Probably the biggest drawbacks of org-mode are easy to spot up-front: - Cross-device syncing isn't as easy to setup compared to easily accessible competitors.

Probably the biggest drawbacks of org-mode are easy to spot up-front: - Cross-device syncing isn't as easy to setup compared to easily accessible competitors. - It's more/less coupled to using Emacs. I guess if someone's willing to accept those things, it's unusual that they'd then go on to use it & complain about other aspects? So, since it's software you choose for yourself, I think it's less likely to fit into that cliche "two kinds of [software]". In terms of what makes org mode special? It's a plaintext format where the org-mode functionality has a long tail of features that are useful for organising things. -- e.g. to compare with markdown: - both org and markdown have tables; but org tables can have spreadsheet functionality; - both have code snippets, but org allows for executing those snippets; - both have headings/subheadings, but org-mode also supports tags/task management. etc.