Evernote

THE PROBLEM WITH EVERNOTE-TYPE CLOUD SERVICES

Bookmarks, notes, pictures, scanned documents and other data placed in Evernote are analyzed and indexed to help you organize and search through them later. Evernote even applies hand-writing recognition algorithms, e.g. to scanned notes, so the text can be indexed and searched.

This is possible because the data you send to Evernote is not encryped. It's perfectly readable to anyone with access. This has awful security and privacy implications most people don't worry nearly enough about.

For example, it makes you vulnerable in these ways:

• Hackers & Security: If hackers gain access to your Evernote stuff (they've been hacked before, even recently), they can obtain all of it in a form readable to them. Which means they know just about everything about you that you shared with Evernote. Moreover, companies make mistakes with security (one very popular company managed to accidentally disable the requirement for any password protection on people's accounts at one point.)

• Mass Surveillance: If the NSA ask Evernote for your data using a National Security Letter, Evernote can be compelled to give them your data and can even be prevented from telling you that they did this. The Snowden leaks show the NSA have targeted data hosted by many other companies, including Google, Microsoft (inc. Skype), Facebook, Yahoo and Dropbox. Each of these companies also store their users' data in a readable form. By the way, we're not talking here about the NSA targeting criminal suspects. We're talking about mass surveillance. (Trump's incoming administration includes strong supporters of indiscriminate surveillance of this type.) National Security Letters mean the NSA can gain access to your data and the company, e.g. Evernote, Google, whatever, can be banned from telling you about it. (If you're one of the "I have nothing to hide" people, "read this". The bottom line is you have the right to privacy, which you should be interested in protecting, and you don't know who will have your data in 5, 10 or 20 years time, how they might use it to incriminate you or other people it might refer to or implicate, or even in what legal jurisdiction that might be happening.)

• Rogue employees: Not much stops company employees behaving unethically if they access to your data. You can't predict what this would lead to. The employees of other companies have done unethical things with people's data before.

Evernote's privacy policy doesn't protect you against any of the above. It's just a policy, which is - at best - upheld when everything is going well. But even that's not something to rely on. Recently, Evernote wanted to change its privacy policy in a way that would have given employees routine access to users' data. They backed out of the change due to the consequent public uproar. However, it shows just how easy it would have been to do: there is no obstacle; your data is there to be read - it's just a question of policy. In a month, or a year from now, they could try something like that again. Who knows.

All these considerations also apply to Evernote's largest competitors, OneNote (by Microsoft) and Google Keep. And 95% of other companies that offer you cloud storage, including Dropbox, Box.com, SugarSync, Facebook, Twitter, Slack and Skype. I've singled out Evernote here because they have a service that collects not "just" your chat or contacts, or "just" your shared documents... but, in principle, everything.

YOUR ONLY FRIEND IS ENCRYPTION

Your only friend in this context, to protect your data in the cloud, is end-to-end encryption. Tried and tested algorithms which encrypt your data with a password only you keep. That way, data is encrypted on your computer before being stored online. If you have that setup, the company storing the data cannot interpret what the content is. With a strong enough algorithm (e.g. AES-256) and a complex enough password, your data should be safe from all of the eventualities I described above.
It's worth being aware that many companies claim to be a) secure and even b) use encryption. But it needs to be specifically end-to-end encryption, or "zero-knowledge". If it's not encrypted, encrypted "server-side" or "at rest" only, and if they don't say they don't keep the keys for themselves, then you're not protected and others can read your data.

For reference, here is a list of apps and services that do use end-to-end encryption (or zero-knowledge):

• Email: Tutanota, Protonmail and Startmail.
• Online Video calls: Jitsi Meet or the Jitsi client configured via an XMPP (Jabber) server.
• Mobile text messages: Signal (for Android and iPhone)
• File Backup/Sync: Spideroak, Tresorit and Backblaze. Duplicati will create encrypted backups of your files and let you decide how to upload them. Cryptomator does the same but aims at sync, not backup.

