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Anytype.io
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 27, 2023 at 01:07 PM
What are the touted benefits of anytype vs. Notion? I don’t use either, but Notion seems stable and established, and it is relatively cheap for this type of app, where the subscription prices seem to be going up.
Steve
Posted by Dormouse
Aug 27, 2023 at 01:16 PM
Local first. Privacy, security, encryption.
Posted by NickG
Aug 27, 2023 at 06:03 PM
The 3 major weaknesses of Notion (deepening on your use case) are:
- No full offline mode: if you don’t have an internet connection, capabilities are limited to what can be dome with the local cache.
- Data is not fully encrypted, e2e and at least at both ends. I tried to use Notion for work, but had to put it to one side because I couldn’t use it for confidential client data.
- It can be slow to open/respond on mobile devices, which makes quick capture painful
AnyType keeps all data locally (so internet only needed for sync between remote devices) and it’s fully encrypted. @Satis made the point in his post of early Sunday that that’s two-edged, because you can only see the local data via the AnyType app (not via Finder or similar). There is a Markdown export facility, but of course that doesn’t preserve all the relationships and non-text content. The local storage also makes it pretty quick and responsive on all devices.
I think it’s worth emphasising that Notion is far more feature-complete and mature generally than AnyType. If you need a system you can fully exploit right now, and the weaknesses aren’t critical, then it’s a better bet.
Anytype needs (among other things) collaboration (later this year), repeating tasks, derived relations (formulae), some key external interactions (e.g. Google calendar) and some fit-and-finish work before it’s a full alternative. It’s working well for me with its current limitations (I’m not using it professionally - I’m retired from my project manager job). If I were still working, it would have a (limited) place in my workflow.
As to how this segment will play out - I think AnyType will be a niche product for people for whom security and privacy are overriding factors.
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
What are the touted benefits of anytype vs. Notion? I don’t use either,
>but Notion seems stable and established, and it is relatively cheap for
>this type of app, where the subscription prices seem to be going up.
>
>Steve
Posted by satis
Aug 28, 2023 at 02:07 AM
NickG wrote:
> I think AnyType will be a niche product for people for
> whom security and privacy are overriding factors.
Which is what concerns me. Is that a big enough market? When you take VC money you’re forced to try to recoup the funding, typically resulting in the Silicon Valley madness of shooting for moonrocket growth to gain mindshare and marketshare to charge $$, necessarily pivoting to a corporate focus (which is where the real money is).
Anytype has the potential to be a lesser competitor to Notion, while being a supercharged Joplin or Standard Notes with its e2ee and privacy focus. But I worry that’s not a big enough ecological niche to support itself, and it risks becoming diluted with feature-bloat (or spends all its time playing catch-up with Notion) to appeal to a broader market.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Aug 28, 2023 at 03:07 PM
Thanks all for answering my question.
Steve Z.