Evernote V Onenote

  



Most note-taking apps do the same things. Save and organize digital notes. Search saved notes, clippings, and files. Sync across multiple devices.

Evernote and Microsoft OneNote both do all these things and more. Both tools let you save typed or handwritten notes, organize your notes into individual notebooks, and clip images, paragraphs of text, and even entire web pages as clippings for later viewing.

What’s interesting about both Evernote and OneNote is that, unlike email, document apps, or even instant messaging tools, note-taking apps aren’t often a core part of most work environments. You don’t necessarily need Evernote or OneNote the way you literally need email. They might not be essential, but they are useful.

But which of these tools is better?

Below, we’ve examined Evernote and OneNote in depth to see which note-taking tool reigns supreme. We looked at several individual categories, and we’ve made our recommendation toward the end of the post.

Evernote vs OneNote. Today, there are two leading contenders for the best work management tools - Evernote and OneNote. Both note-taking applications are stocked with world-class features like audio memos, document uploading, text-typing, templates, etc. However, they both target different audiences - which makes them distinct from each other. Technically, OneNote edges out Evernote––but only just. Evernote received slightly more one-, two-, and three-star reviews than OneNote did, and OneNote received slightly fewer reviews in general. Although this means OneNote beats Evernote narrowly in terms of user satisfaction, it’s too close to be conclusive, so we’re going to call it a draw. Our Recommendation for Evernote vs.

On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be much difference between Evernote and OneNote. Look a little closer, though, and the differences start to become more obvious. Let’s look at how the two apps compare in terms of:

  • Organization
  • Storage
  • Search
  • Pricing
  • Overall user satisfaction

Organization: Winner = Draw

Both Evernote and OneNote rely on the notebook convention to describe how the two tools manage file organization.

Evernote organizes items into Notebook Stacks > Notebooks > Notes. OneNote uses a similar convention of Notebooks > Sections > Pages.

Evernote V Onenote 2019

In addition to their central notebook conventions, both Evernote and OneNote also feature tag systems. Evernote’s tags function similarly to tags in WordPress. You can add a tag to any note and search by tags to find thematically relevant notes.

OneNote’s tags work very differently. They’re a lot more interactive and can be used for lots of different things. For example, you can add Reminder tags to a note to be reminded at specific dates and times. OneNote comes with more than 20 preset tags, from To-Do items and Client Requests to Music to Listen to and Book to Read. There’s even a Password tag.

Unlike Evernote, which limits tag placement to the Notes level, OneNote tags can be applied to any organizational element. Any Notebooks, Sections, or Pages in OneNote can have tags applied to them. You can add multiple tags to multiple elements on a page. For example, you could add a Contact tag to an image of a business card you uploaded after a meeting, a Reminder tag to follow up with that person at a specific date and time, and a Client Request tag to the action items you need to prepare for that meeting.

One of the biggest problems with Evernote is that the program itself can become sluggish once you reach a certain number of notebooks. Another major issue is that quick notes aren’t categorized by default, meaning that if you use Evernote to make lots of quick little notes, your file system in Evernote can quickly become a mess of Untitled Notes. For a tool that’s supposed to help us make sense of the information in our lives, this can be frustratingly counterintuitive.

I wouldn’t say tags in Evernote are “better” than tags in OneNote or vice-versa. It all depends on which system feels right to you and aligns with what you want from the tool.

Storage: Winner = OneNote

If you intend to use Evernote or OneNote simply to record your thoughts, storage isn’t that important. Individual text notes are tiny in terms of file size. So you don’t need to worry as much about running out of space.

If you intend to save a lot of documents and files, though, storage becomes a lot more important.

In terms of storage, Evernote is quite permissive but does have some hard restrictions:

  • Evernote freemium accounts can have a maximum of 100,000 notes with a file-size restriction of 25MB per note. Premium subscribers can upload or capture notes up to 100MB in size.
  • Evernote limits users to a maximum of 250 notebooks synced across a user’s account.
  • Evernote restricts users to a maximum of 10,000 tags.
  • Evernote allows users to save up to 100 searches.
  • Evernote freemium accounts are limited to just 60MB of uploaded data per month, premium users to 10GB, and business users to 20GB.

Evernote’s maximum number of notes, notebooks, and tags is fairly generous. But the 60MB upload limit is very harsh. Even casual users are likely to run up against this restriction pretty quickly, especially when working with larger files such as high-resolution images.

