Ellipsus

Ellipsus is a collaborative writing application aimed at creative writers, offering a text editor combined with drafting, version control and feedback workflows. Core features include documents and linked drafts that can be compared side by side and merged into a main document, inline comments and reactions, real-time collaboration, version history with restore, folders and document import, word count, focus mode, dark mode and themes, and cross-device use on desktop, tablet and mobile. Sharing and publishing options include shareable reader links that require no account, permission-based collaborator roles, export to PDF, HTML, Markdown and rich text, and direct publishing to AO3, including posting new works, adding chapters and updating existing ones.

The product is positioned as an alternative to general-purpose document tools and to the ad hoc mix of docs, Discord and direct messages that writing communities often use to exchange drafts and feedback. The company states that it does not and will not integrate generative AI, that it will not sell user data or use user works for what it describes as exploitative purposes, and that users retain ownership of their content. Ellipsus describes itself as an LGBT+ founded company and frames its positioning around creative freedom, community and opposition to data scraping and machine plagiarism.

In October 2026 the company introduced Ellipsus Plus, an optional paid tier layered on a free plan that retains unlimited documents, drafts, collaborators, sync and sharing. Plus features include custom themes (usable on reader links and snippets, and exportable), Emboss — an opt-in, AI-free visible work-history layer that surfaces writing-process data such as time spent writing, sessions, edits, pauses and revisions as a shareable "Writing Journey" — writing insights covering nine locally computed prose metrics such as vocabulary diversity, sentence length and rhythm, passive voice and repeated echoes, and customizable shareable Snippet images. Planned work cited by the company includes offline syncing and native apps.

Founding story

Ellipsus was founded in 2023 by John and Rex, writers and partners of more than a decade, after the difficulty of co-writing a novel together convinced them existing writing tools did not fit collaborative work. The founding team combined backgrounds in product, writing and community building [3][5][6].

Business model

Freemium software: a free plan with unlimited documents, drafts, collaborators, sync and sharing, plus an optional paid Ellipsus Plus tier launched in 2026 that funds ongoing development of both plans and is intended to keep the company independent and ad-free [5][6].

Ellipsus Plus uses a "subscribe-to-own" structure: users can purchase the license outright with a one-time payment or pay monthly or annually, with payments counting toward permanent ownership of the Plus license, including future Plus updates. Pricing was set from a community survey. The company states it does not sell user data and is ad-free [5].

Traction

The website states Ellipsus is trusted by 700,000 writers; the October 2026 Plus launch post cites nearly 600,000 writers and over 5 million documents hosted, a Discord community of more than 28,000, and more than 3,000 responses to a survey on the paid plan, of which over 70% favored a subscribe-to-own model [0][5].

Latest developments

On 2026-10-06 the company announced Ellipsus Plus, an optional paid plan with custom themes, the Emboss opt-in work-history feature, locally computed writing insights and customizable Snippets, while keeping the free plan unlimited. It has said further Plus features, free-plan improvements, offline syncing and native apps are planned [5][6].