5 Best Roam Research Alternative Tools Worth Trying

Roam Research has simplified note-taking like never before. However, it is not a perfect tool and cannot meet your requirements in many cases. That is why you are seeking Roam Research alternative tools.

In this guide, you can know what is Roam Research, why you need one alternative, how to choose, and the best 5 tools for you to choose. Go to read, then, make your decision.

What is Roam Research?

Roam Research is a popular SaaS-based note-taking app that lets you establish meaningful connections between your notes. These notes help you to organize your team around what they call a “networked thought.” This networked thought is so useful for a team because it gives its members a chance to utilize the knowledge of their fellow members. These notes also help individuals with valuable insights regarding the utility of their existing knowledge in the new projects.

Main Features:

1. Calendar Notification.

2. Fast Real-time Collaboration.

3. A database of public notes that you can search and browse.

4. The ability to create and share collections of notes.

5. A disturbance-free writing environment.

6. Effective task tracking.

7. Markdown support for formatting your notes.

8. The ability to export your notes in multiple formats.

Why Do You Need Alternatives to Roam Research?

Roam Research has some disadvantages and it may not meet your requirements all the time. Here are the main drawbacks.

1. Inflexible task view: without a flexible task view, you can’t be productive enough. The missing features like Kanban view, Timelines, etc. mean that you really need to look for some Roam Research alternatives.

2. Roam has NO mobile App: it sounds strange but that’s true. Now that means that your note-taking has to be messy with your laptop and stuff. You don’t have the ease of note-taking with your mobile phone.

3. Roam Research is too expensive: You have to spend at least $15/month to get started with the Personal version. And, the Believer version costs as much as $500/ 5 years.

4. Security Vulnerability: Roam’s database becomes vulnerable with customized access. This is why Roam alternatives are in demand.

How to Choose One Roam Alternative?

Well, in order to choose a perfect Roam Research alternative, you want to consider the following factors:

· System Requirements: To be on the safer side, it should be a SaaS-based tool so that system requirements may not bother you. However, if a tool is not SaaS-based, it shouldn’t require more than just nominal hardware specifications like 2GB RAM, 8GB Hard Drive, etc.

· Interface: The interface should allow you to flexibly review all your notes and visualize the connections among them. You should also be able to tweak and edit them with ease. Thankfully, all the Roam alternatives mentioned below have this quality.

· Pricing: The pricing has to be cheaper than that of Roam Research. The good news is that all the following tools are significantly cheaper than Roam research and all of them offer a free version for your personal needs.

· Customer’s Review: The customer’s average rating at some credible platform like G2 or Producthunt can make a tool credible in the eyes of the public. All the following Roam Research alternatives have an average rating of more or less 4.5 which is great.

· Features: The features should be versatile. In fact, all of these Roam alternatives offer a great variety of features. You will find Graph View, multiple themes, innovative task reminders, flexible embedding options, and whatnot.

5 Best Roam Research Competitors

The following Roam Research competitors have all the ingredients that you would probably be looking for. They are all cheaper than the Roam and their ratings are also exceptional.

1. Notion – Best Roam Research Free Alternative for Personal Use

With the trust of famous brands like Loom and Figma, Notion is a powerful note-taking tool that makes it one of the best Roam Research competitors. It’s specifically designed to help members of your team coordinate goals, assignments, and deadlines with only a few security vulnerabilities.

Key Features:

1. Table Database Blocks help you avoid the hustle of going through multiple menus and memorizing shortcuts.

2. Its Web Clipper extension allows you to quickly save visual links to your pages.

3. Quickly create web pages with your notes and easily share information with any person on the web using its public pages.

Better than Roam:

1. A more template-like approach to note-taking that takes the burden of creative brainstorming off your shoulders, whereas Roam is better for exploration purposes.

2. Better collaboration through notes. You can confidently use its flexible sharing options to customize access permissions. Whereas, doing so on Roam makes it security-wise vulnerable.

