Looking for Evernote Alternatives…. Suggestions? (CLARIFIED MY QUESTION)

[BASboy 43]

JUST Updating the facts as so many responses have been not answering the question but being Defensive about my thinking of moving on from EN.

So I will state I do not take it lightly to be moving my whole system to another app. I Have been an EN User for well over 10 YRS and Paying PRO Prices to support them. I was a big fan of Phil's who started the company. And I was sticking with the company when he left and the internet was abuzz with 'EN Is Dying'.

SO, what seems to miss most responses is - My Current Notes now take 1+ minutes to open. I have written support and get tickets saying they will get back to me. BUT as of several weeks and several times contacting Evernote Support I keep not being answered and now all of Evernote Staff in the US appears to have been fire., I am beginning to suspect that Bending Spoons is run be a heartless AI with video projections of people. (People missed that this was Sarcasm... so let me now make it clearer #Sarcasm... there, now no misunderstandings, maybe)

So with No Support Response and my notes access problems getting worse, I am starting to look to alternatives that are close to Evernote. So far Nimubs Notes seems like a good Evernote Like Alternative. But open to other suggestions. Please list your app choices and the reason for your choice / maybe some of the functions the alternative app provides. Please DO NOT attack me because I am looking at other options. I realize there are Fanatics out there for so many things, including EN. So try to recognize that I am making this inquiry because I cannot get support and the app is not working properly. BUT if you choose to attack, then give actual FACTS with Links for why is so wrong with my choice and not just state Rumor or Speculation about Nimbus Notes if you Don't have Actual Experience with it. 

Please DO response if you have an actual alternative app suggestion and why. 

I figured there are others looking at possible alternatives and were still on the forums. SO I Thought I would ask Evenote Users that might have some two cents advice to give. 

NIMBUS NOTE PRODUCT OVERVIEW (Just listing some of what they do just like Evernote) 

• All-new note editor

• Groups, workspaces, folders, and subfolders

• Public links to share notes, documents, images, and videos

• Various collaboration features

• Document search and image recognition (OCR)

• Set colors to folders and notes

• Reminders

• Send emails to Nimbus Note

• Screenshot and screencast tools

• AND UNLIKE EVERNOTE... They let you do folders within folders within folders and let you color code the folders) 

Edited July 15, 2023 by BASboy
People were attacking me instead of answering my question, So I felt I need to clarify my position.

[WilliamL 654]

My heartless ai projection of a human says go for Nimbus - don’t worry about the fact that it’s impossible to get your data out of it, don’t worry it grinds to a halt with meagre levels notes or that it’s mobile apps are legendary slow - ai says go for it, lock your data away in a company and see how it goes. 

[gazumped 11,676]

So I'm currently looking at it as:  someone apparently running a hugely successful AI-linked mobile app company recently bought Evernote outright.  They have big plans,  but being based in Europe have moved operations there to make it easier to achieve their ambition.  Beyond the fact that they have been working to speed up operations for the last 6 months or so,  Evernote has continued as before.  If that changes I'll be ready to move on.  Unless that actually happens I'd regard any time spent on finding something "better" is a total waste of time and effort. 

But your choice - there were something like 80 different note-taking apps available last time I looked,  and your preferences will be affected by your OS and your needs.  Most of them have some sort of free use period,  so some practical tests might be possible.  Have fun.

[BASboy 43]

Well @gazumped, I already mentioned I’m looking at Nimbus Notes that is pretty much a duplicate of Evernote as it is. But with actual support, with the less expensive subscription price, imports Evernote, quite easily, and you are not waiting a minute plus for each of your notes that you access to open up. It includes to do’s, and a clipper app, and I can scan into it. As well as access it on my computer, on the web, on my iPad, on my phone.
 

So I was just wondering if anyone else had an alternative solution beyond that particular one. And I’m glad that you aren’t  having issues with Evernote  and you don’t mind that you don’t get any kind of support feedback, no matter where you write them. Evernote, bending spoons site, Twitter, I have tried them all contact them

And if you look in forums you will see others are having problems with Evernote as well. 
 

But as long as you’re fine with a less responsive app with non-responsive staff. And paying more money for less services. You have fun as well. 
But after 10+ years. I think it’s time to make a change.

[BASboy 43]

39 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

My heartless ai projection of a human says go for Nimbus - don’t worry about the fact that it’s impossible to get your data out of it, don’t worry it grinds to a halt with meagre levels notes or that it’s mobile apps are legendary slow - ai says go for it, lock your data away in a company and see how it goes. 

And how long ago did you try this? I am doing a seven day trial. I’ve imported notes. I’ll try exporting a note. If you tried this a long time ago then your complaints may not be true anymore. Did your AI check it out for the current stuff? Because I’m not finding that in any of the reviews I’ve been looking at. And then you got triggered fast. I asked for alternatives, not for people to ***** and complain to me because I’m making a choice for change. And choose not to stick with an app that no longer seems to give you any support, that the notes take a minute or more to access. Things just start NOT working on Evernote anymore.
 

So you say I should stay in a broken marriage  as well? no matter how bad it gets. Because they’re could be other better people to have a relationship with? I think the world is about choice.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

@BASboy Why don’t you pick whatever you want to use, go to their forum and ask how to start ?

You come here, tell nothing about your use cases, just complaining, and say from a list of features that this must be the solution for yourself. OK, I can tell for sure it is the solution, because you seem to be a person of little demand on features, but a high appreciation of „attitude“.

This because I see you here just blaming other users of having the wrong attitude. You have 7 posts here, and most of them are probably dedicated at attitude correction - of others, of course …

[BonskY 79]

I will speak of my self, I'm tired to see this redundant question in the Evernote forum and Evernote subreddit. 

It like to say to my wife " You suck and you're too expensive, what other alternative do you suggest me ??" 

And again, like say Tiago Forte "in productivity , the apps choose you, you don't choose the apps" and don't forget, focus on a app, it's a form of proscratination...

So for my own personal productivity needs and workflow, only Evernote is the right and complete solution to help me to get thing done and organise my life...I tried a combinaison of Obsididan and Onenote that can it near of my Evernote usage...but with the time...workflow is getting ridiculous and too frictionnal.

So pick the apps you want and go to work...

Or you can ask on neutral community on Reddit like r/productivity or r/PKMS there's a lot of Evernote haters that tried a lot of alternative...

Thank you

[WilliamL 654]

1 hour ago, BASboy said:

And how long ago did you try this? I am doing a seven day trial. I’ve imported notes. I’ll try exporting a note. If you tried this a long time ago then your complaints may not be true anymore. Did your AI check it out for the current stuff? Because I’m not finding that in any of the reviews I’ve been looking at. And then you got triggered fast. I asked for alternatives, not for people to ***** and complain to me because I’m making a choice for change. And choose not to stick with an app that no longer seems to give you any support, that the notes take a minute or more to access. Things just start NOT working on Evernote anymore.
 

So you say I should stay in a broken marriage  as well? no matter how bad it gets. Because they’re could be other better people to have a relationship with? I think the world is about choice.

Dude I literally used the language you used in your original post - so it is peculiar you accuse me of being 'triggered' when I only used language you yourself introduced.  

As for Nimbus, sigh, honestly I have run out of patience with people who seem to think moving a company to Europe = disaster, I find it truly insulting, so go for it, I have never heard a good thing about it but I am sure you will be the exception. 

[WilliamL 654]

1 hour ago, BonskY said:

I will speak of my self, I'm tired to see this redundant question in the Evernote forum and Evernote subreddit. 

This!!! I am getting so tired of it especially as so much of it seems rooted in a perspective that no company could possibly thrive outside of America.  

