Is OneNote a good alternative to Evernote?

[Beartooth 9]

In my opinion and a single word “yes”

Now I understand that an Evernote Forum is probably not the best place to ask that question, however, following the Forum the last two years there has been a lot of discussion on searching for alternatives.

 

My main complaint against EN is not the cost, but it is very slow compared to OneNote.

I have been using OneNote 2016 Windows for about a year, but when my paid EN subscription expired on 10/01, I have been using it exclusively.

 

I have been happily using Evernote for a long time.

I am not giving up yet.

When Jan 1 arrives, I plan to re-up my paid EN subscription to a monthly plan and import my last 3 months of OneNote and see hopefully improvements in the performance.

 

Any Evernote / OneNote users out there?

Take it easy on me Pink😊

[PinkElephant 8,350]

Can you quantify „slow“ ?

Some examples of typical actions, and how much time they need ?

Because „slow“ is relative, and subjective.

[mackid1993 1,035]

OneNote is extremely clunky. I use it at work and absolutely hate it. The sync is awful too.

[MvdH 457]

I tried moving to OneNote, twice. I disliked how I could not do the mix of TSW/GTD like I do. I disliked the not-aligning on different screensizes. I disliked the "blocks" of note parts oriented everywhere, instead of lineair editing/presentation. I really liked the little amount of bugs compared to Everntoe v10. Still, v10 Evernote I give 3 stars of 5 right now, and it is worth for me the higher licence price, I give OneNote 1 or 2 stars.

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

Yes, no, maybe. It all depends on your use.

I have been using Onenote for work since at least 2010. I can't imagine Evernote or Notion or any other service being better for that specific use case. 

But that's because of these things:

• I primarily use it on the laptop. Only use my phone to look things up or jot a quick note, but not for major work.
• This means I can mainly use the Windows Desktop version with OneMore addin, which gives me extended functionality not available on mobile devices (or on Mac).
• It has great integration with Outlook and can pull in extended meeting information with a single click. Great for preparing for meetings, marking attendance, taking notes and sending them to everyone at the end. 
• I can create Outlook tasks from Onenote text, again with a single click. Great for making assignments in the meeting. 
• The tree-like organizational structure works great for project management, since projects tend to follow a defined structure. 

But none of this is really important for my personal notes. For these, I need a full featured phone client, and I prefer tags (because my personal notes are more like a bunch of lose records not following a rigid interconnected structure, and tags work better for this). So, while I successfully used Onenote for several years to keep personal notes, it's not the perfect solution (and honestly neither was Evernote, for me at least). 

[SwissDutch 3]

I can imagine you thinking of switching. I have done that numerous times over the years. But the layout of EN is better than anything else. What is worse though is its foundation. One notices this in the speed. For example the latest update (november 2023). EN lags when you type!! EN lags when you switch to another part of the document. And it has nothing to do with my computer or restarting or whatever: done that many, many, many times over the years. Common. What is this? 1984? And this does not happen once but it has happened many times over the years. This is a deal breaker. But there is nobody else with this UI. If there was I would be gone a long time ago.

[PinkElephant 8,350]

No such issue - it may be you have a corrupted local database, and need to replace it to get back to snappy. macOS Sonoma 14.1.1, EN Mac direct 10.67.2.

[krnlhkr 16]

TL;DR - OneNote is great as a graphical scrapbook.  But for storage and retrieval of random data, and for ease of getting data in and out, Evernote is the best for me.

----
My $0.02

Most of these things just come down to how one uses it.   For a tree-structured repository of data, Evernote is the best place to be.  I use it in conjunction with TheBrain which is my goto for data visualization/exploration/ etc.  Evernote is my filing system and TheBrain is my discovery system.

OneNote is more of a graphical scrapbook.  Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't serve any of my purposes. I think the use case is like someone who uses a Bullet Journal and likes making it fancy and such.  That's a valid way to keep notes, but it just doesn't work for me (and I don't have 20 hours a week to put stickers in and draw fancy stuff - though sometimes I would like to). The OneNote webclipper is somewhat subpar as well. 

Evernote for me works like:  I put in X.  I ask Evernote to give me X back.  It's my "memory store" and I recall data from there and do different things with it.  I do basic organization using notebooks and then also rely on search.  I use tags, but only a select few.  The Evernote logo is an elephant for a reason 😉

I can put anything in Evernote and search for it and get it back (which is one reason I don't use Obsidian much - it's not good at general data; difficult even to embed a file). 

That's why I've been with Evernote > 10 years.  There are some features I would like (e.g., setting an entire note contents to encrypted as an option instead of me having to select a region etc), but it does storage, search, and retrieval of random data extremely well.  And the webclipper is the best I've seen so far.  
 

[krnlhkr 16]

10 hours ago, SwissDutch said:

 EN lags when you type!! EN lags when you switch to another part of the document. And it has nothing to do with my computer or restarting or whatever: done that many, many, many times over the years. Common. 

 

10 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

No such issue - it may be you have a corrupted local database, and need to replace it to get back to snappy. macOS Sonoma 14.1.1, EN Mac direct 10.67.2.

Win10 version here. I see some slowdown.   I think when opening a note that hasn't been opened for a while it's reparsing it to a new format?  After I open it once it seems to get cached or something and then goes quickly.

@SwissDutch You might be seeing it more because of a slow machine or a slow internet connection (live editing might be doing it).  Is your machine fairly quick?  What about your internet connection?

It could very well be the case that live editing needs some tuning.  Like on a slower connection they should exchange more data less often.  I think Evernote would be happy to get some feedback from you.

[dvollc 33]

While I agree with the comments that it depends on what you are using it for, I contend that regardless of the use, I would not consider a note taking app unless it has:

• Numerous ways of getting content into the app (e.g. web clipper)
• A robust tagging mechanism to promote notes in many locations
• A feature rich search function to find that needle of a note in your haystack pile of notes.

OneNote is poor, to say the least, at tagging and search compared to EN.

On a tangent, the debate in EN circles on when to use notebooks vs tags illustrates the great flexibility with EN as there is no right or wrong answer.