When comparing Simplenote vs TiddlyWiki, the Slant community recommends Simplenote for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” Simplenote is ranked 4th while TiddlyWiki is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Simplenote is:
Simplenote takes a minimalist approach to its interface. There are no toolbars full of formatting options or extra features like notebooks to group notes. The entire desktop interface consists solely of a sidebar with your tags and trash filters, the list of existing notes with search, a button to add a new note and a simple view for looking an existing note or writing a new one.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Very simple and clean interface
Simplenote takes a minimalist approach to its interface. There are no toolbars full of formatting options or extra features like notebooks to group notes. The entire desktop interface consists solely of a sidebar with your tags and trash filters, the list of existing notes with search, a button to add a new note and a simple view for looking an existing note or writing a new one.
Pro Geared towards fast usage
Unlike alternatives (such as Evernote) that are laden with features, Simplenote is fast to use and sync. Reviews from the Verge, Lifehacker, and a variety of other sources all describe using the Simplenote apps as very fast. While it may not be as feature-rich as other apps, the responsiveness of the app and simple interface keep it easy to use while never slowing down the user when they need to quickly take a note.
Pro Works offline
Users can edit and create documents offline, can then sync their content the next time they are online. This way a user can work even when there's no data connection without the worry of losing work.
Pro Desktop app is open source
The desktop version of Simplenote is hosted on the GitHub and since it is open source, it can allow developers to fork the code in order to improve the app.
Pro Can export your data
The program enables exporting of notes as text documents.
Pro Collaborative features
Notes can be shared with others or worked on collaboratively.
Pro Open Source
All of the Simplenote apps are open source and ready for your contributions! You can find the source on GitHub:
iOS: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-ios
Android: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-android
macOS: https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-macos
Electron (Windows and Linux): https://github.com/automattic/simplenote-electron
Pro "Time machine" style revision control on the notes
Each edit of a note is saved in order to allow the user to go back to a previous version of a document. This way, if mistakes are made or something is deleted, you can go back to the previous version without any hassle.
Pro Wide range of great clients with great sync
Official native apps are available on popular platforms such as Android, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, OS X, Windows and Linux. Open-source clients extend this support even more widely to various other platforms, such as webOS and the BlackBerry PlayBook. These apps embody the core philosophy of Simplenote: minimalism and focus on the note taking.
There are multiple unofficial clients (including the excellent Notational Velocity and NValt, a fork of the app with markdown support and other goodies.)
Pro Markdown support via web interface
There is support for Markdown when using the web app. This can be convenient for those who want to use Markdown in a particular note.
Pro Linux client available
Pro Excellent iOS app
Pro Excellent desktop client in the form of nvAlt
Pro Free and Open Source
No commercial interests, no ads, no registration, no nonsense. You own your notes 100%.
Pro Extremely customizable
This is a major aim and point with TiddlyWiki; people can relatively easily modify it to fit their particular application needs.
Pro Single html file
It's a single file and all your notes will be "accessible even in 25 years" because they can be seen in plain html text.
Pro Self-hosted and indefinitely accessible
All content is stored within the same html file as the interface.
Pro 10+ years mature
Mature software, active community with members from all over the world.
Pro Relational links
Allows for relational links and lists between notes to keep things organized.
Pro Lots of plugins
Pro Progressive user level, from ease of use to programming your own plugins
Basic users can start with simple note-taking, progressively discover predefined features and existing plugins, then start using more fancy features (like filters, widgets, macros), in order to adapt their wiki to their needs.
Pro Multiple, user-defined usages
The list of possible usages is practically infinite in TW, and more importantly it lets the user define their own method of dealing with their content.
Pro Easy to use
Low barrier of entry for the non IT knowledgeable.
Pro Backlinking and backtagging and brain graph visualization
Follow the link back-and-forth.
Pro Lightweight and very customizable
Variety of settings, and community themes & plugins, available from built-in marketplace (CPL library). Every community plugin is open-source which means you can learn from it and develop your own. Some plugin don't require programming knowledge (written using WikiText), and is very easy to learn.
Pro Support many text format (Markdown, WikiText, HTML, WYSIWYG...)
Suit for programmer, writer, Notion style WYSIWYG editor lover, and HTML UI designer.
Pro Locally stored, not dependent on cloud
Everything is stored in your device. You can back them up, encrypt and process however you want to. Works completely offline. Read your notes anytime, anywhere, in any platform, and sync between without cost.
Pro Backlink and BackTagging, advanced linking and cross-references in various ways
Every card can link to other card, and other card will see the way it's linked to. Use Tag for nesting and build folder structure. Tags are tree shaped, and count of tag is limitless. Backlink can be automatically generated or selectively generated using advanced filter.