SO WHAT'S THE BEST PRIVACY-FRIENDLY EVERNOTE ALTERNATIVE?

Sadly, this area is lagging behind.

Option 1: Something that does what Evernote does and includes encryption

If you only need simple notes and don't need mobile, try Laverna. It's open source, supports simple text notes and html and uses markdown for formating. (It's also free.)

If you need something closer to Evernote functionality, there's Turtl. I think this is an excellent potential Evernote killer. Still in beta (so don't expect everything to be perfect), but it already does the following:

• End-to-end encryption, hosted in Germany.
• Windows, Mac and Linux compatible (Evernote doesn't have a Linux client; you need the slightly inferior NixNotes for that)
• Has an Android app (iOS on the way).
• Can store and sync bookmarks, files (pdf, images, etc.) and simple notes.
• You can share what you store with other users and still do it encrypted.
• You can use markdown to have formating in your notes.
• Good seach and tagging functionality.
• Has a web browser extension that allows you to clip content.
• It's open source and free! It's VERY worthy of financial support, though.

Option 2: Store & organize your data on your computer, encrypt it on your computer and sync however you wish

For this, probably the best option is Tagspaces to organize your notes and files. Supports note taking, markdown, tagging, search and has browser plugins. There's a free version which is very functional and it works on Linux, Mac and Windows. The idea is you would use it on your computer to organize your notes, files and tags, etc. The folder(s) in which the data is sitting could easily be encrypted with Cryptomator. The encrypted version can be sent to the cloud without (too many) privacy worries. This doesn't solve everything, like taking notes on a mobile, but it is a good solution and I use this for my work files.

For mobile: take your notes on a mobile and sync with and end-to-end encrypted service (see "File Backup/Sync" suggestions above, or with the excellent service from Seafile.de, which has the option of encrypting file contents, even if not the file name.

If you need an encrypted note-taking app but you don't need the integration of uploaded pdf files, for example, try - in a manner similar to my TagSpaces suggestion - an app called Zim, which quite a lot of people seem to like (for my purposes TagSpaces and Turtl serve me better).

[Edited by JohnFastman, January 04]

[Edited by JohnFastman, January 04]

https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/06/28/changes-to-evernotes-pricing-plans/

Importantly for free/basic users: "Beginning today, the prices for our Plus and Premium tiers will change for new subscriptions, and access from Evernote Basic accounts will be limited to two devices."

Evernote have also announced higher prices for paid plans.

Evernote Basic
Free

The easiest way to get started with Evernote, Basic has been and will remain free of charge. Evernote Basic supports web clipping and note sharing, so you can capture memories, ideas, and inspiration and save them forever.

On Basic, you can access notes on up to two devices, such as a computer and phone, two computers, or a phone and a tablet, as well as on the web, so you can continue to take your notes with you throughout your day. Passcode lock on the mobile app, formerly a paid feature, is now available on Basic as well.

Evernote Plus
$3.99/month or $34.99/year (save 27%)

To stay in sync across all your devices, consider Evernote Plus. You’ll also enjoy the ability to take notebooks offline on a mobile device, so your notes will be with you wherever you go, even when there’s no Internet connection. You can forward emails into Evernote and keep them alongside related notes, complete with attachments, and 1 GB of upload space each month means you can keep all your projects together.

Evernote Premium
$7.99/month or $69.99/year (save 27%)

Get the full power of Evernote with Evernote Premium, a set of tools designed to help you go paperless and take ideas into action across all your devices. Find text buried inside Office docs. Annotate PDFs. Discover connections between notes, turn business cards into phone contacts, or present your work with one click. Premium includes 10 GB of monthly upload space, and you have all the benefits of Plus and Basic, too.

My company started using Evernote in the early 2010's or so and at the time it was great for note taking and keeping. Slowly though I saw they weren't really innovating, and what they were doing to innovate wasn't in line with what we were looking for. So we've made the switch to Google Keep. I really wish Evernote was a better program!

