Trello vs Notebooks

There are two primary columns: the board is shown on the left and all the other controls on the right. The main means of interaction is dragging and dropping to-do cards into the various lists.

The board structure is very customizable, and includes a variety of features that help along the way: color-coding, due dates, card images, checklists with a graphics bar that allows following progress easily, and card aging for cards that haven’t been touched in a long time.

Trello has permissions at the board level as well as the ability to assign multiple people to each card. There are a lot of sharing options available and boards can be made visible for the public. It's also possible to subscribe to a card to be notified of its progress. The simplicity of the UI makes collaboration easy because it’s very simple to see the progress of each card and who is responsible for it. It also updates constantly to reflect real-time changes in progress.

The simplicity of the UI makes collaboration easy as it’s very simple to see the progress of each card and who is responsible for it. It also reflect changes on boards in real-time.

Trello calls items used in the workflow “cards.” Cards are double-sided and can contain subtasks as well as notes and other details.

Card columns can be used to simulate a workflow by moving cards from left to right as they are completed, or as a way of indicating task priority.

The workflow is highly flexible as the columns are completely customizable to suit the task flow. For example, tasks can be put through a workflow "idea > approved > in-progress > pending review > released" or simply "ideas > released" depending on the granularity level needed.

This makes Trello a great solution to feature management as it's possible to set up boards to handle everything from agile sprints to a more generic to-do list, all with status management.

Trello offers a very generous free version that has no ads, no restrictions on the number of users, and very little restriction on how the program can be used. The paid features are generally cosmetic, such as the ability to change the background, add stickers or integration with other tools.

The UI is based around Kanban, so you can see all your tasks and their status clearly.

Voting, view, and calendar plug-ins further increase the functionality.

Trello supports Markdown, meaning that HTML input is represented appropriately. Cards with attachments are also rendered well. For example, images are shown correctly on the card, bug links are detected etc.

Each card can have one or even multiple task lists.

Trello works on all modern devices through the web application and has native apps for iOS, Android and Windows 8/10 devices.

Keep all of your files (images, documents, etc.) organized on their relevant cards.

The responsiveness and layers of customization make it easy for team members of various disciplines to collaborate on the same task board.

Can set different priorities to various tasks, set appropriate due dates and Story points - timing allotted to each task.

Trello offers support for features to add voting on cards, often referred to as 'power-ups'.

Works like a charm.

There is a global history system which allows to rapidly follow changes. There is also a notification system if another user updates the board while you're watching it.

Services like Paper (Dropbox), Evernote, Google, OneNote (Microsoft)... and many others, keep your data in format they can read when it syncs with their servers. That means their admins can read your data (see recent scandal with Evernote privacy policy), they can be compelled to give it to law-enforcement and, if hackers manage to breach their servers, the hackers can read it too.

With Notebooks, you choose how to sync your data, which means that you can do it using a privacy-friendly service, such as SpiderOak, Tresorit, Sync.com or iDrive, which sync your data using end-to-end encryption. This means that although they use their servers to sync your data, their servers store an encrypted version to which the service does not hold the key. Your data stays private.

Notebooks have many features including WYSIWYG editing and Markdown support. While these may be considered power-user features, they are there if the user ever needs them. This makes the app versatile, as it can appeal to the user who just wants to take notes just as much as the user who needs to edit complicated documents.

There are no reoccurring fees connected to this app: pay once for the platform you would like to use it on, and that's it.

As an Evernote alternative, Notebooks is available on iOS as well as OS X and Windows operating systems. This makes for a convenient way to manage one's notes or tasks on multiple devices