What people complain about in Evernote
6 reported problems name Evernote as what the person is currently using. Below is what they said was missing, and what they resorted to instead.
- Complaints
- 6
- Avg severity
- 3.2/5
- Would pay to fix
- 0
- Industries
- 2
What they wish it did
Capabilities people described needing that Evernote does not give them, taken from the highest-scoring problems first. These are individual accounts written in each person’s own terms, so two entries may describe the same underlying gap in different words.
- A search tool that reliably parses and indexes Notion notes without AI dependency
- A quick notes feature that works offline and syncs seamlessly with Notion
- Note-taking app with high-quality OCR integrated directly, eliminating need for separate scanning tools.
- A mobile app with integrated OCR to digitize handwritten notes and whiteboard captures directly into a searchable database.
- A robust PDF annotation and management system that retains highlights and notes directly within the PDF or exports them reliably.
- Automated sync and integration for notes from physical books, Kindle, and research papers into a central knowledge base.
- A native concept mapping tool with automatic linking and export capabilities to other note-taking systems.
- A unified system that automatically indexes and cross-references all types of notes (digital, handwritten, visual) for easy retrieval.
What they do instead
The manual processes people built around the gap. A long workaround list is the strongest evidence a problem is real: someone is already paying for it in time. Where several people described the same workaround, it is marked.
- has to specifically tell AI search to look at notes
- switches back to Evernote
- Keeping a physical notebook/journal (modified bullet journal format) for ephemeral and long-term notes
- Taking pictures of important journal pages every 3 months and importing them into Evernote
- Taking pictures of Post-it notes and whiteboards with the Post-it Plus app and importing into Evernote
- Saving concept maps created with CMAP tools on Dropbox
- Manually exporting Kindle highlights and notes into Evernote
- Creating an index with page numbers in the front of the physical journal, then scanning it into Evernote when the journal is finished
The problems themselves
Highest opportunity score first.
Notion's search is broken: AI search ignores my notes unless I specify it, and often fails to find what's clearly there; quick notes don't work at all and just spin.
4HighGeneral Business ServicesSearch Engine OptimizationSearchFix for NotionNotion app occasionally shows blank notes instead of content, making it unreliable for accessing information on the go.
4HighSoftware and TechnologySoftware PerformanceReliNote - Offline-First NotesNotion lacks excellent OCR, making it unsuitable as a replacement for Evernote or Amplenote for document scanning and text recognition.
3MediumSoftware and TechnologyDocument ManagementScanNote ProThe user struggles to consistently track and organize learning notes across various tools, lacking a single comprehensive solution for note-taking, search, organization, revision, and reference that also integrates with tools like Anki.
3MediumSoftware and TechnologyContent ManagementSynapse LearnThe user is dissatisfied with all existing note-taking applications, finding them universally lacking despite trying many options.
2MildGeneral Business ServicesWorkflow ManagementNoteFlow ProThe user lacks a unified software solution to capture, organize, and integrate various types of learning notes, particularly struggling with PDF highlighting/annotation, physical note transcription, and knowledge graph management across different tools.
3MediumGeneral Business ServicesWorkflow ManagementNoteFlow AI: Unified Knowledge Hub
Read this fairly
These are complaints, and only complaints — nobody posts to say their software worked. A high count mostly reflects how many people use Evernote at all, so this page is not a quality judgement and should not be read as one. What it is good for is the shape of the gaps: the specific jobs people could not get done, which are the same whether the tool is popular or not.