Evernote is a convenient and simple note-taking app. You can make lists, add images, set reminders, and more. It’s a useful app for jotting down ideas or tasks and organising them.
It’s free to download and use, but certain options are inaccessible unless you pay a subscription fee. Is it worth paying a monthly fee for this application or is the free version enough? Find out in this review.
Evernote Review – Is It Worth Paying For?
The app requires a subscription fee rather than a one-time payment, so it’s more of an investment than other app purchases.
Whilst the monthly fee is fairly low, the cost will add up over time. You should ensure that you will make enough use of the app to have the cost be worth it.
There are two subscription plans – the personal plan and the professional plan. The costs for each don’t differ greatly – the personal plan costs £5.99/month whilst the professional plan is £7.49/month.
There is a useful option to ‘compare the plans’, which shows a table that displays the features of each plan beside each other.
This can help you make an informed decision. It also makes the app seem more trustworthy, as they’re willing to give you easy access to information about each plan without prompting you to buy them.
They also make the app non-obstructive to use as a free app. There are no adverts or pop-ups that disrupt your user experience.
The only pop-ups that talk of subscribing are of the informative nature. They appear when you try to access a feature that is only available for paying users.
However, these features usually have a symbol next to them to show that they’re a premium feature. This makes them easy to avoid since repeatedly getting pop-ups can get irritating.
Evernote Pricing – Free To Use
Despite its free nature, the free version of the app still offers many features for users to utilise. It also allows users to test the app out before deciding to pay for a monthly plan.
There is no trial period, so users can take as long as they want to decide on the purchase.
However, the free plan does have some serious limitations. It has a note size limit, and a monthly usage limit for uploads.
Evernote Features
Evernote has a diverse range of options for note-taking, organisation and customisation. This means the app has flexible usage.
It has tools for making to-do lists, note-taking, task assignments, and more. You can tailor the app to suit your own needs. In comparison to most other note taking apps, Evernote offers more in terms of customisation.
Evernote actually has many options for customisation. From changing the UI, to choosing the colour and format of the text, the app offers a high level of personalisation for its users.
You can customise the home page to suit your needs. For instance, you can add or delete widgets to your liking. They have a variety to choose from, with each having a different purpose.
For example, they have a scratch pad widget where you can write down quick notes for later use.
However, in order to change the default layout of the home page, you need to subscribe to one of their monthly plans.
This limits the amount of customisation you can do with the app, but it does give you a preview option to let you look at the changes. This can help you see if you’d like a customisable home page, and whether it would be worth paying for.
Furthermore, you can customise the text’s font and colour (in addition to the basic ‘bold, italic and underline’ options). There’s even an option to cross out words. This can be handy when creating to-do lists.
However, there are very limited options for customising the text. There’s only fourteen colours to choose from, six highlight colours, and six fonts.
Organisational Options
The app also offers a high range of organisational tools to help you better format your notes for ease of access, as well as arranging your tasks in a productive manner.
For instance, they have an option to add a ‘task’ page, which automatically starts a checklist that you can fill in and add to. This makes creating to-do lists much easier.
You can also set reminders, add the tasks to the calendar feature, and assign tasks to other users.
The app has collaboration features, where you can share certain tasks with other people. This makes the app useful for group projects or work.
Furthermore, Evernote has a ‘find’ option for when you want to locate a certain letters, words or phrases in your notes.
It also offers the option to ‘remove’ or ‘replace’ the letters with something else. This makes altering the text very simple to do, especially for longer pieces of text.
Additionally, the app has a tagging feature, where you can tag certain notes to categorise them and make them easier to find.
There are also options to help format your notes, such as the template feature. It gives you a list of different templates, which you can apply to your notes. This makes formatting things much quicker and easier.
Alternatively, you can create your own templates and save them for future use. This is a premium option, so you’d have to pay to use it.
Unfortunately, there is no way to try this feature out for free so it can be difficult to gauge whether you would want this feature.
All in all, these organisational features are very useful for those looking to use the app for work, or those who want to create a large amount of notes.
You don’t have to be afraid of losing sight of important things when making use of these tools.
Shallow Learning Curve
Evernote is simple, and easy to learn. Though it contains many features and settings, the UI is laid out in a way in which everything is fairly easy to find.
The options are self-explanatory in regards to how they’re named, and there are no special terms used. They’re all commonplace words.
Therefore, the app has a fairly shallow learning curve, which encourages new users to continue with the app.
Simple UI
The UI is fairly easy to navigate. There’s a lot of settings but they’re quick to understand and remember.
There are icons for most of them, which imply their use. For example, there’s a bell icon for reminders, and a simplified calendar icon for the calendar feature.
Great Security
Evernote has great security settings. The app lets you easily find things like the access history for your account, and an option to revoke access to certain devices that use the app.
This lets you easily monitor and control the access to your account, so you don’t have to worry about a breach in security.
Pros
- Free to download and use.
- Simple UI.
- Shallow learning curve.
- Flexible usage.
- Customisable home page.
- Large amount of organisational features.
- Good security settings.
- Customisable text.
- Various formatting options.
Cons
- Requires a subscription fee in order to access certain features.
- No one-time payment option.
- Doesn’t make it obvious that some options are premium.
- Has limited text customisation options.
- There is a monthly usage limit for uploads. This gets reset every month.
- There is a note size limit.
Common Questions about Evernote
Is Evernote free?
Yes. It is free to download and use. However, certain features are inaccessible unless you pay for one of their subscription plans. There are two – the personal plan, and the professional plan. The personal plan costs £5.99 per month, and the professional plan costs £7.49 per month.
What is the Evernote app for?
It is an organisational note-taking app, which can be used for making quick notes, stories, schedules, task lists, and more.
Can you use Evernote on Android?
Yes. It is a cross-platform app. It’s available on iOS, Windows and Android.
How can I contact the developers if I have an issue?
Go to https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/20831407 and follow the relevant instructions for sending your issue to the support team.
How do you cancel an Evernote subscription?
You have to do this on their website. Depending on what payment method you’re using, the steps are different. All the instructions and details for cancelling a subscription are available here: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005949208-Cancel-your-Evernote-Personal-subscription.
Conclusion
Evernote is a great organisational app for creating and managing tasks, as well as note-taking and creating documents.
The free version of the app has various uses but many features are still locked, such as the reminder feature and the calendar feature. Although it is a subscription service, the price is quite low so it could be well worth your money to invest in the app if it serves a great purpose to you.
However, you could also continue to use the app for free without ever paying if you either don’t feel it’s worth your money, or you’re afraid it’ll be difficult to cancel the subscription. There is no trial period so you don’t have to feel pressured into making a hurried decision.