Quip - Docs, Chat, Sheets Reviews

How organization was looking for a tool for collaboration that would help simplify things. Will use Google drive and other tools, but to be frank, the mess and spiderweb of files has become overwhelming it is increasingly difficult to manage. We looked at this app as a possible solution to help us to manage collaboration any more simple and streamlined way.

Quit passes benefits and we continue to use this app as a tool. It makes things a lot easier than working in Google and having to open multiple types of files and documents. You can use it on the web you can use a clients on your computer on Mac and you can use it on an iPhone or tablet. It’s very simple and straightforward.

However, this app does have a lot of quirks and limitations that you need to work around them through. Sharing files with people outside of your organization is not possible. Documents or files that you create within this app are absolutely not ready for sharing with people outside your organization because of issues like formatting. In general there’s a lot of opportunity to improve this app from the user experience standpoint and from a functionality perspective as well. The only question is how does this app achieve all of this without becoming big in burdensome such as Evernote.

So, I want to start off by saying I love everything about Quip, it’s made my work life so much simpler to manage! I recommend it to pretty much everyone.

However, I think the mobile app needs a little bit more functionality to compare to the desktop app. I know you can’t make them work EXACTLY the same, but it’d be nice to be able to interact more with the Live Apps on the mobile app.

I’m currently unable to move cards between columns on the Kansan Board and that’s a drag to have to get on my computer just for that. I think once the interactions with Live Apps have improved, this will be a 5-star app for sure.

Recent release has nifty power ups for docs. I now can switch my Trello + Google Docs flow to one doc in this app. Coda, enjoy your $60M lunch while it lasts

Other great stuff:
* collaborative notifs when people open your doc and when people create docs in a shared space... shared context isn't just about sharing info but sharing context of when people engage on what topic

* shared folder space done well --Google Docs, please take notes...on this app perhaps

* mobile app is very slick, delightful to take notes on it

* stupidly easy to share a doc in view only mode externally

* have a reasonably powerful formula-enabled spreadsheet inside a doc. Copy+past special as png can go to heII

* for anyone complaining about formatting feature parity with other doc editors... consider that their guard rails on formatting takes the cognitive load out of composing, which makes it easier for less graphically confident coworkers to be emboldened by the uniformity and therefore contribute more

Updated review as of November 2021:
Still a ways to go. Quip is not innovating fast enough. Still no support of multiple windows. Keyboard shortcuts are better, but still can’t do something like conduct a search easily. No way to view multiple documents at the same time. For some reason on iOS the document view defaults to comment threads.

Glad to see improvements being made, but I know Quip can be better!

Original review:
I thought access to my Sheets on iPadOS with an iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard would be helpful for adding mobility to my productivity with this app. The reality is, Quip is even worse than the web-app counterpart in Safari for working with Sheets. Want to navigate between cells using your keyboard? Nope. Can’t navigate around cells using the arrow keys. Quip is wedged between touch screen and type, causing you to go back and forth to get any real inputs/edits done in Sheets. Also, no Dark Mode support. Files app integration doesn’t work natively (it appears as a source, but you can’t browse files using it—a modal window appears with blank results).

Thank you this app team for this wonderful app! It organizes, sync, and communicates documents beautifully across different devices/platforms. It is my go-to daily app, that captures small ideas to big ideas. An area of improvement that I would suggest is to create an ability within Quip for split screen and/or multiple tabs viewing. This is incredible useful for editing two documents at once, or editing a document while viewing the other for reference. Keep up the good work!

This why I try to avoid using this app as much as I can. It’s the same reason I find myself going back to the default iOS Notes app- simplicity. Less steps to get to where you want. I always feel like in this app I’m going back and forth. Mobile device experience on this app is just not my favorite thing. Amazing features. Wish the bottom menu was always there. Way too many notifications. I don’t care if John just opened a doc in this app. He can let me know when it’s ready. Ok rant over. this app rocks.

Quip has great features but I’ve learned not to invest in apps that don’t clarify their “free” or “trial” periods. I’d prefer if the developers were more forthcoming about the limitations of the trial period so users can make an educated decision about whether or not to upload their entire virtual world to Quip . I don’t want the information I add to Quip to be held for ransom of sorts if I decline to pay a fee once my trial period magically ends. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t recommend Quip for couples and families who need to collaborate but aren’t companies or teams who’d be comfortable paying the $30/month fee to continue using Quip after the trial period.

Using this app across an organization (of any size) makes you realize just how much time is wasted in emailing countless docs around teams, or in fact that info just doesn’t get shared. this app is absolutely ‘real time’ and employs chat for the collaboration side and history to track the development of a doc. Try it...set up some folders, create some docs and experience real collaboration....amazing! Also, finally be in control of your complex content and harness the ingenuity of your team!

Quip is great, but would be my number one app of all time if it only made use of drag and drop options in iOS 11.

For example, it would be much nicer and faster if I could hold on icons and drag them into the folders I want them in, instead of going into the document, selecting move, and going through a couple menus to specify where I want the document.

It would also be nice if I could import from iCloud, Numbers, and other iOS apps. Or even better, just drag and drop through the multitask interface.

I use a lot of collaboration tools, and this is the best performing and most intuitive one out there. My only issue with this tool is that the text color cannot be changed. The developer says that’s by design to “keep it simple and focused”. But changing text color isn’t difficult, especially when you see all of the complex things the tool can do. I hope they reconsider.

General text editing is fine, but when it comes to tables or really anything else except for text it's a nightmare. Table formatting gets corrupted whenever you visit a cell from your iOS this app app. There's no way to undo. And typing at the bottom of a dock has issues where the view scroll position is too high so you can't see what you're typing because the keyboard is over the content. On top of all this, no custom keyboards are enabled so you're stuck without shape writing which is how I'm writing this review so quickly. Overall just a really big pain to use this app. Wish the team would pay attention to it's quality more.

this app is the most powerful collaboration tool that I have used.
The simplicity of quit and the ability to work jointly on a document and the introduction of smart apps makes this app extremely powerful.

