I'm sure its non trivial, especially if youre building the clone by yourself, but over the time anki has been around, you'd think they wouldve ironed out the kinks. losing data itself isn't the problem. i can get the decks back myself. its the fact the app errors so much that its almost common knowledge to hit up r/anki and get a manual procedure to crawl through backups manually.

i think their mistake is thinking memorization tools are only focused on students and not learners in general. I use anki for memorizing chess positions, learning languages, etc. I'm also a full time worker and have plenty of money to spend on a tools that will help my productivity/hobbies. id be more than happy to fork over cash for the anki system with better client apps. if they had a concern that the cost would put them out of reach of students (their iphone app is $20 so i doubt its a concern), then they should just implement student tier memberships for free while people who can pay will pay.