Switch · Motion → Nova · July 2026
Switching from Motion to Nova
An honest ten-minute path across — including the parts Motion still does better. Facts checked against Motion's public pages, July 2026.
Keep Motion running while you look. Nova has no importer — the path below is manual and takes about ten minutes.
What Motion does well
Motion is a genuinely good calendar engine. Auto-scheduling tasks against your real availability, re-packing the day when a meeting overruns, and keeping a priority order across projects is hard to build, and Motion does it as its core product. If dense calendar packing is your main job-to-be-done, Motion targets it more directly than Nova does.
- Motion pricing
- US$34–49 per month billed monthly; US$19–29 billed annually
- Way in
- No free plan — a 7-day trial with a card is the only way in (as of 2026)
Read from www.usemotion.com/pricing, July 2026.
What people bump into · as of 2026
The thing people bump into most, as of 2026, is the flip side of that strength: Motion reschedules on your behalf by default, so one change can cascade into a day that looks nothing like the one you approved. Add no free plan and a card at the door, and it's a lot of commitment before you know whether autonomous reshuffling suits you.
Paraphrased from Motion’s own public pages and the behaviour it documents. No individual is quoted and no review is invented.
What actually changes.
Nothing moves without your tap. Nova never reschedules a meeting, sends a reply or pays anything on its own — it prepares the move, shows you the consequence, and waits.
You can look before you pay. The free preview needs no card, and forwarding a few emails is enough to see whether Nova catches the right things.
Prices in rands. R149/month at the Personal tier, charged in ZAR — no exchange-rate surprise on your statement.
Nova is broader but shallower on calendar. Inbox, renewals, quiet follow-ups and money all get caught; dense auto-packing of your calendar is not what Nova does.
The last card is the honest one: where Motion still wins.
The ten-minute path across.
Everything below works today. There is no data importer for Motion — this is the manual route, written out honestly.
- Minute 1Sign up — no card
The free preview gives you 10 AI actions. Keep your current tool running; nothing about it changes while you look.
- Minutes 2–4Forward the last week of real mail
Nova gives you a private forwarding address. Send the renewals, invoices and threads you actually care about. This is how Nova learns your life — there is no importer that can pull your history out of Motion, and we won't pretend there is.
- Minutes 5–7Bring your dates across
Export an .ics from whatever calendar you use and import it, or type the three dates you'd hate to miss — a licence, an insurance renewal, a filing deadline. Typing them takes about a minute.
- Minutes 8–10Prime one worry, then stop
Tell Nova the single thing you're most afraid of forgetting. That becomes your first watcher, and the first card usually lands the same day. Connect a mailbox or WhatsApp broker later, on Plus, once Nova has earned it.
Questions people actually ask.
- Can I import my data from Motion into Nova?
- No — Nova has no importer for Motion, and we'd rather say so than sell you a migration button that doesn't exist. What works today is manual and takes about ten minutes: forward your recent mail to your private Nova address, import an .ics of your calendar or type your key dates, and tell Nova the one thing you're most worried about forgetting.
- Do I have to cancel Motion first?
- No. Nova's free preview needs no card, so run both for a week and compare what each one catches. If Nova doesn't earn its place, you've lost nothing and Motion carried on untouched. Nova itself cancels in the app — no email, no retention call.
- What will Nova do differently from Motion?
- The core difference is approval. Nova prepares the reply, the reminder or the follow-up and then waits for your tap — nothing is sent, paid or moved on your behalf. It also prices in rands at R149/month for one person, works on any phone from the browser, and catches things that live outside a calendar or a mailbox.