It is obvious, even intuitive, that no todo list site (or any other kind) will be perfect.  This appears to have no restraining influence over my impulse to keep searching for the perfect one.

I used Hiveminder back in the day but it was just too often an impedement to simple use, and now I understand they're shutting down, so moot point.  I then went back and forth between Toodledo (also pretty user aggressive, plus it has some assumptions that cause me to stumble) and doit.im (written by crazy people; nice UI but the first time you have to hand-delete a bunch of items one by one it wears thin, as you realize deleting a task is a pain.)

So now I'm on the hunt again.  I want something with a slick web interface that I will use most of the time, plus nice Android widgets with lots of control over what I get.  Ha ha.  Anyway.

RemembertheMilk: An old classic.  I revisited it, but I was immediately reminded of one of my top needs: start dates, or some other way to defer an item until the future.  I don't want to see next month's bills; I couldn't pay them now if I wanted to, and I don't want to.

Wunderlist: No context or other tags.  Wtf?

Google Tasks: I wish, but barely higher tech than paper.

Todoist: Utterly crippled without premium.  I have no objection to premium; I have in turn paid all three sites I mentioned above in the past (and present, for Toodledo) and rtmilk also, I believe.  But not without establishing that it's useful for me.  Todoist requires premium to even have contexts on tasks. Feh.

Zendone: Looks super impressive, to the point of being overwhelming. Once again, though, no start dates as far as I can tell. There seems to be a weird disconnect between different sites: is a due date when you should be working on something, or when you should be done?  I say it's the latter, which is why I use start dates to cover the former.  I don't want to even think about my cable bill until the 1st, but then it's due on the 5th and not later than that.  And so on.

Must resist bad programmer impulses at a time like this.  My todo list, wherever it is, won't get done at all if I wind up trying to write a todo list site.