A while a go I wrote about my move to Feedbin from Feedly and my reasons for the move. At the time I was still getting used to something other than Google's great RSS reader. Feedly in itself was fine but it didn't have the staying power I wanted. I had to login back in on different devices and there wasn't much in the way of new features. So I moved to Feedbin and over two years later I'm still using it. Here's why.
Features, Features, Features
Feedbin is under continual development and every few of months there's a new feature released or small improvements made to the user-interface. It might seem like a lot of time in between releases, but from the start Feedbin already did everything that was essential. You could subscribe to RSS feeds and read them when you wanted too. Everything that has followed has been "nice to haves" and each one of them makes the experience of using Feedbin even better.
A Great Web Interface
From the start the Feedbin web interface was good. Overtime it's been gradually tweaked and made better. Add to the mix a customisable interface with settings for fonts, text size and themes and you have a web interface that negates the need for any desktop RSS reader. Just use it in your browser.
Also the keyboard shortcuts allow you to move about your feeds without having to reach for the mouse. Even sharing articles to your favourite services like Instapaper and Pinboard is easy because you assign keyboard shortcuts to each of your share locations.
The Notifier App
Finally there's the notifier app. Now maybe I'm alone in this but RSS feeds are a great way of monitoring and tracking services. Funneling these notifications into a single device means that you can stay on top of essential services for clients. As a freelance web developer I have clients that need to know when their websites are likely to face downtime.
To do this I keep a track of the different service they use by subscribing to their status page's RSS feed. In the Feedbin notifier app I can then get notifications of these updates as and when they happen. If a client is likely to see downtime on their website I can give them a heads up on it and we can arrange suitable changes for them if needed.
Feedbin is still one of my essential tools as a web developer, both for consuming content and for keeping up to date with any urgent news. I highly recommend Feedbin if you're in the market for a versatile RSS reader.
