Best Evernote alternative?

[NightStalker 407]

For those, like me, who have become disgruntled Evernoters (in my case, Premium since mid-2008), and who have been sorely disappointed with these latest "upgrades" to v10 on all platforms, I've been searching for a suitable alternative.  I've been looking for something that does what Evernote has traditionally done well - act as a brain/memory extension.

I've played with Notion, DevonThink, OneNote, Apple Notes, Roam Research, and a few others.  None of these quite fits the bill as a close Evernote replacement, either on my Macs, on my work Win10 PC, my iPad, or my iPhone. In each of those, something is missing - eg offline notes and notebooks, ability to email INTO your account, or email a note OUT OF your account, etc etc.

I have now come across the app which comes closest by far to the spirit of the golden years of Evernote.

Check out Notejoy.  No, I'd never heard of it either, until somebody among all the Evernote disgruntled on Twitter mentioned it, and I've been giving it a try.  They are due to release a direct Evernote import utility in the next month, and they are just about to add the feature of being able to email a note to somebody else.  You can already email anything you want INTO Notejoy.

I've been on real-time chat with one of their team, and they seem extremely responsive and keen to get more widely known, and to fill in the gap left by the demise of Evernote as we knew it.  From what I've seen so far, in about a week of playing with it, it really does seem about as close as I've got to a true Evernote replacement.  In addition, it DOES allow you to have video clips in notes, unlike Evernote where most of my clips that contain video are stored as either a blank frame or just a URL.

Check out Notejoy - I have no affiliation with the company whatsoever. I hadn't even heard of them until a few days ago.

https://notejoy.com/?r=3dbadf18dbff

EDIT: Extra disclaimer - I just discovered that the referral link above carries a small credit towards Notejoy subscription if it results in somebody else joining, which I didn't know when I posted the above.  Hence this extra disclaimer.  But don't let that put you off (it's actually a good thing).  Just overnight (in my time zone) they added the ability to directly email notes to other people, who do not need Notejoy to receive and read them.

 

https://notejoy.com/releases?id=261

 

[MrIllustrator 165]

Thank you Notejoy sounds very interesting, being able to email into it is critical for me, so few alternatives to Evernote cover that. I’m going to give it a serious look and keep my fingers crossed it’s the answer. 

[AvdA 0]

That is helpful - I have always found Evernote so handy as a quick way to capture anything - lately it has become simply impossible to work with. I had looked at Notejoy which seemed like it might fit the bill although I had noticed that there was no import from Evernote which slowed down my enthusiasm. Knowing that an import is imminent I'll give it a try - I'm ready for some note joy 🙂 

[Tom BBB 1]

I too have had enormous issues with all the Evernotes updates, and the latest iOS update has destroyed my ability to capture documents (it just says "capturing" forever and no longer covers the doc with a see-through brownish overlay to indicate the document being captured as opposed to its background). I use Evernote as a document backup/capture device -- all of my documents are scanned, or captured by Evernote -- then I destroy the paper version.  I need an alternative.  Evernote just doesn't work anymore.

[bartman66 4]

Thanks for sharing. Since the v10 upgrade evernote has been unusable iPhone. I looked at nimbus notes but I’m not quite sure of It’s longevity.  I’ll give notejoy a look this weekend.

[Gnopps 29]

14 hours ago, NightStalker said:

"I have no affiliation with the company whatsoever. I hadn't even heard of them until a few days ago."

 

Except that the referral link you posted will give some kind of reward I assume.?

[WilliamL 654]

Notejoy does look good - i felt search in it is very underpowered though. Seems not to highlight the words in notes just shows you notes that have those words. That’s note much use for me.  

[NightStalker 407]

1 hour ago, Gnopps said:

Except that the referral link you posted will give some kind of reward I assume.?

I'll look into that - I just got the link from the pop-up menu at bottom left of my copy of Notejoy, where it says Refer Notejoy or something like that.  There's a button to copy the link, and that was it.  If there IS some sort of referral reward, I'll declare it.

 

[mollyhoo 2]

Does Notejoy have an accompanying Apple Watch app? (Pardon if i missed in earlier replies.) im on treadmill and sorely missing that app. 

[NightStalker 407]

18 minutes ago, mollyhoo said:

Does Notejoy have an accompanying Apple Watch app? (Pardon if i missed in earlier replies.) im on treadmill and sorely missing that app. 

I don't think it does - yet.  But they seem VERY keen to cooperate with user requests, and also to plug the gap left by Evernote's backwards moves, so I suspect if you want them to look at that, I think you go to "Feature Requests" or something like that and ask for it in there.  I'm now at the point where I'm ready to move from the free version of Notejoy to a paid plan.  I'm very impressed with both the apps and also the company.  The comparison of attitudes between Evernote and Notejoy towards users is a stark contrast.

