With Enterprise Launch On Horizon, Task Manager Todoist Adds Collaboration & Real-Time Sync

Todoist, the cross-platform task management software reaching 1.3 million users, is getting an upgrade today. The company has been a staple in the world of personal productivity since its debut in 2007, and is now finally adding support for collaboration and real-time sync, among other things. These features will also serve as the precursor for another important release, as it turns out – Todoist will be launching a product designed for businesses in a month or two, we’re told.

According to Todoist founder Amir Salihefendic, collaboration in particular was something the company has been working on for some time. Though they had previously wanted to add support for it, they knew that by doing so, there was a chance at making an otherwise simple product more complex.

“We spent a lot of time on getting this right,” says Salihefendic. “We have rewritten our APIs five times to get this right – it’s been a lot of work.”

The company’s fifteen-person team has spent the past eight months solely focused on today’s upgrade, which was also built with the mobile user in mind, he says.

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Salihefendic explains that mobile users can take advantage of the software, including collaboration, using only their portable devices. Unlike competing software products, like Basecamp for example, there’s no need to ever access the desktop version, he says. You can sign up, work, and collaborate right from your smartphone or tablet.

In addition to collaboration, the Todoist software has also been upgraded today with real-time synchronization across the company’s 13 supported platforms, which is a notable improvement over the way things worked before. In the past, some platforms offered smart sync, but on others, you would still have to manually initiate the sync – like by pushing a button, for example.

Todoist For Enterprise Is Next

While the majority of today’s Todoist users are those taking advantage of the task manager for various personal or professional needs, the company is soon planning to move deeper into the business environment with its forthcoming release of Ist Enterprise. This new product will allow corporate teams to manage both projects and personal tasks within a secure, private network.

A landing page for this software was already made live, and employees from big name tech companies have since registered their interest by signing up, the founder tells us, though until now, Todoist hasn’t really followed through on pursuing those leads.

This version of the software will focus on task management combined with file support, and will include integrations with Dropbox, Box and Google Drive, says Salihefendic. Of course, the company will have plenty of competition in this space, as well, not only from other task managers, but also other team collaboration software like Producteev, Asana, Flow, Trello, Evernote, and more.

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Currently, Todoist monetizes via its premium version ($29/year), but only a small percentage of its free users convert, as with many freemium products. Thanks to today’s upgrade, they’ll even have less reason to upgrade, given that collaboration is being made available to free and premium users alike. (Free users able to collaborate on projects with 5 other people. Premium users can invite up to 25.) 

Salihefendic declined to provide specifics on revenue, but says that the company has not raised much over the years – as CrunchBase reports, they only have $40,000 in grant funding, from back in 2011. 

“We have had interest from multiple investors but we’re doing this on our own,” Salihefendic states. “Most of our people are from Europe, so our thinking is really not that like that of Silicon Valley. For us, having an actual business model and exploring how you can both make something very popular but also make money, makes a lot of sense. I think you can combine these two things,” he says.

The upgraded version of Todoist is out now on all platforms. You can sign up from here.