What SimplyBoard is
AlternativeTo files SimplyBoard under Note-taking. It is recorded as Free, Proprietary, from United States. It ships on Online, Software as a Service (SaaS). The topics its entry raises are offline use, encryption, privacy and code.
That is our reading of the record. For AlternativeTo's own wording, see its page for SimplyBoard — the facts above were read on 2026-08-16.
| Price | Free |
|---|---|
| Licence | Proprietary |
| Category | Note-taking |
| Origin | United States |
| Platforms | Online, Software as a Service (SaaS) |
What SumizAI is
A note-taking application built around a conversation with an AI model. You ask a question, the answer streams back, and the answers worth keeping become Markdown notes — filed into a vault that is a folder on your own disk.
A vault is a directory holding base.md, a generated table of contents up to six levels deep, and a notes/ folder with one .md file per note. Before a note is written it is checked against the ones already there, so the fourth note about the same idea gets merged instead of added. Links between notes are ordinary Markdown links to files that exist.
The model is never ours: you bring your own API key to one of seven providers — Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Groq, OpenRouter, a local Ollama or your own server — and pay that provider directly. A question sends the table of contents plus at most five relevant notes within a 24,000-character budget, and the app shows you which five it used.
Side by side
| Side by side | SumizAI | SimplyBoard |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1/month, one plan, 7-day trial without a card | Free |
| Licence | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows, iOS, Android | Online, Software as a Service (SaaS) |
| Category | Note-taking — AI chat into Markdown | Note-taking |
| Where notes live | Standard .md files in a folder you choose | Its description mentions local or offline files |
| AI model | Seven providers, always on your own API key | Its description does not mention AI |
| Origin | Poland, EU | United States |
Where they differ
- AlternativeTo's description of SimplyBoard does not mention an AI model. That is the whole starting point in SumizAI: you have a conversation with a model on your own API key, and the answers worth keeping become notes without you filing them.
- SimplyBoard is free and SumizAI costs a dollar a month after a seven-day trial that takes no card. A dollar is what it costs to run accounts and licences without reselling the model; if free is the requirement, SimplyBoard wins that row outright.
- AlternativeTo's description of SimplyBoard does not mention Markdown, so check what format your notes end up in before you fill it up. SumizAI writes standard
.mdfiles to a folder you picked, and an unpaid account can still export all of them. - SimplyBoard advertises encryption. SumizAI answers the same worry a different way: on the desktop the notes never leave your disk, and the material a question sends to the model is capped at the table of contents plus at most five notes — and the app shows you which five it used.
- SimplyBoard runs in the browser. SumizAI is a desktop and mobile application, and on the desktop the vault is a folder on your own disk rather than a document in someone's cloud.
Which one to pick
Reasons to pick SimplyBoard
- it costs nothing
- end-to-end encryption is a requirement
- you need it to run in a browser
Reasons to pick SumizAI
- the notes you want already exist inside conversations with an AI model
- you want the filing — title, chapter, duplicate check — to happen without you
- you want the result as plain
.mdfiles in a folder you picked - you would rather pay your AI provider directly than have a note app resell the model
Facts about SimplyBoard: AlternativeTo, read 2026-08-16. SumizAI is not affiliated with SimplyBoard, and the name is used only to identify the product being compared.
Taken from the AlternativeTo lists: Obsidian.