Compare HackMD vs. Notion vs. Obsidian

Rapid real-time collaboration eliminates barriers between team members, ensuring that everyone stays informed through timely change notifications. The collaborative workspace provides a comprehensive overview of all team documents, while shared templates maintain uniformity in formatting and styling. With detailed permissions for notes and secure private image storage, you have complete authority over sharing options. Whether it’s a technical document, UML diagram, mathematical formula, data visualization, or even a slide presentation, everything is easily transferable. Documentation can be managed using the Git workflow, allowing for decentralized editing and storage, while final documents remain centralized. Access your notes effortlessly with a hotkey-activated browser extension, and export them to HackMD in VSCode with just one click. Enjoy version control of your documents using your preferred GitHub workflow, and capture your ideas seamlessly without losing your focus, thanks to the convenient hotkey feature. This seamless integration promotes a productive environment for all team members involved.

Notion is a comprehensive all-in-one workspace that empowers teams to write, plan, collaborate, and organize everything in one place. The platform offers a wide range of tools to create documents, manage tasks, and build detailed project roadmaps, allowing teams to work smarter, not harder. Notion's AI-powered features assist with summarizing lengthy documents, drafting content, and providing quick answers to questions related to ongoing projects. The platform's high degree of customization gives users the flexibility to set up workflows, build templates, and tailor the workspace to their needs, making it ideal for teams of any size. Whether it's managing a project timeline, tracking goals, or maintaining a shared knowledge base, Notion provides a flexible and powerful solution for improving collaboration, communication, and overall team productivity.

Obsidian serves as a robust knowledge management tool that operates using a directory of plain text Markdown files stored locally. Much like the way our minds shift from one concept to another, your second brain should mimic this non-linear pattern. In Obsidian, the process of creating and navigating "connections" between notes is seamless and intuitive. Cultivate your notes with care, and at the end of your day, take a moment to appreciate the intricate web of knowledge you've created. Personalization in note-taking is key, and if you've experimented with various applications but always felt something was amiss, Obsidian offers a refreshing alternative. Designed to be highly customizable, it features 22 essential plugins and 149 additional community-created plugins, allowing you to tailor your toolkit and get started in just a few minutes. Furthermore, when Obsidian reaches version 1.0, you'll have the option to integrate third-party plugins or even create your own, opening up endless possibilities. In today's landscape, where cloud services are vulnerable to sudden changes or shutdowns, relying on proprietary formats and facing potential data lock-in is the last thing you need. With Obsidian, your information remains securely within a local folder, giving you peace of mind and complete control over your data. This ensures that your knowledge remains accessible and safe, no matter what the future holds.