Scrivener Reviews

Summary: Scrivener is a great writing or editing utility. It works especially great for Apple devices featuring Sync between devices and latest features. It provides a distraction free full screen writing experience and is loaded with features to provide a comprehensive writing experience.

Positive: Great interface
Writing, Editing and lots of other uses
Comparison tool
Distraction free writing
Export to multiple formats
Single license for multiple installs

Negative: No updates for Windows version.
No feature for collaboration.

Summary: If you're a writer and like to outline complex stories, this is an excellent tool to managing your projects. If you work within the software or use it as a tool for elsewhere, it will provide whatever you need to help bring to life your story.

Positive: The low one-time fee is a great model in a world where everything is subscription. The many panels and options the software offers allows for sorting and organization of incredibly deep world and plot management easily.

Negative: Very tricky interface to get used to. It is still a text editor at heart with robust features but not much more.

Summary: This gets passed around as one of the "writer" programs to have every October and November. It's overrated, rarely updated, and support is abysmal. I'd recommend something like Evernote or a text editor with hierarchal project organization instead, or even just plain old Word over this. At the very least, you won't risk having to buy this software twice with the other options out there, and that's reason enough to avoid this.

Positive: You can organize your thoughts for story writing and the text processor is alright. There's also the infamous corkboard view that so many people love, though I'm personally meh about. Still, it gives you some variety in how you view things, and I'm never against that even if I personally don't like how it looks.

Negative: This is probably one of the most overrated writing software out there. All "writer" focused software is overrated, and typically overpriced. What Scrivener can do, you can do absolutely for free much easier in Evernote or any other program like that. I've actually found Notepad++ to be much better at organizing writing and notes than all of the more polished, newer programs out there. It rarely gets support, especially for the PC users. Mac is clearly prioritized. I've also known people, thanks to how they verify your license is active (which apparently needs to be done every time you use it even though it's a one time purchase!) lose access because they changed servers, resulting in them having to rebuy the exact same product again. Updates are few and far between, and discounts are promised on products that don't exist yet.