The top tier Business plan adds Timesync with Jira and Redmine, and can provide cost rates for employees. Both paid plans have a 30-day free trial available, and there are discounts for annual. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.
Sometimes it can feel as though we’ve got more to remember than ever before. Fortunately, we have more tools to help us remember everything than ever before, too.
Evernote is one of the oldest and most popular note-taking apps available today. First released in 2004, Evernote was the undisputed king of personal productivity tools for many years. Today, though, Evernote is just one of many tools that can help us organize our lives and get more done.
One such tool is Bear. This simple note-taking app was released in 2016 and has quickly become one of the most popular tools of its kind thanks to its simplicity and clean, intuitive UI. But how does Bear stack up against Evernote?
That’s what we’re going to explore in this post.
We’ll be taking a look at how Bear and Evernote compare to one another. We’ll be looking at several criteria, including note-taking, organization, and UI and navigation, among others.
First, let’s talk pricing.
Pricing: Winner = Bear
When it comes to pricing, Bear is the clear winner.
Bear has two paid subscription plans:
- $1.49 per user, per month (equivalent to $17.88 per year)
- $14.99 per user, per year
Bear’s monthly plan comes with a one-week free trial of the product. The annual plan offers one month free.
In addition to Evernote’s Free plan, it has two paid subscription tiers:
- Evernote Premium, which costs $7.99 per user, per month
- Evernote Business, which costs $14.99 per user, per month
It’s worth noting that if you want to sign up for an Evernote Business account, you have to register at least two users. This means the actual cost of an Evernote Business account is a minimum of $29.98 per month.
Evernote has faced a lot of well-deserved criticism over the years regarding its pricing. Evernote used to be one of the most generous freemium products out there. Today, it’s one of the most expensive, and there’s very little to justify the significant increase in cost.
Evernote charges in two months what Bear costs for an entire year. On this basis alone, Bear is the clear winner.
Note-taking: Winner = Bear
As one of the first note-taking apps, it’s a little embarrassing for Evernote to be outdone in terms of taking notes.
As we covered in our tutorial for Evernote beginners, Evernote doesn’t do a great job when it comes to notes. Actually creating them is easy enough (especially on mobile), but Evernote doesn’t categorize new notes by default, which is frustrating.
Creating notes in Bear is also very easy. However, this isn’t what makes Bear a better note-taking app than Evernote. It’s the fact that, behind Bear’s sleek, minimal UI, the app supports the popular Markdown syntax. This means you can take advantage of sophisticated formatting options without having to navigate a crowded toolbar or WYSIWYG editor.
One area in which Bear falls down is multimedia capture, such as recording audio or capturing content from images and photos. This might not be the fairest criticism of Bear; the app was designed primarily for text. However, with virtually all note-taking apps offering at least some multimedia capture, this is one of Bear’s few real drawbacks.
Search: Winner = Bear
Creating notes is one thing. But what about finding them? Once again, Evernote finds itself outdone by Bear.
Not so long ago, Evernote had one of the best search functions of any note-taking app. Evernote was one of the very first apps to support optical character recognition (OCR) technology, which allows users to search images for strings of text. And to be fair to Evernote, its advanced search operands can be very useful, especially for power users.
Unfortunately, like many elements of the core Evernote experience, it feels as though the product’s search feature has been consistently ignored by Evernote’s developers in recent years.
One of the biggest issues with Evernote’s search function is that it doesn’t take much for the tool to become overwhelmed and either freeze or crash altogether. This can be especially problematic if your Evernote account has a lot of Notebooks to search through. Evernote’s search function on OS X is somehow even worse.
Bear, on the other hand, feels light and nimble when searching. Bear uses a unique hashtag system for searching notes. You can add a hashtag into any note, which then makes that hashtag a keyword that Bear can search for and locate. This system is flexible, intuitive, and, best of all, very fast. Bear’s hashtags can also be nested within each other using slash commands. You can also add as many hashtags to a note as you like.
Organization: Winner = Bear
When it comes to organization, there really isn’t much to distinguish Bear from Evernote.
