Lots of gigabytes is saved in Evernote. But it’s time to say goodbye after 15 years together with Evernote. I know I should have left a long time ago. Here is lots of scanned documents done with my ScanSnap IX500, notes, documents… i’ve thrown so much at Evernote that it swallowed.
But where to go next?
I tried Devonthink Pro first, but I wouldn’t say I liked the software.
The next was OneNote - I liked this especially since it’s compatible with PC and the web. But how to import Evernote files to OneNote nowadays?
What is more out there? Especially if I can use the software with both PC, Mac and iOS
My last day with Evernote is on April 8th. Then everything should be exported and Evernote empty.
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There are many places to go but it all depends on your needs and style.
I left Evernote a few years ago as well. I transitioned over to DevonThink Pro. It took some time to create a flow around what I wanted, but ultimately landed there.
You could also try Bear if you want
Consider maybe Craft or Obsidian?
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My first suggestion will be that you give Devonthink another shot. Then if you also like to take notes Bear could work out great for you.
I don’t take notes with DevonThink but EVERYTHING I need to get archived ends up there. Even my Bear notes if I ever export some.
Regarding Craft as suggested by another user, I didn’t like it as a replacement for Evernote. For me it is an app to create documents for projects and store them. However finding things there can be complex and they don’t support tags AFAIK.
On the other hand you can easily find whatever you throw in Devonthink, not being limited to PDF, Office files, websites, images, etc.
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maybe you should try UpNote , it is available on Mac, Windows, iOS, Andriod and Linux. Only USD25 for lifetime license. Worth every cent to me as my cross platform note taking app. Also has a web clipper too that I recommended quite a few times on this forum like this post and this
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Agree with @fuzzygel I just migrated a 
ton of data from EN to UpNote with very little issue. The only thing I think I miss is email into EN but that may have contributed to my data hoarding 
.
Since migrating I haven’t missed a beat and am literally amazed at the how fast the sync is.
DEVONthink Pro will definitely handle the volume of data you have; it’s Evernote-grade for data handling.
I’m very happy with UpNote, but I don’t know if it will handle large files. It has a 20 mb limit per file. It’s more of a notes app, but not Evernote-grade in features. I like the UpNote sync much better, I think it’s because it doesn’t have to deal with the larger feature set of Evernote.
Do you use Evernote as a filing system (dumping ground for everything) as most of us did - or more heavily for note taking and creating?
The filing VS creating is always a difficult one to balance all around, and can be easier to split them apart if starting fresh.
Obsidian is an option that ticks every box you’ve asked for, but it can feel like the app gets in the way a bit compared to Evernote or Craft. I enjoyed it more as a hobby than a seamless workflow. I’ve stuck with Devonthink and have lost the PC / Web interfaces of Evernote at some cost - not sure how to replace those.
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this is where Upnote can help. It works on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and most Linux distro. It is one of the reasons why I like it, in addition to the amazingly fast and reliable sync. Admittedly the web clipper is not as great as Evernote but it satisfies my needs for clipping mainly text based articles. The developer is also very helpful and churning out new features constantly
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Obsidian with the OmniSearch and TagFolder plug-ins is a good option
Alternatively, Amplenote replicates nearly all of Evernote’s functionality. https://www.amplenote.com/
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I would advise against OneNote. I am not using it day-to-day any more but I have over 10 years of notes in OneNote including my master’s research notes and everything (Obsidian & co. were still not around a few years back when I needed that, plus OneNote is truly cross-platform and the infinite canvas idea is pretty nice) and generally loved using it.However, the export options are extremely limited if you ever decide to move on so you are very much locked in there. You will even struggle to export as PDF. Also, while Mac & iPadOS versions are fine, they are not nearly as feature-rich as OneNote on Windows. Who knows whether feature parity will every be reached.
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Can you say a bit more about why that is? Whether or not it’s the tool I’d pick if I were starting from scratch today is one thing, but to move all the stuff already in there feels like it should be a pretty high bar.