[Jon/t 1,293]

1 hour ago, BonskY said:

I will speak of my self, I'm tired to see this redundant question in the Evernote forum and Evernote subreddit. 

 

It does get very tiring. I think some folk just like trying out new apps and playing with things. I prefer to get some stuff done and try and be organised and productive.

Its like walking into a Ford garage and asking them for the best deals on a Toyota 😂

[PinkElephant 8,121]

There is one positive thing for sure about having the company located in Europe: 

We users get the full protection of GDPR for our data. No more windy, lobby driven „agreements“ with shady US American companies (yes, I mean the Googles, Metas and Amazons that try to record and monetarize our every move, monopolizing and destroying markets as the railway robber barons did) that care a ***** for privacy and user rights.

Personally I feel much better the privacy of my notes is now guaranteed by law, not only by a one sided privacy declaration that the company might change tomorrow.

[WilliamL 654]

7 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

There is one positive thing for sure about having the company located in Europe: 

We users get the full protection of GDPR for our data. No more windy, lobby driven „agreements“ with shady US American companies (yes, I mean the Googles, Metas and Amazons that try to record and monetarize our every move, monopolizing and destroying markets as the railway robber barons did) that care a ***** for privacy and user rights.

Personally I feel much better the privacy of my notes is now guaranteed by law, not only by a one sided privacy declaration that the company might change tomorrow.

Yeah, GDPR is a real pain when trying to work with it but for individuals their data is locked down! Some severe consequences if it’s breached by a company or charity too. 

[seebee 26]

The 60's music scene saw something similar to this exodus, when thousands of folk music fans walked out on Bob Dylan when the band went electric. Difference being is that we haven't any evidence of what we are kicking back against yet.

 

[Twitchly 28]

Well, I’m glad to see the topic here because I’d like to hear from other knowledgeable EN users how other apps currently compare to Evernote. I’m a big fan of EN, just not of the new price. So I’m looking around.

My use case: I mostly use EN as a virtual filing cabinet. I am a heavy clipper user, which sadly puts apps like Apple Notes out of the running.

So I just started looking into Bear 2.0, and here’s what I’m seeing so far:

At this point, I’ve just played with it on my iPhone (which is where I mostly use EN). Very promising. The clipper actually works better than EN’s when dealing with subscription sites. On EN, whenever I try to clip from a paywalled site where I have a subscription, I get just a fragment of the article. Bear gets the whole thing. 

I just tried importing a notebook from EN, and it worked well. Even brought in the tags! Bear uses its own formatting, overriding that of whatever you clip or import. Not an issue for me, may be for some.

No notebooks in Bear, which doesn’t thrill me. They do allow nested tags, though that feels a little kludgy to me compared to notebooks.

The ability to clip and to import tags from EN were two biggies for me and the main reasons why I’ve been reluctant to move entirely to Apple Notes.  (Which also doesn’t have notebooks.) Very happy to see them in Bear. 

Need to research how easy it is to export a bunch of notes from Bear rather than individually.

[Twitchly 28]

Sorry for the huge text; no idea why that happened (or how to fix it). 

[PinkElephant 8,121]

Apple Notes has folders (= notebooks), and they can be nested. Tags are a pale shadow of EN tags, however.

[BASboy 43]

On 7/12/2023 at 5:09 PM, Twitchly said:

Well, I’m glad to see the topic here because I’d like to hear from other knowledgeable EN users how other apps currently compare to Evernote. I’m a big fan of EN, just not of the new price. So I’m looking around.

My use case: I mostly use EN as a virtual filing cabinet. I am a heavy clipper user, which sadly puts apps like Apple Notes out of the running.

So I just started looking into Bear 2.0, and here’s what I’m seeing so far:

At this point, I’ve just played with it on my iPhone (which is where I mostly use EN). Very promising. The clipper actually works better than EN’s when dealing with subscription sites. On EN, whenever I try to clip from a paywalled site where I have a subscription, I get just a fragment of the article. Bear gets the whole thing. 

I just tried importing a notebook from EN, and it worked well. Even brought in the tags! Bear uses its own formatting, overriding that of whatever you clip or import. Not an issue for me, may be for some.

No notebooks in Bear, which doesn’t thrill me. They do allow nested tags, though that feels a little kludgy to me compared to notebooks.

The ability to clip and to import tags from EN were two biggies for me and the main reasons why I’ve been reluctant to move entirely to Apple Notes.  (Which also doesn’t have notebooks.) Very happy to see them in Bear. 

Need to research how easy it is to export a bunch of notes from Bear rather than individually.

Thanks for actually doing what no one else seems to of done at the moment. Actually, give me a suggestion. Instead of getting all defensive and rally behind EN without listening to the reasons I am looking to move. Because the app has stopped working properly and people are not getting back to me or others to help fix things.  You might research bear as to you will not be able to do folders (at least act is a complaint I saw on one persons review on replacing EN with Bear instead... also, Bear is only Mac Based, if that matters to you at all) 

[Jon/t 1,293]

3 minutes ago, BASboy said:

Because the app has stopped working properly

Can you explain how its stopped working properly? For me its really smooth, fast and working a treat right now.

[BASboy 43]

10 hours ago, WilliamL said:

Dude I literally used the language you used in your original post - so it is peculiar you accuse me of being 'triggered' when I only used language you yourself introduced.  

As for Nimbus, sigh, honestly I have run out of patience with people who seem to think moving a company to Europe = disaster, I find it truly insulting, so go for it, I have never heard a good thing about it but I am sure you will be the exception. 

First off you manipulated the way you posted my language and did it in a way that was being basically an A-Hole response. So don’t play the doughy eyed innocent. it did not answer my question that I put out there originally. It was just being a flag-waving fan boy of EN. and not anything more than that.
 

Certainly, I was not complaining that they moved to Europe. I was stating that since they fired all the staff in America, that the app had stopped working properly for me. That I was not getting any help responses back from Evernote. That I noted that there were more and more people complaining that, Evernote staff was not responding to their help inquiries. And I was asking other people who are probably searching around for alternative apps, due to the pricing increase and the lack of function happening. If there were perhaps other apps that were like EN besides  the ones I was considering. 
 

 

[BASboy 43]

12 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

@BASboy Why don’t you pick whatever you want to use, go to their forum and ask how to start ?

You come here, tell nothing about your use cases, just complaining, and say from a list of features that this must be the solution for yourself. OK, I can tell for sure it is the solution, because you seem to be a person of little demand on features, but a high appreciation of „attitude“.

This because I see you here just blaming other users of having the wrong attitude. You have 7 posts here, and most of them are probably dedicated at attitude correction - of others, of course …

My original post was asking for suggestions of other apps in the one that I was considering.. So your comment about my attitude and response. Was responding back to them not doing what I originally asked. But instead being fanboy, waving Finatticz, just acting angry towards me.
 

True I can sometimes come off as abrasive in my words when it’s in text. But in person I’m a really sweetheart of a guy.

 

I already stated at the beginning what my issues were. They have it stopped working appropriately. It was take a minute or more for each note to open up. That I was receiving no response or help back from Evernote since they fired all the staff. That there are reports out there that other people are also having the same problems. And the list of things that the other app does, are very similar to Evernote. That is why I posted it..

I am sorry that my use case is underwhelming to you. My mind only boggles it what amazing things you’re able to accomplish. That this dumb mortal can barely dream about much less comprehend. 
 

 

[BASboy 43]

19 minutes ago, Jon/t said:

Can you explain how its stopped working properly? For me its really smooth, fast and working a treat right now.

Notes take a minute or more to open now. It’s consistently taking more time to open and not getting better on my side of things. And then I have asked for help repeatedly on multiple forms and at multiple sites from the company. And I’ve received no help.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

There is only the ticketing system you can use to contact support.