Evernote will read all your notes and limit to two clients.

This was fantastic for free users once upon a time. Some limits that I barely even noticed. It got slower over time, the UI got more cluttered, and as content increased, search never worked quite the way I wanted it to. It would search the current level notebook, or All Notes, but if you started a search at the current level there was no quick way to switch to all. And if you searched at the All Notes, there wasn't a good way to exclude a few categories and search all the others that I found. Formatting could be really weird and awkward to fix, and note organizational options weren't great - tags were promising, but never quite worked well. Probably three stars then, but it did the job okay and switching was going to take some work.

Then one day free users got limited to 2 devices. So my 2 computers (laptop, desktop) and phone could not longer all be connected at once. After a few months of annoyance and lack of synchronized notes on my phone, it gave me the impetus to finally step through the export and import process and move on.

OneNote offers all the pieces this does with fewer limitations (no device limit), a cleaner look, and easier integration with colleagues using it. For the same free price, it was an easy choice after getting over the transition.

Lost its edge.

It was best for a long time, now they mess it up more and more. - I wish the old interface back.
Now the web interface doesn't allow to see many notes at once - so finding a note becomes problematic. There needs to be an obvious way to swtich back to the compact tab view in the web interface so maximum number of notes can be fit on the screen. Also - an easy 1 click access to the filter - to filter by date and type( screenshot, text etc)
The local version is very slow synchronizing - you need to find something and instead waiting for the sync. Need non0invasive background sync by default and need an indicator whether it is synked.
The search function becomes more and more unusable. Give us back the advanced search
The whole idea of accessing the notes from multiple devices now is paid and the price is too high for a private user - 35$ per year is too much, especially when there are many free alternatives.
THe chrome extension is very good for taking notes, but it misses a link to access notes. It looks like the developers are so concerned about taking and not concerned about ever accessing notes.

Good developments: "add remark" - is a great option, it doesn't mess up the tags and allows to label the note with good keywords. Document photo on android app is exceptionally good - it is first that takes perfect doc photos and removes uneven background - the only suggestion - to add a manual option to select the document and force it too shoot - often it can not decide which part of the image is the document - say if the background has straight lines - so let user show it where it is or let the user force shoot when the right selection is shown.

I need history. I need to be able to see differences between changes. Markdown + Git looks better and today I found Laverna.

The only next features holding me there:

• Not a bad search
• Tag search
• Convenient interface

I was evernote user for many years. But lately I started to think stop using it.
The main problem is a history. I need a history of my notes. I also considered paid version, but
there're 3 main issues there.

1. I would like to see Diff, like normal tools(Beyond Compare, Tortoise Git, VS 2015) do
2. Evernote format doesn't look like format possible to see DIFF, it is not something like markdown
3. Money.

More then a year I'm thinking to stop using and start using GIT + Markdown.
For editing Markdown I was considering

• VS 2015
• Remarkable
• VS Code

The first one I was using a little. I did not like work with images when I stored them in a local folder.
You need to save image and then create a reference. The time spend for naming and creating
reference is quite consuming, compare to Evernote.
Remarkable & VS Code looks interesting as they're cross platform, but Remarkable doesn't have
ability to edit multiple notes at a time. I have not tried VS Code for markdown,
but was not impressed by it when tried to work with Nodejs/Typescript project.

I need next functionality for my notes in order of importance.

• History
• Easy readable format to be able to see changes/DIFF
• Effective Search
• Multiple notes editing at the same time
• Note Tags
• Ability to see/edit notes on any Android device
• Search for a text in the images. Evernote search sometimes really helps(nice to have, but least important).

The first 3 functionality are the core functionalities for me.
Effective search: It is highly critical to have effective search otherwise the whole idea is useless.
I remember from time to time I caught myself that I was thinking that It is likely I had faced
with that problem in the past and I might have a note, but I was thinking that for that case
Google would help me faster. As a result I just googled as Evernote search is not ideal. I actively used tags in Evernote.
They really helped me in 80% of the cases to narrow down search results, but in 20% I actually had
to remove tag from search and start searching again using just keywords.
I must admit that in 80% of the cases tags were helpful to narrow down search results, but to be able to use them
it is required to select tags to avoid typing tag name just to avoid typo.

