79 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9 out of 100
Based on 79 reviews and ratings
11 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.5 out of 100
Based on 11 reviews and ratings
Attribute Ratings
- BBEdit is rated higher in 1 area: Support Rating
- Atom and BBEdit are tied in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
Atom
95%
30 Ratings
9.5
BBEdit
95%
7 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
Atom
100%
1 Rating
BBEdit
N/A
0 Ratings
Usability
9.0
Atom
90%
2 Ratings
BBEdit
N/A
0 Ratings
Support Rating
8.4
Atom
84%
24 Ratings
9.7
BBEdit
97%
14 Ratings
Implementation Rating
10.0
Atom
100%
2 Ratings
BBEdit
N/A
0 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Atom
Atom is great for developers looking for a completely hackable experience. There is a ton of plugins available to you, and you can really build an editor that matches your own personal taste. The performance is also pretty neat and does not impact your CPU as much as the competition.

Verified User
Team Lead in Professional Services
Information Technology and Services Company, 11-50 employeesBBEdit
I'm primarily a graphic designer who does occasional web development. For me, BBEdit works very well. I use it both for developer projects (editing code, editing system files) and for general text processing (cleaning up, formatting, or extracting text). I like that it offers real-time previews of edits to web project files. It comes with some nice editor themes and supports adding more or customizing them. I expect that for some coders, it will be inadequate. It is not an IDE. On the other end of the spectrum, someone who expects an experience more like Microsoft Word will be very disappointed; or if they wanted something more along the lines of Windows Notepad, they may find it to be overkill. It is an ASCII text editor with many advanced commands and tools built-in.
Creative Director
It Is Written, Inc.Religious Institutions, 11-50 employees
Pros
Atom
- Atom is highly customizable and allows for various themes and extensions that can make your code easier to read.
- Atom has many code hinting features that allow users to write faster and integrate with services likeLINT that can clean up your code once your done to meet your internal teams style choices.
- It's very fast and manages projects well - Accessing other files within a related folder(s) is very easy and intuitive.
- It's free!
Sr. Instructional Designer
Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and QualityEducation Management, 10,001+ employees
BBEdit
- BBEdit remembers what I had open, so I never have to worry about losing work when I accidentally close the software. It will hold onto information almost indefinitely, so that the next time I open a program, I can access the information that I may have forgotten to save. Thankfully, its save function is also very simple to use, so I recommend still saving your work as needed.
- Scripts are the most important aspect of BBEdit for the company I work for. Being able to import scripts and create new ones all in the same location are great.
Senior Publications Specialist
Learfield IMG CollegeMarketing & Advertising, 1001-5000 employees
Cons
Atom
- There should be a better user tips manual page to learn keyboard shortcuts
- It would also be beneficial if mathematical and data analytic tools were added
- it has quite high start-up timing when you open large projects to work on it
- Sometimes, atom closed suddenly and do not open again
- It still lacks better options with the previews even though there are already some by users adding plugins
- It doesn't have self-correct features for lint errors, unlike IntelliJ
Software Engineer
Kognoz ConsultingE-Learning, 11-50 employees
BBEdit
- The cost of this product has just become too much for the functionality that most people need. You can find free or $10 tools that do what most people need to do.
- The BBEdit program has lots of functionality, but could it be too much? Are there too many options?
- It seems that there are too many upgrades.
Instructional Technologist
Pomona CollegeHigher Education, 201-500 employees
Pricing Details
Atom
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—BBEdit
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Likelihood to Renew
Atom
Atom 10.0
Based on 1 answer
Well Atom is open source so the re-new is a no brainer. The only way I would stop using Atom is if the developers somehow made it not function well. Or, if the project got forked to a commercial version or something. Or, there could be the case that development stops or that it was not updated on this or that platform
Instructional Technologist
Pomona CollegeHigher Education, 201-500 employees
BBEdit
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Usability
Atom
Atom 9.0
Based on 2 answers
I give Atom a 9 because it is one of the most modern text editors built with JavaScript intentionally to allow the editor to be changed and modified with custom functionality that a team may need. I think I would otherwise give atom an 8 due to support, but it gets a 9/10 because of the extensibility/plugin capability.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employeesBBEdit
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Atom
Atom 8.4
Based on 24 answers
Atom has an active forum and a Slack group where you can ask technical questions. Occasionally, the authors will pop in to answer a few questions here and there, but most of the time, its other helpful users who will assist you. Though they aren't the most knowledgeable, they are at least timely.
As for plugin support, that differs with each plugin, but as I mentioned before, many plugins are no longer maintained.
Senior Software Engineer
IterableInternet, 201-500 employees
BBEdit
BBEdit 9.7
Based on 14 answers
I've been using BBEdit — no joke — for nearly three decades now. Believe it or not, I'm still getting "upgrade pricing" 13 versions later. Bare Bones' support has always been stellar, and pricing continues to be affordable compared to similar tools.
Senior Digital Strategist
LullabotInternet, 51-200 employees
Implementation Rating
Atom
Atom 10.0
Based on 2 answers
Just download and install
Instructional Technologist
Pomona CollegeHigher Education, 201-500 employees
BBEdit
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Atom
They are both pretty good; however, Sublime is free to use but on a trial basis. Atom is free open source. Sublime doesn't have the Github integration or a project file browser. Sublime does have a workspace view option but haven't really used it as much as Atom.
Information Designer
The Pixel ZooOnline Media, 1-10 employees
BBEdit
BBEdit wins over TextEdit every time. They are as different as chalk and cheese. I am so glad we moved to BBEdit.
Founder
The World of Empowerment OrganizationPublishing, 1-10 employees
Return on Investment
Atom
- The tool we use when we need quick fixes. Allows fast, reliable scripting to fix urgent problems in our applications.
- When applications grow from 5-10 files to 100's, they need to be migrated to a heavier-duty IDE. This can be cumbersome and quite annoying, but is necessary to maintain code integrity on such a large scale (since it cannot be done with the limited default toolset of Atom).
DevOps Engineer
CBREReal Estate, 10,001+ employees
BBEdit
- It saves me time, not only with web projects, but even with design, when I want to strip out formatting in text, I bring it in to BBEdit to clean it up.
Owner, Graphic and Web Designer
617 Graphic DesignDesign, 1-10 employees