When comparing BrainTool vs Workona, the Slant community recommends Workona for most people. In the question“What are the best tab managers for Chrome?” Workona is ranked 3rd while BrainTool is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Workona is:
Intuitive UI. Minimal ramp-up.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Editable notes
Every link can have its own editable and changeable notes.
Pro Privacy
No data is stored anywhere other than in your browser and a linked text file.
Pro Personalized nested Topic tree
You can set up your own hierarchal topic tree thats readily editable with keyboard and drag and drop.
Pro Writes to a text file
All your data is always accessible and editable with other tools.
Pro Browser control
Open and close set of tabs by topic into their own tab groups or windows.
Pro Full keyboard control
All actions can be performed via key commands for fast access.
Pro Effortless organization
Intuitive UI.
Minimal ramp-up.
Pro Works seamlessly across multiple monitors and browser instances
Pro Incorporates tasks, notes, and collaboration
Plus: auto save, sharing permissions, various modes for organization, tab suspension, (optional!) new tab, layout switching, multi-platform, file attachments, most web apps supported, and its actively developed and updated with new features. With some ingenuity and a few extra extensions, I've even included my local directory resources in my client workspaces with in-place editing.
Pro Efficient use of System Resources
It seems to be well written and in no way bogs my system.
Pro Very responsive
There is nearly no lag between multiple instances.
Cons
Con Paid
For free accounts, you can only have 5 personal workspaces and 3 shared workspaces.
Con Worst than alternatives
Con Application concept changing all the time
They still seem to be searching heavily for their vision of productivity focussed tab management. Big changes in user interface have occured in the last years. The UI is more complex than needed and it is not clear what they want to achieve.
Con Duplicating and loosing windows and tabs
Sometimes window sessions are duplicated and have to be merged by hand. More than once sessions and tabs have been lost. Mostly because it couldn't cope with Chrome restarting. Once also because the backend was updated and it went wrong. Workona has not at all proven to be reliable.
Con Doesn't always play well with others
Even though most of the bugs and glitches are a result of conflicts with other extensions or browser features (e.g. edge rolling our new tab management features)... it takes a lot of trial an error to figure out what works. Some feedback by way of a useful error message would help.