Evernote vs. Notion: Which Is the Best Note-Taking App?

Do you often find yourself asking, what’s the best note-taking app?
Perhaps you’re an avid fan of a certain brand and are the one who responds with your favorite app, thinking everyone else should be using it too.
No judgment here!

Find the Right Approach!

The point is we, at the Paperless Movement® Membership, receive a lot of similar questions from our community members.
In order to be able to really recommend a note-taking tool, we all need context.
For instance:

• Are you using the app for business or personal use?
• Do you want to build a knowledge database with your note-taking app?
• Do you need to share your notes?
• Do you want to scan handwritten notes and be able to search for them?
  Those and many other questions are the ones you should ask yourself before betting on any app.
  On top of that, you should analyze your workflow because, as we say at the Paperless Movement®, it’s workflows that matter!
  So, let’s gain some real insight, context, and actual use cases to see whether Evernote or Notion is a good fit for your specific use cases.

Why Evernote Is One of the Best Note-Taking Apps?

Evernote is undoubtedly one of the most popular digital note-taking solutions.
There’s a specific use case where Evernote really shines: its search super-power.
For those who love to use digital handwriting apps, then this may be a great little surprise, adding another app to your setup.
Noteshelf, the note-taking app for the iPad and pencil, allows you to synchronize your handwritten notes to Evernote.
That way, you take your handwritten notes in Noteshelf, they appear in Evernote, and they’re also searchable!
You can already scan your handwritten paper notes directly into Evernote and make them searchable.
These options and having such great search functionality make Evernote even more powerful.
Being able to find text inside images is priceless!

Why Notion Is One of the Best Note-Taking Apps?

If you’re interested in creating knowledge management systems, note organization, wanting to interconnect your notes, or building note databases for better note organization, then Evernote will fall short.
Notion provides the function to backlink and crosslinks your notes.
You’re able to cross-reference in Evernote, but in Notion, we have a more intuitive response, easily able to create direct links to pages to connect them.
Links are created by using mentions, targeting specific pages.
Just type @, start typing the name of the page you want to link, and select the page you’d like to link in the dropdown that appears.
Anytime you mention a page, a backlink will be added to the page you linked.

Conclusions

We hope you have gained some inspiration and maybe discovered that both apps are useful but for different purposes.
Perhaps you can use Evernote for document storage and Notion for creative research.
Whatever the use case, at the Paperless Movement® Membership, we strive to show our members when we can use our digital apps with purpose and to their full potential, we can really level up our note-taking and workflow too!