Future plans for Everdo?

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Dear @Andrei,

I love your product. I use it daily and can’t really imagine working without it.

However, I sense the roadmap is drying up, and perhaps this project isn’t getting the focus the users might want on it.

Can you elaborate a bit on your plans for the future? I get the impression this is a side-gig for you, which is fair enough. But have you considered involving others in the development of the tool?

Or seeing if we would pay you a bit more, and thus it becomes a very attractive side gig? I would pay a monthly subscription for something that is well maintained. I suspect other users might feel similarly.

Thanks,
Duncan

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Hi Duncan,

Thank you for your thoughtful post. I’m writing a reply and will post it soon.

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I would happily pay a monthly fee. I have so many other cloud subscription and honestly most of them aren’t worth it. They aren’t so thoughtfully designed and useful to me like everdo is.

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I would also be happy to pay! I pay the fee for syncing, but that is so small compared to the value I receive from Everdo. It’s the main hub in my GTD process. If it would stop being developed it would be a huge setback for me, so I’m prepared to pay for it :slight_smile:

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Hi everyone,

we had this discussion half a year ago here already:

I’m also looking forward to the new post from Andrei so let’s see what he says.

What about open sourcing the app with a license which only allows Andrei to offer self hosted services to the public (similar to the people from https://workadventu.re)? So everyone could contribute, the project is unlikely to die and Andrei still gets a revenue for his initial work? And everyone who is willing to self-host (or doing this already) can just go on with it and its fine. Maybe also have two levels of support – paid one and community support?

Some thoughts on software in general:
I don’t think closed source software has a real future either. I totally understand that we all must pay our rents but regarding the risk of a closed source tool being abandoned or stopped (for good reasons) you always have to think about before using it what happens in these cases. With OpenSource we don’t have this kind of risk (but others). As we always “own” the software we can decide how to proceed and everyone can take over the maintenance.

With Everdo the only reason I decided for using it (and yes, I paid for it and would also pay a small fee for having it properly maintained) is that it’s designed to still own your data. I get it out of the tool at every time in a structured form and there are no licensing servers or tracking tools involved (as far as I noticed). So this is what the tool does right – but on the other side there are important things missing for quite a while like e.g. ARM builds:

Long story short: I really would love to see this project having a sustainable future and if I can help I will. But at the moment it doesn’t look like there’s any progress since months and no (or very little) communication is not a good sign too :disappointed_relieved:

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Hi all. Thank you for your comments. I’m reading and considering all your opinions and ideas.

I know I haven’t been able to set realistic expectations lately, and it’s my responsibility. I’m working on a thorough reply that hopefully answers the questions and suggestions raised here, putting an end to the uncertainty about the future of Everdo. Yes, there has not been many new releases in a while, but the project is not about to shut down either.

I want Everdo to stay around for a long time, and for users to know that it is alive (whatever that means). However for financial reasons, the product has to reach some kind of a good-enough finished state, as opposed to being in perpetual development with an unbounded backlog. I can’t yet say what exactly this finished state is, and it’s a difficult problem, as different users want different things. But, subscription or not, there is simply no reasonable price point that would pay for the level of development and support that would satisfy everyone. In other words, there is not a big enough audience to pay for a continuous development effort in addition to the non-negotiable operations and admin work.

More information coming soon.

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Here’s my first attempt at answering your questions and setting a sustainable vision for the future. Please let me know if you still have unresolved questions, and I will add my answers here. I will post the upcoming release plan soon.

The future of Everdo

I know many of you would like the app to get more new features, or possibly expecting some particular changes.

The truth is, the product is reaching a relatively small audience. Which is enough to fund operations and some development, but not sufficient to enable continuous work on new functionality.

To ensure the longevity and preservation of the app, the available budget must be spent very carefully.

In the order of priority, development will focus on

  1. Keeping up with breaking OS updates
  2. Bug fixes
  3. Keeping libraries up to date and avoiding deprecated APIs
  4. Improving sync transparency and stability across all apps
  5. Improving the mobile apps, in particular the capture capabilities and feature parity between the apps

Increasing the price or introducing a subscription

Some of you have suggested this.

As I replied earlier, a reasonable price increase would not help, and could easily make things worse because the price would become less competitive. Productivity apps is a very crowded market. For every user willing to pay 10x more, another 100 users will just find something cheaper instead.

Release schedule and the backlog

There will be no public backlog to avoid setting incorrect expectations.

Public releases will be scheduled infrequently (no more than twice a year) to avoid the associated overheads.

There will be a page / topic that shows the next release date, as well as a list of planned changes for each app.

Early access releases will be done without a predefined schedule, as things get developed and tested internally.

When will the feature X be implemented?

In general, if it’s not listed in the upcoming release page, please don’t expect it.

In addition, some things will probably never be implemented, for example

  • Markdown support in text
  • Nested projects or actions
  • Adding images or file attachments to actions
  • Grouping of projects in navigation

This is because there is long list of features that are both more useful and easier to add.

Edit: Next Release Details (Q1 2024) - #2

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Thanks for the clarity and transparency Andrei.

To throw my own two cents into the mix, I heavily agree with @sweetgood that Everdo would be best served as open source. I know you’ve considered this and you have your reasons, but given the lack of development + ‘own your data’ mentality, open source really seems like the best fit. Knowing that development will remain stunted and that I can’t make my own changes to the software makes me concerned about the feasibility of continuing to use Everdo long-term.

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Agreed on the appreciation for the transparency, it does exemplify the ethos that I think attracted many of us to Everdo over other options. That said while it is nice to know the roadmap and as much as your logic behind it is all very reasonable, it is definitely disappointing to see that a lot of outstanding core features I’d hope to see added probably never will be.

