When comparing Smartdown vs Boostnote, the Slant community recommends Boostnote for most people. In the question“What are the best open source Markdown editors for UNIX-like systems?” Boostnote is ranked 16th while Smartdown is ranked 33rd. The most important reason people chose Boostnote is:
Supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Integrated file library
You can add directories to the sidebar. These directories can be from cloud services (like Dropbox for example).
Pro Advanced Markdown support
Smartdown supports Critic Markup and MultiMarkdown flavors of Markdown that add advanced functionality, like tables, footnotes, etc.
Pro Customizable
The app can be themed and the layout can be changed around.
Pro Cross platform support
Supports Windows, macOS and Linux.
Pro Markdown support
Pro Free
Pro Open source
See here.
Pro Great for developers
Boostnote is great for developers looking to take programming notes with code snippets and such.
Pro Supports code snippets and syntax highlighting
Boostnote has the ability to store code snippets and comes with syntax highlighting out of the box, supporting many languages.
Pro Works offline
Boostnote doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can write notes offline and sync later.
Pro Global search, tag feature
Pro Comes with many themes
Boostnote comes with many themes out of the box, most of which are popular themes and color schemes for code editors: e.g. 3024, base16, solarized, tomorrow.
Pro vim/emacs key bindings available
Boostnote supports vim/emacs key bindings. If you're a developer familiar with either of them, navigation should be easy to pick up.
Cons
Con Not Free
Smartdown costs $19.99.
Con Some of the features are not consistent
Con Must use third-party service for sync-ing (Dropbox, etc.)
Boostnote does not have sync-ing capabilities and relies on third-party services to fulfil notes storage. There are additional steps involved to set this up.
Con Can't work in "real" offline mode
Con Very poor syncing
Data loss may occur on syncing.
