When comparing Pinboard vs start.me, the Slant community recommends Pinboard for most people. In the question“What are the best ways to organize bookmarks?” Pinboard is ranked 5th while start.me is ranked 17th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro An ad-free site with no third-party tracking
Pro Cheap
The standard account is $11/year. The pro account ($25/year) provides you:
- A permanent personal copy of every bookmark you save.
- Full-text search of all your bookmarks
- Dead link and error detection
Pro A searchable archive of all your tweets and favorites
Pro Easy tagging
Pro Excellent API
Pinboard has an API that gives you access to all features used in the webapp, so you can build scripts and apps that work against it very easily.
Pro Paid service
The service receives direct income from its customers so it is less likely to disappear overnight like so many free services, taking all your bookmarks with it.
Pro Easy download of all your data
Pro The ability to bookmark by email from your iPhone
Pro A way to save notes and other snippets of text as bookmarks
Pro Built-in sync of links and favorites from multiple Twitter accounts
Pro Built-in integration with Instapaper
Pro Great to have bookmarks, feeds and notes in one place
Start.me offers a great tool to stay organized and productive because it allows all bookmarks, news feeds and notes to be available in one place.
Pro Beautiful & Customizable Interface
It has a very nice and customizable interface + you can get your bookmarks online anyware.
Cons
Con Paid service
Costs $11/year. Many features are available elsewhere for free.
Con Unresponsive support
Don't expect a response from their support email. Developer is very active on twitter, perhaps a tweet might work better.
Con Can't provide service paid for
I paid for an archival account for 5 years; as my subscription was about to end, there was no way to download my archive. The download button accomplished nothing, emails went unanswered, my post to the pinboard google support group was not approved, dm on twitter was unanswered. A public comment on twitter got me a reply that he'd "look into it", then nothing. $100+ down the drain! Save your money and look elsewhere.
Con No longer able to meet security standards for Google Sign-In
Start.me used to have an e-mail widget which gave you quick access to your Gmail account(s) along with all your other bookmarks, but it requires a security assessment so that Google can ensure that they do not misuse user data obtained using restricted scopes per the Google API policy. As of 2020, they no longer meet that standard and the e-mail widget has been removed altogether.
Con Should sell itself as a start page because they are not just a bookmark service
Be careful if you Curate Bookmarks or even just have a bunch. You can upload and export bookmarks now, the upload limit is raised. Still, you need an internet connection.
Con Development could be faster
There's a lot to like about this product, but you need patience to see new widgets.