Evernote’s organizational schema relies on the idea of physical notebooks. Individual Notes can be saved in Notebooks, which can be organized into Notebook Stacks. It’s an easy concept to get your head around, and moving Notes from one Notebook to another is quick and simple.
However, Bear just edges out Evernote. Not because it has “better” organizational features but because Evernote doesn’t automatically name or categorize new notes.
When you create a new note in Evernote, that note will be titled Untitled Note by default. It will remain an Untitled Note until you manually rename the file. This might not sound like that big a deal. But if you’re a habitual note-taker, it won’t be long before your Evernote account is full of Untitled Notes with very little to indicate what’s actually in them. This is one of the many things about Evernote that feels like it should have been fixed years ago.
Bear, on the other hand, leaves organization entirely up to you. Its hashtag system means you can create an organizational structure as simple or as complex as you like. Navigating between elements feels a lot like it does in Slack, and the primary UI will be familiar to Slack users.
There really isn’t much to set Bear and Evernote apart when it comes to keeping your stuff organized. That said, Bear still comes out on top.
Integrations: Winner = Evernote
Bear may beat Evernote hands down when it comes to note-taking and navigation, but Evernote reigns supreme when it comes to integrations.
Although Bear can be customized using Apple’s Workflow automation tool and third-party programs, the app itself does not yet support any official integrations.
Conversely, one of Evernote’s greatest strengths is its many integrations with popular productivity tools. You can connect your Evernote account to most collaboration and document-editing tools, including Google Drive, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and Slack.
Evernote’s integrations might not improve the core experience of using the product, but they do expand its utility. That makes Evernote the winner in this category.
UI & navigation: Winner = Bear
The UI of an app can make or break the entire experience of using that product. When it comes to appearances and navigation, Bear wins once again.
The first thing you might notice when you open Bear is how much its UI resembles that of Slack, especially on desktop. Bear looks even better on mobile. Navigating between individual notes and organizational hashtags is effortless, and the app’s swipe gestures will feel very familiar. Overall, Bear feels and looks sleek, elegant, and sophisticated.
Evernote’s UI isn’t bad per se. It just isn’t as polished as Bear’s UI.
Although Evernote uses a three-column UI on desktop as Bear does, it looks and feels distinctly different from Bear. Evernote looks more like a traditional desktop productivity tool than Bear does. Many of the composition elements that are concealed by Bear’s markup language are plain to see in Evernote. Generally, Evernote feels a little more utilitarian and business-like than Bear does.
Actually, navigating around Evernote isn’t difficult. However, the product’s stability issues can become painfully evident when moving from one Notebook to another, especially if your Evernote account has a lot of Notebooks or large files.
Evernote may be more stable than it used to be, but it’s still enough of an issue to make Bear the winner in this round.
Cross-platform availability: Winner = Evernote
Bear is a great product. But it has two major flaws.
First, Bear is only available for iOS and OS X. If you’re an Android or Windows user, you’re pretty much out of luck indefinitely. Shiny Frog, the company behind Bear, says it doesn’t have any plans to develop an Android or Windows version of Bear at all.
Second, Bear doesn’t have a web app—yet. Shiny Frog is apparently developing a web app, but “it’s still a ways off,” according to the company. That said, the original Bear app took three years to develop, so it’s probably safe to assume we shouldn’t expect the Bear web app anytime soon.
Bear does offer browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. (Bear automatically installs its Safari extension upon installation of Bear for Mac.) However, you can’t add the Bear extension to your browser unless you also have Bear for Mac installed on your system, which is irritating.
Is Premium Evernote Worth It
Conversely, Evernote is pretty much everywhere. It’s available via Apple’s App Store, Google’s Play Store, and the Microsoft Store.
Evernote might struggle to compete with Bear in some areas, but Evernote definitely wins this round.
Overall winner = Bear
I used Evernote for years. But there’s no getting around the fact that Evernote costs a lot of money when so many tools do the same things for free or very inexpensively.
Evernote’s biggest problem isn’t the cost or even its instability. It’s the fact that, as a company, Evernote has really lost its way in recent years. The product has lost sight of its original mission to help people “remember everything” in favor of trying to move laterally into the collaborative productivity space.
Ultimately, though, Evernote just doesn’t feel as satisfying to use as Bear does.