Everything else it talking about, not with EN staff.

[gazumped 11,676]

33 minutes ago, BASboy said:

more and more people complaining that, Evernote staff was not responding to their help inquiries.

Evernote layoffs only hit the news a couple of days ago,  so any complaints about help queries pre-date that situation.  And as @PinkElephant said - if you raise a support query correctly you get an immediate online confirmation and a ticket number reserving your place in a queue.  When your turn comes,  you'll get a follow up email.  You can see the current state of all requests here: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/

Recent change to Real Time Editing slowed first-time opening of notes,  and with (allegedly) 200+ MILLION users,  even the relatively small percentage of complainers means they're just a bit busy right now.

[bmcl26 488]

56 minutes ago, Jon/t said:

Can you explain how its stopped working properly? For me its really smooth, fast and working a treat right now.

Same here, yes a few minor niggles recently most have been fixed, with further improvement promised in the next updates.

[Jon/t 1,293]

1 hour ago, BASboy said:

Notes take a minute or more to open now. It’s consistently taking more time to open and not getting better on my side of things. And then I have asked for help repeatedly on multiple forms and at multiple sites from the company. And I’ve received no help.

This should not happen and I don't see this on 4 different PCs so something is probably wrong with your install.

A few things to try:

Do you have the old Legacy app open at the same time as the Version 10 app? This can cause problems as they use different note formats on the back end and things need to be converted.

Try logging out and back in again.

Try logging out, removing all your Evernote data and logging back in again. Give it a few hours for Evernote to download everything.

If that doesn't work try uninstalling Evernote and all the Evernote data. use something like Revo installer. Then reinstall and wait for your notes to download.

Finally contact support. You'll get a pretty instant auto-reply if the ticket goes through.

[sjrixon 24]

18 hours ago, gazumped said:

So I'm currently looking at it as:  someone apparently running a hugely successful AI-linked mobile app company recently bought Evernote outright.  They have big plans,  but being based in Europe have moved operations there to make it easier to achieve their ambition.  Beyond the fact that they have been working to speed up operations for the last 6 months or so,  Evernote has continued as before.  If that changes I'll be ready to move on.  Unless that actually happens I'd regard any time spent on finding something "better" is a total waste of time and effort. 

But your choice - there were something like 80 different note-taking apps available last time I looked,  and your preferences will be affected by your OS and your needs.  Most of them have some sort of free use period,  so some practical tests might be possible.  Have fun.

You read my mind... Well said..

[RJLUK 307]

Theres a new plugin for Obsidian "Import" which imports EN enex files + attachments etc.

If Geller and Co don't pull their fingers out by November that's the route I will probably go down.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

If I look at Obsidian prices, it is similar or even more expensive than EN Pro. No sync at all without a subscription, for example.

For a price level decision this is absurd. If the own use cases are better supported would be a different reason to switch - but subscription price doesn’t look like a saving, based on similar features.

[HeBoIz 241]

14 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

If I look at Obsidian prices, it is similar or even more expensive than EN Pro. No sync at all without a subscription, for example.

For a price level decision this is absurd. If the own use cases are better supported would be a different reason to switch - but subscription price doesn’t look like a saving, based on similar features.

Obsidian does have lots of pros - depending on personal use-cases (where I love it for - for special purposes).

But there are as well some cons (once again depending on use cases):

• Obsidian sync is nearly on same price level as EN Pro (but may be avoided with some nerdy workarounds using github or cloud-storage and 3-party-sync)
• Obsidian also ist Electron-based: So for working with Obsidian the hole workspace has to be loaded for each collection of notes, attachments, plugins etc. If you are working local and running Obsidian in background this ist a one-time job. But if you are on mobile opening and loading obsidian may take some time - in some cases every time you change apps - not always fluent work... And: The more content you put in Obsidian the bigger the workspace to load will be. Dividing and organizing notes in different vaults may reduce loading time. Therefore you have to switch vaults for opening notes with other main-topics.
• And by the way: no integrated webClipper , no direct email-forwarding

But sure: simple-file and folder system with Mardown pure, accessible and editable with every simple note-editor

[ChuckHaas 4]

I just ported over all my EN notes to Obsidian (about 2000)    Took about 2 hours - save each notebook as an Evernote file then convert to markdown via Yarle.  Seems to have worked fine.  I put all my notes on Dropbox, which I have anyway, so the marginal cost of syncing is 0 to me.  I think I've found workarounds to email imports.  And there is a web scraper in Chrome which appears to work fine.  The only piece I don't have yet is handwriting OCR in pdf's.  This will give me enough time to test viability before I get hit by the increased renewal pricing.

[TwoPieceOB166 5]

On 7/12/2023 at 3:27 PM, BonskY said:

...

So for my own personal productivity needs and workflow, only Evernote is the right and complete solution to help me to get thing done and organize my life...I tried a combination of Obsidian and OneNote that can it near of my Evernote usage...but with the time...workflow is getting ridiculous and too frictional.

...

I'm currently evaluating alternatives to Evernote. I'm close to settling on OneNote between it and Obsidian. May I ask what issues you ran into with them? I'd like to learn from your experience before I get too far down the path on one or the other. Thanks!

[RJLUK 307]

13 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

If I look at Obsidian prices, it is similar or even more expensive than EN Pro. No sync at all without a subscription, for example.

For a price level decision this is absurd. If the own use cases are better supported would be a different reason to switch - but subscription price doesn’t look like a saving, based on similar features.

I am synching via icloud- you can do same with dropbox etc. The data is held where YOU decide. 

Obsidian synch is 96 usd a year

EN now wants 125 usd a year and provides less than it did a year ago.

As I said I am monitoring- the issue is not the cost it is the unreliability of EN these days-I am still sitting waiting for older notes to open ......sometimes for hours

I think support must be overwhelmed by free users many of whom have no idea what EN should do

= restrict free access to 1 month.

That would dramatically reduce EN server loads and demands on support surely?

The key with EN these days is Trust - and to be fair it is not bending spoons fault they inherited a sh*t storm after the garbage pumped out by small and co.

But nothing appears to have changed and the service is getting worse

But we are being asked to pay 50%.

What they SHOULD do is FIX it then include more options/tools and ask if people to pay more.

At moment we have a broken classic car that WAS great and looked great

A garage group has bought it and say- its broken we cant fix it at moment but we want you to pay 50% more to use the car

What planet are BS on ( BS how appropriate)

And before the fan boys pile in yes I know I can go elsewhere

So I am monitoring what happens until my renewal in November

Then a decision will be made.

 

 

[johansan 48]

Another vote for Obsidian. It's really amazingly good, and with a few extensions and the right settings (e.g. create new notes in current folder) you can make it look and feel almost exactly like Evernote.

Extensions

• File Explorer Note Count - shows number of notes in each folder
• Icon Folder
• Last Modified Timestamp in Status Bar
• Recent Files
• Simple Embeds (show youtube-links like previews)

I've been with Evernote since 2009, but no longer trust the platform so cancelled my subscription last month. Not only is Obsidian great, but in some cases even better than Evernote. I bought the Obsidian sync and it works great with iPad and iPhone, their mobile app for iPad is also much better than Evernote.

[s2sailor 2,207]

5 hours ago, RobertJLee said:

I think support must be overwhelmed by free users many of whom have no idea what EN should do

Their support access is only Twitter.  Support is backlogged but I don’t think it is from free users.

6 hours ago, RobertJLee said:

= restrict free access to 1 month.

I’m on board with this idea.  The freemium model never made sense to me.

6 hours ago, RobertJLee said:

At moment we have a broken classic car that WAS great and looked great

The “WAS great” part is definitely debatable.  Depends on your use case.  What’s not debatable is that Evernote was dying on the vine and as a business was not sustainable.

