Campfire vs Zettlr

Campfire brings together writing software, a mobile writing app, an online eBook store and a reading app for authors, publishers and readers. Its Manuscript Module supports drafting, chapter organization on a digital corkboard, Index Card View, word-count goals and writing statistics. Worldbuilding tools include modules for characters, cultures, items, locations, philosophies, religions, species, systems, an encyclopedia, magic, maps, research, timelines, arcs, calendars, languages and relationships. Users can invite as many collaborators as they want to view, comment on or edit a project. Campfire states that storage is unlimited across its apps, and manuscripts can be exported as PDF or EPUB. The free desktop app for Mac and Windows supports offline writing. The iOS and Android mobile app requires internet access and omits some modules; free-plan element limits apply in browser and desktop access. Campfire says it backs up work with Amazon servers and keeps projects limited to invited people until sharing or publication. Authors can publish eBooks and digital bonus content and connect Stripe for royalties and sales analytics.

Zettlr is a writing workbench for projects that can run from early notes through journal submissions and book manuscripts. It began as a Markdown editor for academic researchers and is also used by students, journalists, authors, and others writing substantial amounts. The app works offline on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and files stay on the user's computer. It supports standard Markdown and exports to formats supported by Pandoc. Citation manager support includes Zotero, JabRef, and Juris-M, with more than 9,000 citation styles. Note features include IDs, wiki-style internal links, related files, navigation, and graph view. Pandoc-powered profiles can apply templates to papers or prepare presentations for Beamer, reveal.js, or PowerPoint. Zettlr also renders LaTeX equations and Mermaid charts and supports extensive settings and custom CSS. It is free and open source, with no payment required to download. The maker says app data is not collected and update checks can be disabled. Older releases are unsupported; nightly releases may contain many bugs.