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Atom

Atom

Overview

What is Atom?

Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Atom is a versatile and widely-used text and code editor that offers numerous features and benefits to its users. It is favored by …
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Pricing

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What is Atom?

Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Sublime Text?

Sublime Text is a highly customizable text editing solution featuring advanced API, Goto functions, and other features, from Sublime HQ in Sydney.

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Product Details

Atom Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Atom is a free and open source text editor offering a range of packages and themes.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.6.

The most common users of Atom are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(89)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Atom is a versatile and widely-used text and code editor that offers numerous features and benefits to its users. It is favored by developers across various organizations and industries for a range of use cases. Users appreciate Atom's clean and simple user interface, making it easy to navigate and use without any issues. With support for multiple programming languages, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, C++, and more, Atom is suitable for diverse coding projects.

One key use case of Atom is as a powerful tool for web development. It enables developers to efficiently write code for websites using languages like PHP, CSS, JS, and HTML. Its features, such as syntax highlighting and autocompletion, make coding in these languages more efficient. Additionally, Atom's integration with Git provides version control capabilities, allowing teams to collaborate on website development projects seamlessly.

Another notable use case of Atom is its popularity among data scientists and analytics professionals. With support for programming languages like Python, R, and Unix, Atom serves as an effective code editor for editing multiple codes in analytics workflows. Its customizable nature allows users to tailor the editor to their specific needs, making it a valuable tool for data analytics and machine learning projects.

Furthermore, Atom is recommended by developers as an alternative to Visual Studio Code due to its relatively basic interface and extensive selection of plugins contributed by the community. This attributes to its widespread usage within organizations as a preferred IDE text editor.

Overall, Atom's versatility, ease of use, extensive plugin ecosystem, and compatibility with various programming languages make it a go-to choice for developers seeking a customizable and efficient coding environment.

Highly Customizable: Many users have praised Atom for its high level of customization. They appreciate the ability to tailor their coding environment to their preferences, with various themes and extensions available. This feature allows them to make their code easier to read and navigate, enhancing their overall coding experience.

Code Hinting Features: Several reviewers have been impressed with Atom's code hinting capabilities. This feature helps them write code faster and integrates well with services like LINT, allowing them to clean up their code according to their team's style choices. Users find this functionality particularly useful in speeding up their coding process.

Free Software: The fact that Atom is free has been seen as a major advantage by many users. They appreciate not having to invest in expensive software while still being able to access a robust coding environment. This affordability makes it accessible to a wide range of developers.

Limited API Requests: Some users have experienced the issue of receiving an error message stating "Error: Request failed with status code 429." Several reviewers have expressed frustration with this limitation, as it hinders their ability to make API requests effectively.

Performance Issues: A number of users have reported performance issues while using Atom. They have noticed sluggishness and lag in the software, particularly when dealing with larger files or projects. This has led to delays and inefficiencies in their workflow.

Lack of Intuitive UI/UX: Several reviewers have mentioned that they find the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of Atom to be less intuitive compared to other text editors. Users have struggled with finding certain features, customizing their workspace, and navigating through the application smoothly.