6 hours ago, RobertJLee said:

yes I know I can go elsewhere

If you haven’t yet, check out the new version of Bear.  I was pleasantly surprised.  There is more and more competition out there and it’s getting better.

[RJLUK 307]

3 hours ago, s2sailor said:

If you haven’t yet, check out the new version of Bear.  I was pleasantly surprised.  There is more and more competition out there and it’s getting better.

Yes I am testing bear 2- very similar to Apple notes but you can get DATA out also. 

[s2sailor 2,207]

12 minutes ago, RobertJLee said:

Yes I am testing bear 2- very similar to Apple notes but you can get DATA out also. 

Also, the tagging in Bear is much better.

[Twitchly 28]

On 7/13/2023 at 2:45 AM, PinkElephant said:

Apple Notes has folders (= notebooks), and they can be nested. Tags are a pale shadow of EN tags, however.

Thanks; I’ll look into that. Now if only Apple offered a clipper. 

How do Apple notes tags differ from those of EN? I must not be using EN tags to their full capacity, because the two seem pretty similar to me. Apple requires you to type a hashtag symbol, and EN requires you to go into a separate tags window. (On the phone; I rarely use the PC version.) What else?

 

[Twitchly 28]

How tech-savvy does one need to be to use Obsidian’s EN-similar features? I’m not a coder and don’t want to become one in order to use a virtual filing cabinet. 

[s2sailor 2,207]

26 minutes ago, Twitchly said:

How do Apple notes tags differ from those of EN?

I don't believe Apple notes allow for nested tagging.

But, after just checking, it does allow for many levels of nested folders.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

Apple Notes has no tag management to speak of, and tags are there only very rudimentary. You can practically create a tag by typing "#tagword" into a note, and it will be recognized as a tag. You can use it to select notes, but not much more.

[BASboy 43]

On 7/13/2023 at 2:03 AM, Jon/t said:

Finally contact support. You'll get a pretty instant auto-reply if the ticket goes through.

All good suggestions. I will try it. I have just one MacBook and iPhone and iPad. Don't have the legacy open except when I need to print something and you can't get it to properly print on the new stuff.... BUT as to getting an Instant Auto Reply... that isn't the problem. That I (and others) don't get any further follow up, even with multiple re-contacting them, that is the REAL CRUX of the problem. No Communication. No help when things go sideways.  They have fired all the staff without letting us the paying public know they will have some bumps as they reduce staffing, move the servers to their own country and really don't give us any justification for the price increase as they are saving money on staff now (less staff). 

[BASboy 43]

On 7/13/2023 at 1:29 AM, gazumped said:

even the relatively small percentage of complainers means they're just a bit busy right now.

Then perhaps they shouldn't have fired all the staff over here until they were able to handle the problems that are happening. I appreciate the link to see the status. (not something that seems to be jumping up and down for others to easily find) Although the complaints were coming before the reported layoffs, that would seem to indicate they had problems already and Bending Spoons just didn't care and said F-It, Your fired. We need to stop paying people. That Bending Spoons does not respond to the 3 other requests I have put in to different contact locations at their company kind of shows their Long Time Set-Up company is already bad with customer support. So it is only going to get worse in my mind. 

[BASboy 43]

6 hours ago, Twitchly said:

How tech-savvy does one need to be to use Obsidian’s EN-similar features? I’m not a coder and don’t want to become one in order to use a virtual filing cabinet. 

Yeah... this is my challenge as well. Obsidian is great...but seems to be a learning curve and people are saying "If you tweak it" which already sounds complicated for a 57 year young ADHD Guy like myself to relearn a new dog trick. 

[RJLUK 307]

1 hour ago, BASboy said:

57 year young ADHD Guy like myself to relearn a new dog trick. 

I'm 65 there are plenty of guides on youtube. 

[PinkElephant 8,121]

@BASboy Either you have better sources than we have, or you should be careful to spread gossip. EN was for example running on servers rented in Google data centers. They don’t need to move anything from a basement in their former HQ to keep accounts online.

What we can assume without much phantasy is that support has a pretty busy time …

[gazumped 11,676]

4 hours ago, BASboy said:

Bending Spoons does not respond to the 3 other requests I have put in to different contact locations at their company

Evernote won't respond to anything other than a support request to the correct address - they never have.  If your request appears at the link I gave,  you're in a queue.  If it doesn't,  use https://help.evernote.com/hc/requests/new for support - if you have problems with that, use 'account' from the drop-down options as an issue type, sign in as 'guest' or use the help/ feedback link from any app. See also  https://twitter.com/evernotehelps

 

[RJLUK 307]

20 hours ago, s2sailor said:

Also, the tagging in Bear is much better.

Just ran a simple test exported enex file with 1000 notes from EN

Imported into Obsidian no issue

Imported into Bear 2 no issue

Then

Did search for a really obscure term hidden within a pdf 

Obsidian did not find it - implication being does NOT search within PDFS

Bear 2 found it instantaneously

SO if required I have a viable alternative  and have exported all notes to ENEX files incase EN implodes.

[gazumped 11,676]

10 hours ago, BASboy said:

but seems to be a learning curve

I took a look at Obsidian a while ago - seem to remember there are a bunch of plug-ins or add-ons to extend the functionality,  some of which are probably part of the actual app by now (it was a while ago). I'm even older than @RobertJLee,  so I think learning curves are only as steep as you make them.  What you do need is patience - everything takes too long,  until it doesn't.

[eric99 980]

On 7/15/2023 at 2:56 PM, RobertJLee said:

Just ran a simple test exported enex file with 1000 notes from EN

Imported into Obsidian no issue

Imported 3000 notes into Obsidian but attachments are not embedded into the note and/or the attachments links are not working

edit: Importing  attachments does work properly

[HeBoIz 241]

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

attachments are not embedded into the note and/or the attachments links are not working

This shouldn‘t be a difficult problem to solve. How did you import/ convert to markdown? With yarle there are lots of options which will end in different structures. Simple inner embedded links in Obsidian to files with unique names by default will look like ![[filename.extension]].

If links don’t look like this you could use an editor like notepad ++ to replace and change links with regular expressions to this format in all files of a folder.

other solution might be to use the new  enex plugin of Obsidian or to run a second try withe yarle with other options…

Edit: advantage of Yarle is that you can define an use a template for the final markdown file. With template you can define a yaml-frontmatter for metadata wich you can use later for very flexible filtering and reporting with the extraordinary dataview-plugin. (See: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview)

 

[eric99 980]

3 minutes ago, HeBoIz said:

This shouldn‘t be a difficult problem to solve. How did you import/ convert to markdown? With yarle there are lots of options which will end in different structures. Simple inner embedded links in Obsidian to files with unique names by default will look like ![[filename.extension]].

If links don’t look like this you could use an editor like notepad ++ to replace and change links with regular expressions to this format in all files of a folder.

other solution might be to use the new  enex plugin of Obsidian or to run a second try withe yarle with other options…

 

I know that I could change the links, but the Obsidian enex plugin should import  properly without manual intervention afterwards...

[s2sailor 2,207]

My recent Bear test was with a notebook of about 600 notes.  Notes and attachments moved over fine.  Checkboxes changed over to bullets, and of course note links point back to Evernotes.  No folders/notebooks so all organization is via tags.  If I wanted to tidy up it would take some work.  My approach, with any app change, would likely be to dump the data into the new app and then only tidy up what is still currently used as I come across it.  The clipper seems to work ok, though I had some problems sharing PDFs from the iPad.  Even with the current data loss issue in Evernote, I'm taking a wait and see approach, but it is nice to know that I have a few options that will work for me if needed.