Most important questions for now are:

• Any pitfalls of using markdown/text files compare to Evernote?
• How to organise/do effective search in thousands of markdown files?

I wanted to be able to use this, it appears to be The Go-To service of this nature and it sounds powerful when utilized properly. But I just can't use it. Literally. It is far too slow. Not even because it was chock full and had to parse through too much stuff, just right out the gate completely empty it was so slow.

I kept trying it off and on over a span of several months, but using it was so frustrating, I finally just deleted my account.
I had a max total of 33 short notes before I called it quits and deleted.

I tried looking up if other people had this issue, and if there was a fix, but it oddly didn't seem that common a complaint. (I was using the web version on Firefox, don't know if that has anything to do with it.)

Also, Evernote doesn't have an export option (via web, at least), which is ridiculous for a service of this nature. If I had known Evernote didn't have an export option like that, I wouldn't have even bothered in the first place. And I couldn't seem to find the desktop application that apparently had the export option on their site (which has far too many nested webpages of their applications, way too much clicking just to try and find what I needed... which wasn't even there, apparently). I am so glad I didn't have too much on this service before I decided to bail.

I am currently trying out Thinkery, as a direct Evernote alternative. It looks good, feels snappy. We'll see how it works out further down the line.
(I really don't need that much from this sort of service, just something to act as an archive for references of sorts than an active note-taking and idea/project development application. Evernote couldn't even give me that much.)

Evernote. It’s a well-built service (not just one application) that will pretty much work on whatever device you want to access your notes on. It’s pretty solid and does what you tell it to. I used it quite a bit until a few years ago.
Keep in mind that I do not actually disapprove of Evernote; I simply cannot use it because the company has its own mindset and I won’t blame them for it.

I always like to start with the elephant in the room. (Yes, that pun was intentional.)

Thing #1

Your data is not private. While they do allow you to “encrypt” certain things like text, this data is never completely secure. Attachments are processed on their servers (to offer you more functionality). Before you go and put your sensitive information in any company’s hands, consider the ramifications. Evernote is cloud-based, and does not function without you signing up to their service so they can monitor your usage and save your data on their servers.

“But they have to save my data so it will work properly!”

Yes and no. There are various usable schemes so that your data is never actually exposed to non-users in a service such as this. Simply put, Evernote was not built with data encryption as a central focus because people generally don’t care who can see their grocery lists or bookmarks.
People who want the convenience of Evernote to write their personal thoughts or save a snapshot of a medical document should think twice before doing so.

In other words, find another way to save your sensitive info because Evernote’s been hacked before.

Thing #2

The cloud and the coin…

Evernote is a service. A service is always running. A service that always runs needs money to work. The money needs to be a stream and not a sack of cash because a sack of cash will run out. A stream is constant and allows for things like employee salaries.

Why this matters: It’s a service. You are limited in what you can do unless you pay the subscription each month. Is this fair? You have to decide that for yourself. You are given 60 megabytes max of note uploads per month, and you cannot access your notes when you’re offline. You can create new ones, sure. Your archive of stuff? Well if you’re not connected, too bad.

In my case, I’m not fond of paying repeatedly for an application I might use sporadically.

I could go on, but these are the two main points to think about. I don’t consider Evernote to be perfect, but it is probably one of the best services out there if you’re not a technical user.

Very usefull tool, as for me it is really easy to use and you don't have to waste a lot of time to understand what to do - just open and type)

Clean interface to gather your thoughts. Perfect to pick up from where you leave. Great work guys!

It is very convenient to sync my data among different devices. Makes my life easy. I've used it for several years already.

Hope google adds markdown support to Google Keep soon