Why I Deleted Habitify (And What I Use Instead)

Habitify is, by any objective measure, a capable app. It supports iPhone, iPad, Mac, Android, Apple Watch, and web. The analytics are detailed: streaks, completion rates, week-over-week patterns, per-habit statistics. It syncs across everything. The interface is polished. For the right user, $39.99/year is a reasonable price.

I deleted it anyway.

What Made Habitify Good

To be direct about this: I got real use out of Habitify for a while. The cross-platform support was genuinely useful when I worked across iPhone and Mac throughout the day. The analytics showed me which habits I was actually following through on and which I was only doing well in my head. The morning/afternoon/evening habit scheduling helped me organize by when I intended to do things, not just what I intended to do.

These are real features that real users need. If you track habits across multiple devices and want detailed completion statistics, Habitify has earned its reputation.

Why I Stopped

The decision came down to cost and complexity, in that order.

The cost: $39.99/year adds up to $199.95 over five years. Habit tracking is a solved problem. A piece of paper and a pen has handled it for centuries. I started questioning whether I was paying for features I actually used, or features that felt good to have in principle.

The complexity: Habitify has a lot of options. Per-habit analytics, streak statistics, completion rates broken down by day of week, goal tracking, reminders with customizable schedules. For a period when I needed that structure, it was useful. At some point, I realized I was spending time managing the app more than thinking about the habits themselves. The analytics had become the product, not the tracking.

The renewal: The annual renewal notification clarified things. $39.99, another year. I asked myself: what am I getting from this that a simpler app wouldn’t give me? I couldn’t answer that clearly.

What I Use Instead

I switched to Just Habits. At $4.99 once, it paid for itself compared to Habitify’s annual fee within the first month.

The tradeoffs are real: no Mac app, no Android, no detailed analytics. What it has: a 16-week momentum grid that shows my honest completion pattern, interactive home screen widgets that let me check off habits without opening the app, and no account requirement. My data stays in iCloud. Nothing syncs to a third-party server.

The simplicity was the point. I don’t need my habit completion rate broken down by day of week. I need to see whether I’ve been consistent lately. The 16-week grid answers that question in one glance.

Being able to backdate any day I forgot to log also matters more than I expected. The record stays accurate even when I forget to open the app.

When Habitify Is Still the Right Choice

Habitify is not a bad app, and some users should stick with it.

If you use iPhone, Android, Mac, Apple Watch, or web, Habitify’s cross-platform support is hard to match. If you track many habits and need to analyze patterns across them, the analytics justify the subscription. If you’re coordinating habit tracking with a coach or therapist and need to share reports, Habitify supports that in a way simpler apps don’t.

The lifetime option ($89.99) changes the math somewhat. If you’re confident you’ll use it for more than two years and want the feature depth, paying once is reasonable. The breakeven against annual billing is just over two years.

But if you’re primarily an iPhone user who wants to track habits and check them off, the feature complexity you’re paying for is overhead, not value.

The Calculation

The question I wish I’d asked earlier: what do I actually do with this app day to day?

For Habitify, my honest answer was: I open it, check off a few habits, and occasionally look at a chart that tells me what I already know. I wasn’t using the analytics to change my behavior. I was using them to feel like I had a handle on things.

For Just Habits, what I do day to day is: tap the home screen widget, check off habits, occasionally glance at the grid to see my recent pattern. That’s it. It’s a tool that does one thing and then gets out of the way.

The moment I framed it that way, the renewal decision made itself.