The Cloud vs Craft (2025): Two Beautiful Workspaces Compared

If you care about beautiful tools, you've probably looked at both The Cloud and Craft. Both are designed with an emphasis on aesthetics and user experience, but they take very different paths to get there. Craft builds a native Apple experience for beautiful documents, while The Cloud builds an entire creator workspace in the browser.

This comparison covers design, features, pricing, and platform support so you can decide which one fits your workflow.

Quick Overview

The Cloud is a creator-first workspace that combines notes, blog publishing, habit tracking, mood tracking, task management, AI agents, and a CLI into a desktop-like browser experience. It's built for creators who want everything in one place without sacrificing design quality.

Craft is an Apple Design Award-winning document and note-taking app built with native Swift for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. It's known for its stunning typography, smooth animations, and offline-first architecture. Craft excels at producing beautiful documents and sharing them via Craft Sites.

Feature Comparison

Where The Cloud Stands Out

1. A Complete Creator Toolkit

The Cloud is not just a note-taking app. It bundles blog publishing, habit tracking, mood tracking, task management, AI agents, and a CLI into a single workspace. Craft focuses primarily on documents and notes, which means creators who need tracking and publishing tools still need to reach for other apps.

2. Full Blog Publishing

The Cloud has native blog publishing with custom domain support. Write in your workspace, publish directly, and manage your content without leaving the app. You get control over SEO metadata, RSS feeds, and custom domains -- everything you need to run a real blog.

Craft offers Craft Sites, which lets you share pages as simple websites, but it's not a full blogging platform. There's no custom domain support, no RSS feed, and limited control over SEO and layout. For creators who publish regularly, the difference between "share a page" and "run a blog" is significant.

3. Desktop-Like Browser Experience

The Cloud brings a macOS-like windowed interface to the browser. You can drag, resize, and arrange multiple windows across your workspace. This makes multitasking feel natural -- you might have your blog editor open in one window, your habit tracker in another, and your task list in a third, all visible at the same time.

Craft uses a more traditional document-centric navigation model. You work in one document at a time, with a sidebar for navigation. It's clean and focused, but it doesn't support the kind of spatial multitasking that The Cloud's windowed interface enables.

4. True Cross-Platform Access

Because The Cloud runs in the browser, it works on any operating system: macOS, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS. You get the same experience everywhere, with no feature gaps between platforms.

Craft is built primarily for Apple platforms. While a Windows version exists, it lacks the polish and feature parity of the macOS and iOS apps, and Linux users are left without native support entirely. If your team includes members on different operating systems, this becomes a practical limitation.

5. AI Agents and CLI

Both tools offer AI features for writing assistance, but The Cloud goes further with dedicated AI agents that can automate workflows across your workspace. The Cloud also provides a command-line interface for power users who want to interact with their workspace programmatically. Craft has no equivalent.

6. Flat Pricing

The Cloud uses flat pricing tiers. Whether you're a solo creator or a small team, the price stays the same regardless of how many people use it. Craft's Business plan charges $10 per user per month, which can add up quickly for growing teams. A team of five on Craft Business pays $50/month, while the same team on The Cloud Ultra pays a flat $40/month with more features included.

Where Craft Stands Out

1. Native Apple Experience

This is Craft's most significant advantage, and it's real. Built with Swift, Craft feels like it belongs on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad in a way that browser-based tools simply cannot match. The animations are fluid, gestures feel native, and the app integrates deeply with Apple features like Shortcuts, Spotlight, and the Share Sheet. If you live in the Apple ecosystem and value that level of integration, Craft delivers it beautifully.

2. Offline-First Architecture

Craft is built offline-first, meaning your documents are always available regardless of your internet connection. Changes sync automatically when you're back online. The app launches instantly, edits save to disk immediately, and there's never a loading spinner between you and your notes.

This is a genuine strength for anyone who works on planes, in cafes with unreliable Wi-Fi, or simply wants the peace of mind that their data is always accessible locally. Browser-based tools, including The Cloud, depend on an internet connection for most functionality.

