Briskine vs Espanso

Briskine is a text expansion tool for making and inserting reusable templates on websites and in web apps. Templates can use dynamic and custom variables, rich formatting, images, and links; they can also fill Subject, To, CC, and BCC email fields. The editor works with Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and Opera, while mobile browsers on Android and iOS are also supported. Templates can be shared and synced with a team, and insertion works on almost any website or web app. The free plan is for one person and includes 30 templates. Premium includes unlimited templates and team members. The listed starting price is $7/user/mo. Plans can be upgraded, downgraded, or canceled at any time, and yearly billing provides two months free. Creating a free account does not require a credit card. Briskine provides email support and lists discounts for teams of 30 or more, nonprofits, and educational institutions. The site identifies the company as Briskine SRL.

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.