Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

CodePen VS Etherpad

Compare CodePen VS Etherpad and see what are their differences

CodePen logo CodePen

A front end web development playground.

Etherpad logo Etherpad

Etherpad is a highly customizable Open Source online editor providing collaborative editing in...
  • CodePen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30
  • Etherpad Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-26

CodePen features and specs

  • Real-time Collaboration
    Developers can collaborate with others in real-time, making it easy to work on projects with teammates or seek help from the community.
  • Immediate Visual Feedback
    CodePen allows you to see the results of your code as you write it, which is highly beneficial for learning and debugging.
  • Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
    CodePen provides a comfortable and feature-rich online IDE environment with syntax highlighting, autocomplete, and more.
  • Community-Driven
    Users can share their work with the CodePen community, receive feedback, and explore a wide range of projects created by others.
  • Extensive Resources
    CodePen offers a wealth of examples and templates for various web development tasks, making it a useful resource for learning and inspiration.
  • Cross-Device Accessibility
    Being an online platform, CodePen can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, making it convenient for developers on the move.

Possible disadvantages of CodePen

  • Limited Offline Functionality
    Since CodePen is primarily an online tool, it requires an internet connection for most of its features to work, limiting its usefulness in offline environments.
  • Performance Constraints
    Complex or resource-intensive projects may not perform as well on CodePen as they would in a full-fledged local development environment.
  • Subscription Costs
    While many features are free, advanced functionalities and additional storage options require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all users.
  • Limited Backend Capabilities
    CodePen is primarily designed for front-end development, so it offers limited support for backend technologies, making it less suitable for full-stack or server-side development.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing dependencies and libraries can be cumbersome compared to local development environments which have better tools for this purpose, like npm.
  • Security Concerns
    Sharing projects with the public can expose your code and assets to unauthorized use, posing potential intellectual property and security risks.

Etherpad features and specs

  • Real-Time Collaboration
    Etherpad allows multiple users to simultaneously edit a document in real-time, making it an excellent tool for collaborative work.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, Etherpad allows users to modify and enhance the software according to their needs. This also promotes transparency and security.
  • Customizable
    Etherpad is highly customizable owing to its plugin architecture. Users can add various functionalities such as authentication, analytics, and formatting tools.
  • Easy to Use
    The interface is straightforward and user-friendly, making it simple even for non-technical users to start collaborating quickly.
  • Text Highlighting
    Each user's contributions can be highlighted in a different color, making it easy to track changes and contributions.
  • Version Control
    Etherpad provides a version history, allowing users to revert to previous versions of the document in case of errors or unwanted changes.

Possible disadvantages of Etherpad

  • Limited Formatting Options
    Etherpad lacks advanced formatting features, which might be a drawback for users needing to create complex documents.
  • Performance Issues
    With a large number of simultaneous users or extensive documents, Etherpad can sometimes experience lag and performance issues.
  • Hosting and Maintenance
    Being self-hosted, users are responsible for setting up and maintaining the server, which can be technically challenging for some.
  • Lack of Media Integration
    Unlike some other collaborative tools, Etherpad does not natively support embedding multimedia content such as images and videos.
  • Security Risks
    Without proper security measures, a self-hosted Etherpad instance could be vulnerable to attacks such as unauthorized access or data breaches.
  • Basic User Management
    Etherpad's user management is quite rudimentary, lacking advanced features like role-based permissions and detailed access controls.

CodePen videos

What Is Codepen?

More videos:

  • Review - Learn to use CodePen from a co-founder of CodePen
  • Review - Using CodePen For Inspiration & Learning

Etherpad videos

Etherpad Instructional Tool Review

More videos:

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CodePen and Etherpad)
Text Editors
100 100%
0% 0
Office Suites
0 0%
100% 100
Programming
100 100%
0% 0
Project Management
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using CodePen and Etherpad. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CodePen and Etherpad

CodePen Reviews

Best Forums for Developers to Join in 2025
Codepen is a social network for developers to show off their work, ask and answer questions, and exchange ideas. It's like a Reddit for coding and design, with a large community of talented web developers.
Source: www.notchup.com
Top 10 Developer Communities You Should Explore
Codepen is a social development environment that allows developers to showcase their work and experiment with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in a collaborative space. Codepen’s focus on visual and interactive development makes it an excellent community for front-end developers and designers.
Source: www.qodo.ai
8 Best Replit Alternatives & Competitors in 2022 (Free & Paid) - Software Discover
Codepen is a social development environment for front-end designers and developers. Build and deploy a website, show off your work, build test cases to learn.
Best Online Code Editors For Web Developers
Probably the most popular online code editor. CodePen is fast, easy to use, and allows a web developer to write and share HTML/CSS/JS code online.
Source: techarge.in
Top 25 websites for coding challenge and competition [Updated for 2021]
CodePen is a cool online IDE that allows you to write code in your browser and see the result just as you build it. CodePen challenges is a place for leveling up your skills by building things. Each week, new challenges appear for you to tackle, and the best “Pens” get picked.

Etherpad Reviews

We have no reviews of Etherpad yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CodePen seems to be a lot more popular than Etherpad. While we know about 503 links to CodePen, we've tracked only 21 mentions of Etherpad. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CodePen mentions (503)

View more

Etherpad mentions (21)

  • Nextcloud: Open-Source Cloud Apps
    > Try Etherpad (https://etherpad.org/) He should better use OnlyOffice, Collabora or Cryptpad office suite. The Cryptpad server is the only one which is not a nightmare to install and setup. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Nextcloud: Open-Source Cloud Apps
    > What I need in my stack is a focused Google Docs alternative Try Etherpad (https://etherpad.org/) > I ended up going with Seafile for file backups and have been very happy with it I went through probably dozens of solutions and ended up with Syncthing for synchronization of data (it requires understanding how it works but once you do (usually an eureka kind of moment) this is a very powerful system. For me... - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Software Possession for Personal Use
    I don't know if these will suit the latency requirements that you're outlining, but they might very well be what you're looking for. https://etherpad.org/ https://ethercalc.net/. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Looking for suggestions on a self-hosted note app that can handle multiple users and collaboration?
    Check out etherpad. It's an awesome solution. It's got collaboration, and over 200 plugins. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Looking for simple, browser-based collaborative text editing software
    Etherpad Lite is basically selfhosted Google Docs, and it's pretty straightforward but can be extended with various plugins. https://etherpad.org/. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing CodePen and Etherpad, you can also consider the following products

JSFiddle - Test your JavaScript, CSS, HTML or CoffeeScript online with JSFiddle code editor.

Apache OpenOffice - Apache OpenOffice is an open source, office document productivity suite.

CodeSandbox - Online playground for React

Microsoft 365 - Boost your productivity with reliable access anywhere with services like email, calendar, file sharing, meetings, instant messaging, and Office Online

GitHub - Originally founded as a project to simplify sharing code, GitHub has grown into an application used by over a million people to store over two million code repositories, making GitHub the largest code host in the world.

SoftMaker Office - SoftMaker Office is one of the most powerful and reliable office suite that is fully compatible with the MS Office Suite.