When comparing Emacs Org-mode vs Org-mode, the Slant community recommends Org-mode for most people. In the question“What are the best command line to-do list manager?” Org-mode is ranked 2nd while Emacs Org-mode is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Org-mode is:
Org-mode is characterized by a flexible and versatile system with adaptability to different workflows, making it comparable as an Evernote alternative. It is at once simple and complex., which helps it to compete as an Evernote alternative.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Ultimate flexibility
This app's flexibility is based on its minimalist approach, giving the user near-infinite freedom.
Pro Absolutely free
Emacs with Org-mode is free as in beer and free as in speech – that is, it costs nothing and it’s totally open source.
Pro Files are usable anywhere at anytime
Users are not tied to one service provider, program, platform, or database engine.
Pro Incredibly extensible
There are many plug-ins for Org-mode, including Org-habits and Org-notify. If Org-mode lacks some piece of functionality, it is very easy to add it.
Pro Agenda views
Pro Excellent unofficial Android app (orgzly)
Pro Offline support
Pro Efficient features for deadline organization
Pro Supports plaintext spreadsheets
Pro There are a lot of extensions, for exporting to html, bootstrap, js-reveal and much more
Pro Quickly add rich text
Pro Very flexible
Org-mode is characterized by a flexible and versatile system with adaptability to different workflows, making it comparable as an Evernote alternative. It is at once simple and complex., which helps it to compete as an Evernote alternative.
Pro Built-in agenda
Org-mode has some built-in agenda functionality. You can schedule tasks and assign various degrees of importance to each of them. Org-mode agenda can also be synced with Google Calendar.
Pro Versioning can be tracked and synced using Git or other VCS
Org files are plain text, and lend themselves well to version control. Emacs also has good integrations for various VCS.
Pro Great sync support
Notes and to-dos can be synced with Trello, Toodledo, Simplenote, Orgmobile, or with tools like Git on Github, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Bitbucket, while WebDAV (with iOS and Android) can also be exported to PDF, mind map, LaTeX, HTML, Docbook, or txt.
Pro Basic spreadsheet functionality
Org-mode has some basic spreadsheet functionality. Other than auto-formatting ASCII tables (a notoriously annoying problem), it also has support for LISP-like syntax to define equations or any other functionality that can be achieved through spreadsheets.
Pro Out-of-the-box Latex support
Org-mode has out-of-the-box support for Latex: it can immediately parse equations (or other Latex markup) and can even compile notes to PDF or HTML.
Cons
Con Unintuitive user interface
The key combinations are unintuitive and difficult to remember. This is probably because there are a lot of hidden "modes" depending on where the cursor is. Actions aren't paired with reversing actions like in other todo apps. For example, hitting shift-tab does NOT reverse the effect of hitting tab.
Con Android app isn't very good
There are several user-created apps for Android, but none seem to offer the same level of functionality as other to-do apps.
Con Not really cross platform
Although it is possible to get a lot of it working, no all in one, sync included, out of the box solution is available for mobile devices.
Con By default, a hard-to-read display
The default way of writing an outline or checklist creates a very messy wall of text that's difficult to read with no vertical spacing. You can manually add vertical spacing, but the Org operations don't preserve it. There are pretty-display modes, but you need to remember how to enable them, etc. etc.
Con Difficult to learn
Org-mode has a difficult learning curve since you have to learn all the keybindings and commands. It's especially difficult if you are not used to Emacs.