Notion is the way to go if you want collaboration. You can add as many users as you wish to Notion, but that is not true of Evernote. However, if you are planning to collaborate using sensitive information, then you need to beware of Notion. Comparing Notion and Evernote’s features. You can think of Notion as a high-performing sportscar and Evernote as a serviceable Jetta. Both work well, and the right car will be influenced by your style of driving. Here’s a table comparing the two products’ feature sets. For one thing, Notion lacks the powerful search features that Evernote has. Evernote will not only search your notes’ text, it also does OCR-based searches on your note attachments. This is an extremely useful feature because it means that all of those PDFs, and images containing some sort of. Since moving from Evernote to Notion in 2019, I’d been looking to implement David Allen’s Getting Things Done® (GTD®) system. At first, I used one Notion page with multiple views, and despite a few hiccups, it worked reasonably well. I had a view for each of my GTD lists (inbox, next actions, projects), and most importantly, I got things. Notion have spent the last 4 weeks re-developing the Evernote importer to run smoothly, allowing you to import notebooks individually or collectively to popular your Notion account. This is how the new Evernote importer works for Notion and how to transfer notebooks into Notion.

1. Notion Vs Evernote 2020
2. Notion Vs Evernote
3. Notion Evernote
4. Notion Evernote Import Not Working
5. Notion Evernote Roam
6. Notion Evernote Import Stuck

Notion and Evernote are two very different tools with very similar goals.

The biggest difference between the two products is that, as an all-in-one workspace tool, Notion helps users keep all their work in one place. As an organizational note-taking tool, Evernote helps users keep their files in one place.

Of the two tools, Evernote is the older product. Evernote has enjoyed its status as one of the most popular note-taking apps for a decade. But after faltering in recent years, Evernote’s dominance has waned, leaving it vulnerable to competition.

Notion is the relative newcomer. Notion 1.0 first launched in 2016. But the product has undergone a significant overhaul since its initial release. Unlike Evernote, Notion aims to be more than just a simple note-taking app. It’s an all-in-one workspace that happens to do a lot of the same things as Evernote.

But which tool is better? Should you pay for Evernote or Notion?

That all depends on how you work.

Below, we’ve examined both tools to see how they compare. We’ve broken our analysis down into several subsections before making our recommendation at the end.

Let’s see how Notion and Evernote stack up.

Notion vs. Evernote: Generalization vs. Specialization

Before deciding whether to purchase a subscription to either Notion or Evernote, you have to ask yourself whether you need a generalized tool that can do lots of different things or a specialized tool with fewer features but greater depth.

Most of us rely on multiple tools and software programs to get our work done. Document tools, email clients, instant messaging platforms, spreadsheets and databases, code repositories, cloud-based storage services – the list goes on. Notion aims to solve the problem of using dozens of tools to get work done by consolidating the most common features of these tools into a single, minimal workspace. Notion doesn’t replace every tool of course, but it can replace lots of them. And many of the tools we rely upon every day can be integrated with Notion to minimize disruption.

Similarly, just as most of us rely on several tools to get stuff done, many of us rely on almost as many ways to help us remember things. Calendar events for invitations and meetings; contact information of important people; hand-written notes for random thoughts; bookmarks for webpages – that’s a lot of stuff to remember. The more tools you use to keep track of your life, the more likely things are to slip through the cracks. Evernote lets you save and organize all your stuff into digital notebooks that can be synched across all your devices.

Although there are a few factors to consider, the choice between Notion and Evernote ultimately boils down to generalization versus specialization. Notion’s note-taking tools are fine, but they can’t hope to compete with those of Evernote because that’s Evernote’s entire value proposition. Likewise, Evernote can’t possibly go up against Notion as a workspace tool because that’s not what Evernote is.

The question of Notion versus Evernote is really a question of breadth versus depth.

Of course, there’s a little more to it than that. First, let’s see how Notion and Evernote stack up in terms of price.

Pricing: Winner = Notion

When it comes to price, Notion beats Evernote hands-down.