Evernote retired its Plus tier in April 2018, which had a 1GB upload restriction. This forces users to choose between the limitations of the Free plan or 10GB of storage in the Premium plan. There’s no longer any middle ground between these two extremes––a 5GB limit would have been a solid compromise for many users.

OneNote handles storage completely differently:

  • OneNote’s storage limits are connected directly to a user’s Microsoft OneDrive account; there are no restrictions on how many individual notes a OneNote user can save.
  • OneNote Basic accounts offer individual uploaded file size restrictions of 25MB. Both Premium and Business subscribers are limited to uploads of up to 200MB per file––twice the size of Evernote’s maximum file size.
  • OneNote’s free mobile version restricts users to 500 synced notes before prompting users to upgrade.
  • Although the maximum file size you can upload to OneDrive is 15GB, the maximum file size you can upload to OneNote is 2GB.

Evernote Vs Onenote 2020

The biggest problem with Evernote in terms of storage is the lack of a middle option. It’s either 60MB a month or 10GB a month. This makes sense for Evernote––Evernote’s harsh upload limits on its Basic plan are a powerful motivation to upgrade––but it doesn’t make sense for users.

OneNote’s reliance on OneDrive for storage is a blessing and a curse. It helps keep OneNote largely free and offers generous storage and upload limits. But it also forces prospective OneNote users to sign up for a OneDrive account. This isn’t ideal if users prefer a different cloud storage provider or don’t want to migrate from Google Drive or Dropbox to OneDrive.

If you plan on using either of these tools for simple note-taking, storage won’t be as important. If you need to save larger files or upload a lot of data, OneNote is the clear winner.

Search: Winner = Evernote

Note-taking apps help us record our thoughts. They’re somewhere for our random observations to live. If we can’t find our notes quickly and easily, then there’s not much point in saving anything. This makes search critically important.

When it comes to finding things, Evernote’s search functionality is solid. You can search by keyword or strings, as well as other search criteria such as where and when a note was created, media or attachment filetypes (such as PDFs, images, or audio files), and the people associated with or tagged in a note. Evernote also boasts a wide range of search modifiers that Google power users will find familiar.

OneNote’s search functionality isn’t quite as robust as Evernote’s search. OneNote’s search functionality can feel faster than Evernote’s (especially if you have a lot of notes stored) but offers fewer search operands. You won’t see OneNote’s Notebook search option unless those Notebooks are stored in OneDrive. And you can’t search across all notebooks using OneNote’s web version.

Pricing: Winner = OneNote

With Evernote’s Plus tier no longer available, Evernote has three levels of pricing:

  • Basic (free)
  • Premium ($7.99 per month)
  • Business ($14.99 per user, per month)

Evernote’s Basic plan will probably be fine for casual users. For even moderate use, however, it’s not really viable due to Evernote’s upload restrictions. It’s worth remembering that this only really applies if you’re going to be saving lots of files and documents.

Evernote’s Premium plan lacks the restrictions of the Basic plan and offers a decent monthly upload limit. But at almost $96 for the year, it’s far from cheap––especially when OneNote offers so much for free.

Evernote’s Business plan is the most robust of Evernote’s plans. Although cost isn’t likely to be as important a factor for larger companies or enterprise teams, it’s still a considerable expense, especially as the number of users increases.

OneNote, on the other hand, is free. It isn’t even available as a premium version. All you have to decide is how much OneDrive storage you’ll need if any.

Microsoft’s basic plan, which offers 50GB of OneDrive storage, costs just $1.99 per month or $23.88 annually. For $6.99 per month, or $69.99 per year, you get 1,000GB of storage and access to Office 365 Personal edition.

Even if you don’t need Office or 1,000GB of storage, it’s still cheaper than Evernote’s Premium plan.

Overall User Satisfaction: Winner = Draw

Evernote and OneNote score comparably in terms of overall user satisfaction.

According to G2, a website that ranks software products by user reviews and Net Promoter Score (NPS), both Evernote and OneNote perform strongly. Evernote was named a Leader product by G2 in spring 2019 and received an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars across 1,352 user reviews.

OneNote was ranked as one of the Top 100 Software Products of 2019 by G2 and also received an overall rating of 4.4 stars out of 5 across 1,110 user reviews.

Technically, OneNote edges out Evernote––but only just. Evernote received slightly more one-, two-, and three-star reviews than OneNote did, and OneNote received slightly fewer reviews in general. Although this means OneNote beats Evernote narrowly in terms of user satisfaction, it’s too close to be conclusive, so we’re going to call it a draw.

