The Best Note Taking Apps

Note-taking apps are not created equal in concept or in abilities.

- Jill Duffy

While a solid note-taking app is a necessary piece of any suite of productivity apps, figuring out what to do with it in the first place is half the challenge.

Getting the right note-taking app is about finding one that clicks with you as well as the service’s nitty-gritty details. In general, a reliable note-taking app lets you jot down all the things you want to remember quickly and easily, no matter where you are, and lets you refer to your notes anytime and anywhere.

The giants in the space, Editors’ Choice Evernote and runner-up Microsoft OneNote, aim to do it all, offering rich features, support for multimedia notes, and tools that blur the lines between apps for personal use and those intended for work.

Evernote has caused a ruckus among its paying users for hiking the price and slashing the lower tiers of service. Many people are considering leaving Evernote, a sad state of affairs for an inimitable service. For those who use the full gamut of Evernote’s features and functionality, there simply isn’t a good Evernote alternative yet. OneNote is a close second, but transitioning to it from Evernote is tough. The two services have structural differences that make it difficult to map one set of notes to the other app.

There are alternatives, of course, and hopefully, some of them will get better in time. Zoho Notebook is a fine example. It scored low in our testing because it’s available on limited platforms (a Mac app and web clipper just became available), but the company formerly had a full range of apps for a very similar product by the same name that’s been retired. With the rebirth of Zoho Notebook, we should soon see more apps and additional functionality in this rookie service.