Notion’s free plan is a little restrictive, but it’s designed to introduce new users to Notion in a no-risk way. Notion’s Personal plan is ideal for newcomers to Notion. At just $4 per month, it’s also very inexpensive. Even Notion’s Team and Enterprise tiers are reasonably priced.

Evernote’s pricing is a sore spot for many users. Until a few years ago, Evernote had a very generous freemium version. That changed in 2016 when Evernote shook up its executive team and restructured its pricing. Many long-time Evernote users were understandably upset.

Like Notion, Evernote also has a free plan. Like Notion’s free plan, Evernote Basic has a pretty restrictive upload limit. But it gives users a taste of what to expect from its other plans.

Evernote’s biggest weakness when it comes to pricing is the lack of a truly mid-range plan. Sure, $7.99 per month might not seem like a lot of money. But when you consider that Notion does virtually everything Evernote can do at almost half the price, it’s a little more difficult to justify. Similarly, Evernote’s Business plan is cheaper than Notion’s Enterprise plan, but its two-user minimum might feel a little deceptive to some users.

Overall User Satisfaction: Winner = Notion

In terms of overall user satisfaction, Notion and Evernote are pretty evenly matched.

Notion has an average user rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 at G2.com, a site dedicated to reviewing software products.

Evernote also has an average user rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 at G2.

It’s worth noting that Notion’s average score was calculated across 40 user reviews (at the time of this writing). Evernote’s score was calculated across 1,381 user reviews. This disparity can be explained in part by the fact that Evernote has been around for fifteen years, whereas Notion has only been around for four years. Despite its smaller sample size, Notion generally has a greater proportion of positive reviews than Evernote does.

Although Notion and Evernote score similarly in terms of average ratings, perceptions of the two products differ quite widely. Between 2011 and 2015, the Evernote brand took a serious hit after the company released a series of largely irrelevant products that strayed pretty far from Evernote’s core value proposition.

Evernote also has somewhat of a deserved reputation for being buggy and unstable. Both of these factors have harmed perceptions of Evernote as a product in recent years.

Notion, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same branding issues as Evernote. It does, however, have something of a reputation for doing lots of things quite well, but not specializing or excelling in any one area.

Overall, we have to name Notion as the winner in this round.

Note-Taking: Winner = Evernote

As a dedicated note-taking app that’s been around for fifteen years, it’s hardly surprising that Evernote is the clear winner when it comes to taking notes.

The main reason why Notion fails to beat Evernote as a note-taking app is that Notion’s note-taking feature can be pretty intimidating to use. With so many templates to choose from, making a simple note in Notion can feel like anything but. Notion can also feel pretty sluggish if you have lots of notes stored, particularly on mobile.

Evernote’s note-taking features are far from perfect, however. One of the most common complaints about Evernote’s notes is that it doesn’t categorize or label newly created notes by default. You have to manually rename and categorize each note yourself. If you don’t, it won’t take long before your sidebar is almost entirely populated with Untitled Notes with little to indicate their contents. This might not sound like a huge pain, but can quickly get out of hand if you’re in the habit of taking lots of quick notes on the fly.

Organization: Winner = Draw

Notion and Evernote both offer strong organizational options. Notion offers more flexibility when it comes to organization and lets you create custom workspaces using templates as a starting point.

Evernote’s organizational structure is a bit more defined but still offers users a good deal of freedom to customize how they keep their stuff organized.

Notion doesn’t really have a default organizational schema. How you choose to organize your stuff depends entirely on how you like things organized and the kinds of things you’ll be organizing.

For example, Notion allows you to combine multiple “Block” types – everything in Notion is a Block – on a single “page” or workspace. You could create daily, weekly, and monthly workspaces, each of which might contain different types of Blocks. You could add a personal to-do list to your Daily view, a Trello-style Kanban board to track your week’s work to your Weekly view, and Calendar events in your Monthly view. It’s totally up to you. This flexibility is what makes Notion so powerful.

Evernote’s organizational structure is a little more defined. Individual files, clippings, and other items are stored in Notes, which in turn are organized into Notebooks. Users can then combine multiple Notebooks into Notebook Stacks. It’s a familiar convention that doesn’t take a lot of getting used to.

