software

Team Notes: The Search Continues

Daniel Kuney

Daniel Kuney

— 1 min read
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for

Seemingly, a rock solid notes app for teams doesn’t exist. Okay, they exist, and each are compelling and, er, noteworthy, in their own ways. But each also has a fatal flaw that keeps me from going all in with them.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

  • Reliable, dependable, will not go out of business or be sold in the next ten years.
  • Team collaboration.
  • First-rate text entry experience. Should go without saying, but…it must be said.
  • Markdown support.
  • Live co-authoring with typing indicators, which is essential when collaborating on a note in real time.
  • Share links for public or semi-private sharing.
  • Cmd-k menu for keyboard-first navigation and forward slash for quick insertions.

And here’s the competition:

  • Bear - my personal favorite, but no collaboration support.
  • Obsidian - has my attention, but no collaboration support.
  • Craft - this is close but, for some reason, it doesn’t click for me. Perhaps I don’t want to write in blocks? Or it does too much?
  • Evernote - probably what I should be using but I’m not going to dip my toes back into the green elephant until I see how things shake out with the new owner
  • Mem - was really excited about this one but the sync is unreliable (understandably they are still in beta, but the sync has been unstable for some time), collaboration isn’t real-time the way Google Docs is 1000% real-time, no typing indicators, and their recent push into AI makes me think they’re taking a giant leap in the wrong direction.
  • Slite - need to give this another serious look but concerned I don’t hear much about them in my geek circles. Will they be around in 5 years?
  • Amplenote - same as Slite.
  • Notion - again, don’t want to write in blocks. And I don’t want databases in my notes. I have Airtable for that.

Are you still looking for your ideal team notes app? If so, let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @focus_tools.

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