The 27 Best Evernote Alternatives You Can Use in 2022

Evernote is one of the oldest and most feature-packed note-taking software. Not only is the note-taking software free, but everything is optimized for daily use, helping you stay focused and organized.

The app offers a ton of different ways which you can use to collect notes. You can create text-notes, voice-notes, and use Evernote’s Web Clipper tool to directly save entire articles in your notes.

However, neither app is perfect. This is especially the case when it comes to software. Their browser-based editions lack features, while the software versions can be bloated and slow. All these features have made Evernote very clunky and complex.

Evernote’s developers announced that the free note-taking app is undergoing significant changes. Controversially, these include limiting the Free account tier to just two devices, and raising the prices of Premium accounts.

Try one of these alternative lightweight note-taking apps instead! Here are the 27 best Evernote alternatives that you can use in 2022.

1. Cintanotes

Price: Free and Premium

CintaNotes is a Windows-only Evernote alternative, and although it’s also available as a portable app so you don’t have to install it, there’s no online version.

There’s no limit on the number of devices though, so if you’re dedicated to Microsoft’s OS that will be no obstacle. CintaNotes comes in three flavors: free, Pro and Lifetime Pro.

The free version is a straightforward affair offering text clipping, search, backup, customizable hotkeys and three sections to store your notes.

It’s nicely designed, and the keyboard and mouse shortcuts make it feel like a natural extension of Windows. Notes created in CintaNotes are synchronized using Simplenote (above), so it’s worth trying both programs to see which suits you best.

2. Laverna

Price: Free

Laverna’s main selling point is its focus on privacy. Your notes are never stored on the company’s servers. However, you can store your data on Dropbox or RemoteStorage if you want to sync across devices.

It’s also possible to set a password that’ll encrypt your notes, too. Laverna has two other big points in its favor. First, all notes are written in Markdown with a live preview window.

Second, it has three levels of organization; profiles, notebooks, and tags. Notebooks can even be nested within other notebooks. Also, it has distraction-free editing mode, syntax highlighting if you ever write code in your notes, several handy keyboard shortcuts, and it’s open-source on GitHub.

3. Notion

Price: Free and Premium

If you are a person who needs more features than what Evernote offers, Notion is just for you. Notion is a note-taking app which does much more than just allowing you to take notes.

Notion is an all-in-one work-space which allows you to take notes, create an internal wiki of notes, collect research material from the web in form of links, text, and images, create table and databases, manage projects and tasks, and more.

Despite bringing so many features, Notion remains easy to use because it allows users to use only those features that they need without overcrowding the user interface. Another great thing about Notion is its support for templates.

There are hundreds of templates that you can just download and use. From business templates like agile process, coding guidelines, and more to create templates like video production, mood board, editorial calendar, you can find Notion templates for everything that you want to do.

This saves users a ton of time from creating their own templates and they can get started as soon as they download the app.

Since the entire Notion community can create and share templates, there are always new and novel templates to discover. Notion also comes with a web-clipper which allows you to easily save webpages offline just like on Evernote.

Another thing that makes Notion a great Evernote alternative is the fact that it supports instant import from Evernote. That means switching from Evernote to Notion is as simple as it can get. In my opinion, Notion is one of the best Evernote alternatives on the market and you should definitely check it out.

4. ClickUp

Price: Free and Premium

ClickUp comes with all the note-taking and documentation features you’ll ever need in an Evernote alternative.

It is also one of the world’s highest-rated project management and productivity apps preferred by startups, giants, and small businesses worldwide.

Broadly, there are two things you can work on with ClickUp:

Notes: take quick notes and create detailed documents
Tasks: create tasks with Checklists, add Reminders, and track them on a calendar

ClickUp’s Notepad is the perfect place to create notes and ideas quickly on your desktop or on the go. Access rich text editing options to create beautifully detailed notes that accurately reflect your ideas and plans. You can add Multiple fonts, Italics ,Bold text, Strikethroughs, Underlining, Links, Checklists, Code snippets.

