What features would make the Pro plan more lucrative?

šŸŒŸFeatures
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I donā€™t know if this should be in General or Features, but I figured that it requires some level of input from everyone anyway.

The way I perceive pro is that Dynalist is typically meant for people who want to be productive and organize or vice versa. While it does pass the toothbrush test, not everyone is going to use it, if that makes sense (because they might not care about it just yet).

So this might give a bit of leeway in making Dynalist a bit more sophisticated (but not too much) so that way as people learn about itā€™s features over time, they can do things faster and more efficiently, and have tools available whenever they need them, if they want to use them.

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Just making sure I understand, does ā€œitā€ refer to Dynalist or Dynalist Pro?

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Dynalist, since the free plan is good enough to replace Workflowy, which is already quite useful.

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Still not sure how this relates to Dynalist Proā€¦ You mean we should make Pro features more discoverable so people are aware of their usefulness?

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What I was saying is that there might be features that could be added to Dynalist Pro that might make it more complicated or overwhelming, but since people who are technical or strive to be organized are willing to study a product or do more with it, I donā€™t think that it would hurt Dynalist.

Basically, I was just thinking about features that would help people switch from the generous free plan to the pro plan, and since Pro is typically meant for providing things that that the average person probably doesnā€™t need (e.g. what the Macbook Pro shouldā€™ve been, with say, 32gb of RAM), it would make sense. And that given what a large amount of the user base probably consists of (or perhaps Workflowyā€™s), someone shouldnā€™t be deterred from suggesting something incidentally too complex, as long as itā€™s useful.

Edit: I hope that makes sense, as thatā€™s what I originally meant. Iā€™m not saying that Dynalist sucks or anything like that.

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Didnā€™t take it that way at all :slight_smile:

So hereā€™s what we think could be useful as a Pro feature (some are planned, some are not):

  • Google Calendar integration (send your dates in Dynalist to be events in Google Calendar)
  • Email something to Dynalist to have it inserted somewhere for you
  • Revision history
  • True offline mode (data stays in local and never reaches our server; good for work in certain companies)
  • Two-factor authentication (not sure if itā€™s still useful now thereā€™s Google Login)
  • Recurring tasks

Anything you think is particularly attractive to power users?

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I almost forgot about those features. I think theyā€™re pretty solid.

Revision history for me, personally, does a lot. Especially if does exactly what Google Docs does. (Seeing what changes have been made (which are a different color font), undoing revisions, and restoring to select ones, etc.)

Google Calendar, recurring tasks, and true offline mode are something that I could see myself using as well. The main thing with the reminders and calendar integration is that it needs to work reliably (and on mobile, with having persistent notifications (probably Android only) and notifications that donā€™t go away until youā€™ve read every one (basically generating a new bundle of notifications after one has been read, like Telegram) would be great).

I guess another feature that would be useful is notification pinning, so that way they arenā€™t dismissed easily. Along with snoozing reminders, I guess.

Support for Googleā€™s Inbox might be useful (by doing things within an email message), but Iā€™m not sure just how yet.

Some people abhor Google, so if thereā€™s a way to integrate CloudKit (and support for Apple Pay, I guess) so that way users could sign up through it, that might be reduce some and pay for itself. I have yet to see someone offer that, of course, so Iā€™m not sure if itā€™s possible/viable/etc.

The search feature that @Yatharth_Agarwal suggested is a good idea.

Extensive settings, perhaps in a section for power users would be good, too.

ā€œSpecial Dynalist Documentsā€ that are automatically generated, containing reminders, bookmarks, and auto-update as new items are added would be nifty.

Cloned documents would be cool, too. Donā€™t know if that should be a pro-exclusive feature (and Iā€™d hate to make users who suggested it who arenā€™t on the pro plan sad), but it could since people can technically link to other bullet points.

Perhaps a cap on how many people can work on a document? That might backfire, though.

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Two-Factor authentication

While I am a pro customer already (yay for daily backups and attachments!!!) Two factor authentication is one thing that I donā€™t think should be a pro-only. Maybe if you wanted something like SMS for your codes or something, but by way of authenticator apps like Google Authenticator, I would much much rather see this security functionality be available to all.

