Why I’m ditching Evernote for Simplenote (and Notational Velocity)

I've used nvAlt for years, absolutely love it. However, I still use Evernote for its OCR - I scan absolutely everything (letters, business cards, documentation etc) with a ScanSnap S1100 into Evernote and utilise its search on a weekly basis.

I haven't found a solution that can replace this on OSX.

There is something I do not get: Note taking is very important to the OP but he does not even want to spend 5 USD a month?

That also made me sad when Simplenote was bought by Automattic and became free as consequence. It was great that Simplenote was not simply shut down, however, 'free' is not a business model I want to rely on. But Simplenote is still the best although it has some reliability issues too.

As a general side note, syncing – even of relatively simple text notes – is a challenge. If you really on synced data, there is no way around having your own independent local backup with some kind of versioning.

For persistence & syncing: A folder called "notes" in Dropbox full of .txt & .md files.

For editing: Sublime Text on my netbooks/macbooks. Editorial on the iPad. WriteRoom on the iPhone.

Works for me ;-)

This is tangential to the main article, but for years I've used Devonthink Pro in the way Steven Berlin Johnson describes in "Tool for Thought": http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... . This is more of a research-y and writer-y style, but it may also work for people replacing Evernote.

The ironic thing is that the lack of a good export is the one reason I'm thinking of moving away from Evernote. My notes are too valuable for vendor lock-in.

Simplenote reminds me of ZimWiki an Open Source not taking app with tags, search etc: http://zim-wiki.org/screenshots.html

The OP didn't seem to explain too many reasons other than a link to http://jasonkincaid.net/2014/01/evernote-the-bug-ridden-elep... which to me seems to be a uber power user use case and a post that could use some rewriting/editing to cut it down to a post instead of a rant.

I just use it for text notes though. Evernote works great for me - I'm not going to worry about it.

I'm using nvALT but I would never sync my private (as in "private diary") notes with an unencrypted web service. For "transactional notes" like shopping lists I use Simplenote though, because the Android app syncs really fast. Plus I'm using Evernote for saving websites because it's the best solution for saving the whole content including images and tables.

I used to use Google's Notebook up until it ended, and switched over to using a combination of ubernote and basket notes.

So I went to the Simplenote website to check it out, and there's nothing there. You have to register to see anything?

Why not OneNote? Mobile clients on every major platform, desktop clients, is simple to use, and supports nice stuff like ink support, task/meeting integration, etc...

Simplenote? Is that a joke? Most of the sync problems I had were with Simplenote. Notes deleted. Updates not synced. What a mess. Love NV though (or nvAlt which I use).

Thanks for posting that etherpad at the end. neat to see your team's productivity setup and workflow.

I use Notational Velocity every day, but the reason I still use Evernote is that it supports images.

Why are Mozillians using non-web apps for note taking?

Notational is the best.

For fuck sakes. Nobody gives a shit what you use or how, or for what. Just shut up and use wherever fits the way you work.

Seriously, at this point we've covered every facet of every note taking or todo app. Enough already.