So what's up with Ampersand?
Ampersand is an up-and-coming app made for plurals, similar to Simply Plural and Octocon except entirely offline. While downloadable and usable, it's still in alpha. I discovered it a few days ago and instantly fell in love with its dashboard and customization options.
My and my alters profiles on Ampersand. Note the ability to have backgrounds on your profiles, and the space to note role (or whatever else you fancy putting there - we used it for role and emoji designation)
How does it compare functionally, though, to something like Simply Plural? I'll use SP as the main point of comparison here since it's what we're used to using and have the most experience in, and I feel like a lot of plurals that use organizational apps like these are using SP.
Front logging. SP displays it on a scrollable timeline with the ability to see fronters side-by-side, where AMP uses a calendar that you can leaf through to see all who fronted that day in order.
Alter profiles. Both apps use markdown, are able to display images, have custom fields, alter colors, profile pictures, pronouns, etc. Simply Plural lacks Ampersand's ability to display gifs in avatars however. Ampersand's alter profile colors also effect link colors within descriptions and custom fields, and will tint the profile to match the color.
Custom fields. Similar across apps, but AMP only has text fields so far, where SP has options for dates and colors.
Message boards(?). I've not used the feature in any meaningful capacity in SP, but AMP has a dashboard that displays message board messages, and I've been enjoying using that.
Overall system profile. Very similar to SP, AMP has an overall system profile page to display your information - member count, profile photo, description, and name. Unlike SP, since AMP is fully offline, you can make your name anything and not have to worry about if a username is taken.
Custom fronts. As far as I can tell, they work the same way across apps, but I haven't experimented a ton with AMP's version of them.
Front status. Similar across apps, just type in your status.
Archiving alters. The same across apps.
Alter search. Better in SP, I've not quite figured out how to search for alters by things like tag or role - or if that's possible.
Now for the differences...
Has folders. This I feel is sorely lacking in Ampersand, as we're polyfragmented and like most of our alters tucked neatly away out of view so we don't get overwhelmed.
In-app chatroom. Another lacking feature for AMP that's super handy to have, though we don't use it much, when we need it it's a lifesaver.
Friends system. Since AMP is offline, there's no way to share your information with others or to see others information or fronters - which some might like!
App reminders and notifications. Handy. We have a permanent notification pinned to our phone to show us who's logged as fronting at any time.
Some examples and screenshots of SP:
More profile customization options. Backgrounds, gif display, personalized profile/link colors, and another row of display information (the "role" section).
A journal. We haven't tested it and don't plan to use it since we have an analog journal, but it seems to display on a calendar you leaf through like you do with front and message board history.
Passive influence logging and "main fronters". When logging a front, you can set an alter to be the "main fronter", which will change the "hello" header text to their name. You can set other alters to "influence" the main or other fronters, which will change the outline color and set their status to "influencing xyz"
Has tags. When importing your information from SP (which you can do btw - as well as with PK and Tupper!), your folders will be converted to tags. They display underneath your role on your profile, and you can set them to display in list view as well.
Examples and screenshots of AMP:
Overall I really enjoy and even in some ways prefer Ampersand, and the fact that it's still in alpha has me excited for what they'll add in the future. I'd really like them to add the things Simply Plural has that they're lacking - namely folders and an in-app chatroom. I will say, if you're polyfragmented like us, it LAGS when changing just about anything related to members. We had to import from PK to only get the alters that front frequently instead of all 150+ of us, and I have no idea how poorly it would perform for any system with member counts into the several hundreds or thousands. Remember - in alpha still.