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When comparing Zim vs DEVONthink, the Slant community recommends Zim for most people. In the question“What are the best knowledge base systems for personal use?” Zim is ranked 7th while DEVONthink is ranked 25th. The most important reason people chose Zim is:
Notes can contain links to other notes, allowing you to reference important information when needed. This way the user can connect and reference many different pages in the app, keeping things clean and structured, unlike Evernote, which makes this a good Evernote alternative.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Allows for organized, wiki-style navigation
Notes can contain links to other notes, allowing you to reference important information when needed. This way the user can connect and reference many different pages in the app, keeping things clean and structured, unlike Evernote, which makes this a good Evernote alternative.
Pro Plain text data format rather than proprietary
If/when the app is no longer developed (or if the user simply decides to no longer use the application or view/edit it on a non-supported platform), this can still be done with any plain-text editor.
Pro Automatically manages files and folders
Zim will automatically create a folder structure that fits your page hierarchy and adds/removes files such as images to/from appropriate folders.
Pro Good export options
Zim supports HTML, LaTeX, Pandoc Markdown, and RST. This allows ones documents to be easily used in a wide selection of other apps.
Pro Support for multiple platforms
Windows, Linux, and BSD are supported with their own clients. This is nice for those that use multiple operating systems but still want to use the same app on each.
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 No mobile app support
This is a desktop app and there are no mobile versions available. This can make it more difficult to use on-the-go if using cloud storage to store files from the app, as there is no mobile app version to access those files.
Con No native sync support
Zim notes don't automatically synchronize with other devices or offer built-in cloud sync support. Of course the user can add the files to Dropbox, or something similar, to then open them on another device with the app installed. But this is more of a work-around than a built-in solution.
Con Looks ancient
Zim has a very plain and outdated interface.
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)
