When comparing Workflowy vs Amplenote, the Slant community recommends Workflowy for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” Workflowy is ranked 4th while Amplenote is ranked 55th. 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 Notes encrypted at rest on servers
See here.
Pro Long-term minded
Company has not raised venture capital.
Pro "Idea Execution Funnel" methodology
Schema follows sensible flow from capture to revision to prioritize to schedule.
Pro Community-driven
Team maintains a voting board at https://amplenote.featureupvote.com that drives development roadmap, ensuring calibration between note enthusiasts and the product.
Pro Publish and share notes
Publish notes to the web (with configurable URLs) or share notes with collaborators.
Pro Offline-first
Fully functional offline mode.
Pro Omniplatform
Can be installed on macOS, Linux, Windows (via PWA), iOS and Android.
Pro Task/calendar syncing (Google Calendar & Outlook)
Any task with a date/time assigned to it will be exported to calendars optionally connected. Completing the task removes it from calendar.
Pro Multi-level tagging (personal/hobbies/bike-rides) to keep organized
Any note can be assigned as many deeply nested tags as desired. The tag hierarchy can be navigated, filtered on tasks or notes.
Pro Backlinking & networked note references
Amplenote supports the same [[]] syntax popular in Roam to create a link to an existing note. Every linked note has a tab with all the references into that note.
Pro Automatically sorted task list
Every task can be marked as "Urgent" or "Important," along with the time it's due. This makes it possible for the software to automatically sort your todo list in a way that makes sense, and save you time of deciding what to work on first every day.
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 Not end-to-end encrypted
See here.
