When comparing Collate Notes vs Trilium Notes, the Slant community recommends Trilium Notes for most people. In the question“What are the best note taking apps for UNIX-like systems?” Trilium Notes is ranked 12th while Collate Notes is ranked 25th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Markdown or Rich Text editor
Choose between Markdown or Rich Text editor.
Pro Web clipper
A web clipper built into the app saves web pages locally.
Pro All data is saved locally
Data is saved to a local hard drive, not stored on a company's servers.
Pro Cross-platform support
Support for macOs, Windows and Linux.
Pro Note encryption
Pro Free and open source software
Pro Excellent WYSIWYG interface
Pro Attributes that can be assigned to nodes and inherited
Pro Graph of node connectivity
Pro Note versioning
Pro Synchronization with a server
You can set up synchronization but you need a server to do this.
Pro Database storage rather than files
This enables the tool to do a lot of things that would be difficult with plain text file storage.
Pro Archival functionality
Cons
Con No mobile support
This app offers no mobile support.
Con No built-in sync options
For data syncing, a service like Google Drive or Dropbox needs to be used.
Con Interface can be confusing
There is a fair amount of flexibility to the interface but it can also become confusing, especially when some parts are not necessarily simple to use. Most of the basic features nevertheless are intuitive.
Con Database storage rather than files
This makes it a little less simple to work with (also has benefits).
Con Not markdown
It will import and export markdown but it does not store content as markdown. This isn't necessarily a problem if you don't need it.
Con Synchronization requires use of Trilium's sync server
This can be problematic to set up unless you have a web server that will support the requirements of this.