Write.as vs Zettlr

Write.as is a publishing service for blogs and posts, with Markdown and Rich Text editing. It automatically saves work in the browser as users write. Readers can access posts in browsers, by email or RSS, on e-readers and through Mastodon; publishing and reader experiences are ad-free. The Free plan includes one personal blog and three posts per day, but is listed as closed for now. Pro supports up to three blogs on Write.as or a user's own domain; annual billing is $6 a month and monthly billing is $9 a month. Team supports collaborative editing, roles and up to five team members, at $25 a month billed yearly or $30 a month billed monthly. Other listed capabilities include scheduling, memberships, blog analytics, custom-code themes, APIs and command-line publishing. Users can export work or self-host with WriteFreely. The service says it does not track users or gather excessive data, but does not state encryption details or security certifications. Write.as has been founder-owned and operated in New York City since 2015.

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.