If you hang out on this forum at all, you’ve no doubt seen some of my pro-Evernote posts. I do understand the frustration and the fact they’re now under new ownership isn’t helping. Especially when said ownership won’t post prices to their site until you log in - a new, sketchy development in my estimation. They’ve also been very closed-lipped about anything in terms of changes moving forward. Finally, based on Bending Spoons other apps and customer relations practices (check out App Store reviews), it’s a fair bet their prices are going to go up at some point and something shady is coming. I know there’s been a lot of hype online lately about subscription prices increasing in the ball park of 100%, but my sub is the same price as it’s always been and I have a 40% off coupon on my account for my next renewal in June. Not all subs went up. Again, shady, and if it was me facing a 100% increase I’d be more apt to leave too. So maybe the discussion should just end there.
But when it comes to the way I use Evernote, Evernote is still king. People say “why not replace it with Obsidian?”. If my use case for Evernote was meeting notes, life planning, thoughts on life, book notes etc, then yeah, I’d use Obsidian. In fact, I do use Obsidian for a lot of that already. Works great.
But Evernote offers some insanely good features, and as long as my sub is in that $60-$70 ball park range I can’t see leaving anytime soon. I perhaps might even go as high as $100/yr. Maybe even $120 or $130. Look at Note Plan – same price. For me, Evernote is more valuable. Why? It’s my digital cabinet. Not my note taking sanctuary, not my book notes archive, not my linked thinking. It’s my digital cabinet. Here’s what makes it so useful:
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Mail to Evernote. When I’m about to go on a trip or when I buy something online, I can quickly email my receipts into Evernote. I gave my wife my EN email address also, and now when she gets some documentation she wants to hang on to (donation receipts, N95 mask fitting document (she’s a nurse), reference documents/emails to keep in mind for the future) she fires it into EN with a quick email. Do I want all this stuff junking up my Obsidian account? No. Especially when deleting a note keeps all the images associated with it on my computer. Yeah, there’s a plug in to address that, but that just increases complexity and I don’t want to think about it.
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Web Clipper. When there is something of importance online that I want to remember for later I can quickly throw this into a note with the web clipper. It works great for trip planning, and I know that because EN has offline access, my reservation number will be available when I need it. And I want this to look like the web page that was sent to me. Not a markdown version, not a text-only version.
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OCR. Evernote OCR’s each note. If I took a photo of a sign at Home Depot that says “Bath tub Sale”, I know that the next time I search Bath tub, it’s going to pull that note for me.
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Image Annotation. I can take a screen shot or a photo and within Evernote I can right-click and say “annotate image”. Arrows, text, emoji – all available quickly and easily. (Apple Notes does this too)
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Note Versioning. Accidentally erase an entire paragraph? Delete an image by mistake? Go back to the previous version easily
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Evernote Scannable App. The best performing scanning app I’ve used. No weird shadows, clipped edges. It works as expected.
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Easy Export. Yeah, I said it. I’ve left EN quite a few times over the years or at least trialed other apps. I can easily export entire notebooks (I only have 5 or 6 since I use tags primarily), with no limitations. That 50-note thing David and Stephen talked about in a recent MPU episode - not accurate. Plus, most apps specifically have an “import from EN” option. Good luck doing that with Apple notes, or apps like Nimbus.
I’ve tried AmpleNote, Upnote, OneNote, Notion, Obsidian, Notesnook, Notebooks etc, and I always run into a barrier where I say “oh, I could do that in Evernote, but not here I guess”. Whether it’s offline mode, OCR, storing all attachment types (not just a couple), a web interface etc.
I suppose you could make the argument that because I’ve been using it so long, the workflow specific to EN has been learned behaviour by me. I don’t disagree. But it’s exactly how I expect a notes app to work. My brain and EN are on the same page.