Our Recommendation for Evernote vs. OneNote

Now that we’ve examined each tool in a little more depth, it’s time to declare a winner.

Taking everything into consideration, we have to recommend OneNote.

OneNote gives you everything Evernote can do for a fraction of the price. If you want to do more with your notes, such as add to-do lists and reminders, OneNote can do that, too. If you just want to take simple text-based notes and find them quickly, Evernote might be a better bet.

Evernote is a highly capable tool with a broad range of use cases. However, as a product, Evernote has lost its way in recent years. And it’s very hard to justify the cost when OneNote offers virtually identical functionality at a fraction of the price.

But it’s not just about cost. There’s more to it than that.

Aside from its dependence on OneDrive, OneNote is the clear winner for business users. It looks and feels like other Microsoft products. Some might see this as a negative, but it actually reduces the learning curve.

OneNote is also far superior for combining multiple types of information on the same page. For example, you can create a to-do list, add an image or table, and jot down some notes all on the same page. OneNote’s drag-and-drop interface, tabbed tagging system, and familiar toolbars make OneNote feel like Office might if Microsoft had acquired Notion.

Evernote looks and feels very sleek, but its performance and stability issues are problematic. Evernote has done an admirable job of doubling down on product quality, but some of these bugs have been around for years. For a premium product with a price tag to match, these frustrations are hard to justify.

In terms of writing and editing tools, Evernote has never positioned itself as a document tool. That said, its writing and document-editing tools are sorely limited. Creating quick notes feels anything but and highlights how poor Evernote’s default organizational structure can be. It doesn’t support markdown or HTML either.

Similarly, Evernote is a powerful tool but does a poor job of onboarding new users. Evernote’s tag system is much more flexible and useful than its default notebooks schema. It’s baffling why Evernote would almost completely overlook this aspect of its organizational structure in its learning resources and tutorials.

Of course, Evernote does do a few things better than OneNote.

One aspect of Evernote that really shines compared to OneNote is Evernote’s Web Clipper. This handy tool is available as a separate browser extension and allows users to quickly clip and save almost anything they find online. You can clip entire web pages as they appear, as simplified versions without images and special formatting, and even save web pages as PDF documents. OneNote’s clipper is fine, but it does struggle to preserve line breaks and other formatting rules. Evernote’s Web Clipper also offers “smart” recommendations on where clipped items should be saved based on analysis of their contents. This feature is a little rudimentary and isn’t always accurate, but it’s a nice feature.

Both Evernote and OneNote drop the ball when it comes to security. Evernote users can manually encrypt specific highlighted excerpts of text, but Evernote does not allow users to encrypt notebooks or even individual notes. OneNote doesn’t encrypt anything unless you’re a Business user. Granted, most people probably don’t need 256-bit AES encryption of their notes. But that’s beside the point––especially if you’re paying almost $100 a year for Evernote Premium.

Should I Ever Choose Evernote Over OneNote?

At this point, the only real reason to choose Evernote over OneNote is if you’ve already been using it for some time and don’t want to go to the trouble of exporting your notes to OneNote.

If you’re thinking of using Evernote or OneNote for the first time, we have to recommend OneNote every time.

Note-taking is one of the essential jobs of every working professional. Making notes helps to list down the important tasks and activities related to work - and in some cases, related to personal life.

The practice of note-taking not only helps to record essential information but affects various soft skills.

Today, we’re going to compare the two great note-taking apps - Evernote and OneNote. But first, we’ll start the piece by highlight the importance of taking notes and some top tips on how to take notes.

After concluding the battle between Evernote and OneNote, we’ll showcase a new app you can use to take notes and make your work management better.

So without further ado, let’s get started.

Why Take Notes

Note-taking doesn’t just contribute to efficiently collecting information but sparks creativity. Here are some reasons to help you convince why you should take notes.

Gives A To-The-Point Recap

Taking notes helps you to get a to-the-point recap of whatever happened in the previous meeting or class.

When taking notes, you only list down the major things, and that helps you to get a recap of the specific event in a snap.

Helps You Think & Be Creative

When you note down things, your brain pushes you to think and be creative. As everything important related to a meeting or a specific talk is at your disposal, you get to make deep analysis, breakthrough decisions and find patterns.

