Introduction

Notion and Evernote are two of the most popular note-taking apps available today. With their intuitive interfaces, extensive features sets, and flexible pricing plans, both Notion and Evernote cater well to a range of personal and professional users.

But should you use Notion or Evernote in 2023? There are pros and cons to each app.

In this comprehensive Notion versus Evernote comparison guide, we’ll break down how these two heavy hitters stack up across the following key factors:

• Interface and ease of use: How intuitive is navigating each app? What’s the learning curve?
• Features: What built-in tools does each platform offer for taking, organizing, and sharing notes?
• Security: What encryption methods are offered? How is user data handled?
• Planning and pricing: What are the restrictions for free accounts vs. paid subscriptions?

By evaluating Notion vs. Evernote across those categories, you’ll get a clear sense of their overall differences and see which note-taking platform aligns better with your individual or team needs entering 2023.

Interface and Ease of Use

When evaluating Notion vs Evernote, one of the most important comparison factors is the interface and overall ease of use of each platform.

Notion‘s Intuitive and Flexible Interface

One of the main reasons for Notion’s popularity is its clean, versatile interface. Key advantages include:

• Flexible databases: Notion allows you to customize nearly every element into customizable databases, pages, tables, kanban boards, timelines, calendars, and more. This flexibility makes it easy to track notes and projects in different visual layouts.
• Drag and drop: You can intuitively drag and drop elements anywhere on the page. Easily add multimedia, toggle checklists, collaborate on documents, and more without excessive clicks.
• Template gallery: Choose from hundreds of premade templates for personal task management or common project needs like product roadmaps and meeting agendas.
• Natural UI: The interface leverages elements like nested bullets, toggles, page links, and indented text to reflect how information is organized on a physical page.

The flexibility does mean some initial learning is required to customize your Notion workspace fully. However, the logic is relatively intuitive even for beginners.

Evernote‘s Simple Out-of-Box Experience

Evernote offers a simpler, more traditional note-taking interface by default. Key perks include:

• Basic note-taking: Open Evernote and start typing notes right away without any setup or learning curve. The focus is on fast capture rather than complex databases.
• Notebooks and tags: Easily group notes into Notebooks as your collection grows. Add tags to each note for quick searching functionality.
• To-do list integration: Turn any note into a handy checklist by adding the To-Do feature.
• Web Clipper extension: Quickly save web pages, articles, or snippets into your Evernote from your browser.

The straight-forward interface means Evernote is easier for novices to start with, but lacks Notion’s customizability and flexibility. Power users may soon find it limiting.

Based on ease of initial use especially for beginners, Evernote has a slight edge. But for customization and scalability over time, Notion is hard to beat.

Features and Functionality

Notion and Evernote contain extensive feature sets for taking, organizing, and sharing notes. But there are key differences in their strengths.

Notion’s Database-Driven Approach

Notion takes a flexible database approach, allowing users to build customized systems for notes and knowledge management:

• Linked databases: Connect databases across your workspace to create relationships between data. For example, link a projects database to teams and tasks databases.
• Views: Display any database as a table, gallery, calendar, Kanban board, timeline, or map view. Visualize data how you want.
• Automation: Build workflows to update content, assign tasks, send alerts, and more automatically usingordogether formulas. Great for teams.
• API: Integrate with over 1000+ third-party apps via API or get custom solutions built.

With some learning, you can build extremely robust productivity and project management systems. But it does require more effort than Evernote’s out-of-box ease.

Evernote’s Simplified Note-Taking Focus

Evernote makes it incredibly simple to start capturing ideas and findings without much structure:

• Note organization: Group notes into Notebooks. Add tags for easy search. But lack of links between notes or multi-view databases.
• Templates: 100+ templates available including meeting notes, simple project tracker, and research notebook.
• Collaboration: Share Notebooks or notes with other Evernote users. But no live collaboration on documents.
• Web Clipper: Save any webpage or online content to annotate later.

The straightforward approach works very well for basic note management. But Notion’s flexibility provides more room to scale complexity over time.

Based on the depth of tools and scalability, Notion wins on features for most use cases. But Evernote still shines for simple note captures.

Security

Understanding the security of these note-taking apps is key – especially when potentially storing sensitive corporate data or private customer information.

Notion’s Security Stack

Notion has invested heavily in strengthening security protections:

• 256-bit AES encryption: Encryption at rest and in transit for all data.
• Block-level permissions: Granularly control access to each page element.
• Audit log: Review access logs for data changes.
• SOC 2 Type 2 compliance: Audited controls to ensure data remains confidential and available.

Users own their own data in Notion. Data is not used for advertising or other purposes.

Evernote’s Security Standards

Evernote also provides respectable security:

• 256-bit encryption: Encryption for data sync and storage. However, data in transit is unencrypted.
• Permission options: Share notes, sections or full Notebooks. No block-level control.
• Activity log: View actions taken on notes.
• ISO/IEC 27001 certified: Complies with stringent best practices for information security management.

As with Notion, users fully own their own Evernote data.

When comparing Notion vs Evernote, Notion has a slight security edge with block-level access control and full encryption. But both platforms offer robust protection overall.

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Pricing and Plans

Let’s compare the free and paid subscription plans offered by Notion and Evernote.

Notion’s Pricing Tiers

Notion offers free personal accounts, and paid personal, team, and enterprise plans:

• Free plan: Unlimited blocks on up to 1,000 pages for individuals. Great free offering.
• Personal Pro: $4/month. Unlimited pages and blocks. Added features like version history and advanced permissions.
• Teams: $8/user/month. Unlimited members and guests. SSO and management features.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing. Dedicated customer success manager. 99.9% uptime SLA.

Overall, Notion provides exceptional value in the free tier but fairly standard pricing for paid plans.

Evernote’s Subscription Options

Evernote offers more limited free accounts, with paid personal and business offerings:

• Free: 60MB total monthly upload allowance. Sync up to 2 devices.
• Personal: $7.99/month. 10GB uploads. Sync unlimited devices. Passcode lock.
• Professional: $14.99/user/month. Everything in Personal plus enterprise security and admin tools.
• Business: $20/user/month. All Professional features with advanced permission controls.

For free users, the storage limits can prove very restrictive. But reasonably affordable plans unlock more functionality.

When comparing cost, Notion has the advantage for free and personal use. Evernote offers competitive pricing for business team management.

Conclusion: Evaluating Notion vs Evernote

Overall, in this detailed Notion vs Evernote comparison guide we found:

• Notion has more flexibility and features to build customized productivity systems, at the cost of some complexity.
• Evernote makes capturing and finding notes simpler without much structure needed.
• Both platforms have solid security standards with encryption and access controls.
• Notion has more generous free plans, while Evernote caters better to managed business teams.

Ultimately, Notion is our top recommendation for most personal and small team use cases needing flexibility to manage projects and daily tasks. However, Evernote remains a great choice if you just need basic, streamlined note taking and don’t require extensive custom systems.

Assessing your specific note-taking needs should dictate which solution better fits the bill as we start 2023.

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