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LanSchool
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Wikispaces
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syncing between education applications for K-12 schools

Pinterest
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weheartit.com
A visual reference manager for creatives. Organize your reference library and build moodboards on an infinite canvas, all in one desktop app.
Which is more popular?
Based on our record, Clever seems to be more popular. It has been mentioned 2 times since March 2021.
Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.
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| Website | clever.com | refern.app |
| Pricing | ||
| Platforms | — | |
| Company | Startup from the United States | Startup from Canada · 1 - 9 employees · 2026 |
| Listed in |
In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.


No description of Clever yet.
refern is a local-first desktop app for collecting, organizing, and working with visual references. The library side gives you folders, hierarchical tags, smart folders, ratings, color labels, color search by hex, image-to-image visual similarity, and more than 14 typed search operators, all...
What each product offers, as listed by its team.


Possible disadvantages
An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.


Overall verdict
Why this product is good
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Overall verdict
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How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.


As answered by people managing Clever and refern..
refern.'s answer:
I'm an artist, and too often I was frustrated: I couldn't find the right pictures, I struggled to organize and keep track of my reference images, and I was juggling too many apps when all I wanted to do was draw. I wanted one tool that could do it all, with every component well integrated. So I made refern.
refern.'s answer:
The flow of collecting references for art usually goes like this:
find references and inspiration online -> save and organize those images -> use them on their own or in a moodboard -> reuse them for the next project or share them with others
Normally that means a different app for each step. refern does all of it in one place, with every part built to work together.
refern.'s answer:
Most tools solve only one part of the reference workflow, so artists end up juggling several. refern combines them in one app: Eagle-style organization and search, a PureRef-style infinite canvas, and an Obsidian-style graph of how your references connect. It never copies your files, so it doesn't double your disk usage. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, works fully offline, and is a $30 one-time purchase with no subscription. Built in Rust, it stays fast even on libraries with hundreds of thousands of images.
refern.'s answer:
Individual artists and creative professionals: illustrators, concept artists, digital painters, designers, and photographers. They collect and organize large libraries of visual references, build moodboards, and study from reference. refern is built for solo creators rather than teams, spanning hobbyists and students through working professionals.
refern.'s answer:
refern is a Tauri v2 desktop app with a Rust backend and a React 19 (with React Compiler) plus TypeScript frontend. Data is stored locally in SQLite (rusqlite) with FTS5 full-text search. The interface uses Tailwind CSS, Zustand, and TanStack Query, with motion/react for animation. The infinite canvas and graph view are built on react-three-fiber and three.js. Thumbnailing, perceptual hashing, and color and visual similarity run in Rust with rayon and SIMD.
Share your experience with using Clever and refern.. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Recommendations tracked on public social media and blogs since March 2021.


I tried it on the Firefox and Tor Browser on Whonix, same error pops up because it's using the Tor network? Is there any way I can bypass this error so I can visit my schools website, or another way to use the site anonymously? Site is... Source: almost 4 years ago
Mine also don't know what bookmarks are. So to get into Schoology, they type clever.com into the search bar - not the address bar - then log into it, then click the student page, then find Schoology, then click it. And the wifi in my... Source: almost 4 years ago
Tracking refern. since Mar 2024.
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The simple way to view and organize your multiple reference images.
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