About Toolarity

Most articles about productivity software are written by people who never opened the software. They rephrase the vendor's feature list, add a score out of ten, and move on. This site exists because that approach fails the one question you actually came with: will this thing work for what I'm doing?

What we cover

Open-source and self-hosted productivity tools — note-taking, knowledge management, file sync, reference management, task tracking. Tools with real configuration surfaces, where the difference between "it works" and "it works for you" is an afternoon of trial and error. That afternoon is what we're trying to save you.

We deliberately do not cover the categories where a vendor's own marketing team has already written the definitive page. If the honest answer to a question is one paragraph long, we don't stretch it into an article.

How we test

Every guide on this site follows the same rules:

• The software gets installed. On a real machine, for a real task, long enough to hit the parts that break. Every article states the exact version, the operating system, and the date it was tested.
• Screenshots are ours. Taken during that test, from that version. Not pulled from a press kit.
• Facts are checked against the source. Pricing, limits, version numbers and feature availability come from the vendor's own page, and we record the date we checked. When we can't confirm something, the article says "not confirmed" instead of guessing.
• Every guide reaches a conclusion. Including "don't use this," and including "the free tier is enough, don't upgrade." A comparison that ends in "it depends on your needs" is a comparison that wasted your time.

What we won't do

• Publish articles generated in bulk without anyone using the software.
• Recommend a tool because it pays better than the alternative.
• Hide an affiliate relationship. See our affiliate disclosure.
• Invent a version number, a price, or a limitation we haven't verified.

When an article is wrong, we'd rather hear it. Corrections get made and the update date on the article changes so you can see it happened.

Who's behind it

Toolarity is an independent publication. Reach us at hello@toolarity.com — corrections, questions, and "you're wrong about this" all go to the same inbox.