I just stumbled upon a fantastic outliner that has many similarities to Workflowy, Outlinely, and Dynalist. While it lacks many of the bells and whistles of Dynalist, it has a wonderful native iOS app that is very responsive and easy to use. It also has something the other apps don't have: a mind-map view of your outline (although I don't think you can edit in this view). And there is some kind of "presentation view" on the desktop, but that just seems to be the same thing in a larger font.

The only catch is that the interface is currently only available in simplified Chinese! Also, to login you have to have either a Chinese cell phone number or a WeChat account, although it is easy enough to download and install WeChat to login. However, I think anyone familiar with these other apps that didn't speak Chinese could probably figure it out - perhaps with the help of Google Translate.

There is a pro version that removes limits on the number of entries you can make, adds images, export, and allows you to choose multiple mindmap templates. You can upgrade via in-app purchase on the iPhone, but it seemed to charge me more than what was being asked for. I suspect the developers are only listing their cut of the fee, not including apple's which is against store policy. Or it could be something else, I am not sure. I got a three year subscription for $30.99 which my credit card charged me $42.09 for - but you can get just one month or one year if you like.

http://mubu.com/

Someone pointed out to me that the charge might include other purchases I made - AmEx doesn't make it clear. So please ignore the part about getting charged extra until I am able to get the receipt from Apple explaining my charges.

Luhmann wrote:

I got a three year subscription for $30.99 which my credit card
charged me $42.09 for

Could it be an exchange rate issue (difference between an old rate and the actual rate), or the card company added their FX handling fee? Alternatively it could be some added tax.

The mind map view is a nice touch.

After using MuBu a bit I find it actually has taken quite a bit from Dynalist (just as Dynalist took a lot from Workflowy when they started). You can add colors, tags, headings, and basic formatting. It doesn't support Markdown or in-text links however. There is no plain-text export, but it does offer Word and PDF export. Sync is pretty good, but not as good as Outlinely. You sometimes have to refresh manually to ensure that your changes get sent back to the server. That being said, the iOS app is very nice and easy to use, much much better than the web-view apps made by Dynalist or Workflowy, and quite competitive to Outlinely. The biggest problem for most people however will be the lack of any English menus. I suggest writing the developers to encourage them to make one soon. You can reach them at team@mubu.com

As my friend thought - I had bought some apps over the weekend and Apple charged them all together on the same bill. Sorry about the confusion there. The app charged exactly what it said. (I bought it on the US app store, so there were no currency conversions involved.)

Someone I know wrote and asked for English support to which the developers wrote back saying they have no plans to offer that. I find this quite surprising, but I guess it is a sign of how big the Chinese market is now that developers feel they can develop something as specialized as outlining software without supporting any other languages... It is a shame because it really does combine the best of Outlinely and Dynalist. After just one day I've largely switched over to Mubu.

Ask Dynalist to add mindmap?

Luhmann wrote:

Someone I know wrote and asked for English support to which the
developers wrote back saying they have no plans to offer that. I find
this quite surprising, but I guess it is a sign of how big the Chinese
market is now that developers feel they can develop something as
specialized as outlining software without supporting any other
languages... It is a shame because it really does combine the best of
Outlinely and Dynalist. After just one day I've largely switched over to
Mubu.

Actually Dynalist is working on mindmap:

https://trello.com/c/uhHmsldR/63-pro-mind-map-view-alpha-early-access
http://blog.dynalist.io/clone/

However, personally I don't use mindmaps or care about this feature. The killer feature for me is a native iOS client that syncs with the web. I have long loved Dynalist's desktop experience and Outlinely's iOS experience, and Mubu is for me pretty close to the best of both worlds.

But there are concerns. The fact that they are on a Chinese server raises privacy issues, and also concerns over government censorship. I think by law they couldn't allow a shared outline with banned words? (I created a private one just to see if there was some kind of server side search that might affect those terms, but so far it seems OK.)

I tried their iOS app and crashed very often when I switched between mindmaps and list view. When I installed the windows desktop app, it showed strange characters and seemed it does not support English OS.

Luhmann wrote:

Actually Dynalist is working on mindmap:

https://trello.com/c/uhHmsldR/63-pro-mind-map-view-alpha-early-access
http://blog.dynalist.io/clone/

However, personally I don't use mindmaps or care about this feature. The
killer feature for me is a native iOS client that syncs with the web. I
have long loved Dynalist's desktop experience and Outlinely's iOS
experience, and Mubu is for me pretty close to the best of both worlds.

But there are concerns. The fact that they are on a Chinese server
raises privacy issues, and also concerns over government censorship. I
think by law they couldn't allow a shared outline with banned words? (I
created a private one just to see if there was some kind of server side
search that might affect those terms, but so far it seems OK.)

I haven't tried mindmaps on iOS and use the web app, so I can't compare. But for the features I use it has been very stable and I've have had no encoding issues.

Yes, the web app has no problem.

Luhmann wrote:

I haven't tried mindmaps on iOS and use the web app, so I can't compare.
But for the features I use it has been very stable and I've have had no
encoding issues.

I like mind mapping, but I don't see why I would use this implementation. The UI is too jiggly -- like working with a bowl of gelatin. More substantive -- there's no context to the nodes, no tag or calendar info as from the standard Dynalist Pro display. I assume this is VERY early proof-of-concept stuff.

Luhmann wrote:

Actually Dynalist is working on mindmap:

https://trello.com/c/uhHmsldR/63-pro-mind-map-view-alpha-early-access
http://blog.dynalist.io/clone/

I recently downloaded and installed the macOS app for mubu. While it doesn't have any encoding issues as reported for the Windows version, I find that it isn't as full featured as the web version. I will keep it on my computer in case I need offline access (which doesn't seem to work for me on the web, even though the developers insisted that it does), but for now I will continue to use the web version (and the iOS app).

Most recently, the government reinforced censorship for cloud storage. I won't risk this.
Luhmann wrote:

I recently downloaded and installed the macOS app for mubu. While it
doesn't have any encoding issues as reported for the Windows version, I
find that it isn't as full featured as the web version. I will keep it
on my computer in case I need offline access (which doesn't seem to work
for me on the web, even though the developers insisted that it does),
but for now I will continue to use the web version (and the iOS app).

Censorship is a very valid concern, as I mentioned earlier. I don't blame anyone for staying clear of mubu for this reason. For those who do wish to make use of the app, however, I think it shouldn't be a problem as long as you aren't using the sharing features. My understanding of Chinese censorship of cloud storage is that people are using the sharing features of cloud storage to get around censorship so in 2016 the government cracked down on this. For this reason one is probably best off sticking to Dynalist for any kind of serious collaborative work. As I mentioned above, I have a private list in my account of words and names known to be banned by the government. This has not been censored in any way ... so far.