3. Beautiful Document Design

Craft's document styling is exceptional. The typography, spacing, and visual design of Craft documents are among the best in any note-taking app. Cover images, inline styling, and page layouts produce documents that look polished without any extra effort.

Craft also supports nested pages with back-links, making it easy to build structured document hierarchies. The card-style page previews give your workspace a visual, almost spatial quality that helps you navigate large collections of notes. If your primary goal is creating visually stunning standalone documents, Craft is hard to beat.

4. Focus on Simplicity

Craft intentionally stays focused on documents and notes. For users who want a clean, distraction-free writing environment without the overhead of habit trackers, task managers, or other features, Craft's simplicity is a strength. It does fewer things but does them with exceptional polish.

5. Real-Time Collaboration

Craft supports real-time collaboration on documents, making it easy to work with others on shared pages. The collaboration experience benefits from the native app performance and feels smooth and responsive.

Craft also supports external sharing via public links, so you can share documents with people who don't have a Craft account. Combined with Craft Sites, this makes it easy to share polished content without requiring recipients to install anything.

Pricing Comparison

Design Philosophy

Both tools care deeply about design, but they express it differently.

Craft channels its design energy into the document itself. Every page you create in Craft looks beautiful. The typography, the whitespace, the way images sit within text -- it's all carefully considered. Craft treats each document as a piece of visual design.

The Cloud channels its design energy into the workspace experience. The desktop-like interface, the window management, the way different tools coexist -- The Cloud treats the overall environment as the design object. Your entire creative workflow, from notes to habits to publishing, lives in a cohesive visual system.

Neither approach is wrong. They reflect different priorities: Craft optimizes for the individual document, while The Cloud optimizes for the creator's entire workflow.

This distinction matters when choosing between them. If you spend most of your time writing and formatting individual documents, Craft's approach will feel more rewarding. If you spend your time switching between writing, planning, tracking, and publishing, The Cloud's workspace-level design will serve you better.

Platform and Ecosystem

Migration Considerations

If you're currently using Craft and considering The Cloud, the transition is relatively straightforward. Craft supports Markdown export for all your documents, and The Cloud can import Markdown content. Your text, headings, lists, and links will carry over cleanly. Embedded media and Craft-specific formatting (like card-style page links) may need manual adjustment.

If you're moving from The Cloud to Craft, you can export your notes as Markdown and import them into Craft. Keep in mind that blog posts, habit data, mood entries, and task histories don't have equivalents in Craft, so you'll need alternative solutions for those.

Who Should Choose The Cloud?

Choose The Cloud if you:

• Want a complete creator workspace, not just a note-taking app
• Publish blog content and want native publishing built in
• Track habits, moods, or personal metrics alongside your work
• Need serious task management beyond basic to-do lists
• Work across macOS, Windows, and Linux
• Want flat pricing that doesn't scale with team size
• Value AI agents and CLI access for automation

Who Should Choose Craft?

Choose Craft if you:

• Live in the Apple ecosystem and want native macOS/iOS performance
• Prioritize beautiful document design above all else
• Need reliable offline access for your notes
• Want a focused, distraction-free writing environment
• Primarily work solo or in small teams where per-user pricing is manageable
• Don't need blog publishing, habit tracking, or task management in your note-taking app

The Bottom Line

Craft and The Cloud are both beautifully designed tools, but they serve different visions of what a workspace should be. Craft is the best-looking notebook on your desk -- native, fast, and focused on making every page look stunning. The Cloud is the entire desk -- a workspace where notes, publishing, tracking, tasks, and AI come together in one cohesive environment.

If your needs begin and end with beautiful documents on Apple devices, Craft is a genuinely excellent choice. If you're a creator who needs a broader toolkit and wants it all in one place with flat pricing, The Cloud gives you more for the investment. Both offer free tiers, so the best way to decide is to try them side by side with your actual workflow.