Atom vs. IntelliJ IDEA

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Atom
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.N/A
IntelliJ IDEA
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
IntelliJ IDEA is an IDE that aims to give Java and Kotlin developers everything they need out of the box, including a smart code editor, built-in developer tools, framework support, database support, web development support, and much more.
$16.90
per month
Pricing
AtomIntelliJ IDEA
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
For Individual Use
$16.90
per month
All Products Pack (For Individual Use)
$28.90
per month
For Organizations
$59.90
per month
All Products Pack (For Organizations)
$77.90
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AtomIntelliJ IDEA
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsYearly subscriptions: For Individual Use – $169 /1st year, $ 135 /2nd year and $ 101 /3d year onwards For Organizations – $599 /1st year, $479 /2nd year and $ 359 /3rd year onwards All Products Pack (For Individual Use) – $289 /1st year, $ 231 /2nd year and $ 173 /3d year onwards All Products Pack (For Organizations) – $799 /1st year, $623 /2nd year and $ 467 /3rd year onwards
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AtomIntelliJ IDEA
Considered Both Products
Atom

No answer on this topic

IntelliJ IDEA
Chose IntelliJ IDEA
IntelliJ has the richest and most complete set of features out of all the IDEs I've tried. There is the most compatibility across different languages and caters to different compilation strategies. The updates come very regularly, so we know that the product is constantly …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
AtomIntelliJ IDEA
Small Businesses
BBEdit
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Score 8.2 out of 10
PyCharm
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Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Vim
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Score 9.7 out of 10
PyCharm
PyCharm
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Vim
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Score 9.7 out of 10
PyCharm
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
AtomIntelliJ IDEA
Likelihood to Recommend
7.2
(31 ratings)
8.4
(55 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
5.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(2 ratings)
9.1
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(13 ratings)
8.9
(15 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
AtomIntelliJ IDEA
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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JetBrains
For a modern software project, where you want to store everything as code, from the backend to the frontend, to the DB patch scripts, to the documents, API specs, diagrams, infrastructure-as-code, etc. IntelliJ is basically your one-stop. In the same IDE, you can write code, write a spec, draw diagrams, make changes to patch scripts, infrastructure definition.
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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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JetBrains
  • Unit testing: Fully integrated into IntelliJ IDEA. Your unit tests will run smoothly and efficiently, with excellent debugging tools for when things get tricky.
  • Spring integration: Our Spring project using Maven works flawlessly in IntelliJ IDEA. I know firsthand that Apache is also easily and readily supported too. The integration is seamless and very easy to set up using IntelliJ IDEA's set up wizard when importing new projects.
  • Customization: IntelliJ IDEA comes out of the box with a bunch of handy shortcuts, as well as text prediction, syntax error detection, and other tools to help keep your code clean. But even better is that it allows for total customization of shortcuts you can easily create to suit your needs.
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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
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JetBrains
  • IntelliJ IDEA wins as long as the language is Java. Outside that , e.g., in other languages, it is not so advanced.
  • It is licensed, with a steep licensing cost. All features are not included in the free edition.
  • It is not as light as Eclipse, so in a weak system, it can be a pain.
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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
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JetBrains
VS Code is maturing and has a Scala plugin now. The overall experience with VS Code - for web development at least - is very snappy/fast. IntelliJ feels a bit sluggish in comparison. If that Scala plugin for VS Code is deemed mature enough - we may not bother renewing and resort to the Community Edition if we need it.
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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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JetBrains
The user interface for IntelliJ Idea is phenomenal. It's got the usual JetBrains interface but it works well to support all Java processes. All in all, it is a solid product and to be expected from JetBrains who creates this integrated development environment software. It allows me to test in the IDE and run other manual workflows automatically such as install packages.
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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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JetBrains
Customer support is really good in the case of IntelliJ. If you are paying for this product then, the company makes sure that you will get all the services adequately. Regular update patches are provided to improve the IDE. An online bug report makes it easier for the developers to find the solution as fast as possible. The large online community also helps to find the various solutions to the issues.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
Just download and install
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JetBrains
This installs just like any other application - its pretty straight forward. Perhaps licensing could be more challenging - but if you use the cloud licensing they offer its as simple as having engineers login to the application and it just works.
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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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JetBrains
Microsoft Visual Studio Code (VS) requires a lot of textual configuration, where IntelliJ IDEA provides a graphical interface with configuration options displayed. This matters a lot to me as I don't want to hunt around the internet to remember how to set different parameters that I don't use very often. This may be the biggest reason I don't use VS. Eclipse was great for when I was in college, but the power offered by IDEA is so much better that I haven't actually looked back since.
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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).
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JetBrains
  • IntelliJ wasn't provided as complimentary, but the pricing was reasonable. We're healthcare organization of which our applications used to be mission critical and affect to patient safety, we were willing to pay the price.
  • With the pricing, business support was good and well conducted during the project.
  • Overall it was cost-effective as it saved our developers' time in general. (We don't have quantitative measure but we got feedback from them)
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ScreenShots

IntelliJ IDEA Screenshots

Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA interface overview: the Project tool window (left) outlines the code structure and the Editor (right) is used to read, write, and explore the source code.Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA analyzing the context. It then suggests the most applicable and relevant code.Screenshot of the Search Everywhere window, where users can search for files, actions, classes, symbols, settings, UI elements, and anything in Git, all from a single entry point.Screenshot of inspections to help find probable bugs and dead code, detect performance issues, and improve the overall code structure by providing quick-fixes for any code that contains potential concerns.Screenshot of IntelliJ IDEA's support for frameworks with dedicated assistance for Jakarta EE, JPA, Reactor, Spring and Spring Boot, and other popular frameworks.Screenshot of the AI Assistant that provides AI-powered features for software development. It can explain code, answer questions about code fragments, provide code suggestions, generate documentation, and commit messages.