Users recommend using the self-hosted version of Atom instead of the cloud version and taking advantage of Atom's package manager. They suggest that Atom is suitable for both beginners and professionals, as well as for web development, Ruby on Rails development, and front-end development. Atom is also considered a lightweight and visually appealing text editor. Users often suggest it as an alternative to Sublime Text and for languages without a dedicated IDE. They encourage exploring the wide range of packages available in the Atom community and customizing Atom to personal preferences. Atom is frequently recommended for learning to code and simple web development projects. However, users caution that it may not be suitable for large projects and advise learning the keyboard shortcuts for improved efficiency. Additionally, they recommend using Atom on a PC with higher RAM capacity and exploring Atom's plugins for added functionality.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-7 of 7)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Atom is a powerful editor that is being used by development teams for coding in any given programming language. We were looking to unify the developer's experience and work on a single platform, as opposed to everyone having their own editor. Although it is not made mandatory, we had a pretty good and quick adoption of the product throughout the years. Atom is very customizable, which helps tremendously.
  • Lightweight, intuitive interface that is almost self-explanatory
  • Highly customizable (themes, plugins, language support)
  • Great community support with open-source extensions
  • Some stability issues such as intermittent crashes
  • Developers with advanced needs will not find equivalents to VS Studio
  • Managing plugins at the corporate level can be cumbersome
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Atom IDE is a very nice application having inbuilt CLI and it supports multiple extensions and programming languages. I and our coder are using Atom and VS Code mainly because these applications are easy to use and need very low system configurations.
  • Integrated CLI
  • Lightweight
  • Easy to user
  • Support extensions
  • Affects performance
  • Plugins issues
  • Support GIT
I have been using this product since my college days when I had a very low system configuration PC. It's a very good application but sometimes the mix plugins back-end gives unnecessary errors. All features like multiple programming language support, extensions, etc. are personally good. Sometimes we face performance effects when using for the last many hours.
Patrick Fong | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used to use Atom as our code editor of choice for our dynamically typed language. Atom comes with fantastic syntax highlighting and other plugins out of the box that make writing code a breeze. Whenever we have to write HTML, CSS, Javascript, or Python, we used to use Atom. Some engineers also use Atom with some extra plugins for quick text manipulation, such as when they need to format strips, strip out lots of whitespaces, or prefix an unnumbered list with numbers. We have since switched over to VSCode (more on that later), but I would say that Atom is still a good choice if you are already using it.
  • Cross platform support for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
  • Helpful community of people on the forums to ask for help.
  • Development on the Atom source code has greatly stalled since Microsoft purchased GitHub.
  • Many plugin developers moved their plugins onto VSCode and stopped maintaining their Atom version.
My recommendation depends on whether my colleague is already using Atom or not. If they are not using Atom, I sincerely find VSCode to be a slightly better editor with a much brighter future in terms of feature development, upcoming plugins, and support. So they should start with VSCode. However, if they are already using Atom, I see no reason to switch for the time being. Atom was a great editor for a long time, and though feature development has stalled, it continues to perform well. It will meet most people's needs when it comes to editing dynamically typed languages.
Jason Smith, DPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Atom to edit code on the Mac and Windows platform. As a technologist, I do recommend this editor to both faculty and students because it is free and open-source. It is a good text editor and code editor with lots of functionality. It is modern and seems rather stable. I think it will be around for quite a while.
  • Edit code in multiple windows.
  • Atom is available on many computing platforms.
  • Atom seems to be a bit aggressive with the "help" and "tip" system. You have to turn that stuff off or it is annoying.
  • On occasion, sometimes a package does not work, they need to pull those.
Atom is quick to install and get going across a variety of platforms. The open-source nature says that this editor will always be around. I would recommend this editor to someone new to editing code. There is a good help and tip system. I don't think that this editor would appeal to minimalists because it is way maximum on what you can do. Lots of features and lots of configuration that is possible.
Mark Nowowiejski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Atom is a free text editor that is outstanding for writing made forms of code. I currently use if for composing HTML, CSS, Javascript, and JSON for local testing prior to uploading code to an LMS or CMS.
  • 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!
  • The basic setting it comes with aren't very user-friendly, and if you're new to code editing you might struggle with getting it set-up in an effective way.
  • I sometimes have issues with Atom launching from Command line on a MAC(Hyper).
  • Dreamweaver users my dislike the lack of a 'design view' but there workarounds.
I think Atom is pretty standard to most serious coders as it's lightweight, fast, and free. Some people prefer VS Studio which is a very similar product.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My team uses it to develop and maintain our websites using HTML, JavaScript and Django, a python based framework. It is also used as a general purpose text editor. It's light weight too. It also gave us functions comparable to that of a IDE without all the memory usage. It's open source and easily customizable. We also found it to have one of the best GIT integrations among its competitors.
  • Opensource : While Sublime is a good editor which is comparable to Atom, it's not opensource. Atom is opensource. Which makes it easier to tailor it to suit your needs.
  • Autocomplete: Atom automatically variable names, functions and constructs, it also closes the brackets as soon as you open one. Which helps me avoid syntax errors.
  • Simplicity : It maintains simplicity without sacrificing important features.
  • GIT Integration : Considering that it's built by GitHub, it's no surprise that Atom has a very good GIT integration.
  • Startup is a bit slow. Memory management can be improved.
  • Support for syntax highlighting for some languages are missing.
  • Some plugins randomly crash and Atom stops responding. Uninstalling the plugin that crashed usually solves this.
  • Search engine does not work as you would expect it to work.
It is well suited for new programmers who are looking for a free editor to start coding. It also supports most major languages out there. You can use the same software to develop a program in Java, python and many other languages. It is also cross-platform. It is a bare-bones code editor that you can build up to your liking using the available plugins to extend the functionalities.
Dhruba Jyoti Nag | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Atom is mostly used by developers across my current organizations. It is a highly customizable editor with many new developer-friendly features. It can also be custom built to suit individual needs. These customizations have quickly made it a favorite with many developers using Atom. In otherways, Atom brings the best of Sublime Text and Notepad++ together.
  • Customizations
  • Active community for package support
  • Rich user interface
  • Performance: it's resource hungry
  • Stability across OS
  • Issue loading and manipulating big files
Atom is extensible, it has an active package community and integrated package manager. It is ideal for editing in different programming languages. There is also a fair amount of community support for the different issues one may face. But it is slow compared to other light text editors and cannot handle really large files like a database dump well.
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