Atom Reviews & Insights

Score9.5 out of 10

90 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Atom are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

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.

Atom Reviews

11 Reviews

Enterprises (1,001+ employees)

Joyful coding

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

January 2, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Atom for coding emails. I was having a weird problem with Dreamweaver (the licensed software my team uses) for which the program would lag, despite having the same machine as other members... so I picked Atom, which I knew was freely available and I had used in a previous job.

Atom works flawlessly, it's super lightweight, and has wonderful themes that are really pleasing to the eye compared to Dreamweaver or Visual Studio Code

Pros

Lightweight
Beautiful themes
Plugins
Customisable
Easily integrates with version control

Cons

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)

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is great for simple HTML coding. It's fast, has intuitive shortcuts and several options. I particularly love the "convert spaces to tabs" function that I haven't seen in other editors.

I'm not sure how it would fair in more serious web development today, if there are plugins for live updates of the page you are working on...

But the problem is that it has been discontinued so you know there are no new features or fixes coming through.

Flavio Mauri

CRM Designer in Marketing at Asda (Supermarkets, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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Atom for all your text editing needs

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 27, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My organization allows us to choose what IDE/text editor we would like to use, and Atom is a popular choice among developers. One of the biggest business problems that Atom addresses is how to efficiently collaborate with other developers while working remotely. Some of its features make it the best possible option for effective and efficient remote collaboration.

Pros

Remote collaboration
Customization
Source code integration

Cons

Ease of use
Documentation

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is perfectly suited for a developer that wants a highly capable and highly customizable IDE to work in. It has several available packages to integrate with pretty much anything you want and is backed by Github, so that's a huge plus as well. A possible scenario where Atom may not be best suited would be on machines that are a bit slow, as Atom doesn't seem as fast as other text editors or IDE's.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (Computer Software company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Atom data scientists overall satisfaction

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 30, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is being used across the entire organization and most of the data scientists in my company are currently using it under local environment. Even though Atom is just an option and not required to be used, most of my colleagues including myself prefer to use it due to its interface.

Pros

Easy.
Clear.
Multi-language.

Cons

Cloud base.
ec2.
Execution.

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is suitable if you are a data scientist who is not easily [intimidated] with code and object oriented programming layout, and actively working on either creating or improving multiple python packages under different environments locally. It is less appropriate for a business analyst who is not used to writing code.

Verified User

Analyst in Professional Services (Financial Services company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Best local tool, wish to have it on the cloud

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 23, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is widely used in my organization for data scientists. Even though the IDE is not required it is preferred by most of our data scientists. Compared to other IDEs such as PyCharm, the tool is allowing the users to edit multiple codes instead of only python but also R and unix.

Pros

Integration.
Easy to check.
Nice structure.

Cons

Cannot run code directly.
Not working with notebook.
Wish it can be added onto ec2.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are working on the local environment and with multiple type of code in the same time, Atom is one of the best tools you can choose from the market. However, if your work need tons of RAM and you have to get it to run on the cloud, it is not suitable.

Xiaotong Song

Business Analyst in Corporate at 3M (Cosmetics, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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Another user review of Atom

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

January 23, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom [text editor] is not being used across the whole organization, though many people use it for software development. Its compatibility with many programming/scripting languages is great. It helps a lot with creating programs because it is preloaded with a coloring scheme that highlights libraries, reserved words, and even autofill some functions, which makes it even faster to code. Other users use other text editors, but most of us stick with Atom whenever possible.

Pros

Compatibility
Ease of use

Cons

C compatibility sometimes is not that great
File extensions dictate editing functionality (i.e., no html auto-fill if file not saved as .html)

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is great for beginners, for experienced coders, and casual programmers. Is easy to use, easy to export files, easy to identify components, easy to read, and it's pretty good for code reviewing. As we all know, it is always better to review code directly from the compiler/editor used, but if not possible, Atom is an excellent option.

Samuel Hadid

IT Security Engineer in Information Technology at Softtek (Health, Wellness and Fitness, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Code writing made fast and simple

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 4, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

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!

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Mark Nowowiejski

Sr. Instructional Designer in Information Technology at Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality (Education Management, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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A text editor for general analytics workflows made easy

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 4, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is being used by my team as one of the primary text editors for data analytics and machine learning workflows when it comes to making modifications to code and writing analytic SQL queries. The primary business problem it addresses is a cross-platform analytics tool that all our team members can use to make changes to code. It also allows for plugin extensibility, and thereby reduces the amount of friction when sharing text and code that needs highlighting.

Pros

Extensibility via plugins.
Code highlighting in various languages.
Cross-platform support.

Cons

User-support.
Bug and crash handling.
Lagging when connected to a server.

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is well-suited when you need a cross-platform text editor that is basic and highlights code well. This is not an integrated development environment, and therefore you should focus on finding one of those programs instead if your goal is to have a whole testing, run, and automation suite. This works well for rudimentary editing supported by external tools that do running or testing.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Information Technology and Services company, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Atom- the perfect script solution

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

March 27, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is used as a small scripting tool by mainly myself and a few others. It's a perfect tool for drumming up a rapid solution to any problem-- in our case, aws and infrastructure problems. It has enough tools and plug-ins to help you debug a script, but still remains incredibly lightweight and quick to deploy.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Well suited for small, lightweight solutions to problems that need to be made quickly and effectively. My implementation was used mainly for infrastructure scripting and automation processes through python3 and Ansible. Not very good for large application programming, as it won't remember keywords/class names/method names very well and will often suggest wrong fields that would result in errors. Also not very good at catching errors, as it's meant to be lightweight and therefore doesn't have those indexing capabilities.

Dylan Cauwels

DevOps Engineer in Engineering at CBRE (Real Estate, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Atom: You have to build it bit by bit.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

February 28, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atom is being used by select individuals at the University of Kansas, and not by the organization as a whole. Its used primarily as a simple text editor, but can be configured to be used as a full IDE. It is highly configurable to domain-specific problems, but its core competency is text editing.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Atom is great for people that need a desktop text editor, and who like to customize their experience. It's incredibly powerful and serves as a good backup to a full-fledged IDE. It probably won't appeal to those that have to do complex development work, or to those that prefer a web-experience due to the automated syncing.

Matthew Deakyne

Academic Services Manager in Information Technology at The University of Kansas (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Atom: an editor for the 21st century

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

February 10, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

Customizations
Active community for package support
Rich user interface

Cons

Performance: it's resource hungry
Stability across OS
Issue loading and manipulating big files

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Dhruba Jyoti Nag

Associate in Information Technology at Cognizant (Entertainment, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Atom: You have to build it bit by bit.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

February 28, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Likelihood to Recommend

Matthew Deakyne

Academic Services Manager in Information Technology at The University of Kansas (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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