busy.org is an excellent alternative application. If you asked me for rating, I would say it is the next biggest thing in this whole game after the great steemit.com itself. It is very easy to navigate and it has easily accessible tools where you can italicize, bold or place quotes.
Also, claiming of rewards, I noticed, is relatively faster on busy.org compared to steemit.com. i dont really know whether this could be related to the slow internet service is Nigeria. I would like a feedback comparison from another user on this.