A markdown editor without a subscription

Markd.ly is a single payment: $19.99, one time. One purchase covers Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android, and your Bravely Account carries it to each one. There is no annual renewal, no monthly fee and no separate charge for the cloud library. The purchase does not expire: the editor you bought stays the editor you have.

The reason this matters with markdown specifically: a .md file you wrote five years ago should still open instantly in five more years. A subscription editor that lapses can leave you locked out of the tool that organizes your own files. Markd.ly avoids that on two fronts: the purchase is permanent, and the files were always plain .md on your disk, openable in any editor whether Markd.ly is running or not.

Everything, on every platform it runs on. On Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad and Android you create, open, edit and save plain .md files with a live preview, Mermaid diagrams and KaTeX math, and you can add any document to your cloud library to open it on your other devices.

The desktop apps (Mac, Windows and Linux) add the power tools, all in the same purchase: export to HTML, PDF, Word (DOCX), EPUB, LaTeX and reveal.js slides, vim mode, AES-256-GCM encrypted documents, snippets with date, time and cursor placeholders, custom CSS with three built-in themes, and search across every markdown file in a folder. Windows and Linux also include a command-line converter. The phone apps do not export to PDF, Word, EPUB, LaTeX or slides.

Buying once has a real trade-off. Subscription editors often use that recurring revenue to fund automatic sync of everything you write, and Markd.ly's stable releases do not do that. The cloud library opens a document on your other devices when you add it, one document at a time; it does not keep your folders in sync. If you need every note to follow you between a laptop and a phone on its own, a synced subscription app is the better fit today.

Two more things to know before you buy. Markd.ly needs a free Bravely Account, and it checks your purchase online at least once every 72 hours; in between, it works offline. And there is no plugin marketplace and no web app.

Writers, consultants, PMs, and developers who keep documents as files and resent paying rent on a text editor. People consolidating off a bundle subscription where a markdown editor is one of the few apps they actually open. Anyone who wants the tool they use for their own files to keep working without a recurring bill.

If automatic sync between your devices is a hard requirement, a synced subscription editor will serve you better. Be honest with yourself about that before you buy.