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Mendeley
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Qiqqa
Citavi
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Postilae
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Notion
Readwise
Postilae is a reading workspace: it lets you read PDF, EPUB, and DOCX files, take notes and highlights, organize books and reading sessions, and connect your reading to written projects and ideas.
Postilae is currently offered free of charge.
You can explore the Service without an account, but nothing is normally retained unless you create one. Work in an unauthenticated session is lost when you close or reload the app. If you deliberately begin creating an account, Postilae temporarily places a same-tab handoff copy in browser session storage so your current work can survive the authentication redirect. That handoff expires within 24 hours, is not uploaded before authentication and passphrase setup, and is removed when signup is completed, rejected, or expires.
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Postilae's answer:
Postilae is a single container for the whole lifecycle of a reading-based project. Most tools cover one slice โ a reference manager, a note app, a PDF annotator, a word processor โ so your sources, quotes and drafts end up scattered. In Postilae you import PDF, EPUB and DOCX sources, annotate and highlight them, capture quotes with auto-formatted citations (MLA, APA, Chicago), connect ideas on a mind map, track milestones from research to submitted, and export a Word-ready draft โ without leaving the workspace. Everything is private by default: your library stays on your device, and optional cloud sync is end-to-end encrypted with a passphrase only you hold.
Postilae's answer:
Because it replaces a fragmented stack (reference manager + note app + annotator + word processor) with one continuous workflow, so a highlight you make while reading is already linked to the quote, the idea and the project chapter it belongs to โ no re-typing, no copy-paste archaeology. It also has a genuinely comfortable reader (reflowable text, dual navigation, page-flip thumbnails, bookmarks, in-page search, pinch-zoom, three calm themes) instead of treating reading as an afterthought. And privacy is structural, not a policy promise: sync is encrypted client-side, so nobody โ including us โ can read your library.
Postilae's answer:
Researchers, PhD and graduate students, academics, writers and serious non-fiction readers โ anyone who reads a lot of long-form sources and has to turn that reading into something: a thesis, a paper, an essay, a book, a report. It also fits self-directed learners who want their reading to accumulate into structured knowledge rather than a folder of forgotten PDFs.
Postilae's answer:
The name comes from postillae โ the marginal glosses medieval readers wrote beside a text. That's the idea: the value of reading lives in the margins, in what you note, question and connect. Postilae started from the frustration of a scattered workflow โ annotations in one app, citations in another, the actual writing somewhere else, and half the thinking lost between them. It was built to keep reading, annotating and writing in one calm, private space, from the first source to the finished draft.
Postilae's answer:
React 19 with TanStack Start and TanStack Router, TypeScript, Vite 7 and Tailwind CSS on the frontend; pdf.js, epub.js and docx for reading and exporting PDF/EPUB/DOCX; IndexedDB for local, offline-first document storage; Web Crypto (AES-GCM-256) for client-side end-to-end encryption; and a Postgres backend with row-level security for accounts and encrypted sync. Deployed as a PWA on an edge runtime.
Mendeley - Easily organize your papers, read & annotate your PDFs, collaborate in private or open groups, and securely access your research from everywhere.
Zotero - Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research.
Notion - All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.
Qiqqa - Qiqqa is a free research and reference management software. It can be used in many organizational projects from the academic to the personal to the business endeavor. Read more about Qiqqa.
Readwise - Effortlessly rediscover and organize your Kindle highlights
Citavi - Citavi is a program for Microsoft Windows that manages literary references and organizes organizational knowledge.
