DEVONthink vs Logseq
When comparing DEVONthink vs Logseq, the Slant community recommends Logseq for most people. In the question“What are the best knowledge base systems for personal use?” Logseq is ranked 2nd while DEVONthink is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Logseq is:
Logseq is a privacy-first tool for thought.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can store any file type
File types containing text are indexed.
Pro Very flexible
An extensive feature set makes it easy to adapt to your work flow.
Pro Completely offline
Pro Sync
Sync between different macs and/or ios devices is fast, safe and easy. You can sync via iCloud, Dropbox, WebDAV or WiFi.
Pro Full text search
Pro Webpage Clipper
A flexible web clipper can add contents of any web page to DevonThink.
Pro One-time purchase vs monthly subscription.
Pro Paperless office functions available in PRO Office version
Includes processing of scanned documents, OCR etc.
The OCR function is based on FineReader and is probably the best one on the market.
Pro Privacy-first
Logseq is a privacy-first tool for thought.
Pro Networked notes
Similar to Roam's technique of letting the notes flow with links to each other.
Pro Local-first software
Every topic is its own flat file. Nothing is better than keeping your data in the file system with an option of git source control or online backup.
https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
Pro Daily journal is capture on Steriods
The daily journal feature allows you to quickly capture disparate topics under today's date and by way of tags make things organized and findable from any topic page.
Pro Open source
Logseq is opensource.
Pro Structured data over willy-nilly formatting
Lots of apps are too graphically flexible in how they allow content to be entered, placed, and formatted. They act like Word when what you want when authoring content is Markdown. Content and semantic structure, not graphical frills.
Pro Org syntax
Logseq support Emacs Org syntax out of the box.
Cons
Con Only runs on Macs, iPoneOS, iPadOS & Web
It does not run on Windows, Android, and Linux.
Con Stores in a proprietary format
It stores the whole database in a proprietary file package, that you cannot easily access from another app or from the Finder. Considering you might be classifying a huge quantity of files there, it is quite problematic if you want to interact with this data from other applications.
Con Very limited automation
While the marketing claims are about an intelligent document manager, it actually does not offer many automation features, such as automatic classification, tagging and renaming of the files. It's much more like an extended file explorer.
Con Costs US$79.95 for just the Personal version
One-time purchase instead of monthly subscription.
Con Non free/libre (proprietary)
Con Keyboard-driven editing/navigating is descent but average
It is only because I was a long-time Checkvist user that I say this. Checkvist has keyboard-driven controls which are in a league of their own.
Con Still in Alpha
Logseq is still in Alpha and is under heavy development.