For a few years, Evernote was my diary, idea playground, and workspace where I drafted my articles. I had a paid subscription, which allowed me to use the service on a phone, a laptop, and an Android tablet at the same time. However, Google Keep won me over. It is not an ideal replacement, but it does enough things better to be my current note-taking app.
Still, I wish Keep would learn a thing or two from Evernote. While its strength lies in keeping things simple, Google’s notes app lags behind its advanced, feature-rich alternative. Here’s what I miss in Google Keep as a former Evernote user.
Google Keep is still missing a desktop app
What year is it?
One of my favorite things about Evernote is that it has a proper desktop app. I do creative work for a living, and need instant access to my notes. Evernote’s Windows client delivers, as I can permanently pin it to my taskbar for anytime availability. In contrast, there’s more friction than necessary with Keep. My notes are somewhere among a couple of dozen browser tabs, and I need to keep Chrome open to access them.
Also, using Keep offline can be problematic. That’s not an issue on Android, but if my laptop is offline and I don’t have Keep loaded, I practically can’t access my notes. Meanwhile, the Evernote desktop app saves local copies of my notes, allowing me to work even in airplane mode.
Evernote is for serious work
While Keep sticks to simplicity
Google Keep has always been about ease of use. It’s a simple app that’s good enough for most people, with nothing getting in the way of an intuitive experience. Still, at times, I feel like Google Keep is too basic for anything beyond quick note-taking.
For example, Google Keep limits notes to 19,999 characters. The note where I reached the limit was a script for a 10-minute YouTube video. Evernote also has a size cap, but it’s 200 megabytes per note, which is equivalent to millions of characters.
Evernote shines with rich formatting tools
Until recently, another limitation in Keep was the lack of formatting options. Bold and italic were added in May 2025, along with H1 and H2 headers. Before that, I relied on asterisks, all-caps, and emojis to highlight important parts in my notes. Evernote offers several options for text sizes and font styles, lists, justification, colors, and highlighting. It’s easier to turn your quick ideas into structured paragraphs without leaving the app.
Evernote allows for richer documents
There’s more you can do with notes in Evernote. You can insert images at any point in your file. In Keep, they can only be at the top. You can also add voice notes, files, calendar events, and links to other notes. Keep doesn’t support any of that. Notes in Evernote can include plain text and checkboxes. In Keep, every new row must have a checkbox if you want to activate them.
These may all be small things, but they add up and make Evernote the superior app for personal use and professional projects.
The reason why I stopped using Evernote
Bugs. Bugs everywhere
There’s a lot to like about Evernote. It’s a capable app made for power users who need advanced organization tools for professional work. So why did I stop using it?
The day I waved Evernote goodbye was when half of the contents of a note disappeared without explanation. Before that, 10 copies of a different note appeared in my notebook just as mysteriously. Evernote was a buggy app when I was an active user. I can’t say things have changed, judging by the app’s mediocre 3.2-star rating on Google Play.
In comparison, Google Keep is a more stable and reliable app, likely because little can go wrong with its limited feature set. I’ve only had a few issues with it throughout the years, and all have been easy to solve. For a service with several paid tiers and serious competitors beyond Keep, I hope Evernote steps up its game.
Evernote is too expensive for what it is
Unless you’re fine with using it on one device
There are many features I miss with Google Keep after using Evernote for a long time. Paying a monthly fee isn’t one of them. While you can use Evernote for free, you’re limited to only one device. If you want to synchronize your notes across two or more devices, such as a phone, laptop, and tablet, you’ll pay at least $15 a month or $130 a year for a personal plan. For context, Notion Plus costs $10 per month.
I’m not complaining about Evernote locking premium features behind a paywall. Charging a monthly fee is okay when the company doesn’t have the luxury of owning the most popular (and profitable) search engine in the world to fund its other operations. Still, $15 a month is rather steep for a note-taking app, as powerful as it may be.
Meanwhile, Google Keep has always been a free app that you can use on any device with your Google account. Synchronization between devices is free, there’s no limit to the number of notes you can take, and the storage they occupy doesn’t count toward your Google account storage quota.
Google Keep may be limited, but it’s a great value
While I miss Evernote, I’m sticking with Keep. Google’s note-taking app may not be as functional, but it is reliable and gets the job done. It costs nothing to use, and I have learned to find my way around its limitations.
As for Evernote, I wouldn’t mind paying a small fee to support its development. However, $15 a month is not a small fee in my book, and I’m already tired of everything being a subscription. The value I’d get in return is not enough to justify the cost, especially when many of the best note-taking apps are free or cheaper.