3. For view flexibility, it offers Kanban boards whereas Roam doesn’t.

Room for Improvement:

1. When using the copy/paste function, formatting doesn’t work smoothly.

2. Setting up the Notion platform can be too messy for some users.

Pricing: A free plan. The personal Plan costs $4/month and the professional plan costs $8/month.

System Requirements:

Mac:

·The 8 GB free hard-drive space.

· All rest is usually ticked.

Windows:

· Support Windows 10 x 64.

·Need 1 GB RAM

· 8 GB free hard-drive space needs

Customers’ Rate: 4.6 rating at G2.

2. Obsidian

Originally a Markdown file reader, Obsidian allows users to write, edit and develop links among their notes. Its hallmark is its beautiful design and the graph view of bidirectional backlinks. With a mobile app that’s been appreciated widely, inline tags, and a second note window, Obsidian has become one of the most acknowledged Roam Research alternatives in the world.

Key Features:

1. Enjoy effective personalizing with its versatile features: 20+ core plugins, 120+ themes, and 600+ community plugins. That said, enjoy its all-around note-taking features like audio recording & date settings.

2. You can use it to store scanned handwritten notes and convert them into text through its OCR capabilities.

3. The Graph View feature makes it easy to visualize the linked notes and then organize them the way you like.

Better than Roam:

1. Obsidian brings both qualities– optimization and ideation with your notes- to the table. Whereas Roam offers exceptional help only with the creation and ideation.

2. File sharing and group meetings whereas Roam does not provide this option.

3. Obsidian restricts you to be more organized in your writing. It doesn’t allow your notes to be hierarchy-free. That keeps the order and direction intact. This way, your extensive workflows are not prone to unwanted complexity. Whereas the Roam notes are prone to be messy.

Room for Improvement:

1. Personalizing the Obsidian Vault might be a hard task.

2. The edit/preview function hasn’t been updated to an optimal level.

Pricing:

· It is Free for personal use. The catalyst version costs $25 for the one-time payment and the Professional version costs $50 per user per year.

System Requirements: The PC version is available for Windows, Mac, and all other popular OS. Windows 10 with 2 GB RAM and Mac with 8 GB of free space would suffice.

Customers’ Rate: 4.3 at Google Play.

3. Evernote

Evernote can be your dependable digital dumpster. It’s an all-powerful Roam Research alternative that allows you to collect and organize ideas & resources, take notes, edit them, and sync them across all your devices. What makes it preferable to Roam is its extensive sharing options and the ability to attach images and other non-conventional files to notes.

Key Features:

1. Record audio notes and link your notes the way you like.

2. Evernote automatically saves your notes-text, and search tags- that you can recover even offline. It also syncs your study notes across your devices.

3. Excellent organization of notes and useful templates like the Stress Manager, Interview Schedules, Habit Tracker, etc.

Better than Roam:

1. Recurring tasks and templates whereas Roam lacks here.

2. Evernote allows you to design your very own brand of workflows by letting you take more deliberate and elaborate notes. For people with little programming experience, it’s like a super-duper text editor that lands so much power in their hands. Whereas Roam’s design is essentially built to provide a collaborative platform.

3. Unlike Roam, Evernote is useful for large enterprises.

Room for Improvement:

1. Evernote offers only limited cloud storage of a maximum of 60MB.

2. Syncing is allowed between only two devices.

Pricing: A free version. The other three versions cost $8/month, $10/month, and $15/month respectively.

System Requirements: SaaS-based.

Customers’ Rate: 4.4 at G2.

4. AmpleNote

The to-do list feature of Amplenote makes it stand out against all the other Roam Research alternatives. Their forte is that they can be synced two-way to your SaaS calendars like Google calendar. Another pinnacle of Amplenote is its Footnotes. They allow you to quickly capture your thoughts the moment they click before they get lost in the endless valley of your mind.

