Favored "bucket" app - DEVONthink v. Keep-It vs. EagleFiler etc

Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 5, 2018 at 09:12 PM

I’m not a fan of the “bucket app” idea. We all have a terrific “bucket app” by default—the file system. I’d suggest the problem should be approached from the needs perspective—what are your requirements?

Do you need something to organize files for projects or for research?
Do you need to organize your personal financial or other records?
Do you need a tool to compare files, or find commonalities, or suggest groups of files?
Do you need services to capture content on the fly—book marks, clipping or snippets, downloads?
Do you need to compose text and have a place to manage changes?
Do you need to collaborate?
Do you need your documents on multiple platforms (laptop, cloud, iPad/iPhone)?

And so on. Then it’s a matter of scoring your requirements high-to-low and laying them out against the tables of features that all the developers in this category. And then download and try them by throwing real-world (your real world) problems at them.

The cost is not in the software. The cost is in the hours you spend with the software trying to make it work for you. If you don’t know what you want to accomplish to begin with, odds are you’ll buy the wrong thing because some guy on the internet told you what they like.

(Personally, I like DEVONthink and dislike Eagle Filer and Keep It. And I’m bored of all of them and wish there were better options. But I’ve also learned to use the filesystem better and depend less on “bucket” (ugh) software to do my work.)