One pretty big drawback of Evernote’s organizational tools is that newly created Notes aren’t categorized by default. So if you end up using Evernote to create a lot of quick notes, you will soon find your Evernote will be full of Untitled Notes.

Notion’s flexibility is a major asset when it comes to organization. Notion was built with teams in mind. As such, managing and organizing shared assets and collaborative projects is much easier and more intuitive in Notion than Evernote. If you need to keep your team’s assets and projects organized, Notion is the clear choice. If you’re more interested in getting your personal digital life in order, Evernote has a lot to offer.

Overall, both tools offer strong organizational features. It all comes down to which system works best for you and how you prefer to keep your stuff organized.

Search: Winner = Evernote

Both Notion and Evernote rely on the premise of being able to find any saved item quickly. Neither Notion’s workspaces or Evernote’s Notebooks would be much use if you couldn’t find anything within them.

Notion and Evernote both offer strong search functionality. But Evernote just edges out in front of Notion. Evernote’s search functionality is deceptively powerful. You can use a range of advanced search modifiers and operands to create custom search parameters. If you’ve ever used Google’s advanced modifiers, Evernote’s search features will feel very familiar. Evernote’s optical character recognition technology also allows you to search handwritten notes digitally.

Notion’s search features are also powerful. But they’re not quite as intuitive as Evernote’s search operands. Notion favors a series of keyboard shortcuts that rely on Quick Find, Notion’s real-time indexing of users’ files. This feels similar to OS X’s Spotlight feature. In addition to results based on strings entered by the user, Notion’s search function also returns recently viewed items, which feels quick and responsive.

Evernote’s search isn’t perfect. It can be a little slow, especially if you have lots of Notebooks. That said, it’s the strongest search feature of the two tools, which makes it the winner in this round.

Our Recommendation for Notion vs. Evernote

Now that we’ve taken a look at how Notion and Evernote compare, it’s time to look at everything in context and make our recommendation.

Based on the above criteria, we have to recommend Notion over Evernote.

The fact that Notion can do virtually everything that Evernote can do at a significantly lower price makes Notion the clear choice for most users. It’s more flexible, appeals to a broader range of use cases, and offers users more integrations with the tools they’re already using.

Evernote certainly outperforms Notion in some areas such as note-taking. But generally, Notion offers virtually all the same functionality, plus a bit more besides.

As a relatively newer tool, Notion is far from perfect. But Notion’s developers are listening carefully to the product’s community. The same cannot be said for Evernote. Although both tools have their bugs, many of Evernote’s most persistent technical problems have been around for years.

The one exception to our general recommendation of Notion is if you’re looking primarily for a note-taking tool. If this is the case, Evernote will probably serve you much better than Notion will.

You’ve probably already started the new decade hearing about Notion from somewhere. Whether it was on Product Hunt, your Twitter-sphere, or just people nattering about it at work, Notion is gaining attention all round the web as the new shiny productivity tool in town.

With much anticipation, across the last two years, people have flooded to the application with a desire to become organized and productive. From total newbies to veterans of the productivity software ecosystem, millions have embraced Notion.

Notion claims to be the “all-in-one workspace” to solve your growing need for more tools. What does that even mean? Essentially, they’d like to combine all your productivity tools into one application with the ultime goal being total freedom for your productivity with no coding skills needed.

Other “all-in-one workspaces” like Coda, Taskade, and Airtable are on the hunt for market share in this brand new space too.

Evernote is another well-known and popular productivity tool that solved many of these problems for many years. Over-shadowed in recent years due to development progress, Notion has been capitalizing on their lack of momentum. In that fashion, Notion does remind me of Evernote in the early days in how they are positioned in the market and are poised for mass market appeal in 2020.

What is Notion?

First off, what the heck is Notion?

You may have heard about it, and been tempted by people’s well-crafted “dashboards,” but what is Notion and what can it actually do for my productivity?

Notion is a productivity tool that allows you to replace tools like Evernote, Trello, Google Docs, Asana, Quip, Todoist, and others, and bring them all into one application.