Work As A Source Of Getting Caught Up For Your Circle

For instance, your mates weren’t present in a vital meeting, but you took the notes. Now you can share those notes with your mates and help them get back on track and get up-to-date on what they missed.

Serves As A Solid Reminder

Another reason why you should take notes is that it serves as a solid reminder. Whether you want to finish a task by night or shop for some household items on the way back home, notes remind you of things effortlessly.

How To Take Notes - Top Tips

Don’t know how to take notes? Follow these top tips.

Prepare Yourself First

Before the meeting starts, it’s always good to prepare yourself first. Get to the meeting room a few minutes early and create an outline for yourself.

When creating an outline, make sure to align it with the agenda of the meeting. Then once you’re done drafting the outline, it’s time to think about what you’re going to note down.

Prioritize What To Note Down

Taking notes isn’t about writing every single word uttered in a meeting. Actually, taking notes is a blend of sketching the important points of the meeting along with your personal ideas.

As a general rule on what to note down, prioritize the specific details, feedback, and ideas discussed in the meeting.

2016

List Down Action Items

You’re in the meeting room for a reason and nobody will explicitly tell you what you have to do after the meeting.

During the meeting, list down the action items that you think your boss is expecting you to pull off after the meeting.

For instance, if the meeting is about increasing outbound calls and you’re a sales rep, it’s obvious that your main action takeaway from the meeting is to make more calls or explore strategies on how to achieve this.

Don’t Forget To List Down Questions & Answers

Last and certainly not least, when you’re taking notes, don’t forget to list down your questions and answers.

During the meeting, your mind will come up with many questions and answers related to whatever is going on, and after the meeting, you won’t have access to that wisdom. So make sure to list down your questions and answers.

Now let’s get back to the main topic of the piece - Evernote vs. OneNote; which is best for work management?

Which is Best for Note Work Management? Evernote vs OneNote

Today, there are two leading contenders for the best work management tools - Evernote and OneNote.

Both note-taking applications are stocked with world-class features like audio memos, document uploading, text-typing, templates, etc. However, they both target different audiences - which makes them distinct from each other.

Let’s look at the introductory information about both Evernote and OneNote.

Evernote

Launched back in 2008, Evernote is a powerful note-taking software available on Windows, Android, iOS, and Mac OS.

Although Evernote includes all the basic features of a note-taking app, it was primarily designed to clip content from the web.

Evernote’s UI is created keeping in mind simplicity and professionalism. You can navigate between notebooks (note folders) by either selecting or searching on the left-hand of Evernote. Notebooks are note folders, and on each notebook heading, you’ll see how many notes are in that notebook.

Evernote

Speaking of features, Evernote provides all the basic features you need to start taking-notes from scratch. However, you won’t find advanced features on Evernote as this software is leaned more towards web-clipping rather than taking notes from scratch.

Overall, Evernote serves a premium note-taking and note-organizing experience. With its simple and straightforward design and advanced web-clipping feature, Evernote has a class of its own.

OneNote

OneNote was initially released back in 2003 - 17 years ago. OneNote basically lets you create and organize your notes in notebooks that you can further divide into sections and pages.

Microsoft’s OneNote is bundled with Windows 10, and it’s also offered as a standalone freeware.

You can think of OneNote as a handy katana. OneNote lets you create simple or complex notes from scratch. From writing a simple text to adding all sorts of multimedia or clipping information from the web, OneNote enables you to do it all.

Just like your ideas, OneNote is dynamic and rich. With OneNote, you can draw, record audio/video, scan images, embed spreadsheets, and review edits of other users. Note-creation tools of One-Note are easy-to-use yet give you so much power and control.

All-in-all, OneNote by Microsoft is a cutting-edge note-taking software that’s available on all platforms. It does not just help you take detailed notes but organize and share them in an efficient manner.

Talking-Points of Evernote

An Ultimate Web-Clipping Tool

There’s one place where Evernote truly shines – it’s as a web-clipping tool. Evernote’s web clipping tool works as a browser add-on to capture content on pretty much any web page - you just need to click the Evernote icon in the browser’s toolbar.

Web-clipping tool by Evernote offers the ability to capture the article itself without any ads or unnecessary materials. You can also just capture the screenshot and use the built-in markup tool to add text, highlight material, draw arrows, etc.

With Evernote’s web clipping tool, you get to capture the web pages in an advanced manner within just a few simple steps.

Unique Integrations

Evernote has some unique integration options. Unlike the typical integrations that only let you send and share notes, some Evernote integrations are magical!