Key Features:

• Use rich text formatting options to create detailed documents
• Export notes by downloading docs in PDF or HTML format
• Create relationships in your doc to link tasks, projects, and other docs together to streamline project updates and keep all your work in one place
• Nest pages within documents to create a comprehensive file with different sections

5. Microsoft OneNote

Price: Free

If you use Evernote as a multimedia pinboard or to manage projects, Microsoft OneNote is an excellent alternative.

The OneNote app comes pre-installed with Windows 10 as part of the updated Office suite, and is available to download for earlier versions of Windows.

There are mobile apps for Android, iOS and Windows Phone too, plus a web app. OneNote synchronizes your data through your Microsoft account, and uses OneDrive to store everything you save.

Earlier this year, Microsoft cut the standard OneDrive storage limit from 15GB to 5GB, which is worth bearing in mind if your notes tend to contain a lot of images and other media.

Like most Evernote alternatives, OneNote lets you gather and organise links, text, images and drawings in tagged notebooks, but it also has a few extra tricks up its sleeve.

You can also import text and tables from other Microsoft Office apps, record audio, and email content straight to a notebook (a very handy option for working on fiddly smartphone screens).

It can also record audio. There are optional extensions, too: OneNote Web Clipper lets you capture and clip sections of web pages, and Office Lens (for Windows 10 Mobile) captures pictures of handouts, whiteboards and other meeting-room paraphernalia, turns them into editable documents and saves them to a notebook.

Thanks to Microsoft’s business clout, other developers are falling over themselves to integrate OneNote into their apps.

WordPress, IFTTT, Feedly and Livescribe are just a few with OneNote compatibility now built in.

6. Standard Notes

Price: Free and Premium

Standard Notes is a secure, encrypted, and open-source note-taking app. If you’re after a privacy-focused Evernote alternative, then this software is ideal.

Not only is the app available on all desktop and mobile platforms, but there’s even a web edition, too. Standard Notes operates a freemium model; the app is free to use, but additional features need to be unlocked with the Extended edition.

The free version comes with all the app’s encryption features, sync services, and offline access. The Extended option opens up additional editor styles (only plain-text is available in the free version), adds two-factor authentication, and enables note history.

For anyone who has used Apple’s Notes software, the Standard Notes interface will feel familiar, too.

7. Notejoy

Price: Free and Premium

While Evernote has a note sharing feature, it is not as robust as many other options out there. If your main problem with Evernote is that it doesn’t efficiently allow you to share notes with your team members then you should try out Noetjoy.

Notejoy is an incredible note-taking application which takes note sharing to the next level. In the app, all your notes are arranged in libraries. You have a personal library where you can save all your private notes.

Then there are shared libraries which contain notes you have shared with other users. Once you share a library with someone, all the notes saved in the library are automatically shared with them. Then you can collaborate with other users on that note.

In fact, Notejoy even brings a real-time chat feature which you can use while taking notes. Other features of the app include pinned notes, image galleries support, support for any kind of documents including word, PDFs, Google Doc, and more, markdown support, tags, and more.

All these features make Notejoy great for people who like to work in shared spaces. If Evernote was unable to meet your note sharing needs, you should give Notejoy a chance.

8. Sticky Notes Pro

Price: Premium

Sticky Notes is a browser extension that makes it easy to take notes in both Chrome and Edge.

Accessing and organizing notes is also easy, and the app allows you to work offline so you can continue to jot down ideas, to-do lists, and other info at any time.

With a range of beautiful themes, this browser extension allows you to personalize your experience while making note taking fun!

Key Features:

• Beautiful handpicked themes to create an experience that’s easy on the eyes.
• Access notes quickly by clicking the extension icon.
• Works offline; take notes without an internet connection.
• Open Sticky Notes in just one click inside your browser.
• Save your notes with optional Cloud backups and organize them into folders.

9. ProofHub

Price: Free and Premium

As a great Evernote alternative, ProofHub offers advanced project management and team collaboration features besides its intuitive and useful note taking app. With an easy-to-interface, this feature-rich software helps teams stay in ultimate control of their tasks, projects, and communications.

