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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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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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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

(1-25 of 31)
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January 02, 2024

Joyful coding

Flavio Mauri | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Lightweight
  • Beautiful themes
  • Plugins
  • Customisable
  • Easily integrates with version control
  • remember window configuration (reopens always the same panels despite closing them)
  • remember code preferences (I use word wrap and i have to switch it on every document)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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
Deepshi Sharma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Adding packages in preferable language
  • Formatting of code making it easy to read for all users
  • Support for GitHub and plugins and plugin development
  • It is able to handle large amounts of data without slowing down
  • 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
David McCann | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Atom has an amazing plugin library that is easy to use and integrates seamlessly.
  • Specifically, Atom's multi-cursor plug-in functionality provides a powerful method for manipulating text in bulk.
  • Atom provides good syntax highlighting and other interactive support for a number of programming languages through its available plug-ins.
  • Some of Atom's default UX could be improved. Depending on your previous workspace, it can open with two panes and a welcome tab in each, requiring you to close lots of cruft on startup.
  • Atom's documentation and plugin marketplace could be a little more discoverable.
Jonah Dempcy | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Git integration
  • Plugin ecosystem
  • C++ development
  • Sometimes things do not work as expected. Atom has improved a lot over the last couple of years, but it still could use some polish.
  • Atom needs plugins for quality-of-life improvements. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows you to customize Atom to suit your needs.
  • It would be nice if Atom had some recommended starter packages that come with popular plugins for highlighting, soft-wrapping and so on.
  • There are some plugins that could be turned into core Atom features, like Linter and Beautify.
Patrick Fong | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
January 30, 2020

Used Atom about 1 year

Suleman Ahmad | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Built-in package manager.
  • Smart auto completion feature was great.
  • Due to some default settings, when I opened the file in Atom and commit it on Git it shows almost every line is changed so my PR is looking too big/ugly.
  • I think omitting the empty spaces should not be the default setting.
  • Performance needs some attention.
Jason Smith, DPA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Color Coding for ease of organization.
  • Excellent customization - visually and functionally.
  • Integrated SASS compilers (or similar) would be a great asset.
  • The ability to create "draft" or backups of files would be a nice feature.
Mark Nowowiejski | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Usability: Atom is very user-friendly. Its interface is clean and the entire application is incredibly simple to navigate even for users new to editors
  • Cross-Platform Experience: No matter your system, Atom works the same which makes providing demos and examples pretty seamless
  • Community Driven Plugin Development: Because the community is able to contribute plugins, Atom is extremely useful regardless of what you are trying to do. Working on the Go? There's a plugin for that. Working with infrastructure as code using Terraform? Plugin for that. Editing chef code? There's also a plugin for that.
  • Memory Hog: Using Atom, Slack, and Chrome on a laptop that isn't completely specked out is a recipe for disaster. Try opening Spotify, I dare you.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Steven Puringi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Real-time code previewing.
  • Word selection highlights.
  • Shorthand coding.
  • In terms of processing, if too many packages installed it tends to slow the PC.
  • Should also branch out to other languages in terms of ease of use and flexibility.
Dylan Cauwels | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Lightweight solution. Unmatched in the ability to drum up a script, test it, and deploy it until a more permanent solution is available.
  • Adaptable to almost any situation. Need to do a SQL script? There's a plugin that will allow you to connect to your database or a sample one and run your code. General scripts can be run straight from the program instead of the command line with the "script" plugin. There are even scripts that will "beautify" ugly code for you to fix "that guy's" code.
  • Should have account-based customization so that plugins sync across machines. Currently, you have to individually install each plugin/environment on every machine that you encounter, which can be incredibly time consuming and frustrating after the first time.
Matthew Deakyne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Highly configurable. Atom has packages that can be managed through the application or via command line. This gives it incredible power for advanced users.
  • Blank Start. Atom opens up by default to a blank note page which can be saved anywhere. It can also be used to open projects, but sometimes notes aren't attached to specific projects. This is useful for quick notes.
  • Run anywhere. Due to it being an electron application, Atom can run on Windows/Mac and Linux. This is incredibly powerful, and a surprising differentiator for a desktop application.
  • Lack of sync. Atom doesn't have sync built in. I know this can be configured to work with Dropbox or Git, but web applications that sync have a clear advantage.
  • Lack of mobile. Not all notes are taken on a computer, and several other note taking apps have an option to take and review notes on a phone.
  • Lack of built-in IDE features. Atom can be configured to be an IDE, but other applications are IDEs by default. It takes a good amount of configuration to bring atom up to that level.
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