Iāve been a Podio Partner for a while now, working closely with clients on Podio. Over the last year, I also teamed up as a Tape partner. After being asked quite often, I took the time to put together a thorough comparison.
All platforms clearly have their pros and cons. If youāre interested in a discussion, feel free to get in touch, for example, via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkspannaus/
Tape vs Podio - Summary
Tape is obviously based on Podio. Some highlights are the workflow automations, permissions and task management, unified development experience with JavaScript and HTML support across all features (calculation field, workflow automations). Close to feature parity with Podio except a couple of missing features like calendar view, reference layouts, dashboards and a global calendar. Better pricing policy with free guest users that are able to edit items. Product and community keeps evolving at a rapid pace compared to Podio. Only real alternative to Podio for heavy users of Podio Workflow Automations, for basic Podio setups many other alternatives exist.
Field types
Tape differs from Podio in that they have item tasks and item attachments as field types instead of being static properties of items. This enabled better filtering and automation support and overall greater flexibility for building apps. Some useful Podio field types like progress or voting are missing. A highlight is the calculation field. 100% compatible with Podio but has full HTML support, so no super menu extension needed for basic things like embeds (iframes), tables of related items, buttons and so on.
Views (layouts, filters, split by)
Comprehensive set of filtering options. Tape has basic filters that are missing in Podio like text filters, relation filters with many different matching types like āis emptyā. The ability to provide a search term that searches all fields of an item for the current view is a nice enhancement. Tape has a table, list and board view. However, classic Podio views like Gallery, Calendar and Activity are missing. Split by category field, relation field and so on are very similar to Podio with some nice improvements for split by date fields. The table view has some Excel-like features like calculating the sum for a column respecting the current viewās filtering options.
Task Management
Tape has a more scalable approach to task management. Instead of having tasks for each item, Tape introduces a āChecklistā field for task management. This enables the automation of tasks via workflows just as any other field type. There is one place (Home) where each user can see all their assigned tasks across all apps, just like in Podio. Due to the field-type approach for tasks, the admin can decide for each checklist field whether it appears in the global tasks list or not.
Permissions
Tape has item-level, app-level and workspace-level permissions. This eliminates the need for multiple apps in different workspaces just for the sake of permissions. Sharing of individual items is possible. Sharing a workspace via a public link is possible, allowing for everyone with the link to see the data and to duplicate the entire workspace into their own organization (useful for templates). Large amounts of users can be effectively managed via groups (like āSalesā or āSupportā) and are natively supported on each level (item, app, workspace). Instead of managing each userās permissions individually, this is a more scalable approach for larger organizations.
Workflow automations
Tape Automations are like GlobiFlow 2.0. They are natively integrated into the product. The only downside (for PHP coders) is that PHP is not supported, instead JavaScript is used everywhere (similar to the Podio calculation field). Tape has all GlobiFlow features and solves many of the issues (save without leaving a flow, proper attachment and tasks integration, better run overview, activity stream shows which flow did a change, ā¦). The best pro feature is the āScript Actionā, which is a fully functional JavaScript (Node) environment with asynchronous HTTP calls, Developer API integration, JSON support and everything else a fully fledged programming environment offers. Documentation could be better.
Item Layout
The Podio item layout is more feature complete. The main reason is that Tape is missing reference layouts for relation fields. Some small improvements to Podio are the rich-text editor and replies (threads) inside the right-hand activity stream. Item metadata like ācreated atā, ācreated byā or āunique IDā are handled as field types inside Tape, which offers some more flexibility regarding the position and formatting.
Large organizations
Podio has some well known shortcomings regarding larger organizations. Supermenu fixes some of those, however Tape addresses these shortcomings natively: The sidebar scales nicely with the number of workspaces, the favorites section allows quick access to apps and items. Each workspace can either be Podio-style navigation with a single-click navigation and an app bar on top or a nested approach where clicking on a workspace expands the list of apps below.
Compliance
A core compliance issue of Podio is that a single Podio account is used across multiple organizations. Therefore, the account cannot be managed by the organization (e.g., enforce password policy, account deactivation) which is necessary for larger organizations. Tape creates one account per organization, which solves this issue. Additionally, much needed security options like disabling guests or the export for a workspace are in place. Probably not relevant for smaller teams.
Billing
Due to the recent billing changes of Podio, Tape has a couple of advantages regarding their pricing. For each billed user, the organization gets a certain amount of free guest users, which can fully collaborate within Tape. The grandfathering of plans (The pricing of an existing subscription will not be changed) is an important guarantee from the company and offers greater predictability for costs.
Tape until 30.09.2023, and just send us a message with āMigration.ā Thatās it. And take all the time you need.
Thanks for spreading these words around your ecosystem! 
details such as thread comments and a RichText Editor.
Simple tasks can be done with building blocks and a low-code approach. But if you want to go further, there is a comprehensive script editor that satisfies every need. As a low/no coder i miss here a better documentation, but iām convinced that with a little practice you can automate much more natively in Tape than in Podio. Generating delivery notes or order confirmations as PDFs is quite easy and natively possible here, something you could only dream of in Podio. 
would be a calendar view, an improved reference layout and the possibility to edit several objects at the same time. But I am sure that Tim and his colleagues will deliver this pretty soon. 
