When comparing Workflowy vs DEVONthink, the Slant community recommends Workflowy for most people. In the question“What are the best knowledge base systems for personal use?” Workflowy is ranked 16th while DEVONthink is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Workflowy is:
Any sublist can be viewed as a top-level list. This sounds simple but makes WorkFlowy extremely powerful. For example, the same line item, "write my book," can simultaneously be a to-do in a task list and the container for an entire working document.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Outline-style hierarchy with zoom
Any sublist can be viewed as a top-level list. This sounds simple but makes WorkFlowy extremely powerful. For example, the same line item, "write my book," can simultaneously be a to-do in a task list and the container for an entire working document.
Pro Minimalistic interface
Interface has no clutter. It allows focusing on thoughts to note down. This keeps things simple and easy to understand, which can help keep everything organized in an intuitive manner.
Pro Easy to see an overview and organize notes
All notes are part of a list, which makes it easy to organize everything. Nested lists allow for organizing notes into hierarchical categories of infinite depth. All lists can be folded. WorkFlowy also has tags and instant full-text search.
Pro Super fast sync between devices
While adding a list of to-do on web, it syncs with iPhone and iPad apps very quickly. This way you can jump between devices with no delay of up to date content.
Pro Quickly focus on a specific topic
Enables users to focus on specific topic area, which is referred to as "hoisting" within Workflowy.
Pro Supports tags
Enables users to search by tags.
Pro Cross-platform web and mobile
WorkFlowy can be accessed from either a browser or their apps, which include a Chrome app for desktops as well as an iOS and Android app. This makes it easy to access ones notes no matter the platform or device being used.
Pro Deep nesting
Workflowy's 'everything is in a tree' interface makes it easy to keep expanding on topics, no matter where, or how deep in the hierarchy they are.

Pro Tasks can be added and manipulated quickly
WorkFlowy allows entering many tasks very quickly – especially useful for meeting minutes or a "brain dump" when you have to type fast. After typing in all your thoughts, it's very easy to organize and sort multiple groups at once.
Pro Import and export via OPML
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) is a commonly used standard for text exchange. With two-way support for OPML you are never locked into Workflowy. Importing/exporting via copy/paste of entire outlines is a snap.
Pro Text formatting
You can have bold, italic, and underlined text.
Pro Strong community
There are number of talented coders who help customize WorkFlowy with extensions and styles. It has an active blog and welcomes collaboration.
Pro Daily digest email
WorkFlowy can send you an email with that day's activity. It's a great way to track progress.
Pro Can store any file type
File types containing text are indexed.
Pro Very flexible
An extensive feature set makes it easy to adapt to your work flow.
Pro Completely offline
Pro Sync
Sync between different macs and/or ios devices is fast, safe and easy. You can sync via iCloud, Dropbox, WebDAV or WiFi.
Pro Full text search
Pro Webpage Clipper
A flexible web clipper can add contents of any web page to DevonThink.
Pro One-time purchase vs monthly subscription.
Pro Paperless office functions available in PRO Office version
Includes processing of scanned documents, OCR etc.
The OCR function is based on FineReader and is probably the best one on the market.
Cons
Con Doesn't work well in mobile browsers
The functionality of the mobile version of the site is a bit limited, while new features have been added such as the ability to move lines of text, even that is limited on Android to only being functional on Chrome.
Con Offline desktop app requires Chrome
The offline desktop requires installing Google Chrome first before the WorkFlowy app can be installed. This is not good news for non-Chrome users especially users who frequently uses Firefox or Safari as their default browsers, in which Chrome app also suffers memory leak and battery issues.
Con Inconvenient interface
Notes automatically collapse, making them unreadable without user interaction. You cannot view multiple long notes at once.
Con No public API
Con Cannot use link-text
You cannot have text link to a URL. When you link to a website you have to post the full URL instead. Instead of having the name of the website or article like, Slant, you instead have to post http://slant.co
. It's especially annoying if you have a long URL that takes up a lot of space in the document.
Con No support for Right-To-Left languages
Mixed text is scrambled, and text-alignment is wrong.
Con Doesn't work on all mobile phones
Not compatible with Android OS version 4.1 and 4.2.
Con Infrequent updates and new features
WorkFlowy works well but it is hardly ever updated, in comparison to Dynalist, which works in a very similar way but has more features and is updated weekly.
Con Only supports one big text file
Although with Workflowy's focus feature this can work, you might prefer managing separate text files.
Con Only runs on Macs, iPoneOS, iPadOS & Web
It does not run on Windows, Android, and Linux.
Con Stores in a proprietary format
It stores the whole database in a proprietary file package, that you cannot easily access from another app or from the Finder. Considering you might be classifying a huge quantity of files there, it is quite problematic if you want to interact with this data from other applications.
Con Very limited automation
While the marketing claims are about an intelligent document manager, it actually does not offer many automation features, such as automatic classification, tagging and renaming of the files. It's much more like an extended file explorer.
Con Costs US$79.95 for just the Personal version
One-time purchase instead of monthly subscription.
Con Non free/libre (proprietary)
