However, recently Evernote changed their pricing policy and it was nowhere near the nominal charges I had in mind. The premium Evernote plans now costs $7.99/month or $69.99/year and the Evernote Plus costs $3.99/month or $34.99/year. Well, you might ask me as to why these prices look ridiculously expensive to me? The fact that Microsoft Office 365 Personal costs the same as that of Evernote Premium. Moreover, compared to just a note-taking app, I am not only getting the Office 2016 application suite but also 1 TB of cloud storage. So if you are an Evernote premium user, just think about it again – if it’s worth paying that amount of money? And while you do that, let me talk about a few reasons I started using Keep; which is a free note-taking application from Google. Google Keep is a free app which has enough features to compete with Evernote so let me talk about a few of ‘em.
1. Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication
As Leonardo da Vinci meant from the above quote that if something simple can serve a purpose, creating it in a complex manner to do the same thing is not justified. Google Keep is also designed on the same principles. When compared to Evernote, be it on web or smartphones, you get sticky notes like interface which is easy to work on even when it’s the first time you are using the service, you feel at home. You get different colored notes and you can have a look at the content of attached media file right from the main screen. Clicking on a note will expand it for you to have a full access to your notes.
2. There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
It’s not that Evernote does not provide a free subscription to their services. However, after the recent update, they have limited online syncing to just two devices at the same time. So let’s say that I need to work on a home and office computer along with my smartphone, the free version is not gonna do that for me. Also, there’s an upload limit of just 60 MB per month and in today’s world, that’s peanuts. On the other hand, Google Keep is free and I can sync it with any smartphone without any issues. There are no upload limitations and you can even integrate Google Keep with Google Drive and export notes as documents to cloud storage.
Features of Google Keep
So these were the two main reasons I jumped ship from Evernote and started using Google Keep and when I did so, there were so many amazing features I discovered that I stuck with it. So let me know tell you a few features you get on Google Keep without paying a penny.
1. Whatever You Say, Your Wish is My Command
Using Google Keep, you can create Voice Notes. Simply tap on the record button and start taking notes. While the app records the audio, it will also convert it to text, along with the recorded audio file. This way you can have the best of both worlds. Listen to the notes when you want to or search through them with the help of converted text. This feature can be very helpful in conferences, seminars and even lectures where you only want to concentrate on what’s going on rather than manually taking notes. Not only that, you can also give voice commands directly through Google Keep to take and amend notes. So next time you feel like adding something to your shopping like, just say “OK Google add milk to my shopping list” and Keep will do it. There’s a whole lot of things you can do with voice commands and the entire list can be found here.
2. Alone We are Smart. Together We are Brilliant
Google Keep lets you collaborate your notes with other people to be more creative at work and college. Just think about an instance where you are working in a team to achieve a project goal, collaborative notes will be very useful to jot down ideas you get which will be instantly shared with your team members to view and amend. Just select the collaboration option and add the emails of people you want to collaborate with. The only thing that’s essential is a Google Account and who doesn’t have one who if they are active on the internet!
3. Snap It and It Will Take Care of The Rest
Google Keep also hosts an amazing OCR feature using which you can take a picture of some text and the app will automatically convert it to editable text. As it will be in plain text, you can even search through the text. We have already seen the feature of OCR in details in one of our previous articles that you can have a look at.
What Do You Think?
So these are the reasons I think using Google Keep makes sense when compared to Evernote and yes, you can say that pricing is a major factor. When it comes to features, Evernote also hosts some amazing features that you will not find in any other note taking the app, but then I am compelled to ask myself, “Are those features worth the price tag?” Let me know via our comments section. ALSO READ: How to Export All Your Evernote Data to OneNote and Google Keep