How does it do that? Notion uses databases, which allows you to build a structure that meets your needs. So, looking to create an editorial calendar for your team? Build that from the Board Database. Or maybe want to see your habit tracking progress. In that case try the Table Database.

The real magic with Notion is in the unlimited uses for the application giving many users a playground for creative expression with their own productivity needs.

A few weeks ago, Matt Ragland explained Notion perfectly in a round-up here on The Sweet Setup, and we recommend giving this a read too!

What Do People Use Evernote For?

Evernote is commonly used as the best filing cabinet tool. It’s a great way to store documents, handy notes, important files, project notes, and even tend to your daily reminders.

A wide use case has been to store everything in Evernote as a “second brain” if you like — a concept coined by productivity guru Tiago Forte. This storage base means easy access for Evernote users to get things on the go and upload things that matter to them that they never want to forget or lose.

Here are a few of the most common Evernote use cases:

Document Capture

Scanning things into Evernote makes referring back to it extremely easy. The built-in scanner feature allows you to upload documents with just your phone camera, and the quality is marvelous. This allows you to upload all your important files and reduces your need to keep and store paper.

Another bonus is that the documents are searchable using Evernote’s powerful OCR search capabilities.

Web Clipper

There’s a lot of demand for Evernote’s Web Clipper feature that allows users to clip articles, PDFs and documents within the Chrome browser. A much-loved feature for users, the web clipper goes above and beyond by also allowing you to snap screenshots, annotate, and even organize them all from the browser.

It’s one of the many abilities that people appreciate in Evernote.

Anchor Notes

Clipping documents and web articles are very powerful, but one thing people love is being able to save notes forever. Anchor notes is something that Steve Dotto calls a must for Evernote users, allowing them to store anything from your husband’s shirt neck size, to your boiler serial numbers. These useful anchor notes can be saved into Evernote and accessed anytime, so when you’re out and about, Evernote works for you like no other tool — the ultimate filing cabinet.

All in all, Evernote is loved by many. But if you were consider Notion instead, what would that look like?

What would Evernote use cases look like in Notion?

Notion allows you to build pages that are the equivalent of notebooks in Evernote.

Pages allow you to craft whatever you like, be it a database for your recipes, a photo gallery, or even a content calendar for your team’s blog — it’s entirely up to you.

Here’s a basic way to start managing your notes within Notion:

1. Start out with a blank page. This is where all pages are made, a way for you to choose the format.
   
2. Select a Gallery on the Database. By selecting Gallery, you’ll have a database perfect for adding notes into. Give the page an emoji and a title to spruce it up a little.
   
3. Set up your Properties. This is important for your notes as they are added. This allows you to add areas for tags and useful display settings.
   
4. Add your Notes. Once you’ve chosen your properties and settings, you can now add notes. Here’s one that I use for “Project Workshop Meeting” notes each week.
   

The note-taking in Notion is highly attractive and very tempting, but does come with a few flaws that you may want to be aware of before jumping right in, so make sure to read all the Q&A below if you’re considering a move to Notion.

Stop losing your ideas and notes to multiple apps…

An online course to help you save time, organize your notes, and master the best writing app for Mac and iOS: Ulysses.

Some Useful Q&A

Question 1: I’m currently using Evernote. Would Notion suit my needs?

Let’s determine your existing use cases for Evernote and how you go about using it and whether it translates to Notion with a few examples. This will help to establish a good framework for whether your needs match up with Notion’s features.

Example 1: I’m currently using Evernote to scan in documents, log emails, and also to manage checklists with external clients.

In this case, Evernote might be best to stick with. Notion currently doesn’t have scanning abilities like Evernote and email forwarding is non-existent. But the way Notion could help is with the project management side of things, it really does perform well with databases allowing you to switch between board view and calendar view, great for planning checklists and crafting client projects.

Example 2: I take regular notes on podcasts, manage my weekly agenda, and even clip articles to read for later via a web browser.***

These are all things that Notion can do even better than Evernote. Although it doesn’t have a fantastic web clipper, it works well enough to clip articles, and taking notes and producing weekly agendas is a breeze.

