10 Best free Alternatives to Evernote for taking notes online

To take notes online on any platform-Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android or iOS, you can use top & best 10 free alternatives to Evernote, that you should surely give a try. 

With several distractions everywhere, and in the era, where multitasking is the key to progress in life, we need to set small goals for all the tasks we have to do in our lives and work on them to proceed. Thus, it takes a lot to achieve maximum productivity and noting down small things from time to time surely help out most people to achieve the goals. As most things related to our work and life has gone online nowadays, we all prefer taking notes online using different apps. Talking about note-taking apps, Evernote is one of the best apps. Most people already use it, and the features make the best of its kind.

Evernote is a free app, which is available on the Web, Android, iOS, however, the free version comes with its own limitations. Subscribing to Evernote is optional, but the biggest limitation, which bothers me and most other users are the two-device limits, which means, you cannot use the Evernote app in more than two devices. So if you have more than two devices, this is a big concern, when you might think of switching over to a new app offering the same functionality. Sometimes, you might not need all the premium features that come with Evernote, and thus, looking for a viable alternative makes sense.

 

Best free Evernote alternatives

Google Keep

The first Evernote Alternative in the list is one of my favourites, and I use it almost every single time I need to take some quick notes. It is Google Keep. Google Keep is one of the best note-taking apps, where it is even possible to take audio and photo notes beside the simplest text notes. Unlike Evernote, you cannot change the text colour, style, but it has some additional functionalities making it worth using.

Google Keep alternative to evernot

Evernote like app Google Keep comes with OCR functionality so that you can copy and paste text elements right from the photo notes on Google Keep. This feature is very useful. Besides that, you can even add photo notes by just tapping on the camera button within the Google Keep user interface, and draw anything on the canvas to save it as a handwritten note or idea. It is also a piece of cake to organize notes with the provision of pinning the important notes, adding tags and labels to the notes and by changing the paper colour of the individual notes. Google Keep is free, just like most other Google products, and is cross-platform.

Price: Free
Platform: Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is also a note-taking app that you might already know about. It is a part of the Microsoft Office package, or you can even download and install Microsoft OneNote individually. With a pleasing user interface and cross-platform support, you can sync all your thoughts across devices and can ask your colleagues to contribute to it, all at the same time. Just like Evernote, this alternative can format the font style of the notes and can organize the notes across several categories to help you find it instantly when you need it.

Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is the perfect note-taking app with support for optimized brainstorming. Besides the ability to work on a single note by multiple users, Microsoft OneNote comes with some neat features to capture a business card and save it instantly to OneNote, search across the notes taken by you, draw items within the canvas to create notes, create to-do lists, and everything else to organize your digital life with notes.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Notebook by Zoho

Most netizens are already aware of Zoho CRM, and the Notebook app is one of the cool developments by Zoho to make it easy to take notes and share the same across devices. Like other alternatives to Evernote, the Notebook by Zoho is a completely free service, which can help you take notes almost in every possible way with hardly any limits. Start writing a note, add photos from your gallery or camera, record voice notes, draw things, all within a single note and share the same with others. Out of the other Evernote alternatives, it provides a web clipper functionality on Notebook, capture screenshots and add it to your notes or create a smartcard. 

free Evernote Alternative zoho note

Besides a plethora of functionalities on Notebook, there are some handy features available exclusively for Android, which include multi-window support, access to the last 20 notes easily, create a shortcut to a note using a widget, any more. Well, the best one is the ability to create notes asking Google Assistant to the same. Create a note using your own handwriting or by typing, add some illustrations to it, and export it to PDF to share or print it without any hassles. The ability to secure the notes ensures nobody will steal your ideas or get hands on them without your consent.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Notion

Another great cross-platform note-taking app available for all platforms is Notion. The notion app is one of the best Evernote alternatives if you are looking for something better than Evernote. Just like Evernote, Notion comes with support for templates, which is my favourite feature as it saves a lot of time while I start creating some notes. There are several categories, and chances of your not getting the most desired template are out of the question. Note-taking apps are not always limited only to taking notes. The apps can also be useful to organize a day for maximum productivity. Yes, that is something Notion makes very easy.

Notion online note talking app

With Notion, you can create to-do lists, and can even add sub-tasks to add all the elements or tasks that you need to do and break the task into smaller goals. Just like most other popular note-taking applications like OneNote, Notion has support for online collaboration to help you work on the project with all the colleagues. To make the notes more interactive, it is super-easy to add photos, videos, and other multimedia elements quite effortlessly to Notion by simply dragging the content and dropping it into the note you are working on. With all those features for free, Notion is worth giving a try.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS

Joplin

Joplin app might not offer a wonderful user interface like that of Evernote, but it is almost as good as Evernote if you have a look at the features. Just like Evernote and Google Keep, you can assign tags aka. labels to the notes for the purpose of organizing them, and search them easily when you actually need them. With the ability to add multimedia elements, Joplin can help you keep everything associated with a note in a simple way. Depending upon how important a particular note is, you can assign every single note to different folders like the notebook functionality on Evernote.

jolinapp

With Joplin, you can synchronize the notes across all the devices, but in a different way. Joplin features a robust backup functionality to help you back up and synchronize notes through Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV, etc. Joplin is a very light-weight note-taking app, and you can even use it offline. The notes can be configured to sync automatically once you are connected to the internet. Joplin can also help you create alarms, add geolocation to the maps, which are some small handy features, most people will often need in a note-taking application.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Simplenote

Not everybody needs the rich set of features available on Evernote. That’s when Simplenote comes into play. Simplenote, as the name suggests, is a great note-taking app, and it justifies its name for the true simplicity it has to offer. With Simplenote, you can organize the notes by adding tags, and can simply find a note with a specified tag, by tapping on the hamburger menu, and then by choosing the appropriate tag, associated with the note. Yes, it is that simple. But wait! The simplicity of Simplenote doesn’t imply, this Evernote alternative doesn’t have other features, at all.

