Why don’t you offer your own cloud sync solution?

Data you feed into 2Do, or any task management system for that matter, is almost always extremely private and confidential. You could thus ask the same question in a slightly different way: "Are you guys willing to take responsibility of taking care and providing top-grade security for all our private and confidential data / image attachments / notes? Ensuring no soul ever lays eyes on it, even for debugging / logging / diagnostic purposes?"

 

The answer, at least at the moment, is: No. We cannot. If we were to implement our own cloud solution, no matter how secure the server itself was, frankly we would not be able to ensure your safety. Simply because we would not have complete control over it, not that you can guarantee anything then either. These servers would be distributed across the globe, and still managed and monitored by 3rd parties you know nothing much about.

 

Sure, if we were to support our own cloud sync solution, we're confident sync would be a lot faster and transparent, but at what cost?.

 

If we stick with support for 3rd party sync services, we're able to appeal to a much larger audience given the immense flexibility and security that comes with such an approach. You use the service you trust, not forcing you to pick one, as well as a mix of tools that use the same sync services in return. A good example is 2Do's support for Reminders (CalDAV Sync). Given 2Do supports CalDAV, we're able to sync seamlessly with Reminders. Any data you add to Reminders directly or indirectly using Siri, in return gets added to 2Do effortlessly.

 

Similarly, several businesses run and manage their own calendaring services (with support for CalDAV). So if you had a mix of devices running Windows / Linux / Android / iOS, you could effectively use 2Do on one or more supported platforms whilst sticking to solutions and tools supported by your business on the rest.

 

Another advantage is leveraging specialized features offered by a particular sync service. Siri, for example, allows you to add tasks directly to Reminders using voice commands. Since 2Do syncs with Reminders, you get Siri's integration for free. Similarly, Toodledo supports adding tasks via email. If all you have at hand is an email client on the go, you could email yourself a bunch of tasks, which then get added to your online Toodledo account. Given 2Do syncs with Toodledo, you get this integration for free as well. Finally, Dropbox sync is fast, secure and allows us to support special synchronization meta-data which we otherwise cannot with other sync methods. This results in a near perfect sync solution without sacrificing your security, as described above.

 

Obviously and unsaid advantage is potential support for future protocols and sync services. Given how open 2Do is to synchronizing with 3rd parties, we'll hopefully be able to sync with Google Tasks, for example, once they allow storing meta-data with tasks (needed to correctly sync data across devices).