This. 100%.

Because of this, I've come to distrust any offering that's not self-hosted on my homeserver. Sounds drastic, but I've been burned too often. The quality I get from this is significantly lower, the amount of work I need to put in is much more, and though often fun it's not always at convenient times and sometimes I hate it. But I'm fairly confident that all my data, be it email, cal, notes, pictures, whatnot, will still be accessible 3 years or 10 years from now. Some things from 10 years ago I dearly miss, and I don't want that to happen again.

While I generally want control of my data too, I think if the small team has to prioritise creating final APIs (on a data model that probably still in flux) and export functions for the 1% of users who might end up using that… OR… building features and trying to find a product that has market fit and that people like to use and find valuable.. I hope they choose the later. People are less likely to try out (let alone choose) a product based on export functions than they are actual productivity functionality. Well done on the launch it looks really exciting!

Sure, but this here is "Hacker News". We are the 1% that you are talking about.

Export functions wouldn't convince me though. Those can disappear och be broken or miss things, which I wouldn't only notice when it's too late.

I sadly agree. While I love seeing products like this, I always hesitate to fully embrace them because it would have a major impact to my day and I don't want surprises there.

That's a very valid concern. Given how often it was expressed in this topic, looks like we need to find a way to accommodate it (e.g. export option). We'll think about it, thanks!

I'll suggest something along the lines of Bitwarden (also Vaultwarden).

Even though I self-host Vaultwarden, I pay the yearly subscription to BW.

This could also tackle the “right to access” aka “right to export” in the EU GDPR.