Example 3: I love storing and managing PDFs that are important to my house and finances. I also like to curate in-depth research articles that I annotate and read later.

Evernote is probably more suitable for you. Moving to Notion would only hinder you. The PDF abilities in Notion are limited to upload-only and they aren’t stored locally like Evernote. Finding them becomes even harder with the limited search feature. The web clipper for Notion also doesn’t meet Evernote standards, as only images and links can be saved, which limits you in case you want to take a screenshot, annotate, add tags for your research, etc.

This isn’t to put you off Notion, but more to ensure the switch is viable from a productivity standpoint.

Question 2: How would you plan on using Notion in your daily life?

This is to help drill down into what you’d be using Notion for, and why. You don’t want to use it for the sake of it, or just because it is the “App of the Day” — you need to have a genuine use case for the tool.

Let’s examine whether the actual features match your needs moving forward, per category.

Scenario 1: Storing and Filing Information

If you’re looking for a hub to file and manage your documents, Evernote might still be better. Notion currently allows you to upload files (up to 5MB in free plan) and doesn’t have dedicated local storage, so all files are uploaded to AWS (Amazon’s web server) and aren’t accessible offline.

If your sole use of the tool is to manage files, it’s good for lighter use, but until they introduce better search for documents, local document management, and maybe some editing/annotation abilities — with PDFs — Evernote is still the better option.

Scenario 2: Managing Tasks

Planning and managing tasks inside Notion is relatively easy and if we compare it to the likes of Evernote, Notion wins. With the databases, Notion’s main feature, you can manage, plot, and even change the view of how you see and co-ordinate tasks.

Although it lacks the pre-built and natural experience of a list tool like Things, Notion still allows you to add tags, dates (as many as you like), view tasks in a calendar view, add checklists, filter tasks, and plan using boards too. In this scenario, Notion is the better tool for the job.

Scenario 3: Taking Notes

This is where it becomes trickier as each tool does a good job at note-taking. Evernote has a more traditional setup that allows you to add media, annotate images, and log within a notebook.

Notion offers a richer experience that allows you to add databases to organize your notes, and it also comes with great interactive abilities like being able to view videos and embed Google Maps and other files like Google Drive (something Evernote can do too).

Most recent earthquake. It depends on what type of note-taker you are, but Notion’s flexible nature does allow you to create more attractive notes.

For many, this will be the most important factor. Can you take good enough notes with Notion? The answer is yes. You can create more interactive and rich notes in Notion than you can with Evernote, but there is the question of offline needs.

A few months ago, I was travelling and in need of my travel plan. I was in a new country at customs, and they asked “where will you be staying, exactly?” Luckily, I saved it inside Evernote because the Notion offline version didn’t work. I was able to extract the address, so if you are a frequent traveller or have any other reason that offline access matters to you, Evernote could still be your base for notes.

Notion Vs Evernote 2020

Scenario 4: Coordinating Projects

Many people use Evernote to manage their projects. There are many benefits including having all your notes inside one notebook, and even for teams the Evernote spaces feature to see a dashboard of your team’s work.

Notion Vs Evernote

But Notion does allow you to do a lot more, challenging the likes of Trello, Asana, and even monday.com — allowing you to do so much more — including manage projects in board view, connect up databases (relational databases), create formulas, and even manage database templates, helping you to reduce your workload.

Notion Evernote

Scenario 5: Research

Notion Evernote Import Not Working

If you’re a student, academic, or researcher, Notion lacks a powerful web clipper when you place it next to the likes of Evernote. Evernote allows you to clip titles, links, tags, remarks, and even screenshots, save and annotate PDFs, and much more, which brings it into classic notes. Even emails can be saved into Evernote with just a forward or click of a button.

Notion lacks the advanced research functionality as its own web clipper only allows you to clip articles and images off your iPhone/Android for on the go.

Notion Evernote Roam

Stop losing your ideas and notes to multiple apps…

Notion Evernote Import Stuck

An online course to help you save time, organize your notes, and master the best writing app for Mac and iOS: Ulysses.