When comparing Coggle vs PlantUml, the Slant community recommends Coggle for most people. In the question“What are the best flowchart / diagram softwares?” Coggle is ranked 17th while PlantUml is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Coggle is:
Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can optionally be converted to HTML using a tool by the same name.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Supports Markdown (their own variant)
Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax designed so that it can optionally be converted to HTML using a tool by the same name.
Pro Collaborative
Coggle allows inviting friends and colleagues to work collaboratively on notes and diagrams in real-time.
Pro Pretty diagrams
No effort to create beautiful diagrams.
Pro Supports LaTeX
LaTeX is a document preparation system and document markup language. It is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents.
Pro Allows easy color-coding of paths
Pro Versioning support
Enter history mode to view all changes to a diagram over time, and make a copy from that point.
Pro Optional Chrome store App
Pro Free
Pro Lots of export options
Exports to PDF, image, plaintext and .mm files.
Pro Many, many integrations
For example from Emacs, Sublime Text and so on. You can learn about integrations here.
Pro Easy create diagrams from text
There is even a Visual Basic Macro to draw UML diagrams in Word.
Pro Free/libre/open source (GPL)
Source code can be browsed here.
Pro Has online editors
Such as.
Pro sphinx-contrib extension for embedding into docs
sphinx-contrib extension on PyPi
Allows you to keep your UML definitions under VCS and include them inside generated documentation with ease.
Cons
Con Tree relations only; no non-parent links
Coggle's model allows a node to have multiple children, but only one parent, and no other connections of any sort.
Con Unconventional note taking style
Coggle is a mind mapping application, not a traditional text based note storage platform.
Con The "plantUML-language" is a bit strange and hard to grasp for new people
Con Slow development due to it being mostly a one-man project
There’s been no recent contribution to the source forge project but from the administrator arnaud_roques. Future contribution might be difficult due to lacking code documentation.
Con Not maintained