Key Features:

1. Get client-side encryption for enhanced security through its Vault Notes feature. Their main benefit is that anyone even with full access to your database won’t be able to decrypt them. Their security review has also been great.

2. There’s a feature called “flexible recurrence.” Tasks become due only when the due time is passed after the last time you did it. This has become a handy alternative to the rigid and often unproductive calendar features.

3. AmpleNote allows you to view all your tasks in a unified manner. You can also hide and repeat tasks.

Better than Roam:

1. AmpleNote offers Optical Character Recognition. That means image-to-text note-making is available. Whereas, Roam doesn’t provide this option.

2. Fix your unproductive time allocation issue through its Task Context feature. Set a priority criterion when you create a task, and then depending on its duration, due date, etc., this feature keeps you updated on whether you should spend your time on this task or not. However, Roam lacks this feature.

3. Unlike Roam, it offers password-protected notes.

Room for Improvement:

1. They should allow tag merging/editing and notes merging. This feature can make it one of the best Roam alternatives.

2. When using chrome extensions to add text to the existing notes, it would be great if they provided more control over text formatting and placement…top or bottom, bold or not, surrounding text, etc.

Pricing: The Personal version is free. The other three versions cost $5.84/month, $10/month, and $20/month respectively.

System Requirements: It’s a SaaS-based tool.

Customers’ Rate: 4.8 at Producthunt.

5. RemNote

If you are looking for a Pro kind of Roam Research alternative, RemNote is for you. RemNote probably has no match in terms of utility for academics and students. Like Roam and Obsidian, it’s also a 3rd generation tool that offers everything from backlinks to nested hierarchies to unreferenced link promotion, and whatnot.

Key Features:

1. A very strong and compelling feature set among which many are available with the Free version.

2. The core idea of assisting with writing is so powerful that it has probably superseded all other AI writing assistants.

3. Quickly create flashcards while taking your notes. Use its trademark Spaced Repetition (SR) algorithm to review your flashcards.

Better than Roam:

1. RemNote offers an extremely useful in-depth interaction among community members. However, Roam lacks such quality.

2. For students, RemNote is preferable to all competitors let alone Roam. It makes learning your notes a breeze thanks to its exclusive flash cards feature.

3. It has a feature called Portals that allows you to embed documents from your knowledge database with your new document. This way, you can edit an already existing document without having to open it and stuff. However, Roam lacks such flexibility.

Room for Improvement:

· Themes are not available. Only color customization is available. Also, its UI/UX needs to be more user-friendly.

· The tools like MS Word, Google Docs, etc. cannot be embedded with them.

Pricing: There is a free basic plan. The Pro plan costs $6/month. And, the exclusive Life-Long Learning plan costs a one-time amount of $300.

System Requirements: SaaS tool, so no specific requirements.

Customers’ Rate: Its G2 rating is 4.4

Final Words:

There is no doubt that Roam Research is a handy tool. However, it’s too expensive for a common user. And some features you need that Ream Research cannot offer. That’s why the Roam Research alternatives especially Notion are getting appreciation worldwide. Even the free versions of its competitors like AmpleNote and Evernote are doing well with the users. So, it can be said that the Roam alternatives are proving to be equally useful but at a much lower price and with powerful features.

FAQS About Roam Research

1. Does Roam Research have a free version?

NO, it doesn’t. You have to pay at least $15/per month to get started with Roam Research. However, it does offer a free trial.

2. Is Roam Research better than Notion?

Basically, both have different primary uses. The Notion is better for sharing purposes. It allows everyone a chance to be creative and contribute to the team. Whereas, Roam Research suits those who need to brainstorm harder and make new connections.

3. Who owns Roam Research?

Conor White–Sullivan, a businessman from the USA, owns Roam Research. He is also the CEO of this company.

4. How do I start Roam Research?

It’s quite simple. Just use your email address to sign up at Roamresearch.com. Follow the guideline of the website and create a database. Name it, and start using it.