I have used Evernote for years to capture notes, web clips and receipts, and the search across everything is still excellent. The problem is the subscription keeps climbing while the free tier got squeezed down to two devices. I am torn between loyalty to my decade of notes and the value I am now getting.
Powerful search and web clipping
Rising price, restrictive free tier
Evernote remains a solid home for my long-term notes and document scans, and the organisation with notebooks and tags works well. But the desktop app has felt heavy and slow to launch since the last few redesigns. Good for storing, frustrating for quick capture, so a genuinely mixed feeling.
Good organisation and document storage
App feels heavy and slow
The thing that keeps me on Evernote is the web clipper; saving full articles and PDFs into searchable notebooks is genuinely brilliant for research. Sync across my laptop and phone is dependable too. I would give five stars if the mobile app launched a little faster.
Excellent web clipper and reliable sync
Mobile app slow to open
Evernote still captures and syncs my notes reliably across devices and the OCR on scanned documents is handy. That said, newer note apps have caught up and in some cases overtaken it on speed and design. I keep it for the archive but I am no longer sure it is worth the premium.
Reliable sync and document OCR
Feels dated against newer rivals
After the free plan was cut to fifty notes I suddenly couldn't add to notebooks I'd built over years without paying up. Exporting everything to move elsewhere was painful and some formatting broke in the process. Felt like my own data was being held hostage to force an upgrade.
Severe free-tier limits and messy export