I’ll add my vote to an open source model seeming like a good fit. I know others have offered reasons why they think it would be best and you’ve said that you haven’t found a way to make it work, but I’m curious if you’ve looked at a model like what Bitwarden uses.

With Bitwarden there is a core product that is open source and can be used for free, but a paid license is required to unlock certain features, even in a self-hosted environment. I understand there’s a good amount of work to get to that point but once you reach it development of the apps could really accelerate and draw in more customers.

Say there was a free product that could only sync with an ESS subscription, while paid licenses would be required to enable features like self-hosting for syncing and/or other premium features. Or whatever lol. Big fan of Bitwarden and their model, the product has improved massively as I’ve used it over the years, and I’d love to see Everdo on the same path.

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Surely I was hoping for more, but it’s great to see that in general the app will stay alive and support will be available, as well as bug fixing and a little development.
The app is in a state of “good enough” for me, no real blockers. A few things are annoying, like the short project selector on desktop which too often only shows about 3 words and my project titles are really long.
And I miss a search/filter functionality in the project or tag selector on android. This would make processing on my smartphone so much smoother and the weekly review on my android epaper device so much more fun.

Sorry couldn’t resist bringing those up…
Anyway keep it up.

I expect still more movement on everdo than on that other similar app …

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Thank you for taking the time to respond, and for withstanding all our opinions on what you should do with your project.

To add to the unsolicited advice, I can’t help wondering if the current model (high starting price and low recurring fees) is squashing your market penetration and lowering the lifetime value of customers.

You seem to have loyal and passionate users (based on this thread). We are even asking to pay you more money. This doesn’t happen often :wink:

A small passionate user base can grow if the barrier to use the product is lower. Happy to share testimonials etc if you go down that route.

Anyway, I will continue to pay what you ask and enjoy the current features. You’ve made a remarkably lean and stable product. Kudos.

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Thank you all for your feedback.

Checking in to reassure you that it’s all well received and valuable. It gave me many ideas for improvement.

Continued support is my top priority, followed by improving the product in a smart and sustainable way.

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@Andrei – I’ve been away from GTD for a while and I’m getting back into it and Everdo is my favorite app for it, whether new features are ever added or not. It’s been a year since the last release though.

Before I start using it again, I’m curious if you’re still committed to keeping the app functioning (basically the 5-point list you provided in October 2023)? I just want to make sure if the sync goes down or an OS update breaks something that you’re still around to attempt to fix it?

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I’ve noted that the last time Andrei posted anything to the forum was 7 months ago. Between that and his statements about the limited audience and resources for the app in this topic, the future prospects for Everdo don’t look promising to me. That’s unfortunate, I’ve been actively looking for alternatives and haven’t found another app that combines privacy with an excellent GTD structure.

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He has been prompt helping anyone who had sync issues. When spammers got in to the forums he was prompt at removing them after emailed an update. I am not expecting new features but expect bugs to be fixed and critical issues like sync and system compatibility issues to be addressed. In my eyes it is in maintenance mode right now and has been for a couple of years.

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Hey guys. Just letting you all know I’m here. I had to take a break from development and replying on the forum (again, I know).

The forum got hit by spam pretty bad at the worst time so I had to disable all signups and spend a bunch of time cleaning all the mess. As a result, the amount of forum visitors and posts dropped, so I looked at it even less, which I regret.

You can rest assured that no matter what, stability of the app is a priority. The app is not going away any time soon. As you know, the app is not dependent on any service. The sync infrastructure is rock-solid and is monitored. If you run into issues do email me or PM on the forum.

In terms of sustainability and new development, I do have ideas, but I will talk about that once I have something close to being released. After not reaching the previous milestone(s?) I feel bad about announcing anything upfront.

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Hello!

First, thank you, Andrei, for making such a great app!
I was happy to pay 120$ (Pro + 1 year of sync) today.

I might be wrong, but I think I will be happy to pay again the same sum in 1 year.
But ESS renewal will only be 20$.
Of course, I can buy another Product key and either not use it or find a friend/relative interested by it.

But it would be nice if there was another option, like becoming a “Everdo Sponsor” (it is fine if the only thing you get is the right to call yourself an Everdo Sponsor ).

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Eric, welcome and thank you for the kind words. I hope you are happy with the product in a year. Then if you still want to be a supporter and there’s no official way to pay more, please PM me and I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, keep in mind that one of the best way to support a product like this is to leave positive reviews online, especially in app stores and social media. Instead of you paying extra it might help a number of people discover the app and become happy users.

When it comes to payment options, you are touching upon a very relevant topic.

Improving the pricing structure of Everdo is something that’s been brought up many times and I’m thinking about ways to do it without negatively affecting existing users. Some users want a subscription for Everdo Pro, some want to pay for everything at once and forever, a few want to pay more. A “Supporter” tier might or might not be a part of the solution, but I understand the motivation. For an offline-first application with some “cloud” features pricing is a challenging problem, but I’m working on it.

To everyone
Since this topic has a bit of a negative sentiment lately (for good reason) I though I’d share some relevant news. You can expect releases on all platforms in the near future. A major Everdo for Android upgrade is being rolled out right now, containing some long-awaited functionality. I will make a separate post on that.

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For what it’s worth, I read this thread very positively. I’ve spent my career struggling to sell products to reluctant users, and would have loved a thread full of people saying: “we love your product, and we want to pay you more for it”.

This is not a normal thing. And it’s very, very good!

Exciting to hear a new release is coming :slight_smile:

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Android app crash reporting opt-out