I downloaded Inoreader recently to find out what all the fuss was about, and was pleasantly surprised. Inoreader is pretty solid with a lot ways to customize your reading experience, and some advanced features. Something that matters when you are a prolific reader like I am. Let’s begin. Also Read: How To use Feedly Effectively
Feedly vs. Inoreader
1. Inoreader Has a Flexible UI
Feedly comes with a lot of ways to customize your reading experience, but Inoreader still dwarfs it by offering even more ways to improve it. Feedly recently launched a new version of the Feedly Web UI which comes with a dark mode. Inoreader also offers aqua and contrast mode. Plus, the dark mode on Inoreader is true OLED dark.
Feedly has a number of views to choose from, depending on how you want to consume content. While there are four options and they are sufficient for most people, Inoreader offers one more. A scrollable column view where you can consume content in a three column layout.
Similarly, Inoreader again takes the lead when it comes to customizing the user interface. While Feedly will let you font type, size, and density, Inoreader goes one step forward. Some notable options are setting to load images or not, display author name and source or not, change text alignment, change tree pane options, and much more. Frankly, there are too many options and I got a little confused as to what will happen if I select or unselect it. In a good way. All in all, Inoreader has won me over with its customization options for reading articles and changing how the UI looks and functions. Also Read: 5 Best eBook Reader Apps for Android Smartphones and Tablets
2. Is Inoreader Better than Feedly for Reading Content?
Feedly set the standard for a UI that simply works, but Inoreader, as we saw above, found new and innovative ways to improve upon that. But what about adding sources and reading content. After all, that’s what we are here for. Let’s explore the mobile apps now cause most people like to read while on the go. Feedly has a bottom bar where you will find a compass icon. Use it to discover popular blogs, sites or simply search for your favorite ones. Once you find something you like, tap on the ‘+’ icon to add it to a folder or category. Most popular sources are already categorized neatly into niches.
You can move between these folders and feeds from the sidebar. That’s where you can also access settings or more reading options like Today and articles saved for Later.
You can simply swipe right in Feedly while reading an article to move on to the next article. A real-time saver. No need to go back and forth. You can also change font type and size while reading, save article to a personal board or just bookmark it. I use boards to identify and save potential topics for TW, hobbies that I am into and so on. Finally, use pinch to zoom out to the main screen.
Unfortunately, Inoreader has no bottom bar which is sad seeing how much time and thinking went into the design part. You can access RSS feed subscriptions from the sidebar and the UI has a true dark tone which looks bloody cool. There is another sidebar that launches from the right side of the screen. This is where you can sort articles based on date, bookmarks, and unread.
The bottom bar navigation appears only when you open a feed to read an article on Inoreader. You can swipe left or right just like in Feedly to move to the next article but there is no pinch to zoom out feature yet. On the plus side, you can also use tags to group articles together. One cool feature is the ability to pull down the feed to load full content right inside the app in real time. In Feedly, the article will load in a built-in browser.
Inoreader does come with an in-built browser but whoever wants to use it now? This one feature alone makes the app cool in my eyes, purely as a reader. On the minus side, if you have to change fonts and layout, you will need to tap into settings unlike in Feedly where you could change things right there. However, these settings are more like set and forget anyway, so no real harm done. Also Read: 6 Best Comic Book Reader Apps for Android
3. Integrations and Rules
Both the apps come with a powerful API that integrates with a number of productivity and utility tools. You can save articles directly to Pocket, Instapaper, and Evernote. Not only that, but you can also back up read or saved articles as PDF files to Dropbox. Then there are IFTTT and Zapier app integrations which opens up a whole new way of working with third-party apps and services.
Almost forgot! If you are a social influencer, Feedly is a must. You can directly work with social media behemoths like Buffer and Hootsuit to share content with your fans and followers. A cool way to keep them updated and gain new followers. Note that both these features are part of the pro plan. More on that later. Inoreader has another trick up its sleeve called Rules. Rules will allow you to filter content in new and interesting ways. You have access to parameters like keyword, author name, URL strings, and even attachments. Not only that, you can then append these rules to share or send filtered content with third-party apps like Buffer or Pocket. Right now, I am not aware of any other app that offers this feature. It’s unique and a real time saver.
4. How Much It Costs and Why
Both offers a freemium model. Feedly will cost you $5.41/month paid annually. For that price, you get unlimited sources and feeds, app integrations, advanced keyword and saved searches, Google keyword alerts, more fonts, and ability to take notes and highlight content. More features are self-explanatory.
Inoreader has two plans. the first one will cost just $1.67/month paid annually which allows 150 sources, keyword searches, Google keywords, highlight, and ability to save articles to Evernote, Pocket, and others. You can also get all these features in the free plan which is ad-supported. That’s a lot of value, and the ads are not at all intrusive. In fact, I barely noticed one! Feedly’s free plan is ad-free but lacks app integrations for saving and sharing content and there some restrictions on number of feeds you can subscribed to. Inoreader has another plan that will cost $4.17/month paid annually. That will unlock some crazy powerful tools. You can search feeds you are not even subscribed to yet. You can track topics based on saved keyword searches. You can password protect important or confidential feeds. Finally, you can create unlimited rules that we discussed earlier. Both Feedly and Inoreader have separate plans for teams. I didn’t compare that because Inoreader hasn’t made the pricing public.
Feedly vs. Inoreader
Inoreader blows Feedly out of the water and by a good margin too. It is extremely flexible and customizable, the UI is well designed, and you can automate so many tasks with Rules. All of this plus everything that Feedly does for a price that’s lower than Feedly. If you haven’t checked out Inoreader yet, do it now. And if you like what you see, you can export Feedly Subscriptions in OPML and import it in Inorderer.
