How Eight Evernote Alternatives Stack Up

Evernote is one of my favorite tools for staying organized and productive. But changes to Evernote’s plans and pricing have burned its users, who now have to face paying a lot more or finding an alternative.

- Jill Duffy

The company jacked up the price on the highest tier of service by about 55 percent and gutted what’s included in the lower tiers of service, including the free offering. Loyal users aren’t getting grandfathered into a better deal, and the community is pretty ticked off. Many, including PC Magazine’s Sascha Segan, are talking about leaving Evernote, showing their dissatisfaction by taking their money— and their notes—elsewhere. But doing so is easier said than done.

Imagine taking all your clothes out of the closet and trying to rearrange them into your kitchen cupboards instead. The space is different. There’s no bar for hangers. And where the hell do you put your shoe rack? You could make it work, but do you want to? If you’re an Evernote power user, that might be how it’s going to feel when you try to switch to another note-taking app.

Alternatives to Evernote do exist, but most pale in comparison in terms of functionality. None of them offers a truly comparable experience, and they’re all structurally different to some degree. If you migrate, your notes and all their attributes aren’t guaranteed to come out the same way on the other side. If you use Evernote’s full range of features, including tags, notebook stacks (nested notebooks), reminders, and internal links to other Evernote notes, these elements of your organization won’t transfer into any other app that’s currently available.

Once you get a sense of some of those alternatives and the shortcomings you can expect with them, you might start to see why holding onto Evernote a while longer could be the best option.

Microsoft OneNote