The ability to have the same experience on the desktop and on a mobile device has made it my choice of go to app to work with for note taking, planning, collaboration, and communication.

Worst editor I’ve ever used. Worse than Word, worse than Ulysses, worse than IA writer, worse than you name it. The screen constantly blinks and scrolls to the top when I am in the middle of editing. The iPad version is quite literally unusable as a document editor. The MacOS version is fine. I only use editors that I don’t have to fight while writing. I have to fight this app ipad app second to second. No thanks.

I like this app, but some bugs on the iPad pro make me crazy.

1. When multitasking (split screen w/ this app being on half the screen), a lot of functionality disappears or is buggy. For example, I was unable to leave a comment - first because the comment bar at the bottom wouldn’t show no matter what i did. Second, once it randomly did show up, it wouldn’t open the comment pane. I had to bring it back to full screen.
2. When I highlight a word or touch to put my cursor in a different section, this app scrolls back to the top. Talk about insanely annoying!
3. Why can’t I pin certain tool bars or side bars?
4. I use this app within my enterprise organization. Thus, I don’t have a Salesforce account or whatever else its connected to. I cannot leave feedback because of it without making a personal account. Not worth my time, make it EASY to give feedback!

When this app first came out it felt like another cloud document sharing tool in the cloud. With all the new updates and integrations and having used it for a few months, it’s become an invaluable place to do work. Both the web and mobile app really work when you need them to. Truly an absolute pleasure to use.

Quip is iso buggy, the UX jumps all over the place. Does not work well with an external Keyboard on my iPad. Example: I added a HorizontalRule to a doc, but then I could not for the life of me, delete it! I had to go to the doc on my laptop once I returned to the office to clean it up.

Navigating is problematic, and trying to search is extremely difficult. Not sure how it indexes documents, but the results are inconsistent.

I love the collaboration aspects of Quip , but if you can’t edit, what’s the need for collaboration?

They give you #anotherone. Huge wins on the new powering. Consolidating a kanban board, calander, polls within this app is amazing. Google sheets is great but the level of cross team communication it provides at the level of a Slack, makes this app a no brainer. Shout out to the IOS engineers & mobile team making the offline sync work flawlessly.

this app is the best thing since sliced bread. My team is on it and we’re adding more people as the months continue on. Please make a custom iPad app that provides the same functionalities as the desktop version. Our iPads are having to use the mobile app version and we are very limited and are having to use it in Chrome which is still limited. After that you all will take over any productivity program out there...period! Cheers!

I don’t usually comment on apps, but this one got me pretty upset. There is no way to download more than one file at a time, the system is a web based interface, very crapy.

The only two option to download any files is through export, which only gives you 2 options. Html and word! Who the hell use word and html for collaboration, have you hear of pdf??

What’s more, the folder structure is a total joke, my client uploads 10 pdfs to me, and I can only see them in the notification center. Not able to download them in pdf format unless you open the file and export. How is this called itself an organization tool or productivity tool is beyond me.

Hey just use dropbox or google drive for file sharing, use google doc for word collaboration. Stay away from Quip gonna save you so much time.

Whoever designed Quip is absolutely stupid.

Ease of use on day one was stellar. FYI... I am starting off on my iPad Pro. The first documents created and imported were effortless and based on my needs looks to be perfect to pair with my paper and pencil Panda Planner.

I have been using several apps but am looking to streamline productivity as a freelancer, for various professional and Personal projects and areas of life.

this app started out as a word processor designed with mobile devices in mind, but over the years has not kept up with that original vision. Lots of small issues hamper the performance on mobile devices. For instance, on the iPad, the cursor is often hidden behind a split keyboard and I am forced to add a lot of extra line breaks to a document so that I can push the cursor above the keyboard and actually see what I am typing. The split keyboard on the iPad is also handled poorly. Even with the keyboard split, the space between the keys is still filled in with an opaque gray area, blocking out a large section of the screen. In addition, there are no options for what browser should be used to open links, which was probably okay in 2015, but most apps nowadays give options.

Also, just a thought, but if this app gave me an option to pay money and unlock the ability to change the color of Quip icon, I would do it in a heartbeat. Or maybe even revert to the original icon. See the popular calculator app PCalc if you need an example of how it’s done.

So, I want to start off by saying I love everything about Quip, it’s made my work life so much simpler to manage! I recommend it to pretty much everyone.

However, I think the mobile app needs a little bit more functionality to compare to the desktop app. I know you can’t make them work EXACTLY the same, but it’d be nice to be able to interact more with the Live Apps on the mobile app.

I’m currently unable to move cards between columns on the Kansan Board and that’s a drag to have to get on my computer just for that. I think once the interactions with Live Apps have improved, this will be a 5-star app for sure.

1) very buggy on on iPad Pro with the official keyboard. Cursor disappears a lot which causes the keyboard input to fail, requiring a re-tap of the screen somewhere else to get it to come back.

2) Seemingly doesn’t support iOS 11 drag-n-drop. I cannot drag images from Files into the doc, nor can I add images into the doc from Files any other way. So, no proper iOS 11 support, a full year after it’s release

3) Adding a table on iPad breaks the entire app and document. If the table scrolls off the screen, the entire document will be permanently moved off the screen and you won’t be able to see the rest of it without exiting Quip and coming back in.

4) lack of feature parity. Lots of basic features like anchor links are missing from Quip .

I work mainly from an iPad Pro, as does the rest of my company, so this app won’t work for us because Quip is so buggy with poor UX, UI, and lack of feature parity.