 

[VDo 29]

Quick question: did you have the chance to try image OCR capability? Is it as efficient as in Evernote because this is a feature I am having a hard time to find in Evernote alternatives. 

[NightStalker 407]

36 minutes ago, VDo said:

Quick question: did you have the chance to try image OCR capability? Is it as efficient as in Evernote because this is a feature I am having a hard time to find in Evernote alternatives. 

Haven't tried that, as I'm still on the free version.  OCR is a feature of all the paid plans (even the cheapest at $4/month), allowing search inside PDFs, images, etc.

If anyone tries it before I do, I'd love to hear how quickly it works.  With Evernote, it's not unusual to have to wait until anything from a couple of hours up to the next day for OCR to happen server-side.  Would love to know how long it takes with Notejoy.

 

[RJLUK 307]

Despite claims to contrary it looks like import from Evernote has been requested for over 2 years.......not available.

[NightStalker 407]

1 hour ago, rob24hrs said:

Despite claims to contrary it looks like import from Evernote has been requested for over 2 years.......not available.

The CEO has said it will be within a month, the sooner the better.  I got the impression that they are very keen to step into the Evernote breech, so it's in their own interest to get that function up and running a.s.a.p.

 

[VDo 29]

I did create a test account on Notejoy, am able to import a photo but how can you add a file like a pdf to a note (iOS)? I might be missing something super obvious.

[VDo 29]

I am not sure this is ready for prime time for my use of a note taking app. 

 

Here is an answer I got from Notejoy support: 

 

From our web and desktop apps, you can click the paperclip icon in the styling bar to add a PDF file or word file. We don't currently allow you to attach PDF or word files from our mobile app.

Here are the details of our our OCR capabilities, which are available in any of our paid plans: notejoy.com/help/search-inside-images-documents

 

...They say it’s on the roadmap but no timeframe.

.

[PinkElephant 8,117]

Furthermore it says there is a limit of 5, 10 or 20 GB for the team library, depending on the paid plan. With EN Premium I get a MONTHLY upload of 10GB, and practically unlimited storage. I am way above 10 GB ...

[NightStalker 407]

1 hour ago, VDo said:

I am not sure this is ready for prime time for my use of a note taking app. 

 

Here is an answer I got from Notejoy support: 

 

From our web and desktop apps, you can click the paperclip icon in the styling bar to add a PDF file or word file. We don't currently allow you to attach PDF or word files from our mobile app.

Here are the details of our our OCR capabilities, which are available in any of our paid plans: notejoy.com/help/search-inside-images-documents

 

...They say it’s on the roadmap but no timeframe.

.

Thanks for this. I'm a bit confused though: are you talking about just ADDING a PDF to an already created text note, for example?  How do you do that in Evernote on iOS? I can add a PDF to the database AS a note at any time, even by just emailing into Evernote (or, apparently, Notejoy).  And I can add a PDF to an already created note in Evernote on the Mac or the PC, as they both deal in "files".  But iOS doesn't really do the files thing much at all - so I'm not sure how you'd add a PDF to a pre-existing note?  Would be delighted to learn how to do that on my iPhone or iPad.

The storage limit is, admittedly, a bit spartan - I think Notejoy needs to up its game there, but perhaps they've suddenly been thrust into the spotlight from being a fairly niche product, but the Evernote update débâcle may prompt them to increase their server capability? 

[VDo 29]

I used to use drag n drop with the iPad with previous Evernote versions.  Drag n drop is not available with v10. 
It is still possible to add PDFs to existing notes in v10 with both the iPhone and iPad. 

Within a note, please see screen captures. 
 

 

[NightStalker 407]

Thanks for that.  But drag and drop from where? Are you talking about using the "File Explorer" thing on the iPad, perhaps with Evernote in a split screen?  I never use split screen or the File Explorer thing on the iPad, so I've never done that.  I do any major manipulation of notes, or editing, on my computer, then sync. 

With v10, and no drag-and-drop, where do you point the program to when you tap the "Attachment" button?  PDFs don't "exist" as a separate entity on iOS do they? Or do you have to go into, eg Dropbox, or Documents app, for example, to find them first?  I've never thought about trying to do stuff like that - I always do it on the computer.

Learn something new every day

 

[egypturnash 19]

Notejoy, like New Evernote, is a web app masquerading as an actual app. It does at least have enough attention to detail to not let you select half the stuff in the UI by dragging your mouse across it so there's that. (Seriously, you can select half of EN's interface, it's so embarrassing.)

