When comparing Flipboard vs Feedly, the Slant community recommends Feedly for most people. In the question“What are the best news readers?” Feedly is ranked 2nd while Flipboard is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Feedly is:
Feedly has an easy to overview interface. While this interface is clean and simple, it is still full of bright colors. A great feature that adds to the clean feel is "eliminate clutter", which keeps only the text of the desired topic.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Very polished UI that is organized like a magazine
This app has a very polished, magazine-style layout, that is flipped through by swiping. Because of its layout, Flipboard is especially nice on tablets.
Pro Personalized magazines
Magazines is a features by Flipboard that can allow anyone to create their own personalized magazine by collecting the content from various websites and collate them into a magazine that can also be shared to other readers. Magazines can be set to either public or private access and anyone can follow the magazine.
Pro Free
Pro Cross-platform
Flipboard is available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows and web app.
Pro Google Reader import
There is also a simple import from Google Reader.
Pro Social network integration
Flipboard pulls information from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc. Everything is aggregated in one app, which can then be flipped through and shared, either directly on Flipboard or on social networks.
Pro Easily discover stories based on topics
Flipboard has millions of Magazines that anyone can follow, covering various subjects. Some cover general topics like home decoration, while others are immensely specific: for example, there’s one just about technological advances that extend human lifespan. All users can create their own Magazines and share them publicly, with friends, or keep them for private use.
Pro Clean, easy to overview UI
Feedly has an easy to overview interface. While this interface is clean and simple, it is still full of bright colors.
A great feature that adds to the clean feel is "eliminate clutter", which keeps only the text of the desired topic.
Pro Integrates other services for ease of use and sharing
Feedly sign-in is done with Facebook, Twitter, Google, or Microsoft credentials. It offers many ways to share a story from within the application, including social networks, e-mail, etc.
Pro Choice of many different layouts
For each news source, a different layout can be chosen. Choose between showing thumbnails, titles and summaries, titles only, thumbnails with overlaid titles in a grid, or have all content inlined.
Pro Great article recommendations
Search a topic and Feedly will offer resources that are related to that topic.
Pro Supports OPML export/import
With this feature, all subscriptions can be saved.
Pro Seamless Google Reader migration
Feedly have made it especially easy to navigate away from Google Reader.
Pro Similar mobile experience to Google Reader
It supports a list UI similar to Google Reader, among other more graphical layouts.
Pro Browser extensions
Feedly's extension lets users add feeds directly from websites, but also lets users curate pages, save them to Evernote or Facebook, email, or Tweet pages.
Pro Open API
There are multitudes of third party clients available for many platforms.
Pro Boards for organising the content (Paid)
Feedly allows you to create unlimited Boards (folders/sets/collections) and use them to organise your saved content.
Pro IFTTT and Zapier integration (Paid)
Feedly functionality can be extended and workflows automated with IFTTT and Zapier integrations that make it possible to connect the reader with hundreds of popular apps.
Cons
Con Excessive ads with no way to remove them
Flipboard doesn’t offer subscription plans, having only the completely free full version. However, it does feature ads that appear between articles and there’s no way of removing this function.
Con Needs better organization of topics, mags, users followed
When you follow 3-5 magazines per topic (sometimes more) it would be nice to be able to group some of these together in a way that constricts the 'fire hose' of content.
Con Low quality news sources
The default content is from low quality sources such as Mashable.
Con Long list of paid-only features
Free features are pretty basic. It seems like all the new development goes into paid-only features. Paid features include sharing and saving options, alerts, backup, support or integrations with collaborative tools.
Con No push notifications
Among the most requested features for Feedly is push notification support. The feature was officially requested in 2011 and currently has over 600 votes on Feedly's Uservoice.
Con Log-in is buggy
Logging in can sometimes cause Feedly to struggle. It can become unresponsive and force close.
Con The layout isn't like Google's original or Inoreader's of which is much easier to browse and read quickly
Con Inline adds
Free version puts adds in your feeds
Con No keyword filtering
Feedly has no ability to filter a feed by keyword like a lot of other RSS readers do.
Con No offline support
There is no offline support with the official client.
Con Forces external account to log in
Users are forced to use Twitter, Facebook, Google, or Microsoft login credentials.
Con Steals page views
Feedly has had issues multiple times with hijacking page views from original publishers. See:
Con Organization/sorting features lacking
There is no ability to sort feeds within a folder, and moving feeds between folders is difficult with lots of content.