One such integration in Evernote suggests relevant information based on what you’re typing in real-time by giving permission to specific websites. For instance, if you’re jotting down notes related to a new Nike commercial, Evernote will suggest articles related to that ad.

Another great integration found in Evernote is the ability to search both Google and your personal notes simultaneously. For instance, if you’re searching for a gaming console and you have something similar in your personal notes, Evernote will suggest that you have something similar stored in your notes.

To-The-Point User Experience

Evernote uses a standard bold color scheme and an easy-to-understand user interface. Formatting tools are lined-up along the top-menu bar like stars in the sky.

When you open a note, the cursor, by default, automatically goes to the upper leftmost free space to clear the room on the screen. Although you can customize the way your Evernote app looks look, everything is by default perfectly fine.

Talking-Points of OneNote

Plenty of Features (For Free)

Open the OneNote app on any platform, and you’ll see eight ribbon tabs, Files, Home, Insert, Draw, History, Review, View, and Help.

All eight sections have a ton of features for you to make the most of the note-taking experience.

Firstly, the File tab lets you open, print, share, and export files along with tweaking other settings. Next up, the Home ribbon tab features options like formatting text, adding tags, marking items, and more.

Just like any other Microsoft Suite app, the Insert tab in OneNote is loaded with useful features. From inserting objects to pictures and recording audio, you’ll find everything in the Insert tab.

Draw, History, Review, View, and Help tabs serve other useful features that can be used to make your note-taking experience even better.

Supreme Extractability & Searchability

OneNote makes all the text in images, documents, PDFs, and other supported files extractable and searchable.

Even if you snap a picture and upload it to your OneNote app, you can easily extract the text from the image.

After extracting the text, you can make the required changes like editing some sentences, formatting text, etc.

As a matter of fact, all the text in the supporting documents also automatically gets searchable.

OneNote Is Free

Evernote Vs Onenote Sync

Last and certainly not least, OneNote is a free-to-use application. Microsoft has made OneNote a free standalone software that’s available on Windows, Android, iPhone/iPad, Mac, Web, and Windows Mobile.

Everything available in OneNote is free, and you don’t have to pay a single penny to use the super-advanced features of OneNote.

From freelancers to small businesses and large corporations, OneNote can be used by anyone to level-up their note-taking game for free.

Evernote Vs Onenote Ipad

Which One Should You Choose?

Both Evernote and OneNote are top-notch note-taking apps with great management features. But which one should you choose?

Well, if your work and note-taking are based on clipping information from the internet, Evernote is the way forward. On the other side, if you want plenty of features to make your notes dynamic and versatile without paying anything, OneNote has got your back.

Evernote is suited towards business professionals and more focused around the use case of clipping information from the world wide web. Whereas OneNote gives power and freedom to professionals who want to make and organize notes on their own.

A New Way To Manage Your Work Notes With Breeze

Evernote and OneNote are great for making and organizing notes in general, but what if you are managing a project with a virtual team?

Well, there’s a new way to manage your work/project notes with Breeze.

What’s Breeze?

Breeze is an intuitive project management tool that your team will love. With Breeze, you can easily plan, organize, manage and track your projects.

Breeze has taken a user-friendly approach in their project management tool. Breeze hasn’t made their tool too complicated nor too simple - they have found just the right proportion of both worlds.

With Breeze, you and your team members can efficiently collaborate on projects, plan stuff, communicate, analyze and control everything.

From seeing who’s working on which task to assigning roles and calling a meeting, Breeze makes project management simple and straightforward.

Breeze Notes

As one of the leading project management tools, Breeze decided to add something new and useful for its customers - and that’s Breeze notes.

Evernote Vs Onenote Vs Notion

Breeze thinks that notes are one of the most vital yet underrated elements of a project. Many project management tools don’t even include a separate space for notes. However, with Breeze notes, you can keep the notes in one easy-to-manage place.

Every project in your Breeze space will include a separate notes section. You can find the notes section under the task input box, right next to the files button. Click on the blue “New Note” button to draft a note. Breeze Notes let you create lists, checklists, files, and other important stuff for your projects.

Final Words

In the battle of Evernote and OneNote, the best note-taking tool for work management is the one that suits your requirements.

Evernote Vs Onenote Surface

On the split side, if you’re managing a project, the Breeze app itself and its useful features like Breeze Notes will redefine your project management experience.