Idle and in the background it's using about as much CPU time on my Mac as Evernote 7.14, so it's cleared the first hurdle of being an Electron app. I would note how EN10 is doing with that but I just replaced that with 7.14.

Can't drag and drop an image out of Notejoy to my desktop or another program, that's one of the things driving me nuts about EN10. Dragging an image into a NJ window results in a delay while it uploads it to their servers, which is pretty annoying compared to "it goes into the local note instantly and gets synced in the background while you keep on typing whatever thought you are trying to get out without any opportunities for distraction".

Sharing with other users doesn't seem too bad, you have to create a shared "library" which contains notebooks rather than creating shared notebooks as with EN. Haven't actually tried it, I don't feel like cutting and pasting a hundred or so notes from my current big comics project into here.

Has anyone experimented with going offline on two devices and making different changes, to see how it handles the dreaded Conflicting Changes that EN has been terrible at dealing with for the entire twenty years of its existence? The bar here is pretty low. 

I am really not a big fan of the multiple-second wait for a new Notejoy window to become active. Wasn't a fan of that in EN10 either. Nor am I a fan of it taking a moment to update after I rearrange notebooks/libraries in the sidebar. I wonder if Phone Notejoy takes as long to be responsive as Phone EN10? That's one of the things I'm really loathing about EN10.

[VDo 29]

3 hours ago, NightStalker said:

Thanks for that.  But drag and drop from where? Are you talking about using the "File Explorer" thing on the iPad, perhaps with Evernote in a split screen?  I never use split screen or the File Explorer thing on the iPad, so I've never done that.  I do any major manipulation of notes, or editing, on my computer, then sync. 

With v10, and no drag-and-drop, where do you point the program to when you tap the "Attachment" button?  PDFs don't "exist" as a separate entity on iOS do they? Or do you have to go into, eg Dropbox, or Documents app, for example, to find them first?  I've never thought about trying to do stuff like that - I always do it on the computer.

Learn something new every day

 

You can effectively save PDF files in the Files app. Before v10, I was able to use the split screen or slide over mode to drag n drop form the Files app to append a note in Evernote. I used to also drag n drop from other apps, for example, Scanner Pro, PDF Expert, etc.. Can’t wait for that feature to come back...

[Michael M-C 1]

On 10/30/2020 at 5:22 AM, NightStalker said:

For those, like me, who have become disgruntled Evernoters (in my case, Premium since mid-2008), and who have been sorely disappointed with these latest "upgrades" to v10 on all platforms, I've been searching for a suitable alternative.  I've been looking for something that does what Evernote has traditionally done well - act as a brain/memory extension.

I've played with Notion, DevonThink, OneNote, Apple Notes, Roam Research, and a few others.  None of these quite fits the bill as a close Evernote replacement, either on my Macs, on my work Win10 PC, my iPad, or my iPhone. In each of those, something is missing - eg offline notes and notebooks, ability to email INTO your account, or email a note OUT OF your account, etc etc.

I have now come across the app which comes closest by far to the spirit of the golden years of Evernote.

Check out Notejoy.  No, I'd never heard of it either, until somebody among all the Evernote disgruntled on Twitter mentioned it, and I've been giving it a try.  They are due to release a direct Evernote import utility in the next month, and they are just about to add the feature of being able to email a note to somebody else.  You can already email anything you want INTO Notejoy.

I've been on real-time chat with one of their team, and they seem extremely responsive and keen to get more widely known, and to fill in the gap left by the demise of Evernote as we knew it.  From what I've seen so far, in about a week of playing with it, it really does seem about as close as I've got to a true Evernote replacement.  In addition, it DOES allow you to have video clips in notes, unlike Evernote where most of my clips that contain video are stored as either a blank frame or just a URL.

Check out Notejoy - I have no affiliation with the company whatsoever. I hadn't even heard of them until a few days ago.

https://notejoy.com/?r=3dbadf18dbff

EDIT: Extra disclaimer - I just discovered that the referral link above carries a small credit towards Notejoy subscription if it results in somebody else joining, which I didn't know when I posted the above.  Hence this extra disclaimer.  But don't let that put you off (it's actually a good thing).  Just overnight (in my time zone) they added the ability to directly email notes to other people, who do not need Notejoy to receive and read them.

 

https://notejoy.com/releases?id=261

 

Thank you for this. It is sad that we have to move, but Evernote is now so poor that this does seem a good option. I would love to know from Evernote if they see some commercial advantage in making the experience of using the app this bad? It seems so contrary to good sense to release a bug-ridden and inept update

[AHM1 0]

How do you email multiple notes that contain scanned documents out of Evernote v. 10.  I read that the windows version of V. 10 does not support emailing FROM evernote. Is this temporary?