Note-taking apps aren’t competing with each other. They’re competing with pen and paper. Products like Evernote can be extremely powerful. But unless making a note is as easy—or easier—than quickly scribbling something down on a Post-it, that product has failed. As Evernote has added more and more features over the years, it’s gotten further and further away from that idea.
When I take notes, all I need is to capture what I’m thinking at that moment. When I look back through those notes, all I need is to be able to find what I want quickly and easily. Can Evernote help me do this? Sure—but Bear does it better and costs a lot less.
Only you can decide whether Bear can serve your needs better than Evernote can. That said, there’s no harm in taking Bear for a spin and seeing what it can do. I’m glad I did—and I’ve never looked back.
Freemium products are a great way to try out a new tool or app before committing to a subscription. Productivity tool Evernote, which first launched in 2004, is one of countless apps that come in a freemium version.
Evernote Premium, which the company introduced in 2011, was supposed to be a significant improvement on Evernote’s freemium version. It offered more features and more utility—for a price. Evernote has made several tweaks to its products and pricing over the years.
But is Evernote Premium worth it today?
That’s what we’ll be exploring in this post. We’ll look at exactly what an Evernote Premium subscription offers and what the key differences are between the free and Premium plans. We’ll also examine which types of users might benefit from an Evernote Premium subscription. Finally, we’ll be looking at Evernote Premium’s pricing and whether it’s still worth the cost.
What Does Evernote Premium Include?
In terms of functionality, Evernote Premium offers users almost everything that Evernote Business—Evernote’s costliest monthly plan—offers, with a few exceptions.
Evernote Premium Annual Cost
Evernote Premium can, of course, do everything that Evernote’s free version can do. But it’s not quite as fully featured as Evernote Business. Let’s take a look at the differences between Evernote’s freemium product and Evernote Premium, as well as the limitations of the Premium plan. Since all of Evernote’s plans include note-taking functionality, we’ve left that category out.
AI-Suggested Content
Over the years, Evernote has incorporated a range of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning features to make the product “smarter” and more intuitive to use. Unfortunately, none of Evernote’s AI-suggested functionality is available in the freemium product.
However, for Premium users, Evernote’s AI features, known as Evernote Context, can be a real time-saver. For example, Evernote can make personalized recommendations for related notes when creating new ones. This can help you avoid making duplicate notes and can make it easier to find relevant notes by their tags.
Evernote Premium’s AI functionality can also make content recommendations. Simply start typing a note and Evernote Premium can provide tailored suggestions for related content from leading publishers and news outlets from around the web, including Inc. Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
Clipping and Capturing
One of Evernote’s handiest features is its Web Clipper. This tool allows you to “clip” and save practically anything you find online: articles, social media posts, ebooks, PDFs, images, videos, and more.
Evernote’s freemium version and its Premium plan offer identical clipping and capturing functionality. Both plans allow users to attach documents, files, PDFs, and receipts to notes, and both can clip full pages, text, and images from the web.
Evernote Premium allows users to forward emails directly to their Evernote account. Freemium users cannot do this. Evernote Premium also allows users to create contacts from scanned business cards, while Evernote’s free product does not. Finally, Evernote Premium users can annotate PDFs, whereas Evernote’s freemium version cannot.
Integrations
Evernote’s original core value proposition was to help users “remember everything.” As such, Evernote’s integrations play an important role in making the product more useful.
Evernote freemium users may be disappointed to learn that the free product doesn’t offer any external integrations whatsoever. This might not be the biggest deal if you just need a simple note-taking app. But if you’re hoping to make Evernote a central part of your daily workflow, you’ll need to upgrade to Evernote Premium.
Evernote Premium, on the other hand, integrates with many of the most widely used productivity tools on the market. Evernote Premium users can link to Google Drive files within notes and Notebooks and can also connect an Evernote account to a Microsoft Outlook account. Evernote Premium also integrates seamlessly with Slack and Microsoft Teams. It doesn’t, however, offer integration with popular CRM Salesforce; you’ll need an Evernote Business subscription if you need Salesforce connectivity.
Organization
There’s little point in taking notes if you can’t organize them in a way that makes sense and makes it easy to find them later.