[HeBoIz 241]

7 minutes ago, eric99 said:

the Obsidian enex plugin should import  properly without manual intervention afterwards...

Surely - but my impression is: the Obsidian enex-import-plugin is a private programmed simplified version of Yarle. And Yarle is no Obsidian only tool but rather a flexible converter to markdown for different purposes… 

So in some cases there may still be some work to do for optimizing markdown-import/export for Obsidian.

[eric99 980]

14 minutes ago, HeBoIz said:

Surely - but my impression is: the obsidian import plugin is a private programmed simplified version of Yarle. And Yarle is no Obsidian only tool but rather a flexible converter to markdown for different purposes…

If markdown would be a real standard, it should be readable by any markdown reader, but unfortunately each notetaking app seams to have it's own markdown dialect 🙄

[avevers 74]

As @HeBoIz said, Yarle is more sophisticated than the main Obsidian plugin, which uses Yarle but with defaults that cannot be changed. It's why I'm playing around with Yarle itself; I like its options.

I've found that images are not embedded into Obsidian's imported notes on my machine, because by default Yarle uses the Evernote note's title for the new markdown file's filename, and some of my Evernote notes have very long titles. Meaning very long filenames. This means that the images (in a similarly-long resources subfolder) have a path length that's too long for my OS (Windows) and the images can't display! Over 255 total characters will give this problem. (On Windows 10 at least.)

I actually remembered this all being far too much hassle when I first looked at Obsidian and Yarle two years ago, and my Evernote notebook stack is massive. Back then I stuck with Evernote legacy. Since then, Obsidian has matured a lot (in many ways far surpassing Evernote's functionality) and this week's dipping my toe into the v10 waters resembled playing footsie with a piranha fish. So I'm going to make this exodus, via Yarle, work.

[jefito 5,589]

On 7/12/2023 at 6:00 PM, seebee said:

The 60's music scene saw something similar to this exodus, when thousands of folk music fans walked out on Bob Dylan when the band went electric. Difference being is that we haven't any evidence of what we are kicking back against yet.

Kind of a strange take on Dylan -- and Evernote -- there. Sure, he lost some folkie purists, but so what? His songs are known and loved by millions, and I'm guessing even some of those folkies came back around eventually. BTW, he was originally a rock'n'roller (think Elvis and Little Richard) before he became a folkie in Greenwich Village. He moved back to rock, and later to country and wrote great songs in all musical genres that he chose, a true artist, defined by his work, and not by any genre. But Evernote is a company, not a person, with very few, if any, of the original folks remaining at this point. Maybe it'll make a huge turnaround under the new ownership; it's hard to tell. I'd say it's unlikely they'll follow Dylan's path, however...

[Myron Zweihorn 3]

We are outraged that Evernote raised its fee about 80%, and automatically renewed our subscription without first sending us an email about their enormous price gouging. Having found a very suitable replacement for Evernote,  we followed the Evernote instructions to cancel our subscription, which had just renewed on July 14th 2023.

Now according to the Evernote refund policy (https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/115010561808-Evernote-Refund-Policy#:~:text=For any monthly Individual Paid,the date of the payment.) "For any annual Individual Paid Service subscription fee, Evernote will process a refund if the request is received within sixty days of the date of the payment."

But when followed the instructions to cancel our subscription, instead of telling us we would be issued a pro-rated refund for our annual subscription, we were cheerfully informed that our "subscription would not cancel until July 24th 2024!"

We will not be using Evernote anymore and insist that we be refunded the balance of the insane $143.53 fee, (which is up from $76.20).

Since Evernote makes it impossible to contact them to discuss this matter, we will be contacting Mastercard to explain the situation to them and receive the refund.

 

 

 

[RJLUK 307]

10 hours ago, eric99 said:

I know that I could change the links, but the Obsidian enex plugin should import  properly without manual intervention afterwards...

it does

 

[RJLUK 307]

10 hours ago, s2sailor said:

with the current data loss issue in Evernote, I'm taking a wait and see approach, but it is nice to know that I have a few options that will work for me if needed.

Same - there is a viable alternative.

 

[BASboy 43]

On 7/13/2023 at 1:09 AM, PinkElephant said:

There is only the ticketing system you can use to contact support.

Everything else it talking about, not with EN staff.

Well then we're left to our own devices and are paying for support that apparently will Never Ever Come and if Bending Spoons Cared... they would be addressing our issues. Which they are not. 

[PinkElephant 8,121]

It obviously depends on what you ask support: It can be something available, and they just point out how, it can be  an issue that needs to pass through the release cycle, or it can be one of these „nice to have, but never will“ features.

Depending on this the time it will take will be between a few hours, several weeks or „never“.

It is plain bad mouthing to tell „they never will“ - as if you would know.

[gazumped 11,676]

2 hours ago, BASboy said:

we're left to our own devices and are paying for support that apparently will Never Ever Come

The system is,  you make a report on the link we already shared and immediately get a ticket number.  Within a day or two (or several if they're busy) you'll get a human willing to help if they can.  Depending on the details in your original report,  they may have questions.  That's about as good a support response as I've had from any tech company - and I used to run an IT support team back in the day.  Meantime we're here to help with work-arounds if we can.

[s2sailor 2,207]

My recent experience is unfortunately different.  Two tickets opened 3 weeks ago.  Other than the initial email response, no further contact human or otherwise.  When checking status online, one is closed.  It would have been nice if I was told.  The other is still open.  I’m not as charitable as you Gaz. Their support performance, never particularly good is, in my experience, shoddy now.

[gazumped 11,676]

6 hours ago, s2sailor said:

My recent experience is unfortunately different.

Hmmn.  Can you post the ticket numbers here?  I can flag them for the forum Admins to take a look at which might get you some action...

[s2sailor 2,207]

5 hours ago, gazumped said:

Can you post the ticket numbers here?

Sure, 3704123 and 3704697, though I'm not looking for special attention.  Only pointing out that support service for myself, and others isn't as good as you defend it to be.

[gazumped 11,676]

OK I flagged the numbers.  Can't really comment on others' experience,  but I had a request responded to within a few days recently - maybe it depends on what the issue is...

[s2sailor 2,207]

6 minutes ago, gazumped said:

maybe it depends on what the issue is...

Thanks, could be.

[eric99 980]

On 7/16/2023 at 7:39 AM, RobertJLee said:

Same - there is a viable alternative.

 

In the mean time, I further investigated Obsidian in more detail.

Import:  I successfully imported a notebook of 3000 notes without data loss. Attachment links do work properly and what's more, even internal note links are imported properly (probably recovered from the note title because ENEX still doesn't save the note-id)

security: Different from most note apps, Obsidian encrypts the vault on your device with a custom encryption key before it's sent to Obsidian's servers. This guarantees that no one—not even the Obsidian team—can access your notes

search: your notes are searched offline since the server can't do it due to the encryption.  The search is OK, it can even search for a substring inside a word, something EN can't do.  Search inside PDF is not supported by obsidian yet, but there is a super search community plugin that can handle pdf and OCR.

Other nice features:

• code syntax coloring
• canvas
• graph
• 1023 plugins, written by a very active community

Export:  since notes are stored as markdown files, it can be edited with any editor and it should be readable by any markdown viewer. With Pandoc you can convert the markdown to other formats. I need to further investigate this.

Conclusion: overall I'm impressed and I agree Obsidian is a viable alternative indeed...

 

[Boot17 1,455]

2 hours ago, eric99 said:

Conclusion: overall I'm impressed and I agree Obsidian is a viable alternative indeed...

Was just checking out Obsidian more myself over the last few days and concluded the same. Obsidian is my number one viable alternative now.