Two factor Authentication for Account Security is one thing everyone should be able to add to their account, even on a free tier. Security for ones account should be something accessible to all individuals.

That said, I would be okay with secondary methods, like the SMS codes, or YubiKey for 2FA being a paid feature. (I :heart: my YubiKey for 2 factor) But everything from LastPass, Facebook, Twitter, Google, SnapChat, Tumblr etc all support Authenticator apps for the 2FA at a free level.

Thatā€™s just my $0.02CDN on the subject of 2 factor authentication.

Matt

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You mean ā€œCADā€? :wink:

We havenā€™t decided that 2FA is Pro-only anyway. The Trello card doesnā€™t say so either. Itā€™s more of a result from a brainstorming session above where I tried to come up with as many as possible Pro feature candidates as possible.

You do have some excellent points in there which would mean a Pro-only 2FA feature is out of the question. As much as we want to sustain Dynalist, we donā€™t want to treat users badly either, especially when it comes to security.

By the way, now with Google Login, 2FA kind of comes with it (if you have 2FA on your Google account, of course). Just need a way to ā€œkillā€ your old email and password login.

Thanks again for the reply Matt, really helpful!

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Iā€™m sure that neither a content delivery network, nor computer-aided design is a type of currency. /kidding

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The comprehensive feature that @Yatharth_Agarwal once suggested would be excellent.

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Do you mean ā€˜superman modeā€™?

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Yeah, I think that was it. The combination of ctrl+o and ctrl+f > ctrl+enter.

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Oh, the ā€œbrowser find tool.ā€ Superman mode is something else.

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Context for Superman mode.

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im nearly always signed into google but i would still rather have the email sign in + 2-factor option for dynalist. this is mainly because i use lastpass and its hard to know whether auto-fill would work with the google sign in page. ive had mixed results with those types of log-ins in the past so i nearly always choose the email option when i sign up for things. and once you choose there usually isnt an option to switch back so you are stuck with it then.

whether 2-factor is free or paid, i cant wait either way! i have so much of my brain/thoughts in dynalist now that it makes me nervous thinking about anyone getting access to it somehow

this sounds interesting. would it be an ā€œall or nothingā€ option or more like evernote where you are allowed have some offline notebooks and others synced?

it would be neat if the offline files could work with something like bitTorrent sync. (its like dropbox but just syncs files between computers on your home network). 95% of the time i am using dynalist at home, maybe once in a while i use it on my phone when i am away, so manually syncing the files between computers would work really well for me. i wouldnt even need the 2-factor option then :smiley:

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Hi Dave,

What browser are you using with LastPass? You have auto-fill enabled and not auto-login, correct?

As a LastPass user on Chrome, I havenā€™t experienced any issues.

Thatā€™s a good point. And migrating things over might be a bit tedious, although not outright impossible.

Yeah, I completely understand, as Iā€™m in the same boat (but am using a Google account that has 2FA enabled). Iā€™m not involved with developing Dynalist, but fwiw to anyone else reading this, 2SV/FA costs money to keep running (e.g. Dynalist might get charged per each login), so it might be part of the Pro plan before itā€™s available to all users with the costs covered by revenue from the Pro plan, since the free accounts donā€™t have ads.

Be sure to update to Resilio if you havenā€™t already. :slight_smile:

I agree with your idea, that would be really cool. Itā€™ll definitely take some time as native apps would be required. Iā€™ll let @Erica respond to the rest.

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Actually, this isnā€™t true. That is only if you want to add something like SMS or other functionality. Just offering TOTP (Time-based one Time passwords) such as those generated by Google Authenticator are an open standard (RFC6238). Even YubiKey offers free software/libraries to integrate their hardware keys as 2FA (https://developers.yubico.com/). However there are more limitations on the web for using those beyond just the implementation of the key.

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Thank you for providing better information about the subject. Thatā€™s good to hear.

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Yeah thatā€™s our top option right now. Cheap and effective.

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