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Tools for writing notes, PKM, team knowledge base, technical documents then publish online

PKM: Personal Knowledge Management

Things I use

Dendron

Obsidian

  • Difficulty to setup: 1/5
  • Publishing:
    • Obsidian Publish plugin
    • 3rd-party solution
      • Pricing: free
      • have to read tutorial to setup. Not easy for non-techie

Fibery

  • Difficulty to use: 2/5
  • Pricing plan starts at USD 10/month/user, with a generously unlimited free tier for individual use.
  • Publishing: share article only
  • Thoughts: I currently use as a database, great gratis alternative of Airtable

Notion

  • Difficulty to use: 1/5
  • Pricing plan, starting at USD 10/month per user. It has an unlimited free tier for individual use.
  • Publishing: share directly using Notion public link, or 3rd-party service provider

Things I played with

Logseq

From Logseq
Go to text →

Logseq is a note-taking tool, free and open source alternative of Roam Research

Difficulty to use: 2/5

Thoughts:

  • notes are saved locally as plaintext markdown files
  • It also has spaced repetition flashcards feature.

A sketch of the current UI. Credit: danzu in Logseq discord logseq-ui

Coda

  • Difficulty to use: 1/5
  • Pricing: limited free tier. Their pricing starts at USD 12/month per Doc Maker (have the ability to create new docs)
    Thoughts: it has an advantage with the embedded inline formula in Coda

Affine

Remnote

  • Difficulty to use: 2/5
  • Pricing plan starts at USD 6/month, with a free tier for individual use.
    Thoughts: some frequently used feature (eg. aliases, graph view, templates) are moved to paid tier. The unique selling point of this product is its spaced repetition flashcards and unlimited notes in free tier.

Anytype

  • Difficulty to use: 2/5
  • Thoughts: I can't understand their logic with relation and objects. Need more time to play and learn its features.

Innos Note

  • Difficulty to setup: 1/5
  • Thoughts: currently provide only Sign in with Google (2021-11-01), so I hesitate to test. But their demo public note Book Recommendation looks great. However, its owner, Lark, is a subsidiary of ByteDance. Although Lark is based in Singapore, ByteDance’s ownership might be problematic.

Lark

  • Pricing plan is currently set to free.
  • Thoughts:
    • alternative of Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Notion
    • Bitable is its approach to database inside a document, with two-way links support, similar to Notion or Airtable
    • Wiki is their feature for team knowledge base, as the current offer of Notion and others
    • Lark Flow is the automation tool similar to Zapier and Microsoft Power Automate

Gitbook

  • Difficulty to setup: 3/5
  • Pricing plan starts at USD 8/month. Free for individual use, with 10 public and private spaces, custom domains included.
    Thoughts: This is a solution for technical project documentation, rather a pkm like Dendron or Obsidian.

MkDocs

Docusaurus

  • Difficulty to setup: 4/5
  • Pricing: free

    From Docusaurus
    Go to text →

    My thoughts on Version: 2.0.0-beta.13

    Pros:

    • generate documents as a Single Page Application (SPA), dark mode
    • Has sidebar navigation, menu bar, search bar, admonition, i18n built-in (crowdin plugin or alternative locale markdown files), Next and Previous UI links at the end of each doc page, tabbed content.
    • has url slug in frontmatter to generate a static URL for each md file

    Cons:

    • when I reorganize the hierarchy structure of md files (ie. move to other folder, rename folder that contains md files, rename md files) in docs folder, I need to manually
      • update doc IDs in my sidebar file, since notes hierarchy structure are hardcoded in sidebar file for sidebar for navigation
      • update the reference links to other markdown files
    • does not support wikilink style, need custom script to convert to markdown link. Or use a plugin in Obsidian to convert the link in notes within your vault.

Docsify

  • Difficulty to setup: 4/5
  • Pricing: free
  • Thoughts: not easy to setup and maintain

Retype

  • Difficulty to setup: 4/5
  • Pricing: free. Developers are discussing a pricing plan, which limits the max pages per project in free tier to 100.
  • Thoughts: alternative of Gitbook, Docusaurus

Almanac

  • Pricing plan starts at USD 12/month. Free for personal use
  • Pros: Organize doc versions using Git-like version control

Slite

  • Pricing plan starts at USD 8/month with limited free tier
  • Thoughts: Equivalent offer to Notion, don't have database yet (as on 2011-11-12)

Bit.ai

  • Pricing plan starts at USD 8/month with limited free tier
  • Thoughts: alternative of Notion and Coda

Document360

  • Pricing plan starts at USD 99/month/project with 14-day free trial only
  • Thoughts: Can customize your own branding, navigations & menu, custom domain

appflowy

  • Thoughts: new open source Notion alternative, founded in 2021-11. Promising but currently not available

Unigraph

  • Thoughts: combination of outliner type (eg. Logseq) and many other features (rss reader, email, feeds and inbox). Promising but currently not available.

