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Workflowy

Workflowy Pro review

WorkflowyEdward Kiledjian

On September 2 2011, I reviewed Workflowy and although I thought the clean and simple interface was good, it wasn’t good enough for me to use it on a daily basis. For a service to truly win me over, I need multi-platform clients as a bare minimum (before any fans get angry with me, an html5 interface which works in a browser is not the same thing as a native client).

One of my original questions was about how the company would monetize their service... At the time no one wanted to say but now we know. They are using the fremium model where free users get a bunch of free functionality but demanding users can pay $4.99 a month (of $49 per year pre-paid) and upgrade to their pro version. To see the benefits of the pro version or to subscribe, look at the bottom right corner of the Workflowy interface for the "Go Pro" link.

In exchange for $50 of your hard earned money, they will give you:

  • Ability to create an unlimited number of lists (non pro users are limited to 500 per month)
  • Automatic backups to dropbox
  • Access to a future update which will somehow enable offline access
  • Access to a future update which will enable the ability to share partial lists with selected users (protected by passwords).
  • Ability to customize the look and feel of workflowy

I don't feel that the features justify the cost. I still want to see Workflowy get picked up but Evernote and its features built-in to it.

Workflowy is a great list manager

Evernote, Workflowy, freemiumEdward Kiledjian

Click on any image in this post to see it in full size

My regular readers know about my addiction to David Allen’s GTD system. At its core, it is a well defined list management system. My tool of choice for my GTD implementation is Evernote but many of my co-workers and friends have become big fans of a web-based list service called Workflowy.

As soon as you login, you will notice a clean and easy to use interface.

 

Sure a blank screen may be intimidating to some but getting started is easy. If you are not using a formal list management philosophy then why not start with these: Goals, Projects, TO DO and Links. To get started, position yourself right after the dot, and type your first item. Then press enter and type your second item, etc.

Now the beauty of Webflowy is that you can create sub lists and sub-sub lists and sub-sub-sub lists (and so on). To do this, click on the dot next to your first item, then click on "+ Create New Item" and start typing your sub list items.

You can continue embedding to your hearts desire.

In the above case, I created 4 levels of embedded lists. I can move back to whichever level I want by simply clicking the navigator window (I highlighted in red).

If you hover your mouse over any of the item bullet dots, you get this menu

 

 

 The export option is neat and would look like this for my above test list:

Search Twitter and the biggest request you will see from Webflowy users is an iPhone or Android app. Their support team informs me that this is in the works but that they cannot provide a timeline.

One question I ask any company offering a free service is "how do you plan to monetize it?". After all, an unprofitable business won’t be in business for long. When I asked this question on Twitter, their response was that they will use a freemium model (similar to Evernote) where premium paid customers receive additional benefits but where regular users can choose to stay on the free plan if they choose forever.