Why every task manager charges monthly now
Software subscriptions are rational from a business perspective. Recurring revenue is predictable, investors prefer it, and once you're reliant on a tool it's easy to keep charging. The result for users: you never actually own the software you use every day. You rent it.
For most software this trade-off makes sense. But for a personal task manager - a tool you use to write down what you need to do and tick it off - a subscription is hard to justify. The core job hasn't changed. The price keeps going up.
The quiet cost of "just £5 a month"
Five pounds a month sounds trivial. Over five years it's £300. Over a working career it's thousands - for an app that stores a list. Telu is £9 once and works indefinitely, with no dependency on our servers or this website.
What no subscription actually means for Telu
It is not just a pricing decision. It is an architectural one. Subscription task managers need your recurring payment to maintain servers, fund ongoing development, and keep the cloud infrastructure running. Telu has none of that.
Telu is a single HTML file. It runs in your browser. Your tasks live in your browser's localStorage - on your device, nowhere else. There is no server to maintain. No infrastructure to pay for. No reason to charge monthly.
This also means something important: if Telu ever shut down tomorrow, your tasks would still be there. The file still opens. The app still works. You own it completely.
What you get for £9
- Task priorities (High, Medium, Low) and custom categories
- Due dates with colour-coded urgency
- Monthly calendar view
- Upcoming timeline grouped by urgency
- Notes on every task
- Six colour themes
- Automatic local backups on a schedule you set
- One-click restore from any backup
- Works on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android
- Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari
- Works completely offline
No feature tiers. No "this is a Pro feature". Everything is included. There is one version of Telu and you get all of it.
The honest trade-off
A subscription task manager syncs your data automatically across devices. Telu does not. To use it on multiple computers you export a backup file and import it on the other machine - one extra step.
If automatic cross-device sync is essential to you, Telu may not be the right fit. If you primarily work on one machine, or you prefer the simplicity and permanence of owning your software outright, Telu is exactly that.
How to get started
Pay £9 on Gumroad. Download Telu.html. Open it in any browser. That is the entire setup process. No account, no onboarding, no configuration. Just a task manager that works.
Telu also works completely offline and requires no account of any kind. If you want to understand how it works technically, see the browser-based task manager page.