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Add to SafariWhen comparing Zim vs Boostnote, the Slant community recommends Zim for most people. In the question“What is the best cross-platform note-taking app?” Zim is ranked 3rd while Boostnote is ranked 10th. 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 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 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 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.
