81 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 81 reviews and ratings
26 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.4 out of 100
Based on 26 reviews and ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Atom is rated higher in 2 areas: Usability, Support Rating
- Vim is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
Likelihood to Recommend
9.6
Atom
96%
30 Ratings
9.7
Vim
97%
8 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
Atom
100%
1 Rating
Vim
N/A
0 Ratings
Usability
9.0
Atom
90%
2 Ratings
8.0
Vim
80%
1 Rating
Support Rating
8.4
Atom
84%
24 Ratings
6.4
Vim
64%
9 Ratings
Implementation Rating
10.0
Atom
100%
2 Ratings
Vim
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 employeesVim
I would recommend Vim in any scenario where text files have to be viewed, created, or edited on GNU/Linux computers. Regardless if you need to quickly change a few things in a configuration file, or you need to write up a full document, Vim is great.I wouldn't use Vim to view, edit, or create anything that requires "rich-text". In other words, if you need to format the text (bolding, font colours, word-art, etc), then Vim isn't the tool to use.

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 201-500 employeesPros
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
Vim
- The efficient modal editing makes it very fast to write/edit code as I think of it.
- The customization and wide range of plugins let me do very specific things and automate parts of my workflow.
- The fact that it runs inside a terminal simplifies my window management and just becomes another Tmux window in my workflow.

Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology
Automotive Company, 10,001+ employeesCons
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
Vim
- Without a doubt the hardest program to learn. It is a completely different paradigm of thinking compared to other editors
- By default it doesn't have lots of fancy features you would find in larger IDE programs like code completion and linking
- It lives in the command line so a user has to be comfortable with this interface

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employeesPricing Details
Atom
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—Vim
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
Vim
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+ employeesVim
Vim 8.0
Based on 1 answer
I don't consider the steep learning curve to be a hinderance on the overall usability. I would rate this a ten, but to be honest a lot of people do get hung up at the beginning and just abandon it. However, for people who have made the moderate effort to get over the hump, nothing can be more usable.

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employeesSupport 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
Vim
Vim 6.4
Based on 9 answers
There is no commercial support for Vim. Thus, it will not get a mark beyond 5. However, community support is very good. You can easily find solutions for most of the problems in the community.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Research Company, 501-1000 employeesImplementation Rating
Atom
Atom 10.0
Based on 2 answers
Just download and install
Instructional Technologist
Pomona CollegeHigher Education, 201-500 employees
Vim
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
Vim
Vim's keybindings are a lot more complex than Notepad++. With that, comes a whole bunch of capability that Notepad++ just can't match. Emacs is comparable, in terms of capabilities--because Vim is built into so many unix systems, I chose to learn it instead of Emacs. Knowing both probably isn't a bad idea, but there's enough to learn in either camp to keep you busy
Director of Development - Data Services
Millikin UniversityHigher Education, 201-500 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
Vim
- It always increases productivity.
- Sometimes feature discovery is not easy. It could be documented well like how to install a plugin and if it supported well or not.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 1001-5000 employees