Dedoose

I use both, below are my impressions, hope it helps, cheers. Dedoose Pros: it is simpler, much easier to collaborate with (cloud based) and is payable on a monthly use basis, Cons : since it is browser based, can get slow and crash, also although you can easily modify your coding tree to create sub codes, in context, it is difficult to split a code, once the excerpt is coded you can relabel it as something else but not easily break it into smaller coded excerpts. I feel this lack of in-text flexibility could potentialy impact your analysis as it makes it harder to evolve from your initial, first cycle coding tree. Nvivo Pros: you can sub code excerpts (lump and detail) including from within -soon to be- parent code excerpts, or on the other hand merge codes (split and gather) at will. the software is computer based, no lagging, very rare crashing. Cons: it is expensive (easily worth 20 months of Dedoose subscription), the learning curve is longuer, it is difficult to collaborate with, but not impossible (you either need to coordinate coders to regularily export and then you gather and consolidate NVP files, or have access to Nvivo servers/ Nvivo for teams which is very expensive-in the thousands USD per year). in brief, it depends: the shorter the analysis timeframe, the more collaborative= Dedoose; the longuer the analysis timeframe, the less collaborative (i.e. PhD thesis)=Nvivo