Evernote still has a few advantages over it that I like. (Obsidian has advantages over Evernote too.) I went to find my note about it and... well - see for yourself:

• 

..what? What happened to my notes!? I'm pretty sure I jotted down way more than that! (Checked note history -- nope - nothing!) Did Evernote eat my notes about what it had going for it! 🤔 How ironic if true!  🤦

Anyway - I remember some things were a better feature/GUI-rich editor, better table implementation, better tasks (I know about task plugins for Obsidian), easy non-destructive image markup, more. Maybe I just thought about it and never actually wrote it... could be.

[eric99 980]

3 hours ago, Boot17 said:

Was just checking out Obsidian more myself over the last few days and concluded the same. Obsidian is my number one viable alternative now.

Evernote still has a few advantages over it that I like. (Obsidian has advantages over Evernote too.) I went to find my note about it and... well - see for yourself:

• 

..what? What happened to my notes!? I'm pretty sure I jotted down way more than that! (Checked note history -- nope - nothing!) Did Evernote eat my notes about what it had going for it! 🤔 How ironic if true!  🤦

Anyway - I remember some things were a better feature/GUI-rich editor, better table implementation, better tasks (I know about task plugins for Obsidian), easy non-destructive image markup, more. Maybe I just thought about it and never actually wrote it... could be.

Forgot to mention: obsidian sync costs about the same as EN personal

[Mia 38]

On 7/12/2023 at 8:11 PM, Twitchly said:

Sorry for the huge text; no idea why that happened (or how to fix it). 

Love Huge Font, even tho now am  Plano (20/20 vision).

[JDCis 19]

For what it’s worth, I use both Evernote and Obsidian. I started using Obsidian to develop an exit strategy in case things went south about a year or so ago, but recently I just updated my subscription to Evernote as well. (I don’t pay for Obsidian sync but rather use iCloud) 

 

I really like Obsidian, and it has a lot of things going for it. The community plug-ins are great, and the ability to use simple markdown and completely local/transferable files are things I like. Tabs and Split View are useful. The ease of linking and backlinking is a huge benefit (even though Evernote also has this feature it’s just a bit more steps to use). A lot of people are crazy about graph view, but I don’t find it that helpful. 
 

That said, I still find a lot of benefit in Evernote, including the ease of use, especially on mobile. (IMO the Obsidian mobile app is barely usable). Tables, images, and other forms of multimedia in notes is way easier and more effective in Evernote. And of course the web clipper!

 

Personally, I have been using Obsidian more for writing research notes and memos, and very early stages of drafting. That said, I still use Evernote every day for doing online research and project planning. Maybe one day I will consolidate, but so far I find benefits in both apps.
 

I have been using Evernote for over 10 years, so I have a lot of notes. I have transferred a handful over if I want to work with them in Obsidian, but But I just don’t see the point of transferring thousands of notes over to obsidian. Seems like a waste of time to me, when I can still access them in Evernote. (And could even if I had just a free plan)

 

FWIW, Vlad Campos, an Evernote expert, has a channel on YouTube with lots of great videos including how to transfer from Evernote into Obsidian, if you need help. 
 

Anyway, those are my 2 cents.

[Brian Handscomb 28]

Back in February 2021 I made a note that I had looked at Joplin, Standard Note and Obsidian and really didn't like any of them.

Fast forward two years...

I started "test driving" Obsidian with my "daily diary" notes on 19 June (simple text only notes) my incentive being switching my personal phone from Android (where I had an old EN app) to iOS. Think I first tried iOS then Mac desktop app of Obsidian. Early test with that day's note seemed "promising". Notably for this use case there is a "core plugin" in Obsidian that is designed to make a daily note named with the day's date. Been doing that manually in Evernote for almost four and a half years by that point, sometimes even getting the date wrong.

I noticed the Obsidian Sync service is certain a little quirky on iOS - one way to guarantee a sync is to close the note and re-open it. I don't see the issue that often.

I have no idea how well the other half of my Evernote note collection will transfer (some have formatting, or embedded pictures/files), or even if Obsidian will be my note taker of choice long term. It could for example eventually be Joplin.

Since starting my "test drive" of Obsidian I have had an EXTREMELY basic quick look at Joplin - in some ways I prefer it, in others less so. I know for "local storage" Joplin builds a "database" (SQLite I believe) containing your content where Obsidian (on desktop) is basically an open folder with a file per note meaning you can take your notes anywhere. Joplin has a visible formatting bar though. In one of my notes Obsidian had trouble when I pasted in a Windows file path and the backslashes didn't display after an edit to the note. Joplin "imported" the Obsidian note and the display was fine meaning it was just a display issue.

At the moment still using Evernote for my "reference" notes (about 900 of them I think), but haven't created a new note in a month and only edited 7 (mostly using NixNote2).

There it a lot of "doom and gloom" predictions about "Legacy" stopping working soon (notably not from Evernote), but personally I am not too worried. For one thing at least one copy of my notes are in a "local database" maintained by a non Evernote client which uses the published API that I don't think has changed in the last couple of years. Tempting to spin up another third party client I know about (Quentier)  to get ANOTHER independent local copy. I've successfully played with that a little in the past and it is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.

[Harry Slaughter 10]

After Evernote10 came out, I started looking at alternatives too. 

The best alternative I found at the time was also Joplin. But it does not have built in sync. You'd have to do that yourself using Dropbox or similar. It's a lot nicer and simpler in many ways, and it is not a victim to the marketing department like Evernote (dumbing it down and making it more expensive). It's also cross platform (read Linux). I like that Joplin stores everything in markdown, which makes it much easier to work with externally. But it stores all notes in one directory with random names, so the notes are much less useful externally. It was also the only app able to import 15 years worth of Evernote data. 

Once I discovered a seemingly supported port of Evernote10 for Linux (https://itsfoss.com/install-evernote-ubuntu/), I kinda stopped pursuing the issue. 

[Dora Smith 1]

I too am looking for Evernote alternatives.  I ahve used Evernote for years and WAS very happy with it.  It used to be great!  But lately it has one bug after another, it can't even tell you how to contact Customer Support, and their chat bot is the stupidest chat bot ever.    It can't answer ANYTHING wtih the answer.  Not even do you want to tell me or the Better Business Bureau how to contact customer service?  (It does not understand how do I contact customer service.)

 

EVernote WILL be telling the Better Business Bureau how to contact customer service if it doesn't get it together and fast.

[agsteele 2,951]

6 minutes ago, Dora Smith said:

EVernote WILL be telling the Better Business Bureau how to contact customer service if it doesn't get it together and fast.

Probably not. The company is now based in Italy. 

Meanwhile you can go to https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

 

[WayneM 2]

For many years EVERNOTE was a reliable, trustworthy, comprehensive and responsive tool for maintaining a large number of documents, notes, ToDo items, documentation that were central to maintaining critical info covering all manner of personal and professional endeavors. All that seems to have come "crashing" halt with the orchestrated train wreck that is now Evernote. . .or should we call it NEVER-NOTE. I know I am among many others feeling that the team responsible for this mess can suffer no catastrophe as horrible as the pain they are inflicting to a long loyal, but now betrayed, user base. 

Just imagine if this development team had even the most menial role in the US Space program or in our Air Traffic Control system.

[gazumped 11,676]

8 minutes ago, WayneM said:

I know I am among many others feeling that the team responsible for this mess can suffer no catastrophe as horrible as the pain they are inflicting to a long loyal, but now betrayed, user base. 

I think the team most likely responsible for significant parts of it are currently looking for work in the US.  The new Italian owners - who have only been around for half a year or so - are mostly fighting fires originating with past versions of the apps.  Seems a bit unfair to blame the responders for all the carnage...

[RJLUK 307]

10 hours ago, gazumped said:

Seems a bit unfair to blame the responders for all the carnage...