The Essential plan with basic features starts at $45/month, and its Ultimate Control plan with unlimited users and all the advanced features starts at $89/month.

Key Features:

• Intuitive note-taking app
• Custom workflows and kanban boards
• Built-in chat app
• Create tasks with deadlines
• Online proofing tool

10. Simplenote

Price: Free

You can use Simplenote on as many devices you like, with apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Kindle Fire, Android and Linux, plus a web version for good measure.

There’s unlimited storage too (as long as you don’t go mad with it), and it’s completely free. The catch? It’s text-only – no images, web pages or doodles.

That won’t be to everyone’s liking, but if you never bother with Evernote’s fancier options and just want a cross-platform notebook with automatic syncing, it’s perfect.

11. Turtl

Price: Free

Turtl is a secure Evernote alternative. Most of the app’s features mirror those available in Evernote and OneNote. However, privacy is the top priority here.

To that end, Turtl is open-source and available to view on the project’s Github page. All notes are encrypted locally before being uploaded to the syncing server.

Despite being an alternative to OneNote, the way you use the app is different, and there will be a learning curve.

Another important item to consider is that Turtl is currently not available on iOS. However, you can use it on the desktop and Android devices. You can use the Turtl browser extensions to collect files, images, and bookmarks, too.

All of these items are arranged into a board, which are notebooks with a more visual layout, and can be tagged for more granular organization.

12. DEVONthink

Price: Premium

If you are one of those few people who has surpassed the limits of Evernote, and even it cannot fulfill all your needs, DEVONthink 3 is just for you.

In fact, calling DEVONthink a note-taking app will be undermining its full potential as it’s not only a note-taking app, it’s also a full-blown document management system that can handle PDFs, links, and more. The app even has a built-in browser which lets you open the links inside the app itself.

DEVONthink also brings a ton of automation tools and scripts which you can use to automate your note organization.

The software basically has more features than anyone will ever need. The app also has a web clipping tool just like Evernote and offers the best search features out of any app on this list.

If Evernote cannot meet your demands, DEVONthink is certainly for you.

13. Apple Notes

Price: Premium

If you have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you’re probably already familiar with Apple Notes. While simple, Notes makes it easy to capture thoughts, create checklists, and sketch ideas quickly.

It comes loaded on your iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, so there’s no need to download the app. To create a note, open the app, tap the “compose” button, create your note, and tap “Done.” Then it’s saved and synced to all your devices. It couldn’t be easier!

Key Features:

• Use iCloud to update your notes across all your devices.
• Create checklists to mark off as you finish.
• Scan and sign documents within the app.
• Organize your notes in folders.
• Pin important notes, so they are easier to find later.
• Format with headings, bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, and more.
• Add attachments like a website, photo, video, or Google map.

14. Todoist

Price: Free and Premium

Todoist is an Evernote alternative that’s available on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Use it to organize, prioritize, and manage projects while noting down important information you need to remember.

The app also comes with templates to help you get started in minutes. This Evernote alternative offers a free plan and a paid plan that costs $3/user per month.

Key Features:

• Recurring due dates to remember deadlines
• Visualize daily or weekly productivity
• Templates for education, design, management, etc.
• Priorities for managing urgent tasks

15. Google Keep

Price: Free

This is particularly irritating if you want to add an image from a website – you need to save it locally, then re-upload it. Not ideal. Ultimately, Keep’s little notes are essentially a portable alternative to a collection of Post-it notes orbiting your monitor reminding you to make a phone call at 3pm, or pick up cake ingredients on Wednesday.

They serve a definite purpose, but you wouldn’t use them to gather ideas for a novel or manage a project.

16. CherryTree

Price: Free

CherryTree is a great open-source alternative to OneNote. Many of the features found in Microsoft’s note-taking app are here, too. Despite being open-source, the app is regularly updated.

For this reason, it is one of the best note-taking tools for programmers. It can handle rich-text notes and code-based notes with syntax highlighting.

And although CherryTree doesn’t have notebooks per se, notes can be nested under other notes, so top-level notes act as notebooks. One of CherryTree’s standout features is the ability to create internal links to other notes. In this sense, it functions much like a wiki.