Pro Update all links when renaming notes (required the Relink plugin)
Renames titles in "Tags" and "List" fields by default. Relink plugin updates titles in all links automatically.
Pro Host your TiddlyWiki file on GitHub for free
You can use the TiddlyWiki saver to save your TiddlyWiki file directly to your github repository. If you also use GitHub pages, then you can load your file wherever you happen to be, make changes, and update.
Pro Active and helpful community typically answers questions within hours
The official support forum is at talk.tiddlywiki.org. It's frequented by a large number of knowledgeable TiddlyWiki enthusiasts. You rarely see a question go unanswered more than 2 or 3 days, and in most cases questions are answered within minutes. For harder questions, the developer himself frequently wades in to add information.
Pro The equivalent of DataView/SQL already baked into the product
You can create lists of anything inside TiddlyWiki like tags, title structure, date, custom fields and present it as links, checkboxes, tables or whatever structure you need using a few lines of wikitext (a markdown-like language with powerful widget ability built-in).
Pro Official CodeMirror Plugins for a complete editing experience
The official CodeMirror plugins allow you to close brackets, close tags, auto-complete, use VIM, Sublime or Emacs keybindings, and edit CSS, HTML, XML or Javascript text.
Pro Tags are first-class objects in TiddlyWiki
In TiddlyWiki tags aren't some kludgey text-based add-on -- they're built into the design from the first. Tags can contain spaces and non-Latin characters. Tags are available at the top of each note. Click on a tag and you instantly see all the other notes that share that tag. You can then change the order of that list simply by dragging and dropping from the tag-pill. Tags can tag other tags, allowing you to create multiple types of TOC's with the built-in tag macros. You can create new notes tagged with the current note with just one click.
Pro Encrypt your entire Wiki with SJCL without additional plugins
You don't have to worry about leaving your TW somewhere it might get exposed. You can activate the built-in encryption ability, using the Stanford Javascript Encryption Library to have your wiki encrypted with 256 bit security.
Pro Can embed images and documents for a portable, single-file solution.
TiddlyWiki gives you the choice of whether you access additional resources (images, docx, pdfs) externally from the operating system or internally as embedded objects.
Cons
Con No note encryption at rest
Notes are encrypted in transit, but remain unencrypted on Simplenote's servers.
Con Limited ways to reorder notes
You are able to sort your notes alphabetically, date modified, or by last created. There is no way to drag and drop the notes to create a custom order.
Con No reminders
You cannot set reminders to revisit a specific note or complete a task.
Con No support for file attachments
Simplenote doesn't provide support for embedded attachments. This can limit the use for some as many other note-taking apps do support this type of feature.
Con Search is limited to one tag
There seems to be no way to find notes that have both tag X and tag Y. This isn't a big deal until you have a large library of notes, and want to cross-search for two things at the same time to vastly narrow down your search.
Con No way to import notes from anywhere
Con Web access only for updated browsers
They recently removed support for older browsers, and it's not working on the latest version of Waterfox. You need an updated version of a well-known browser.
Con No 32-bit version
Con The search function doesn't see tags
If you search for 'foo' you won't find notes with tag foo. In that regard, tags are completely isolated from the search.
Con No way to bulk-apply a tag
This is a typical workflow action in other apps: Do a search, multi-select notes among the matches, then apply or de-apply one or more tags to all these notes at once.
There's no way to do this in Simplenote. The only bulk operations are Delete and Pin-to-top.
Con No notification when changes made on a shared note
Currently, there is no way to be alerted when a change is made by another contributor on a shared note.
Con Save-to-disk feature is poor
The only way to download your data off Simplenote is via a "download zip" feature that unfortunately loses all the semantic structure of your data (tags, for instance).
Con No integrated social media sharing
The only way you can share notes with others is with a link you're given when you publish your note. There is no integrated social media sharing if you directly want to post your note to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Con Lack of color impacts usability
There are two themes available, the default theme and a dark theme.
Both use only the single solid color (either white or black) for the background, so there is a lack of visual cues to separate what you're looking at.
Con Too many backlinks can cause performance issues
With 100k+ notes, backlink and brain graph visualization can slow down the wiki.
Con Relies on browser performance, online or offline
TiddlyWiki is a single HTML file. Thus, if you directly embed e. g large images or videos in it (instead of using the features to display externally stored images and videos) it would make the file big and performance slow.
Con Without JavaScript nothing is visible
You need a browser that is not outdated to open the wiki, if you want to edit the HTML wiki file inside browser. Or you will need to download app like TiddlywikiDesktop or TidGi App to edit the wiki.
Con Unintuitive, complex official user interface
Too powerful for some new users, requires stribg ability to learn many interactions and advanced features sets. But this can be change at anytime by install community theme and plugins. Or use edition like TidGi app to get Notion style experience.