When it comes to keeping your stuff organized, all three Evernote plans are fairly similar. All three plans allow you to search notes; create new Notebooks and tags; organize notes by date, tag, or title; and search for text within images. For most users, this will probably be enough.
Unfortunately, Evernote’s freemium product does not allow you to search for text strings in PDFs and Microsoft Office documents. Unlike the Premium plan, the free product doesn’t allow you to access a revision history for your notes, either.
Sharing
Evernote’s free version allows you to share Notebooks with one or more people. You can also control who can access which notes by adjusting permissions controls in the freemium version, too. There probably aren’t too many use cases that rely on advanced permissions controls, but it’s handy that the freemium product offers them.
Download Evernote Premium
Evernote Premium doesn’t offer a great deal more than the freemium product. One notable exception is that Evernote Premium gives you the option to turn notes into a presentation with just one click, a feature lacking from the free product.
Team Administration & Collaboration
One of Evernote’s biggest challenges of the past several years has been how to make Evernote useful for individual users and teams. Despite introducing Evernote Spaces, Evernote’s Slack-like collaborative workspace tool, it hasn’t really figured this out yet.
Unfortunately, neither Evernote’s freemium product nor Evernote Premium offers any team administration or collaboration tools at all. While this may serve as an incentive to upgrade to Evernote Business, it’s frustrating that Evernote doesn’t offer any collaboration tools to Premium subscribers.
Evernote Premium Pricing
Now that we’ve covered exactly what Evernote Premium can do, it’s time to talk pricing.
Evernote Premium costs $7.99 per month. Generally speaking, that isn’t unreasonable for a SaaS productivity tool. However, that applies only if we look at Evernote Premium in a vacuum. When you start comparing Evernote Premium to competing products on the market, it gets harder and harder to justify paying even $7.99 per month.
As we noted in our overview of Evernote competitors, many of the tools vying to replace Evernote can do everything Evernote can do, and at a fraction of the cost or even completely free.
Bear, a minimal note-taking app, offers a freemium version that can do almost everything Evernote can do. Similarly, workspace tool Notion can perform a lot of the same tasks as Evernote Premium, without having to pay for a subscription. Comparing Notion to Evernote might not be an apples-to-apples comparison, as we noted in our breakdown of the two tools, but it’s still very difficult to recommend Evernote over Notion, especially when it comes to price.
Evernote Premium Offer
There’s nothing “wrong” with Evernote Premium’s pricing. It’s just very hard to justify paying $7.99 per month when there are so many tools that do the same things much more inexpensively.
Should You Choose Evernote Premium?
Evernote Premium is a capable tool that offers plenty of helpful features. However, whether Evernote Premium is right for you depends on your needs and budget.
In terms of pure functionality, most of Evernote Premium’s features are nice-to-haves rather than essentials. Its AI-suggested content recommendations, for example, are handy but are far from mission critical for most users. The fact that Evernote Premium doesn’t offer any team management or collaboration tools may be a deal-breaker for some users.
For simple note-taking and organization, Evernote’s freemium product will probably be perfectly fine for most users. Even then, an alternative like Bear may be a better fit. This is what makes Evernote’s Premium product so frustrating. It’s hard enough to justify paying for Evernote Premium as an individual, and the fact that Premium offers absolutely no collaborative features makes it even harder. Evernote Premium isn’t really worth it for individuals, and it doesn’t even work for teams.
Perhaps the only thing more difficult than justifying Evernote Premium’s price is figuring out who it’s supposed to be for.
Evernote Premium: Too Much for Too Little
If you’re a hardcore Evernote user, you probably don’t need to be sold on Evernote Premium. You’re either using it already or happily making notes in Evernote’s freemium product. Likewise, if you’ve been using Evernote’s free product for some time, upgrading to take advantage of Premium’s additional features might make sense for you.
That said, it’s a real shame how Evernote has lost its way in recent years. What used to be the undisputed king of note-taking apps has gradually been undercut and overshadowed by the many competing products that offer much more for far less.
It’s entirely possible that Evernote will reexamine the pricing and features included in Evernote Premium in the future. Until then, however, we’d recommend looking elsewhere.