For many productivity enthusiasts,Evernotebecame the go-to note-taking app of the 2010s.
It was fast, and let you create notebooks with notes, images, and even to-dos.
And it did this all mostly for free.
But in the past five years, things kept on changing for the worse.
Evernote started limiting the free plans to promote their paid ones, which didnt costtoomuch.
But then, they kept jacking up the price.
Thats more than what Microsoft charges for the entire ecosystem of Office products, including OneNote.
But the question is, where to go from here?
If youre paying for Microsoft 365, the premium version is already included.
One place OneNote lacks, though, is OCR (optical character recognition).
The workflow is not as intuitive as Evernote, and searching inside PDFs and documents isnt enabled by default.
This is the one thing that Evernote does far better than OneNote.
Take a look at the fullOneNote review at PCMagto learn more.
Taskade
If you loved Evernote for the collaboration, youll get better mileage fromTaskade.
Taskade integrates ChatGPT everywhere you’re free to enter text, and it takes a collaboration-first approach.
Youll also find basic task management features here.
It has a web clipper, but theres no OCR support.
Check out the fullTaskade review at PCMagfor more.
Notion lets you create multiple workspaces, with documents at the core.
Notions collaboration game is strong, and they have a giant array of templates and customization features.
Tables and systems you could create in Notion are sometimes only limited by your imagination.
Notion is free to use, and you could collaborate with up to five users without paying a penny.
Obsidian
Obsidianis not a true replacement for Evernote, but its a great note-taking app.
Obsidian lets you create plain text notes and leaves the rest of the functionality topluginsand there are many.
This also means that the learning curve here is massive, and it wont work for everyone.
The same goes for the web clipper.
While there is no official tool, there is acommunity-created option.
That’s the best way to think of Obsidian.
This brings a level of customization and flexibility that is unheard of in the note-taking space.
To learn more, check out the fullObsidian reviewat PCMag.
Think of it as the Apple Notes app, but elevated.
Bear supports Markdown, and makes it easy to import and export your notes.
Plus, theres great support for media and documents.
you could organize notes using tags, which are quite powerful.
Other than collaboration and web clipper, Bear offers everything that made Evernote such a great note-taking app.
And, in my humble opinion, Bear is better designed and much faster to use.
Joplin
Did Evernote leave a sour taste in your mouth?
So much so that you cant trust another third-party note-taking service?Joplinmight help.
It’s a completely free and open-source note-taking service that works on all major platforms.
it’s possible for you to use the app for free, forever.
But you wont find advanced tools like OCR or document scanning.
Check out thePCMag reviewto know more.
This is an incredibly simple, free app that works on every popular platform.
Its owned and maintained by Automattic, the makers of WordPress.
It has automatic sync, tags, revision history, and collaboration features.
you might even write in Markdown.
All of that is made for free, forever.
That said, its colorful, fun, easy to use, and it works well on smartphones.
Its also quite easy to share and collaborate on Google Keep lists.
Its free to use as long as you have a Google account.
