Imagine taking all your clothes out of your closet and trying to rearrange them into your kitchen cupboards. That’s how it feels when you get used to a productivity app and then switch to an alternative. The new space isn’t bad. It’s just different. Whoever built all these drawers and shelves designed them for you to put your belongings… just not these belongings. So you have to rethink the purpose of the space and all your assumptions about organizing your things into it. It’s a lot to wrap your mind around.
If you’re an Evernote user, you might go through a similar adjustment period when switching to another note-taking app. Over the last few years, Evernote users have felt burned by a once high-value, reliable app after the company hiked its prices (2016) and a few years later released new versions of its apps that were painfully buggy and missing features. In my personal experience, I put up with a lot of frustration for too long, turning to legacy versions of the Evernote desk app and largely giving up on the mobile apps. It finally came to a head, and I’ve permanently switched to a different note-taking app. In my case, I went with Joplin. It’s not a perfect alternative, but it meets my needs well enough.
I’ve been testing and researching alternatives to Evernote since at least 2011, and as far as I’ve seen, there is no clone. Plenty of other note-taking apps exist, but each one approaches the very idea of what notes are and how you might use them differently. As a result, transferring notes from one system to another doesn’t always go smoothly. If you use Evernote’s tags, notebook stacks (i.e., nested notebooks), reminders, and internal links to other Evernote notes, these elements won’t all transfer perfectly into any other app that’s currently available. (I’ve tried.) Switching from Evernote really is a daunting task.
And yet, it can be done. It may not be smooth or perfect, but it can be done.
Other Options
In searching for the best alternatives to Evernote, I considered many more apps that didn’t make this list. I ruled them out fairly quickly for various reasons, which I’ll share here.
Roam, for example, is a relatively new note-taking app for research modeled on the idea of networked ideas. At $165 per year, it’s more than twice as expensive as Evernote, which will be a deal breaker for most people who find Evernote already too pricey. Milanote has been on my radar for a while, but it’s more targeted at designers and people who make visual notes, which Evernote isn’t especially adept at doing in the first place (and therefore, I can’t imagine too many soon-to-be Milanote fans would be with Evernote in the first place). Moleskine is way too simplistic in comparison to Evernote. OpenNote is not too dissimilar from Simplenote (which is included below), although you have to host your notes yourself and it’s only available for Windows. Obsidian has some interesting mind-mapping features included and seems like it might appeal to tinkerers, but I haven’t had the chance to test it thoroughly yet.
Then there are all the note-taking apps that specialize in handwriting, sketching, and PDF markup, ideally used on a tablet or touch surface. These include Penultimate, Notability, GoodNotes, among others. Again, if you’ve invested in Evernote for years and haven’t jumped to one of these other apps yet, it’s probably because they never were the right replacement.
Make the Leap
If you have thousands of notes in Evernote, making the switch to a new app is a big deal and will take time. Test out any new potential apps you’ve identified as possible replacements by moving some of your notes to it before you commit to a complete migration. Be sure to doable check that any important types of data that you want transferred, whether it’s tags or attachments, come through as you expect them to.
Don’t forget to check when your next Evernote billing cycle is due! (Go to Account Info > Manage subscription.) You’ll want to leave plenty of time to migrate before your billing cycle ends.
Here are the best Evernote alternatives. What makes them different from Evernote, and how will those differences affect your ability to make the leap to them?