Simplenote alternative to evernote

On Simplenote, you can easily add photos to the notes, create grocery lists, and everything else with no distracting tools within the user interface of the app. Simplenote offers a dark user interface, which can be changed, however, but you can understand, how pleasing the black colour or the dark mode is, for the eyes. Simplenote is meant for taking notes quickly, and its availability for almost all the major platforms including Linux is something that really makes it special. Simplenote offers 5 GB for keeping your notes, which isn’t too bad.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Dropbox Paper

Dropbox is the cloud storage platform most people already know about. Dropbox Paper is another note-taking program in our Evernote alternatives list, with support for every other feature to create documents effortlessly directly from the notes written by you. As the name suggests, Dropbox Paper features a paper, where you can write or draw anything or everything, no matter whether it is a document, note, handwriting, or anything else. With easy collaboration, you can invite others to work on the note or document, whichever it may be, and others can comment on some particular element. You can even reply to that at the same time. 

Dropbox Paper is a note-taking program

With the ability to access Dropbox Paper from any device, you can work on your projects from anywhere with your colleagues and co-workers. Unlike most other note-taking applications, which do not work properly while offline, Dropbox Paper is different, and you can work on your projects to get it synced when you are online. So your deadline will never depend on the geological restrictions caused by your mobile network. Dropbox Paper comes with 5 GB storage for free, which isn’t a bad number, and the user interface is minimalistic. All the features make Dropbox Paper a Swiss Knife for all your needs at home and office.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Notejoy

Looking for a note-taking application with an easy way of sharing the same with others to work on! Notejoy is the one you should try out. With robust sharing functionalities, you can share a complete library of note with a group of people to allow them to work on the same. What exactly can be better than that!  Out of other alternatives for Evernote, here, each library is like a Notebook which will contain notes for a certain requirement. Add multimedia elements to the notes, including files from different sources to make the note a full-fledged one and work efficiently.

Notejoy apps like Evernote

Notejoy has a chat functionality, which can be very useful for real-time collaboration with your co-workers to skyrocket your productivity while you are working on a certain project. Besides cross-platform synchronization, which is worth mentioning, Notejoy will also integrate with Slack, Microsoft Office, G Suite, and Trello. Notejoy is free to use, but with a set of limitations. However, you can upgrade to premium versions to get over the limitations and get the best out of Notejoy. If you aren’t a professional, the basic version of Notejoy shouldn’t disappoint you.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux, MacOS, Android and iOS

Elephant

In love with Evernote, but want to switch to a different note-taking program, with almost the same set of functionalities! Elephant app is the one for you. It comes with almost the same set of features like Evernote, and the user interface is also purposely made as similar as possible to Evernote. So just feel at home with your hands laid down on the Elephant note-taking app. Well, that’s not the best part!. The best part is, Elephant is open-source, and you have the option to change or modify the program to suit your needs, obviously if you have some coding expertise.

elephant note taking

If you are looking for almost the exact copy of Evernote, only for your computer, you can go for Elephant. No, Elephant isn’t available for mobile phones as of now which give it a downside as compared to other Evernote alternatives. Well, Elephant is open-source, and who knows, an Android and iOS version of the app will come tomorrow. We can just expect it to happen. But if you are frustrated with the limitations of Evernote’s free version, Elephant can be the best alternative you can choose, that will get you over the limitations, obviously for free.

Price: Free
Platform:  Windows, Linux and MacOS

Orgzly

The final one in the list of top 10 alternatives Evernote is Orgzly, which is a note-taking app that is different from most note-taking apps, I had discussed. Orgzly isn’t optimized for taking quick notes, but for taking notes, prioritize them as per your timings, add tags, deadline, and most other necessary tidbits of information. Well, such information is optional, however, a title has to be assigned to the notes created using Orgzly. The ability to organize a note with additional pieces of information is very helpful to keep a track of your tasks, record the progress made by writing them down in the note itself.

Orgzly Notes & To-Do Lists

Just like Joplin, Orgzly offers a robust backup and sync functionality and you can back things up to your Dropbox account, or to the local storage of your smartphone. The notes can be organized in notebooks, just like Evernote. With the ability to assign deadline, priority, etc. to each note within a notebook, you can create a notebook with the task name, and add notes to it as sub-tasks, with a deadline and priority for each. This can perhaps help you to complete a task as per priorities, and complete it well before the deadline. All such things make Orgzly perfect for professionals looking for a way to boost productivity.

Price: Free
Platform: Android

So that was the list of top 10 alternatives to Evernote. Note-taking apps are really useful today, and syncing them across devices isn’t a luxury. I tried to keep the list filled with freemium, if not completely free note-taking apps with support for synchronization across devices. Some of those I mentioned above are way better than Evernote, and you can even get way more functionalities in some of them with a paid subscription.

So that was it. Do you know any other great note-taking app that deserves its name in the list? Feel free to write the name of it in the comment section down below.

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