How funny will it be for a writer without a jotter?

I personally don’t think that would be possible, as writers are always in search of “inspiration”, as they call it. They write down what they observe about their environment and use their noted data to plan bestselling books.

But we’re in 2020!

To be honest, when last did you see someone carry a jotter at a gathering, jotting down things, apart from journalists?

Does that mean there are no more writers, or people no longer take notes of important activities?

No, I guess.

This is the digital age, and many of our ways of life have been digitalized. This has probably affected the way we take notes. Instead of moving around with paper jotters, we now use digital notes. Popular notes people use now are Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, and the likes.

Today, our notes are right in our computers, phones, and tablets. By paying a little token, we get more flexibility and possibilities that our native notes would have never been able to give us.

This article reviews one of the best productivity and note-taking apps available right now, Evernote.

[lwptoc]

Evernote Review.

What is Evernote?

Evernote is a productivity app that’s designed to make your note-taking easier on your digital devices. It is highly rated and regarded as the best note-taking app, according to many reviews.

Evernote is simply described as an app that lets you record your notes, images, files, videos, and voice notes into a cloud saving system, so you can easily access it, anytime, from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection and a computer device.

It has many positive features and it’s highly rated by reviewers. It allows you to find files you’ve saved online using an intelligent search feature. It surpasses competitors with more organization tools to keep your note organized and accessible at all times. We’ll discuss more features in this Evernote review.

While it is highly regarded amongst note-taking apps, it also has its fair share of criticism from users. This is because most people find the features of Evernote too vast, and they decide it’s too complicated for them.

A review I once read classified the world into two; “those who understand how Evernote works” and “those who find it difficult to understand, and therefore term it crap.”

Here, we go over all you need to know about Evernote so that you can migrate from the latter group of the people to the former. Reading this guide, however, isn’t an assurance that you’ll understand Evernote and how it works.

That crap seems useless to some people, no matter how many years you spend preaching it to them.

However, this is yet another Evernote review. Here, I’ll try my best to communicate the features of the app, so you can evaluate the value of the app, and determine if it’s worth paying for.

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Basic Features, Design, and Availability

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When we talk about accessibility, there is no app that quite describes it as well as Evernote. There is an Evernote app for every major operating system; Windows, Android, iOS, and there is even an Evernote for Mac.

The apps are essential if you want an easily accessible Evernote, even in remote locations where internet connection is not available.

What if you don’t use one of the major operating systems (and I don’t want to believe how that will be possible)?

No need to worry, Evernote has got you covered with an equally feature-packed Evernote web app. A major downside of this is that it isn’t available offline. However, it is also advantageous in the sense that your files are stored online, reducing the risks of data loss.

The fact that it’s supported on many platforms contributes to its success in this Evernote review.

Evernote has the simplest of designs. Just a couple of icons at the left side of the screen for making the basic controls; creating notes, viewing notes and notebooks, etc. The desktop app for Evernote is by far the most comprehensive application in its enormous suite of apps. The web app is just like a lite version of the desktop app, but it’s excellent nonetheless.

You can use the desktop app offline from anywhere, but you have to get access to your computer or mobile device to access your notes. The web app can be used from anywhere with an internet connection.

Also, it has a browser extension, how cool?

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Evernote isn’t letting away any chance. Its browser extension enables you to save a webpage into your Evernote account. It even skips the advertisements, if you want. You can save a recipe into your notebook, anything. If you were using a paper notebook, you’ll need to hire people to help you copy!

This feature isn’t an added advantage or anything, it’s just a necessity in today’s note-taking apps. All Evernote alternatives like OneNote and Google keep all offer a similar feature. So, the absence of the feature could suggest inferiority.

This means, in addition to Evernote for Mac, Windows, or any OS you might be using, you can also get the Evernote Chrome extension to make things better.

Evernote takes the app to an advanced level by embedding an instant messaging feature into the browser’s interface. From the chat, you can invite any Evernote user to chat with you, regardless of subscription or distance.

This feature encourages and streamlines the process of collaboration. It offers the ease of being able to respond to a message without having to leave the Window you’re working on. While many Evernote users might prefer using more popular messaging apps on a daily basis, the Evernote chat will be a modest option while planning a note with another user.

You should note that you’d need an Evernote account to use that chat feature. If you have an Evernote account, you can invite anyone else to chat with you, -unless they don’t have an Evernote sign in.

Evernote integrates well with other apps, which encourages mass usage. You get an Evernote email address when you use one of the paid plans. You can set your emails to automatically forward to your Evernote email address.

You can connect your Evernote to Slack, which allows you to automatically show up some Slack commands as notes on the app. You can also use Evernote with many office collaboration tools like Atlassian Confluence. You can also use it with your everyday apps like Pocket.

To me, this is the most amazing feature of the app. It is previously believed that a computer program cannot possibly read the text content on images.

With Evernote however, you can take pictures of anything, and the app will automatically transcribe them. Amazing, right?

The app can instantly recognize the text on presentations, advertisements, anything! This feature is not exclusive to Evernote, however. Google and Microsoft have developed apps that provide similar functionality too. However, most Evernote review readers will be looking out for this feature.

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Evernote Pricing

You won’t normally expect an app with as so many features as Evernote to be put out for free. Evernote isn’t free!