This is fantastic for notes that are relative to other notes, such as when planning characters and plots for a novel.

17. Keep It

Price: Premium

If you are a Mac user, Keep It can serve as a good Evernote Alternative option for you. Keep It is from the guys who previously created Together 3 which was one of the most famous note-taking apps on the Mac.

Their new product brings a better and more organized user interface which not only looks good but is also very intuitive. You can create notes, organize them using notebooks, tags, bundles, and bookmarks, save web articles, and more.

Probably the biggest feature of Keep It is that it is optimized for macOS which means you can perform native functions such as searching for notes using Spotlight, back up with Time Machine, open notes in any app, and more.

18. Obsidian

Price: Free and Premium

A direct competitor to Roam, Obsidian markets itself as “a second brain” that helps you make connections between your notes and ideas. This knowledge base works on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files.

Encouraging you to make connections between your ideas, Obsidian makes it easy to connect notes with backlinks and a graph view.

The ability to use offline may be a game-changer for those who want to collect ideas or make notes without the distraction of the internet.

Key Features:

• Available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
• Connect ideas and notes using backlinks with a graph view for a bird’s-eye view of connections.
• Build your own note-taking toolkit with plugins like graph view, page view, backlinks, daily notes, word count, and search.
• Use offline for a distraction-free experience.
• Split panes infinitely, resize, and pin to keep content linked.

19. Hive

Price: Free and Premium

Hive is a project management tool with a dedicated feature for meeting notes. It’s a great alternative to Evernote that you can use to take down every meeting note, assign tasks, and collaborate with your team.

This alternative to Evernote has no free plan. You’ll have to pay $12/user per month for Hive notes.

Key Features:

• Shareable notes for external participants
• Keyboard shortcuts for quick formatting
• Link notes to projects in Hive workspace
• Supports real-time collaboration

20. Dropbox Paper

Price: Free

In contrast to Keep, Evernote alternative Dropbox Paper (initially known as Note) is serious business.

With support for images, tables and tasks (which can be assigned to people using their Dropbox usernames), it makes a great replacement for the usual handwritten minutes, hastily scrawled, then transcribed by an unfortunate soul and sent as a mass email. We’re sure you’ve been there.

There’s currently no size limit on notebooks created using Paper, but you can’t insert documents directly; instead, the document must uploaded to your Dropbox account, then linked. Paper will display a small preview of the document, so teammates can see if it’s relevant before adding it to their own Dropbox folder.

The interface is straightforward, and everything can be clicked and dragged around the page. Paper is still in beta, so its features are subject to change, but if you already use Dropbox for filesharing at work then it’s definitely worth a look.

Bear in mind that it’s still undergoing stability and security testing.

21. TagSpaces

Price: Free and Premium

Unlike all of the other apps on this list, TagSpaces is completely offline. It never sends data across the internet. Instead, it only uses local folders and files, which also means no cross-device syncing.

That is unless you sync using a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive. TagSpaces is free, although you can unlock extra features by upgrading to the Pro edition. The app supports three note types: plain text (TXT), rich text (HTML), and Markdown (MD).

The interface is a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it, it will all make sense and boost your productivity. And since TagSpaces uses the local file system, staying organized is as easy as creating your own preferred subfolder hierarchy.

22. Zoho Notebook

Price: Free

Zoho Notebook is one of the coolest looking note taking app on this list.

The app lets you easily create Notebooks which actually look like a real notebook. Inside, you can create text-notes, voice-notes, add pictures, and more. It also has a web clipping tool which lets you save articles from the web. One of the best features of Zoho is how easy it makes writing and editing your notes by giving all the controls right at your fingertips.

I also love the quick note feature of Zoho Notebook which is available for macOS. Basically, the app creates a menu bar app, clicking on which, you can record a quick note without even opening the app. It also supports the multi-window editing feature in iPad.

The app also supports Google Keep like color coding of your notes, making it easier to find the notes you are looking for. Zoho Notebook is one of the most fully featured note-taking apps you can use. The fact that it also looks good also helps.

