con Doesn't work well in mobile browsers
The functionality of the mobile version of the site is a bit limited, while new features have been added such as the ability to move lines of text, even that is limited on Android to only being functional on Chrome.
Con Offline desktop app requires Chrome
The offline desktop requires installing Google Chrome first before the WorkFlowy app can be installed. This is not good news for non-Chrome users especially users who frequently uses Firefox or Safari as their default browsers, in which Chrome app also suffers memory leak and battery issues.
Con Inconvenient interface
Notes automatically collapse, making them unreadable without user interaction. You cannot view multiple long notes at once.
Con No public API
Con Cannot use link-text
You cannot have text link to a URL. When you link to a website you have to post the full URL instead. Instead of having the name of the website or article like, Slant, you instead have to post http://slant.co
. It's especially annoying if you have a long URL that takes up a lot of space in the document.
Con No support for Right-To-Left languages
Mixed text is scrambled, and text-alignment is wrong.
Con Doesn't work on all mobile phones
Not compatible with Android OS version 4.1 and 4.2.
Con Infrequent updates and new features
WorkFlowy works well but it is hardly ever updated, in comparison to Dynalist, which works in a very similar way but has more features and is updated weekly.
Con Only supports one big text file
Although with Workflowy's focus feature this can work, you might prefer managing separate text files.
