Today’s news on Mac Rumors (http://bit.ly/2PAzgo2) says that EverNote (eek! Oh, no!, really!) is on the skids - top execs are gone or leaving. Need something cross-platform, including Mac, iOS and Windows. Whether free or paid - any suggestions for the best ones out there?
For those comfortable riding things out, I saw a notice in a 512 Pixels article about the EN troubles that they are offering a sale on A subscription.
Evernote is currently offering a sale on its Premium membership, slashing its yearly subscription price from $70 down to a much more reasonable $42. The company offered the same deal earlier this year. If you’re interested in grabbing the deal, it’s available now on Evernote’s site. It only applies if you pay one lump sum for the annual subscription.
If you need cross platform support, I think Microsoft OneNote is probably the best option. They have an Evernote importer to move your data over (disclamier: I’ve never used it). If you didn’t need Windows support Bear and Devonthink are other popular choices. One last thought might be to give Apple Notes a trial run. You can get at your notes through a web browser on Windows via icloud.com.
I hope Evernote continues as a company. I use it multiple times a day on Windows, Mac, and my iPhone.
1 Like
I had a feeling things were headed in this direction. A few months ago I stopped using Evernote and am using a combination of Apple’s Notes app plus leveraging the Mac/iOS Files app’s excellent search features to locate PDFs. My usage of Evernote had become simpler and simpler over time as I went from having accounts for both business and personal use. Evernote has a lot of features but I found several were really unnecessary/gimmicky (e.g. business cards).
But for anyone whose workflow is still all wrapped up in Evernote’s tools switching will be hard and likely involve mulptiple new apps.
This is an example of problems when using a proprietary filing system to save documents. As @ronguest suggested, using the Mac’s standard file system is perfectly adequate. These days, there is little advantage to using a proprietary app to store files long-term.
Back in my old Windows PC days, I used the app “Paperport” to store documents. Big mistake. This app initially stored documents in its proprietary format (.max files). In later years, Paperport supported .pdf files - but too late, as I had thousands of files in the .max format. Paperport was not available for OS-X (later macOS), probably because the Mac operating system supported .pdf files natively. I struggled for years trying to convert the old .max files to a usable format.
Lesson learned: Don’t use a proprietary app or file format for long-term storage of documents.
3 Likes
Yea! OneNote.
*** 123
The web clipping tool is trash. Anyone know of anything better to web clip into OneNote?
I’m becoming more and more aware of how true this really is as I’m experimenting with putting everything in iCloud instead of Evernote.
In particular, I’m using the iWork apps to create my own notes, which offers distinct advantages in formattting and adding content, as well as a certain aesthetic appeal.
Apple notes has been slowly becoming my “scratchpad” on the go, another inbox for me to place items for later processing.
2 Likes
Former user, can confirm. I received an e-mail from EN with this offer. I declined and deleted it, but it is a valid offer. 
I particularly liked the web clipper and it was one of the features that I used the most but at times it would only save the URL, but most of the time it worked correctly.
I have been starting to use Keep IT for website clipper.
@Arthur Yes I also bought Paperport a while back when I was still using Windows and did not the proprietary database so never implemented it. I ran into issues when I used a business card scanner that even the hardware Cardscan required use of their software and they we bought by Dynamo complete disaster and new software unable to read old database files so all those cards are lost.
I went to the EN web page and saw the offer but when I clicked on it I got a “this offer is not valid for your account type” error after logging in. I am currently a Premium subscriber.
I am a long time EN user. About a year ago I got OneNote and started moving some pieces of my life to that. I recently gave up on it. OneNote has promise but there are so many little issues. You can’t share a single note only an entire notebook, you can’t create reasonable PDF files (it frequently splits lines of text down the middle across pages. When you attach a file you can’t see the entire name (there are ways around that but requires more work). I loved the organization in OneNote and it is the reason that I started moving to it…but the other stuff just wore me down over time. So, for now, I am back on EN until I find an alternative.
Some may not know but pdfs added to Apple Notes are fully indexed and searchable from spotlight on iOS or within the search field in notes. Works great. Personally, I’ve been a big fan of Apple Notes. It’s evolved into a very capable app over recent years.
2 Likes
I didn’t know about the indexing, that’s great! I’ll have to drop some pdf in there and test it out
1 Like
Looking for a good EN alternative myself… I’ve looked at the other alternatives and honestly if EN goes out of business, I’ll probably have to switch to gdocs. Still, I’m sticking it out with EN. I love the app and how you can switch between different notes on a single screen. Which is a major advantage for me VS dealing to tons and tons of individual word documents. Folder and sharing options, and general ways to manage all your notes is an advantage over systems like Apple Notes or Bear that I appreciate. I never got the ‘tagging’ thing, so Bear is a no go for me. I’m old school and prefer to organise my stuff in folders and sub folders.
The EN webclipper is really useful too, and that’s something I’ll miss if I switch to something like gdocs.
DevonThink - I don’t get this app at all. It’s overkill for me. I mainly store text and do some short fiction writing in my EN. Hardly store any PDFs or documents, so I need a text storage system and not a file storage system. I’m not writing books, tried dedicated writing apps like scrivener and it’s again an overkill. Plus, the app design looked dated and too complicated for a casual writer. Meanwhile I find Apple Notes too spartan… I can’t seem to find a word count feature for example. I do use apple notes, but more for keeping ‘important things’ that I want to save. Like my employment number for example. Not a secret in particular, but important information that I may need to reference in future. Also have taken to putting packing lists in there thanks to the checkable bullet points feature and I love it!
Yeah… Overall… Still sticking to Evernote till they close down or something else more suitable for my needs comes by!
@Coolohoh Have you looked at Ulysses? If you’re mostly writing rather than storing other types of files it might fit the bill for you. It’s got more of a hierarchical structure than Bear.
1 Like
I’ve migrated to Dynalist. It is an online outlier, but by switching to Article view, one can ignore the node hierarchy. Notes can be organized by both tags, folders, and bookmarks. Markdown is supported. The web clipper works pretty well. If you pay for the premium account, you also get Google Calendar integration, automatic daily backups, custom CSS, and file uploads. It fits all my note-taking needs, and I can’t be happier about it.
I’ve heard a lot about it but never sat down and really looked at it. Was hesitant about signing up for another subscription since I’m still on Evernote. Will have to check it out again sometime!
Fourteen days can be too short of a time.
I use EN and have gotten pretty deep with it the last couple years.
There are 2 main reasons I haven’t been able to switch to Apple notes (would be preferred because of ios/Mac integration)
- The lack of tags—so powerful for locating notes quickly.
- Note links—I use this constantly by putting a note link in task comments in omnifocus.
Without those 2 features, I’ll stay with EN till it dies. Hopefully Apple notes will get them before then.