Nothing unfair about it.

If they had spent 10 minutes reading this forum before buying they would have realised EN was a disaster waiting to happen.

Bending spoons are responsible for the current fiasco.

Their response has been to churn out some half baked "updates" with new facilities nobody asked for rather than stabilising the current product AND put price up by 40%.

The best advice at moment seems to be download your data asap and take cover.......

[bswiss56 8]

After all these years using Evernote (since 2011) i am used to its nice features!
Have tried alternatives lately. Unfortunately i am missing a lot of functions there which i am enjoying here with Evernote.
e.g.:
Joplin: nice but lack of a lot of functions...
Notion: not really my taste...
Obsidion:to complicate for me...
Apple Notes: not really usable for me as i am a multiplatform guy...
Only the pricing should not get to high...
 

[Boot17 1,455]

17 hours ago, gazumped said:

I think the team most likely responsible for significant parts of it are currently looking for work in the US.  The new Italian owners - who have only been around for half a year or so - are mostly fighting fires originating with past versions of the apps.  Seems a bit unfair to blame the responders for all the carnage...

That seems incredibly unfair to the previous team.

Bending Spoons fires all the staff that knows the code base, pushes the most buggy v10 release since inception months later and it's the previously fired team's fault? The previous team weren't even around for testing or decision making or even development for this latest round, but it's somehow their fault? 

Maybe Bending Spoons should have waited longer to fire the staff until they were more up to speed on the code base.

Under Bending Spoons we've gotten the release with huge missing data problems and now this latest release comes broken search and a whole more handful of problems. 

This carnage is all self inflicted.

I still think Bending Spoons can get a handle on things, but man, Bending Spoons is making this current bed all by themselves so let's let them lie in it.

[gazumped 11,676]

54 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

That seems incredibly unfair to the previous team.

You're possibly right - but since no-one actually knows (yet) what on earth went wrong or why it's pointless debating the point.  Plus - gentle reminder;  some of us are smugly feeling no pain (again...yet).

[Mike P 2,643]

5 hours ago, bswiss56 said:

Obsidion:to complicate for me...

I think I now have a web clipping work flow for obsidian that I am reasonably happy with. My escape tunnel just got a  little longer. Hopefully I won't need it, but I'm afraid 10.59.5 has forced me to dust off my "EN_alternatives" tag that I've not really looked at since late 2021.

 

[eric99 980]

3 hours ago, gazumped said:

Plus - gentle reminder;  some of us are smugly feeling no pain (again...yet).

Probably because these users don't try hard enough with different notebooks, different search strings and with different result list (length). It doesn't occur in all circumstances...

But then again, what's the point of the very slow rollout if no action is taken when these issues were reported in a very early stage? I would expect them to at least analyze/debug the issues to get a better understanding of the impact before moving forward with the rollout...

[Monofurioso 8]

A few months ago, I cancelled Evernote after being a paid subscriber since 2008.  The app tranformed from my absolute favorite, most reliable, highly evangelized, to a train wreck for my VERY basic usage.  Literally all I do is create text or HTML formatted notes and occasionally a picture. 

The Evernote forum seems the perfect spot to list viable alternatives since it's chock full of unhappy Evernote users.

Protip:  Turning on Ignore for most anyone (some exceptions) with over 1000 posts on the Evernote forum will greatly reduce the bickering as you search for constructive conversations about alternatives. https://discussion.evernote.com/ignore/  Use it liberally.

 

[eric99 980]

16 minutes ago, Monofurioso said:

Protip:  Turning on Ignore for anyone with over 1000 posts on the Evernote forum will greatly reduce the bickering as you search for constructive conversations about alternatives. https://discussion.evernote.com/ignore/  Use it liberally.

 

Is it possible to ignore anyone below a specific number of posts too? 😏

[Boot17 1,455]

On the topic of looking for Evernote alternatives...

I've been playing around with Obsidian quite a bit over the last week or so. Standard Notes and UpNotes were the top alternatives for me before I started digging into Obsidian... now I think it's leading the alternative list. I had looked at Obsidian a year or so ago and didn't really like it then, I think they must have revamped the UI on both Desktop and mobile recently? Anyway I liked it this time around.

Here are some very incomplete and random thoughts of comparison between Obsidian and Evernote for my personal use cases in just a week of playing with Obsidian.

I still prefer Evernote overall and haven't used Obsidian for any serious work yet and also haven't ingested a lot of notes into it. It's mostly just fun to play around with at this point for me.

💜 Big Obsidian Advantages

• Tabs, Tab Groups, Split Panes -- wow these are so good
• Keep Window on Top
• Plugins in General. (Current plugin list: Advanced Tables, Calendar, Dataview, File Tree Alternative Plugin, Hover Editor, Omnisearch, OZ Calendar, Recent Files)
• Hover window previewing and editing -- so cool.
• Command Palette
• Callouts & Quote blocks
• Embedded HTML
• Visible/Workable Metadata
• Side Bar TOC
• Collapsible sections and collapsible bulleted lists.

🛑 Big Obsidian Criticisms

• Note titles are limited to valid characters for a file name. Can't use ":" or "/" for example. Some emojis might be questionable on some OSes.
• I've heard search is super slow once you get a lot of notes. (?)
• more text centric -- copying and pasting lots of images just doesn't seem right
• Community Plugins are a little bit of a security risk

🛠 Obsidian Workarounds

• Use Shottr for quick image markup.
• Better GUI Editor for tables is planned on the roadmap https://obsidian.md/roadmap/ (they have a roadmap!)

💚 Big Evernote Advantages

• Way better feature rich editor - WYSiWYG
  • I think about this one all the time. It is a huge Quality of Life feature.
  • Way easier to capture & size screenshots
  • Way better table features and UX
    • Embed images easier in tables, code blocks, etc
    • Sizing columns
    • Dragging columns
    • Adding columns / rows
  • Drag and Drop Bullets on Desktop and Web
  • Better looking attachment widgets
  • more...
• Way better and more advanced searching and filtering
• Cmd-J (Switch To) is more simple and more intuitive than Cmd-O which doesn't do tags or notebooks or search all. Omnisearch plugin kind of helps here.
• OCR Searching in images (might be an Obsidian plugin for that... there is -- Omnisearch)
• Quick and easy non destructive image markup / annotating
• Less overall configuration -- it's just *all there*
• Tasks are way better, including push notifications
• Personal momentum
• Web Version
• RTE

🛑  Big Evernote Criticisms

• CPU Spiking
• Data Loss
• Slow/Laggy/Heavy (maybe Obsidian would feel this way if I had as many notes in it)

 

[eric99 980]

7 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

On the topic of looking for Evernote alternatives...

I've been playing around with Obsidian quite a bit over the last week or so. Standard Notes and UpNotes were the top alternatives for me before I started digging into Obsidian... now I think it's leading the alternative list. I had looked at Obsidian a year or so ago and didn't really like it then, I think they must have revamped the UI on both Desktop and mobile recently? Anyway I liked it this time around.

Here are some very incomplete and random thoughts of comparison between Obsidian and Evernote for my personal use cases in just a week of playing with Obsidian.

I still prefer Evernote overall and haven't used Obsidian for any serious work yet and also haven't ingested a lot of notes into it. It's mostly just fun to play around with at this point for me.

💜 Big Obsidian Advantages

• Tabs, Tab Groups, Split Panes -- wow these are so good
• Keep Window on Top
• Plugins in General. (Current plugin list: Advanced Tables, Calendar, Dataview, File Tree Alternative Plugin, Hover Editor, Omnisearch, OZ Calendar, Recent Files)
• Hover window previewing and editing -- so cool.
• Command Palette
• Callouts & Quote blocks
• Embedded HTML
• Visible/Workable Metadata
• Side Bar TOC
• Collapsible sections and collapsible bulleted lists.

