Productivity is an important aspect of a student’s business and social life. Thankfully, there are applications to help increase your everyday productivity. Perhaps none are more useful than a versatile calendar app.

The real conundrum when looking at which calendar is best for you is what features you need for your life. To compare different types of calendars, let’s contrast one that is a local start-up, “WotNow,” to a more widely accepted application, “Sunrise.” Both are available for iOS and Android devices.

“WotNow” is a calendar app made in the College of DuPage’s own backyard, Naperville. The main objectives of this app are to both compile your major social media outlets, like Facebook and Google Calendar, as well as sharing local events and deals with you to provide a more personal and localized experience with your calendar.

“Sunrise” is a well established Microsoft application that is the ultimate compiler of events that you would ever care about on a larger scale. It gathers almost every single social media platform you can think of, and renders it into one simple place. It also integrates major national events like sporting games from all major U.S. leagues, all election days for this presidential season and even does listings of your favorite TV channels. For “WotNow” to compete in the calendar app world, it will need to do all of this alongside its localized features.

The actual calendar part of the app works very similar to each other. There is a week-by-week list of days on top of the screen, and below it is the list of events you have put into the calendar sorted chronologically. You input the events similarly to each other as well. There is a “+” button near the top right side of the screen where you can input what the event is, where it is happening and set alarms to remind you of the event.

Although similar due to the bare nature of the application, there are vast differences in how both of these work. Although “WotNow” does not have the vast amount of compatibility with events on the national scale like “Sunrise,” it is a much more localized application. You can track local organizations and find events happening near you through your interests, location or popularity of said event in your area with your GPS. On the other hand, “Sunrise” has a much more in-depth automatic input of dates, events and even weather patterns that makes the whole process of planning your day simply streamlined.

If “WotNow” were to add even half of the application support that “Sunrise” has to offer, I’d see the application as a titan and dangerous competition to “Sunrise” on the app store of both iOS and Android. For now though, it is a more localized application. That is not a mark against it, but it does hold back the potential of its popularity both nationally and internationally.

Depending on what you want out of your calendar, either one might work for you. If you are always looking for things to do in the Chicagoland area, then you should check out “WotNow.” If you are looking for a more generalized all-in-one platform to mesh everything together, I would check out “Sunrise.” Personally, I will be using “Sunrise” until “WotNow” can do everything the other can with all of its localized features.