Ant Text vs Espanso

Ant Text provides reusable Outlook templates for writing emails faster and keeping communications consistent. Templates can include text, subject titles, banners, pictures, tables, hyperlinks, and attachments. Ant Text 365 lets teams share approved templates and manage automated email workflows with Power Automate. Ant XL sends personalized bulk emails, with listed versions that include or omit a watermark. The product family also includes Ant Snippets, which expands saved text, links, replies, and AI prompts across apps when a user types a command and presses Space. Snippets are stored on the user's PC or Mac, and expansion does not require cloud storage. Ant Text supports Outlook Classic and Microsoft 365, including Outlook on PC and Mac and Outlook Web App. Ant Text Classic has a 14-day trial, while Ant Text 365 has a 30-day trial; a subscription is needed afterward. Ant Text 365 costs $14.99 a month per user, and Ant Text Classic costs $14.99 a month per machine. Ant Snippets has Free and Basic plans, each with limits on groups, snippets, and characters.

Espanso detects configured keywords as they are typed and replaces them with saved text. It supports reusable templates for customer support replies, sales pitches, and medical reports, while a search bar opened with Alt+Space helps users find and insert snippets. Snippets can also insert dates, including past and future dates, or emoji shortcuts. They may run shell commands or custom scripts, and forms can pass values to scripts. Users can install or build reusable packages through Espanso Hub, which includes a package manager and store. Espanso says it works with most applications and supports app-specific configurations. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and costs nothing under the GPL-3 open-source license. Configuration is handled through YAML files; a graphical interface is described as planned for the future. Users can sync configuration through cloud storage such as Dropbox or Google Drive, or through GitHub, although the unmanaged-directory method is experimental. The software ships with very few built-in matches, and some trigger types remain unsupported.