Both Daylite Self-Serve and Daylite Cloud use the same native app on your Mac and iPhone, so they have to be the same under the hood right? Well, actually no, they run on distinct servers and this, as it turns out, makes all the difference.
You have high standards for Daylite. You expect us to change as your business needs evolve and we are up to the challenge. As part of this, we are adding new features, but some of them have been Daylite Cloud Exclusives, and this has caused some confusion for some customers.
Daylite Cloud is just that, a Cloud. It isn’t Daylite Self-Serve Admin running on rows and rows of Mac Minis – one of which has your database. The services, processes, and application you use to manage your server don’t exist with Daylite Cloud. It’s an entirely different beast altogether. If you were to run your system like Daylite Cloud, to manage Sync, API, monitoring, and other services, you may be looking at running many (think double digits) devices, nodes, and VMs.
This Cloud infrastructure allows us to develop things faster and opens the door to many new features that you have been asking for which just aren’t possible with Self-Serve.
Here are some of the latest features and improvements exclusive to Daylite Cloud and some details as to why they are available for Daylite Cloud only.
Syncing
One of the more distinct differences that you see is how Daylite Cloud’s sync works remotely without any setup. Using Daylite Self-Serve, you need to configure multiple different services from your ISP, router, and maybe even VPN. Daylite Cloud works out of the box. While this is a significant benefit, there are even greater ones that are much less obvious.
With Daylite Cloud, we can often see when a problem is developing before it becomes a major issue. This information helps ensure syncing is up and hassle free for you. To maintain a system like this, you need a significant investment in your IT staff which puts this capability out of reach for most small to medium-sized businesses. But with Daylite Cloud, you get this coverage.
Another improvement made in the sync engine is that Daylite syncs much more frequently and much quicker. When you’re using Daylite Cloud, it syncs whenever you make a change to the database, decreasing the turnaround time that it takes to get a response from your team member after scheduling a meeting.
Integrations
Integrating Daylite with other apps gives you new workflows, improves productivity and increases your capabilities as a business. It is no wonder that better integrations are something that is requested by customers every day. While a big challenge, this is something we want to bring to you and with Daylite Cloud we are doing just that.
To integrate with other apps, you need to develop what is called an API. This gives apps hooks that allow them to interact with each other. One of the requirements to integrate with many modern apps is to have a single verifiable destination, and that is not possible with Daylite Self-Serve. Each Daylite Self-Serve Database is an individual, and for things like Zapier integration, that is not allowed.
Haven’t seen what Daylite Cloud can integrate with yet? Check out our Daylite Zapbook
The Daylite API can also change much easier as Daylite evolves. As we add capabilities to Daylite, the API will need to change with it. Having a single source for the API allows us to be bolder and think bigger because we don’t have to worry if people are updating their servers, neither does anyone else who develops apps to connect with Daylite.
New Features
Daylite Mail on the iPhone & iPad is a feature coming to Daylite Cloud and is a good example of how Daylite Cloud gives us new areas to explore and grow. Daylite Mail on the iPhone & iPad will allow you to manage your emails from the Daylite iPhone & iPad app. Doing email processing within the Daylite app is very stressful to the server for both Cloud and Self-Serve, and while we initially tried to achieve that, we found that it was a dead-end.
To solve this problem, and give you a feature you’ve been asking for years, we had to add to the current infrastructure instead of modifying our own. The nature of Daylite Cloud, adding new services on top of the primary Daylite Server, is relatively easy to add and can be distributed by us. This gives us the ability to try new and different things which are not possible for Self-Serve.
These types of add-ons often require a high level of IT development and can sometimes require you add more computers to run correctly. If implemented on Daylite Self-Serve, you may be asked to run two, three or even more additional servers and support these services which, for the majority of Small and Medium Businesses, is too much of an investment.
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Ultimately, we want to give you the best possible CRM, Project Management and Lead Management app available on the Mac, iPhone & iPad. We were happy to give you features like Team View and the recent calendar improvements on both Daylite Cloud and Self-Serve. We have lofty goals and want to add more value to Daylite and with the differences between Daylite Self-Serve and Daylite Cloud, some features will continue to be Daylite Cloud Exclusives.