23. Nimbus Note

Price: Free and Premium

Nimbus Note is the ultimate note-taking, sharing, and organizing tool for easy collaboration across team members and clients.

This powerful platform eliminates the scatterbrained feeling of juggling tools, folders, and those pesky sticky notes on your monitor.

With customizable workspaces for team members to get on the same page, simple tracking, seamless embedding, and even live desktop screen recording, productivity for your team just got a whole lot better.

Key Features:

• Use isolated workspaces, each with their own access permissions, branding, and third-party integrations
• Assemble notes with a block editor, which lets you embed files, audio, video, websites, and widgets like Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Drive
• Flexible tables that act as spreadsheets, databases, or both
• Public pages that you can share with teams and clients with ease
• Unlimited nested folders for each workspace to manage complex projects
• Mobile app lets you scan papers and add them straight to your notes
• Nimbus Capture lets you record desktop videos with a live feed from your webcam, with the ability to take on-screen notes
• Embeddable code of shared Nimbus Pages for your website or blog

24. Bear

Price: Premium

Bear is a popular writing app on the App Store. With powerful editing features, you’ll have no trouble creating detailed notes in Bear. This note-taking application has a free version for simple note creation.

However, to access the advanced features you’ll have to buy a subscription that’s billed as either: $1.49/monthly OR $14.99/yearly.

Key Features:

• Beautiful user interface
• Automatic data sync across multiple platforms
• Can annotate PDFs, DOCX, HTML and TXT notes
• Powerful note tagging feature for simple categorization

25. Quip

Price: Premium

Owned by Salesforce, Quip brings all your notes, docs, and team members into one place where you can collaborate and chat with ease.

A unique feature of Quip is its chat feature, which is built into every document.

Quick to set up and easy to use, Quip makes it easy to get started with creating and maintaining living documents. Starter ($10/user/month) plan includes unlimited documents, spreadsheets, and slides with group chat and 1:1 messages.

Enterprise ($25/user/month) plan adds single sign-on, enterprise API and customization, and custom live apps.

Key Features:

• Integrates with Salesforce’s CRM software so you can create spreadsheets with live Salesforce data
• Collaborate on documents and edit with others in real time
• Out-of-the-box security with encrypted, auditable, and controlled data
• Streamline your workflow with a built-in chat feature, team chat rooms, and 1:1 messaging
• Templates for sales, service, marketing, manufacturing, project planning, and more to kickstart your workflow

26. Milanote

Price: Free and Premium

Some people are visual thinkers, and they need a different note-taking experience. For them, I suggest Milanote. Milanote is kind of an endless whiteboard where you can add notes, columns, photos, links, and more.

You can create multiple boards and even nest boards inside other boards. The app is really good and responsive, and I love the clean look and feel of it. I find it perfect for doing creative work like story-boarding and planning a novel.

But you can also use it for things like managing tasks and even entire teams. The app comes with a limited but excellent selection of templates. You can find templates for different fields including, product design, novel writing, digital marketing, mood boarding, and game design, among others.

The app is available for free, but the limit of 100 notes is quite restrictive. You will surpass it within days. If you want to use it, you will have to buy the premium version.

27. Roam Research

Price: Premium

Marketed as a personal knowledge management system, Roam is a note-taking tool that’s ideal for organizing ongoing research and collecting data.

This app was inspired by the Zettelkasten method of note taking, which involves writing lots of small notes on rearrangeable index cards instead of taking pages and pages of notes that you then have to sort through.

Roam is unique because it allows you to collect notes using “networked thought,” which helps you discover and create relationships between notes and ideas.

Key Features:

• Available through web browser
• Use in-text links or page links at the bottom of notes to jump from one note to another
• Insert code, images, videos, tables, nested lists, diagrams, and more
• Use bidirectional links to link existing topics or ideas together
• Get a bird’s-eye view of all your pages and how they are linked using the graph overview

Conclusion

That’s pretty much it! So, there are Best Evernote Alternatives.

If you have any other favorite Best Evernote Alternatives then don’t forget to share them with us in the comment below. Also, if you liked this article, Share on your favorite Social media platform.