Comparison of Best Online RSS Feed Readers

Online feed readers (feed aggregators) have become very popular mainly because they provide access to your feeds whereever you are. They are generally slower and not as flexible as desktop feed readers, but are becoming faster and more feature rich. They are generally better (faster) in feed searches since they contain a huge collection of feeds and also offer means for easily sharing your feeds.

Some of the popular Online Feed Readers are :

Attensa Online

Description

• Attensa Online lets you read RSS feeds on the web, in your browser.
• Integration with Attensa for Outlook synchronizes subscriptions and read items.
• You can organize and read subscribed feeds in folders.
• Attensa Online offers a number of display styles and can show referenced web pages inline.

Pros

• Attensa Online is a simple and pure displayer of RSS feeds
• Integration with Attensa for Outlook and Attensa Mobile lets you get your subscriptions anywhere
• Attensa Online offers a number of neat display styles, and you can group feeds in folders

Cons

• Attensa Online does not offer search or virtual folders
• Neither can you flag or label items for later or for organization
• Attensa Online cannot be navigated with keyboard shortcuts

Bloglines

Description

• Bloglines is a web-based news reader that aggregates RSS feeds and email newsletters.
• News sources can be organized in folders in Bloglines, and you can read all news in a folder easily.
• Set up "playlists" with all your favorite feeds, grouped by theme or time, occasion or circumstances.
• Bloglines lets you clip and annotate individual news items to get back to them later.
• You can also publish your news clippings (as well as free-form entries) as a blog in Bloglines.
• A low-graphic, fast-loading edition of Bloglines is available for mobile devices. iBloglines is optimized for the iPhone.
• Pop-up window, Firefox extension and Windows/Mac OS X apps notify you about new news in Bloglines.
• Bloglines can import and export subscriptions via OPML files and lets you manage your blogroll.
• Search across all of Bloglines' feeds or just yours and subscribe to the search results as a feed.
• Bloglines lets you specify a preferred language, links to Google translation for non-matching items.

Pros

• Bloglines is friendly, easy to use and universally accessible
• Individual news items can be clipped, emailed and blogged easily
• Bloglines lets you organize feeds with folders and playlists and offers saved searches

Cons

• Bloglines does not offer smart playlists
• Feed item display can't be customized
• Bloglines lacks a three-pane view

FeedLounge

Description

• Subscribe to feeds (RSS and Atom) from your favorite web sites and enjoy the most powerful and elegant web-based feed reading experience ever created.
• FeedLounge supports importing (and exporting) OPML files from popular feed readers like BlogLines, NetNewsWire.

Pros

• Rich Client Experience
• Full Keyboard Control
• 3 pane interface
• Access from any modern browser
• Cross-browser Support
• Unique features like tagging, saving items indefinitely and flagging items
• It is quick. Actions are performed quickly. Content appears quickly
• Feedlounge goes out and updates content on a regular basis. While leaving the browser open, users can do other tasks and return to Feedlounge to find new content ready to be read without having to refresh the browser
• Two Column Split, Three Column, or River of News
  Buttons are labeled clearly. Nothing is hidden or buried
  Posts can be flagged to be read later

Cons

• It does not offer a free version
• There is absolutely nothing to download with Feedlounge. No browser integration, no lite client, no full client

Google Reader

Description

• Google Reader is a web-based reader for RSS and Atom news feeds.
• You can group and read your subscriptions using free labels.
• Google Reader lets you tag, sort and organize individual items using labels, too.
• Keyboard shortcuts make navigating Google Reader a pleasurable snap.
• You can easily share items on a public web page that has an RSS feed itself, send them by email, or use tags for blogrolls.
• A blog and news search engine makes it easy to find and subscribe to feeds.
• Google Reader is accessible in screen readers and navigable using WAI-ARIA.
• Using Google Gears, you can access up to 2000 items offline (in the normal Google Reader interface).
• You can import and export your subscriptions using OPML.

Pros

• Google Reader provides a slick, universally accessible and uncomplicated way to read RSS news feeds
• Sensible keyboard shortcuts make navigating Google Reader a snap
• Lets you label feeds and items freely and for comprehensive grouping and organization

Cons

• Google Reader cannot label items automatically based on past choices
• You cannot annotate items
• Google Reader not identify related posts and news to put items in context

Gritwire

Description

• Gritwire is a flash-based RSS reader
• It has the typical “Outlook” panels going on with the normal stuff you’ll see in any aggregator on the market (folders, etc).