Heptabase

  • Thoughts: combination of whiteboard and note taking. Promising but currently not available for public.
  • 2022-01, they have private beta for paid subscribers in their discord server

Siyuan

  • Pricing plan starts at RMB 96/year for cloud service features like data synchronization, backups. The product is completely free for individual use.
  • Thoughts: initially developped as a copycat of Notion and Obsidian for Chinese market. But their UI looks great now. They have a GitHub repo for international community. The notes are stored in a database instead of plaintext markdown files like Obsidian or Dendron. Since this is designed for Mainland China market, I hesitated to experiment.

Notabase

  • Pricing plan starts at USD 7/month. Limited free tier with 100 notes only.
  • Thoughts: I can't find a reason to try this one, since there are many better free alternatives like Obsidan and Dendron. Notabase has open source version for self-host. There's also a recently released fork called mdSilo.

Tettra

Nuclino

  • Pricing plan starts at EUR 6/month, with 14-day trial. Really limited free tier
  • Thoughts: similar to Notion, with less object types, has real time editing view for teams and a wiki concept, better for team than individual use.

Saga

  • Thoughts: currently in beta. At first glance, it seems to be another clone of Notion

HackMD

  • Pricing starts at USD 5/month. Free tier is offered for team less than 3.
  • Thoughts:
    • real-time collaborative edit in markdown for team. With the limit of 20 push to Git repo per month, their free tier is not attractive enough to experiment, compared to Notion.
    • CodiMD is their self-hosted version. Another forked version, maintained by community is HedgeDoc

Athens

  • Thoughts: open source, alternative of Roam, Logseq. User base is significant less than Logseq

Inkdrop

  • Pricing starts at USD 5/month. Free trial only
  • Thoughts: cross platform markdown note app. Alternative of Obsidian. I can't find enough interest to experiment a note-taking app with a monthly subscription.

Read the Docs

Jupyter Book

Readme

  • Pricing starts at USD 99/month. Has free plan
  • Thoughts:
    • alternative of GitBook
    • features: integrated voting feature request board

Capacities

  • Pricing starts at USD 12/month. Has a Basic Free plan, with unlimited notes
  • Thoughts:
    • alternative of Notion
    • can share content via link
    • only web version, not yet mobile or desktop apps

Scrintal

  • 2022-03-15, currently available only to private waitlist
  • the product self claim as a sweet blend of Miro and Obsidian
  • I considered this as an alternative of Heptabase

Stacks

  • Pricing is one-time payment of USD 49
  • Thoughts:
    • This is inclined to an offline project management apps, similar to Trello
    • Documents are stored in editable text based JSON files
    • Sync your workspace through iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive or any service of your choice

acreom

  • Pricing starts at USD 7.5/month. Unlimited free tier for personal use
  • Thoughts:
    • sync between devices, document publishing is only available in Pro paid subscription
    • documents are stored locally as markdown files, with offline mode available

Legend

  • Pricing starts at USD 7/month. Has Free tier with unlimited documents
  • task management app for work with email client built-in
  • has web, mobile, desktop version

Infinity Maps

  • Pricing starts at EUR 8/month. With limited free tier
  • alternative of Heptabase

Kosmik

Clover

  • Pricing starts at USD 10/month. With limited Free tier
  • note taking with whiteboard
  • alternative of Scrintal

Kinopio

  • whiteboard canvas to share ideas with others
  • currently free to use

Stemic

  • Pricing starts at USD 9/month. With free tier
  • their [feature] list seems to be a whiteboard canvas for plotting map of concepts

TiddlyWiki

  • a non-linear notebook for capturing, organising and sharing complex information
  • free to use. It’s been around for about 15 years
  • publish for free on TiddlyHost
  • review
  • thoughts:
    • notes are stored as .tiddler files. Obsidian community tried to export tiddler to Obsidian
    • I can't find specific reason to experiment this. Obsidian or Dendron are much simpler and better

Muse

  • text note and canvas for iPad and Mac
  • Pricing starts at USD 4/month. Limited free for casual use

Thymer

  • specific tool for todo and task management
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