In this section of this Evernote review, we’ll discuss how much it costs to get the Evernote plans, compare it with those of competitors, then we determine if the pricing is fair for the services it offers.

If we’re to look at it from a comparative angle, Evernote’s price is rather too steep. However, the flexibility attached to Evernote pricing plans makes it worth looking at.

Evernote offers a free plan termed “Basic”, which is just like an overview of the app. This is not something I’ll recommend to a new Evernote user.

The Evernote basic plan has quite a lot of restrictions, and the restrictions seem to be growing with every new revamp. Over the years, Evernote free plan is growing to be a useless version of Evernote.

You can’t get the Evernote email feature with the Basic plan, and you can only sync between two devices. You cannot save data offline, so, unless you have an internet connection on either device, your notes will be inaccessible. However, your notes are always available on the web app, which you can access from any browser.

Evernote saves your notes to the cloud, and you’re allocated a limited amount of storage space each month. For the Basic plan, you get 60MB of storage each month. This is quite small if you use Evernote for anything serious. Another thing is that unused storage doesn’t roll over to the next month, so you have 60MB monthly, no more, no less.

Also, you can’t upload a file larger than 25MB with the Basic plan, even if your space is sufficient. These are the reasons why I wouldn’t recommend the Evernote free plan.

At $35, the Plus plan offers a lot more than the Basic plan. The most evident of the changes is obviously the allocated space. With the Plus account, you’re given 1GB of free space each month. Like the free plan, you can’t roll over too.

Another significant difference between the Basic plan and the superior Plus plan is the ability to save and edit notes offline. This can be quite handy for journalists who work in very remote locations where internet connectivity might be unstable.

Do you think an email is worth adding to your notebook? You can just forward it to Evernote, and you’re done. This is only available from the Plus plan.

However, remember, the Plus version isn’t the ultimate version of Evernote. There are some areas that are restricted only to Premium members. Once you try to access these areas, you’re prompted to upgrade to Premium.

If you ever feel the need to use a Premium feature from a running Evernote Plus subscription, you don’t have to pay the enormous fee again. You can just pay $7.99 to access the feature for a month. However, the best thing to do is to be a Premium member from the start.

The Premium plan is the real deal. It is equipped with every feature from the Basic and Plus plans, and even a lot more.

The allocated monthly space for notes shoots up to 10GB, which should be more than enough unless you’re using it for something else.

With the premium plan, you don’t only have offline access to the files but you’re also allowed access to a much more robust search. When you search for text on the Basic and Plus plans, it only scans the uploaded notes for a similar text. On the Premium plan, however, Evernote also searches the uploaded PDF files and Microsoft Office documents.

While the Plus plan only gives you access to email customer support, the Premium plan supports email support as well as a live chat with one of their online representatives, which assures you of faster response time.

There is also a Presentation mode on Evernote. This feature helps you convert your notes to presentations effortlessly. This can be a really useful time-saver, and it really works.

If you want access to the best of Evernote, go Premium, if you’re a basic user, go for the Plus plan and if you want to see the ugly sides, go for the Basic plan.

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Is Evernote worth paying for?

It’s no doubt that Evernote is a fairly expensive application to use. A question that comes to mind is; “should I really pay for an Evernote plan?”

We decide this by going through some Evernote alternatives, and what they demand. It won’t so comprehensive, as this is an Evernote review.

Evernote alternatives

Evernote has a lot of features that can’t be found in competing apps. On the other hand, some really powerful Evernote alternative is free, while offering almost as many features as you can find on Evernote.

For example, with Google Keep, you get an amazing 10GB free space with the free plan. Microsoft OneNote is also impressive at 5GB. However, space is for their respective Drives (Google Drive and OneDrive), which you use across all Google and Microsoft services respectively.

While Evernote asks you to pay $70 for 10GB per month, you get 100GB of space with Google Drive for just $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year. If you can pay $99.99 per year, you get access to 1TB of space, and you decide if you want to spend it entirely on taking notes or backing up your devices.

With Microsoft OneDrive, it gets even more confusing. $1.99 per month gives you 50GB while a $99.99 subscription to Office 365 gives you access to 5TB, which must be shared between five people, -which translates to 1TB for everyone. $$69.99 gives you access to 1TB for a single person, as well as all Office 365 apps, which includes OneNote.

When the prices are compared, one would see that Evernote’s competitors offer many times as much as it offers, with a very significant price difference. However, when it comes to taking notes, Evernote Premium smashed the first place.

Microsoft OneNote, which comes for free, is the nearest thing to Evernote in usability and features. Google Keep is nowhere near Evernote, but it’s just manageable if you’re not using it for professional purposes.

Other note-taking apps to take note of include Bear for macOS, Zoho Notebook, and Milanote.

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Final Words

Taking note has become a digital responsibility, and our digital devices should do that with ease.

However, how can they take useful notes without an app to support them?

We’re not talking about Microsoft Word, or word processing apps because they only do a good job of formatting the text we input, they don’t look like real notebooks!

While trying to get the apps that function like real notebooks, we found a couple of them; OneNote, Google Keep, Evernote, etc.

Out of all apps we discovered, Evernote turned out the best. More investigation into Evernote brought about this, and now by reading this Evernote review, you can decide if it is your app, or not.