Pros

• It has a social networking aspect. You can add contacts and then send over recommended feeds to those on My List.
• Gritwire also has a media player built in so that you can listen to podcasts that you subscribed to.
• There is also a neat little wiki application that they built it.

Cons

• It’s very buggy in Firefox.
• Has problems with OPML imports.
• Has some image display issues.

News Alloy

Description

• News Alloy is FREE service for discovering, reading, and sharing Internet news and information.
• It has a similar feel to Google Mail about it, from the white on red ‘loading’ logo that pops up, to the Archive, Delete and More Actions buttons.
• News Alloy lets you view information from a wide variety of news sources, special interest publications and blogs via RSS and Atom in an easy to use and manageable way.

Pros

• It uses an innovative double-folder system – the top set offers options like Inbox, Archive and Trash, much like an email program
• The second batch is your collection of feeds, which you organise separately. These work in conjunction with one another, so if you’ve got Inbox and one of your feeds selected, it will show all the new items in that feed
• Switch to Archive and it’ll show you old items for the same feed

Cons

• It’s a small operation with limited resources
• As it stands at the moment, there’s an element of risk to entrusting it with all your feeds

NewsGator Online

Description

• NewsGator Online Services is a web-based news aggregator and RSS feed to POP email gateway.
• Additionally, NewsGator Online offers NewsGator for Outlook integration and a mobile edition.
• NewsGator Online Services keeps all subscriptions and read/unread status in sync across editions.
• Each access point can have its own set of subscriptions, and subscribed feeds can overlap.
• The email edition of NewsGator Online is accessible via POP, provides clues for automatic filtering.
• NewsGator Online Services offers smart feeds tracking keywords or mail sent to a specific address.
• You can organize feeds to folders in the web edition, save posts for later and rate content.
• Based on your subscriptions and ratings, NewsGator Online suggests related feeds and postings.
• NewsGator Online Services also allows you to subscribe to select premium content feeds.

Pros

• NewsGator Online Services provides web-based, POP and mobile access to RSS feeds
• Synchronizes subscriptions and read items of all editions and with NewsGator for Outlook
• NewsGator Online Services offers news search feeds as well as related and rated content

Cons

• NewsGator Online Services web edition lacks search
• IMAP access to the email edition of NewsGator Online Services would be great

Pluck Web Edition

Description

• Pluck Web Edition RSS offers an easy way for you to be alerted when new content appears on your favorite websites and blogs.
• Just check your Pluck RSS Reader and see all the latest content, all in one place.

Pros

• It links to the Shadow pages of the sites you’re looking at. If you really need this function as part of your reader, then maybe Pluck is for you.
• Pluck is adware-free, spyware-free, and just plain free.

Cons

• Maybe their IE and Firefox specific extensions are better, but the web client is slow, unwieldy, and buggy.
• It is the slowest of any of the web readers.
• It also breaks some interaction when you use it in Firefox - the feed list has it’s own pane on the left, but in Firefox the scrollbar is missing.
• Want to read Zeldman? Too bad.
• In IEtab and the scrollbar it shows up, but it seems kinda like a big thing to miss.

Rojo

Description

• Rojo feels like Bloglines++. It takes the interaction of Bloglines, makes it better, and adds tagging.
• There are a few small problems that keeps you completely switching to Rojo, but if they fix those, you might be heading over for good.

Pros

• Also looks much nicer than Bloglines. Comparable to Newsgator.
• The interaction is like Bloglines, but better. It shows all articles for a specific feed in the right pane, but fills in the previously read articles at the end of the unread ones (up to a threshold you set). Amazing… You can read new articles AND see previous ones all at once? Who would have thought?
• Has a unique tagging feature.
• Also has a “show all feeds in a folder” type mode like Newsgator and Google reader.

Cons

• The export is sometimes broken.
• You can’t turn off tagging. Granted, it doesn’t take up much space on each article, but if you never intend to tag articles, it’d be nice to save that little space from each article.
• It can be slow at times. (Apparently there is a Greasemonkey script that AJAXifies the interface, drastically improving the speed)

Comparison Chart :