But like I said, I don’t use it as a note taking repository. It’s my “oh, I needed to remember that, where did I save that info” repository. For that, I’ve yet to find a challenger that makes me laugh and is there for me like Evernote. We complete each other. 
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We’re in almost exactly the same boat. I get nervous when people are talking about leaving Evernote, as though I’m missing something and should be coming up with a plan B myself. I don’t want to spend the time doing that and, beyond pure speculation thus far, I still haven’t heard the reason why I should invest that time.
Evernote could cost twice as much and I’m still not sure it would be worth it to me to move to another tool - and that assumes I could even find one with the seven advantages you list above (same as my top 7).
For as long as I’ve been using Evernote (Dec 16, 2009), people have been talking about the need to leave Evernote. No doubt one day they will be right and I’ll be frantically searching for the replacement. But at this point I do feel like I have 14 years of “unexpected” productivity from it in the bank.
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Bear would use iCloud. Transition to it means I have to add iCloud storage?
I left Evernote a while ago.
I’m not quite sure what your use case is for EN or other services. Evernote was a big hole of stuff for me. When I was using it, I didn’t really have a strategy - I just put stuff in there. When I finally left, I had thousands of notes but most of them ended up getting trashed as I’d just collected crap that wasn’t useful. Maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the notes were useful or worth keeping, but even then I had to significantly edit or get rid of lots of stuff because the formatting of EN was just… garbage (at least when I was using it).
I currently use four programs, but with different purposes for each.
To store or archive things, I use DEVONThink. I get your hesitance, it’s not the easiest app (until you learn how to use it. I’ve read a bit and will still probably get @MacSparky’s class. But it’s a good place to archive things.
To write, think, and plan I use Obsidian. These files are available on my Mac and iPad. I could use it on my phone as well, but that’s not super useful. So while I will often save an article to my DEVONThink database, I’ll read it, take notes on it, and store those notes in Obsidian with a link back to the DT database for the article. Anything that I want to maintain over hte long haul (class documents, articles, PDFs, etc) goes into DT.
For quick notes, work on the fly, and to generally capture ideas and info, I use Drafts. This is a temporary container, but I like how it works and depending on where I am, I may start any number of documents or writing tasks in Drafts before moving it to Obsidian, Word, Pages, or to a web based program. I send web pages and what not to Drafts to review later, and try to empty it of notes daily.
Finally, for notes and items I need to share with my family (my immediate family as well as my parents and in-laws), I use Notes. I have various specific notes set up to share with different people and groups of different people. It’s not my favorite, but everyone uses it and I can easily share information with them relatively quickly.
I suggest rather than just dumping EV, you think through what your use case is. Are you just storing stuff in there or do you actually use it for other things. Then parse out what your actual needs are. You may have apps already that can serve those needs or you may wish to (re)visit other apps to meet your needs.
Good luck!
Khalil
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I agree that you should try UpNote. It’s very easy to import your Evernote notes - I imported 2,000 about a year ago. UpNote even retains the original creation date of your Evernote notes.
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I’ve kept my free version of Evernote. Although the UpNote web clipper is generally very good, I occasionally will clip to Evernote, then export from Evernote and import into UpNote. I don’t do this often, but it’s nice to have it available for those times when the the UpNote web clipper isn’t quite good enough.
I started with Evernote around '09 and was a satisfied user for many years. But a few years ago after having a few problems I started questioning whether I still needed a separate product as my “everything bucket”. Long story short I (eventually) moved all my EN data to my Google Workspace account.
The first thing I do before committing to new software is ensure I can get my data back out. It’s always been easy to export from EN to an .enex file and I would do this once a month as a backup. I’m also a long time EagleFiler user so it was easy for it to import the .enex files.
If you are backing up EN to .enex files I wouldn’t be nervous about continuing to use Evernote. But it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious. If EN had been doing this in 2009 I would have never signed up.
This is the correct answer.
UpNote, hands down
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#respect and still use Scannable app because it just works great for my needs.
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