When comparing Emacs Org-mode vs Toggl, the Slant community recommends Toggl for most people. In the question“What are the best time tracking apps for freelancers?” Toggl is ranked 1st while Emacs Org-mode is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Toggl is:
Integrates with services such as TeamWeek, Pivotal Tracker, Github, Asana, Unfuddle, Gitlab, Trello, Worksection, Redbooth, Podio, Basecamp, JIRA, Producteev, Bitbucket, Stifer, Google Docs, Redmine, YouTrack, CapsuleCRM, Xero, Zendesk, Any.do, Todoist, Trac, Wunderlist, Toodledo, Teamwork.com, Google Mail, Taiga, HabitRPG, Axosoft, Countersoft Gemini, Drupal.org, Esa, Help Scout, Flow, Sprintly, Google Calendar & TestRail.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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 Integration with existing services
Integrates with services such as TeamWeek, Pivotal Tracker, Github, Asana, Unfuddle, Gitlab, Trello, Worksection, Redbooth, Podio, Basecamp, JIRA, Producteev, Bitbucket, Stifer, Google Docs, Redmine, YouTrack, CapsuleCRM, Xero, Zendesk, Any.do, Todoist, Trac, Wunderlist, Toodledo, Teamwork.com, Google Mail, Taiga, HabitRPG, Axosoft, Countersoft Gemini, Drupal.org, Esa, Help Scout, Flow, Sprintly, Google Calendar & TestRail.
Pro Open source, native Linux desktop client is being worked on
Source code is available on GitHub.
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 Stable version requires Chrome
The stable version of Toggl on Linux installs as a Chrome app thus Chrome has to be installed on the machine and run (it can be run as a process in the background). A native client is in the works, but it's still in beta.