Comparison

Smart Totem vs emdee

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Smart Totem

Capture, organize, and act on real-world data from the field in real time. Geotag observations with photos, notes, and custom forms. Collaborate with your team and generate reports with AI insights.

Highlights
  • Geolocated data capture
  • Customizable forms
  • Real-time team sync
  • Offline data collection
  • AI-generated reports
  • Data export
Features
Read full description

SMART TOTEM is LOCATION. SMART TOTEM is DATA. In a world where data drives every decision, Smart Totem gives field professionals the tool they've always needed — a simple, powerful way to capture, organize and act on real-world data, directly from the field, in real time. Stop losing observations in paper notebooks, scattered spreadsheets or memory. Every point of interest becomes a geolocated data point, enriched with photos, structured records and timestamps. CAPTURE Drop a totem anywhere on the map. Add photos, notes, measurements, choice lists — whatever your workflow requires. Build custom forms tailored to your industry. Every record is geolocated, timestamped and attributed to its author. ORGANIZE Filter your data by color, shape, keyword or date. Visualize patterns on the map. Navigate your full history of observations. Find anything instantly. ACT Generate professional reports in one tap, or let our AI write a narrative summary that turns raw field data into actionable insights. Share with your team, your clients, or export to your own systems. COLLABORATE Real-time sync keeps your whole team aligned. Share totems and forms with colleagues, track who recorded what and when. Your field data is a shared asset — not locked in one person's phone. WORKS ONLINE AND OFFLINE Built for the real world. No signal? No problem. Capture data anywhere, sync when you're back online. Your data is private — it's yours only. WHO IS IT FOR? Agriculture: crop monitoring, scouting, machinery tracking, yield observations Facilities and maintenance: equipment mapping, intervention logs, status tracking Real estate: property geotagging, visit logs, team sharing Environment and ecology: species location, long-term observation records, field reports Sales and field teams: prospect mapping, client visit logs, shared data across the team Construction and inspection: site mapping, issue tracking, photo documentation And anywhere data from the real world needs to be captured, tracked and shared PRICING Free to get started. Affordable in-app purchases to expand your totem quota. Go Pro to unlock AI reports, CSV export and advanced collaboration features.

About

emdee

Edit Markdown files directly in a formatted view without switching modes. This app offers a true WYSIWYG experience for creating and modifying documents, including tables, lists, and images, while ensuring your files remain plain .md.

Highlights
  • True WYSIWYG Markdown editing
  • Edit directly in formatted view
  • Supports headings, bold, italic, lists, tables
  • Image insertion and display
  • Export to PDF, HTML, plain text
  • Table of contents generation
Read full description

A .md file from an AI chat, full of # and **. A browser can show it to you. emdee lets you rewrite it — in that same clean, formatted view. You don't need to switch between a reading mode and an editing mode. You edit the document while it stays clean and properly formatted, exactly as a .md document should look. Headings stay heading-sized, tables stay tables, and you type directly into the document. Want bold? Select the text and tap the button. You never type the symbols, and you never see them. Save, and it's still a plain .md file. ■ When you'd use it You saved an AI answer as .md — now you want it in your own words, not just readable AI drafted your travel plan or checklist — now the dates and details need to be yours You want to keep notes and minutes in .md, without looking up syntax as you write ■ What you can actually edit "emdee" is not a viewer — it's a true WYSIWYG Markdown editor. All of this works right in the formatted view: Headings (six levels), bold, italic, strikethrough, inline code, links Bullet lists, numbered lists, and checklists you can tick with a tap Block quotes, code blocks, horizontal rules Tables: insert with one button, and add or delete rows and columns from that same button's menu. Line breaks inside cells are supported Find and replace — Replace All comes back with a single undo It all sits in the format bar along the bottom, which rises with the keyboard so you can change formatting mid-sentence ■ Images An image in the same folder as the document you have open is drawn right there in the text. So is one in a folder below it. PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and SVG are drawn. So are images on the web (https://) HEIC — what an iPhone camera writes — is not drawn. Export it as JPEG and it is The first time, emdee asks permission to read that folder — one button, and it never asks again Anything it cannot draw shows its path in a frame instead The image button on the format bar puts one in. An image from outside the document's folder is copied into that folder first, and a file of the same name is never overwritten. What gets written is a relative path, so hand the images over along with the document. Exported HTML and PDF have the pictures embedded, so they travel on their own. The ![...](...) in your file is not touched by any of this. ■ More features Table of contents — tap a heading to jump there. On iPad it opens as a column beside your text instead of covering it Print, and export to PDF, HTML, or plain text. Lines break on paper exactly where they break on screen, and tables never split mid-row across pages Light, dark, or follow the system Body text can follow the system text size or stay at a size you choose, and the line width is yours: fit the screen, or match A4 print ■ What you write stays a .md No proprietary format, no importing. The file you have open is the .md itself, opened in place where it lives — no copy is made. It saves back readable by GitHub, VS Code, Obsidian — anything. Even details like line breaks inside table cells are written the standard way, as an HTML br tag. Line endings (LF / CRLF / CR) and text encodings (UTF-8, UTF-16, and legacy encodings such as Shift_JIS) are preserved exactly as the file was opened. Files made on Windows keep their format intact. ■ One purchase — iPhone, iPad, and Mac The same document, on the same page layout, wherever you open it. ■ What emdee doesn't do File management belongs to the Files app, and sync belongs to iCloud Drive. There is no proprietary notes database and no cloud service. The only thing open is your .md file. Images are looked for inside the folder your document is in, and nowhere else. A reference pointing outside it (../ or an absolute path) is not drawn, and neither are HEIC, AVIF or TIFF files, or images over roughly 8 MB (24 MB per document). Anything that cannot be drawn shows its path in a frame instead. Questions and bug reports are welcome — see the support page.

Screenshots

Smart Totem4 screens
emdee4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Smart Totem at Free against emdee's $7.99. Smart Totem also leads on iOS requirement (14.0 vs 17.0). emdee's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 6) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 2 months). On rating, review sentiment, ratings volume and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Smart Totem is free to download; emdee costs $7.99 up front. Smart Totem sells 6 one-off in-app purchases. emdee asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Smart Totem against 5.0 for emdee. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 1 respectively. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Smart Totem ships an update every 2 months, emdee every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and November 7, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
Smart Totem versus emdee: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSmart Totememdee
PriceFree — better$7.99
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews100.0% of reviews
Number of ratings2 — better1
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsEvery 3 weeks — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchases — betterPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, Mac
Requires iOS14.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size79 MB6 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCroisixKeita Eto

Customer experience

Smart Totem

All ratings2 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews13 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

emdee

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

6 purchases

Smart Totem

One-time6
  • No ads$0.99
  • 12 Totems$2.99
  • 40 Totems$8.99
Show 3 more
  • 100 Totems$8.99
  • 150 Totems - Pro$32.99
  • 1000 Totems - Pro+$199.99
None

emdee

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Smart Totem free?
Smart Totem is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is emdee free?
emdee costs $7.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Smart Totem or emdee?
Smart Totem and emdee are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 1 ratings respectively.
Do Smart Totem or emdee have ads?
Neither Smart Totem nor emdee shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Smart Totem or emdee?
Smart Totem ships an update every 2 months, and emdee every 3 weeks. Most recently, Smart Totem was updated on November 1, 2026 and emdee on November 7, 2026.

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