🛑 Big Obsidian Criticisms

• Note titles are limited to valid characters for a file name. Can't use ":" or "/" for example. Some emojis might be questionable on some OSes.
• I've heard search is super slow once you get a lot of notes. (?)
• more text centric -- copying and pasting lots of images just doesn't seem right
• Community Plugins are a little bit of a security risk

🛠 Obsidian Workarounds

• Use Shottr for quick image markup.
• Better GUI Editor for tables is planned on the roadmap https://obsidian.md/roadmap/ (they have a roadmap!)

💚 Big Evernote Advantages

• Way better feature rich editor - WYSiWYG
  • I think about this one all the time. It is a huge Quality of Life feature.
  • Way easier to capture & size screenshots
  • Way better table features and UX
    • Embed images easier in tables, code blocks, etc
    • Sizing columns
    • Dragging columns
    • Adding columns / rows
  • Drag and Drop Bullets on Desktop and Web
  • Better looking attachment widgets
  • more...
• Way better and more advanced searching and filtering
• Cmd-J (Switch To) is more simple and more intuitive than Cmd-O which doesn't do tags or notebooks or search all. Omnisearch plugin kind of helps here.
• OCR Searching in images (might be an Obsidian plugin for that... there is -- Omnisearch)
• Quick and easy non destructive image markup / annotating
• Less overall configuration -- it's just *all there*
• Tasks are way better, including push notifications
• Personal momentum
• Web Version
• RTE

🛑  Big Evernote Criticisms

• CPU Spiking
• Data Loss
• Slow/Laggy/Heavy (maybe Obsidian would feel this way if I had as many notes in it)

 

A major obsidian disadvantage is the cluttered search result list, it is really overloaded with useless links etc.  Joplin does this much better ...

[Boot17 1,455]

1 hour ago, eric99 said:

4 hours ago, gazumped said:

Plus - gentle reminder;  some of us are smugly feeling no pain (again...yet).

Probably because these users don't try hard enough with different notebooks, different search strings and with different result list (length). It doesn't occur in all circumstances...

 

Ahem... 😉

[gazumped 11,676]

I would like to offer a formal apology if my continuingly efficient workflow has offended you.  I'll try not to detail it again...  🙂 

[BASboy 43]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

I would like to offer a formal apology if my continuingly efficient workflow has offended you.  I'll try not to detail it again...  🙂 

For those of you who don't use 50 Cent Sized Words... "

Meaning of continuingly in English

In a way that keeps happening or existing: The book was followed by a number of continuingly popular sequels. The issues that you have identified are continuingly being addressed."

[gazumped 11,676]

As an adroit and erudite writer I'd also like to formally apologise for proficiently and masterfully engaging in the ineffably exuberant and extravagantly verbose employment of an extensive array of effusive adjectives, artfully cascading through sesquipedalian expressions with unabashed enthusiasm. While this conspicuous copious and conspicuous display of loquacious linguistic prowess bestows upon the prose an unparalleled grandiosity, exuding a sense of intellectual grandeur that leaves readers awestruck in a state of reverential admiration for the author's lexical dexterity and perspicacious aptitude, it obviously causes some people to say "WTF?"

Edited:  Oops.

[Grant837 111]

Adding to the many replies discussing Obsidian:  I used it intensively for 3 months and returned to Evernote. (I earlier tried Notion for 3 months too)

Obsidian is more of a text based concept management tool.  It also requires a certain amount of 'nerdiness' since much of the functionality you might be used to in something like Evernote requires plugins, that you need to often configure just right to work.  Also, as pointed out, to sync most quickly and reliably, you need the paid Sync subscription, which is around 100dollars/Euros as I recollect.  Using any other free sync mention will lead to data loss if you go and use another device too quickly. 

Managing a calendar can be tedious, although you can  sync it with, for example, google calendar.  Using the plugin and keeping the calendar local, means you can not, for example, have an end to repeating events, nor can you change just one event in a repeating series.   And I had my entire calendar wiped out once... 

Task management standard is very basic.  A plugin offers more functionality, but overall not more than Evernote.   Organizing and finding back you tasks, requires either a rigid self-imposed listing of tasks in the right documents that you know how to find, or a plugin, to search and list tasks from anywhere. 

The ability to clip web and store it is very limited, or again, nerdy.

So, if you like spending your time playing with all the ways to can tune Obsidian to your way of working, and maintaining that, then Obsidian can be fun and useful.  I found it fun, but eventually, I had to get some real work done...

[RJLUK 307]

4 hours ago, Grant837 said:

 and returned to Evernote.

Recently? Hows 10.59 performing for you?

[Grant837 111]

1 hour ago, RobertJLee said:

Recently? Hows 10.59 performing for you?

Nothing more than minor glitches, which are not show stopper.  Frequent screen update when enter tasks, and occasional high cpu usage (problems been around on and off for ages).  I have 3k notes, and they open quickly. Once lost text, but that was before 10.59, and I was partially to blame (syncing while editing my self in two places)

[xiangyu 1]

I used EverNote for nearly a decade. No Tasks, No Reminder, just as what it startet and should be, as a note taking app.
The evernote alternative is quite a huge list. OneNote, Notion, Obsidian, Joplin, Google Keep, Roam Research, Squid, Logseq and etc Depends on the use-case.
I am not sure there is something with all you are asking for but I think that OneNote and Joplin are the closer ones right now.

[HeBoIz 241]

7 hours ago, xiangyu said:

think that OneNote and Joplin are the closer ones right now

There are no closest alternatives to Evernote, at least not for everyone.

Every Solution has it‘s pros and cons, it strengths and weaknesses.

What fit‘s you best depends on your use case, your data types and structure and philosophy of use, your technical environment, devices and conditions (Apple only? Windows only? Local only or as well mobile? Cross plattform, with need for frequent and fast sync? With Android or Linux? Do you trust or have to rely on online services? Partly working in restricted conditions with only access to web version? Want to organize your data strictly local and safe on your one - including backups? What need for speed? How should search work and look like? How about linking and backlinks? Need for visualisation of relations/graphs. Do you need a proper and easy, allways there clipping and sharing solution? Want to do some scripting and automating?)

Depending on your answers, you may want to look in DevonThink, on OneNote, Joplin, Obsidian, Google Keep, Apple Notes Dropbox Paper or whatever else. And you may have to use workarounds or additional solutions and services to replace „your“ Evernote. And still there may be gaps to except…

That is the reason why lots of us think best alternative to Evernote Legacy might still be Evernote v.10 - once the actual issues will be solved.

[chronistin 187]

On 7/13/2023 at 12:00 AM, seebee said:

The 60's music scene saw something similar to this exodus, when thousands of folk music fans walked out on Bob Dylan when the band went electric. Difference being is that we haven't any evidence of what we are kicking back against yet.

 

Nah, don't drag Bob into this. There's a huge difference between an artist changing his style and a piece of technology that gets more unusable with every update. 

[bswiss56 8]

Lets wait what the newest update will have at hand...
Being in tech since 1978, i do know for a fact that there is always a possibility for error (humans at work)...
Also in the past changing system because something has a bug does usually drive into new problems...😉

 

[Grant837 111]

On 7/31/2023 at 11:41 AM, bswiss56 said:

Lets wait what the newest update will have at hand...

@bswiss56Indeed, having managed software implementations and releases in the past... I am giving them the benefit of the doubt right now,

But I did hold my breath when I got home yesterday after using the web version of Evernote elsewhere and opened my laptop from stand-by where the same earlier edited documents were all open... but, whew, the updates from the Web synced fine and I had no data loss that I could see on a quick scan...