Flexlists is 20 years old

Flexlists turns 20 this year. The oldest copy of flexlists.com in the Internet Archive is from 6 April 2006, and a few days before that, on 30 March 2006, our Moving Labs weblog already mentioned that we were using "FLEXlists" to keep track of our own work. So: twenty years of lists. Here is where it started, and how much of it is still the same.

2006: "Do you keep lists in a spreadsheet?"

The first Flexlists was a small product of Moving Labs, the web company behind it, built in PHP on our own AJAX framework, Consyn. The homepage asked three questions:

Do you keep lists in a spreadsheet? Need to share your lists? Need access everywhere?

And it promised: "With FLEXlists you can create lists of anything you want, with every field you need. You can share the list with others, invite them to edit the list or just keep it for yourself."

There were no accounts. You typed a list name, picked what it was for (Addresses, Tasks, or "create from scratch"), optionally left an e-mail address "only for mailing the secret URL", typed the captcha and pressed Create now! The secret URL was your login.

2006–2007: the features you still use

Reading the old weblog back, it is striking how many of today's ideas were already there in the first year:

• Every field you need. Text, long text, date, number, link and choice — values separated with a |.
• Project management in a list. In August 2006 we wrote "Simple project management with FlexLists": a list with Description, Priority, Status and Notes, and "keep all communication in the FlexList."
• Put the list on your website. "A very basic publishing feature… with just a simple HTML snippet" (August 2006). Today that is live widgets.
• Track changes. Every list had an RSS feed, sorted by what changed — the ancestor of today's history and automations.
• Import and export CSV, so your spreadsheet came with you.
• Sublists and filters were already on the to-do list in July 2006.
• By the end of 2006: automatic created and changed fields, accounts, search and "Your Lists". In 2007, rows that open in place, English and Dutch, and a wizard because "some people complained that FlexLists was too complex."

2008: Create, Configure, Share

In 2008 Flexlists got the look many long-time users will remember: a 1 Create · 2 Configure · 3 Share wizard, templates for issue tracking, GTD-style projects, inventory, a glossary, wishes and more, and "create now without registration" still right there.

That version ran, with small changes, for fifteen years. The counter on the homepage kept going up: 12,851 lists in 2010, 23,941 in 2013, 33,091 in 2016 and 54,860 in 2019.

2023–2026: new Flexlists, same idea

At the end of 2023 we rebuilt Flexlists from the ground up, and on 1 January 2024 we relaunched it. Then, on 5 October 2026, we moved everything to the version you use today — every list, row and file came along.

The tools around a list have changed beyond recognition. There's Dave, who builds lists, views, forms and apps for you. There are boards, calendars, maps, timelines and mind maps, forms you design yourself, n8n and an API. But the question on the homepage is the same one we asked in 2006: do you keep your lists in a spreadsheet? Then bring them here, add every field you need, and share them with whoever needs them.

Thank you

To everyone who made a list in 2006 with nothing but a secret URL, to everyone who stayed through 2008, 2016 and 2024, and to everyone who joined this month: thank you. Twenty years is a long time on the internet. We are bootstrapped, we are still here, and we are building faster than ever.

Here's to the next twenty. 🎉

Have a Flexlists memory from the early days, or a list you've kept for years? Tell us with the Contact button — we'd love to hear it.