Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Atom
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.N/A
BlueFish Editor
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
BlueFish is a free and open source text editor supporting a wide range of languages, multiple document interface, search tools, in-line checking and auto-recovery, and other features.
$0
NetBeans
Score 7.1 out of 10
N/A
NetBeans is a free and open source platform and integrated development environment (IDE).N/A
Pricing
AtomBlueFish EditorNetBeans
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AtomBlueFish EditorNetBeans
Free Trial
NoNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AtomBlueFish EditorNetBeans
Considered Multiple Products
Atom
Chose Atom
NetBeans was a big application in terms of size, so it usually takes more time when starting development.
Chose Atom
Atom is not as great for Android development as Android Studio, as great for iOS development as Xcode, C# for Visual Studio, or even Java with Eclipse. Atom is less-preferred for any of those platforms for me. However, it is my preferred IDE for just about every other …
Chose Atom
I like Atom because it is simple and not too complicated. Configurable, full-featured, yet remains nimble. You can not beat the cost of Open Source, so this leaves software like BBEdit out in the cold. Atom is not as hardcore as Vim or Emacs. Less complicated than full IDEs …
Chose Atom
Atom is simpler to install and maintain, does not generate unwanted files, does not add folders or other hidden objects to your project.
BlueFish Editor
Chose BlueFish Editor
BBEdit is fantastic but it costs money. Frankly, BBEdit is not worth paying for. All you are doing is paying old software and I have a problem asking people to do that. Also, BBEdit is limited to the small Mac Universe. Likewise, Notepadd++ is only found on Windows but I much …
NetBeans
Chose NetBeans
IntelliJ IDEA is more feature-rich and has professional support available, but comes with increased licensing costs.
Eclipse is widely used, and some of our developers still prefer Eclipse over NetBeans. However, developers spend more time working around IDE bugs when using Eclip…
Chose NetBeans
Formatting becomes easy. File navigation becomes easy. Can compile code in IDE itself.
Chose NetBeans
All above mentioned is good for web development and Netbeans is an IDE which can do a lot more than normal text editors. File navigation is also easy in Netbeans.
Best Alternatives
AtomBlueFish EditorNetBeans
Small Businesses
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 10.0 out of 10
BBEdit
BBEdit
Score 10.0 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Vim
Vim
Score 9.5 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.5 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Vim
Vim
Score 9.5 out of 10
Vim
Vim
Score 9.5 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AtomBlueFish EditorNetBeans
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(31 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
7.8
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(13 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.5
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AtomBlueFish EditorNetBeans
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
Atom is great for simple HTML coding. It's fast, has intuitive shortcuts and several options. I particularly love the "convert spaces to tabs" function that I haven't seen in other editors.
I'm not sure how it would fair in more serious web development today, if there are plugins for live updates of the page you are working on...
But the problem is that it has been discontinued so you know there are no new features or fixes coming through.
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Open Source
BlueFish is a good basic HTML and text editor that is easy for all to use. If I need someone to grab a friendly editor, then BlueFish is the way to go. If you need an editor to fix a bunch of pages then this editor has a lot of functions that are not found it other editors. Stuff like HTML Tidy or functions that strip extra lines out.
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Open Source
NetBeans is extremely user friendly and easy to start developing complex applications. Adding and configuring external libraries is much simpler than in Eclipse. It is highly cost effective and most of the latest framework based libraries required are automatically downloaded to the projects. The overall tool is also light weight and consumes less memory as compared to other competitor tools.
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Pros
Open Source
  • 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!
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Open Source
  • Easily found and downloaded. If I need someone to go to the web and grab it I can tell them the URL. It is easily installed and one can be edited in minutes.
  • BlueFish is easy to use. It can have a non-technical user use it to edit config files or text documents and not have them frustrated. It has a friendly straight forward user interface.
  • BlueFish does a really good job editing HTML documents specifically. Probably one of the best HTML editors left out there.
Read full review
Open Source
  • Debugging - Save time hunting down errors by stepping through the code to find the root of a problem.
  • Refactoring - Easily rename classes and variables or make other structural changes using built-in refactoring tools.
  • Service management - NetBeans integrates seamlessly with web application servers like Tomcat and GlassFish.
  • Source control - Works well with Git and other version control tools.
Read full review
Cons
Open Source
  • 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
Read full review
Open Source
  • There are WYSIWYG Open alternatives, some of which work perfectly as an Open version of Dreamweaver, but the only suggestion I would have is that Bluefish add a WYSIWYG tab, e.g. code/visual.
Read full review
Open Source
  • NetBeans [should] work smoothly with systems having less RAM. Systems with less RAM face trouble with NetBeans.
  • File open history also requires improvement. Once NetBeans is restarted, all files are closed automatically and there is no shortcut to open last opened files.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
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
Read full review
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Usability
Open Source
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.
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Open Source
Netbeans enhances my coding work, shows me where I have errors and helps find variable instances. I would be lost without find/replace in projects functionality as I use projects as templates for new projects. Occasionally the code hints aggravate me, but I understand that it is actually making me a better coder, working to get the 'green light' of a clean file with no errors or clumsy code.
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Support Rating
Open Source
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.
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Open Source
As with most GNU GPL products support is top-notch. Documentation is fantastic, all functions are documented. Also, this product has been around for more than a decade so there is lots of stuff on how to do this or that with this tool. The only thing holding you back from support is your own drive to find a solution. RTFM, my friend.
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Open Source
NetBeans has a very strong user community. We can find solutions here for almost all the problems we face. In addition, we can forward NetBeans Support teams the problems we cannot solve. We can get quick feedback from the support teams, but I generally try to solve my problems by following the forums.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
Just download and install
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Open Source
No answers on this topic
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Open Source
Our company likes to keep things open, and we don't want to prevent developers from customizing their environment the way they want. Atom seemed to be a lot more open than our existing tools and has good community support on pretty much any programming language. This can create some confusion since adding too many extensions or customizing can make the tool slower than it is supposed to be.
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Open Source
Compare it to what I'd call its WYSIWYG editor, BlueGriffon. Again, the two are fundamentally different solutions. Use them together. Don't waste your money on Adobe or any other proprietary alternative.
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Open Source
It works very smoothly as compared to other tools . The problem of restarting and reimporting the projects is not in the netbeans IDE . The front end development features are good . Netbeans connector is one of the best thing which enables us to deeply integrate netbeans IDE with google chrome browser
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • 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).
Read full review
Open Source
  • How can you go wrong with a GNU GPL product that works? That's a really low-risk proposition.
  • It is only returns. It is like 0% investment to 5,000% return.
  • The only negative you will have with this product are those Cretans that despise OSS and the willfully ignorant.
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Open Source
  • By working on Netbeans I just learned one more tool and can teach others about it. One should learn every tool so that it might help someday if another editor is not available and you have to use different software for your work.
  • Compiling code became easy as it is not a feature of normal text editors. Only IDE can do this.
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ScreenShots