Are you planning to switch to the Google ecosystem? What about note-taking? Find out the major differences between Evernote and Google Keep below.
In this video, Peter talks about the advantages of shifting to Google Keep compared to using Evernote.
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Transcription:
What's up guys? Pete Moriarty here. Great to have you and in this video, I'm going to be covering my case for switching from Evernote over to Google Keep. An article was posted just recently on Tech Crunch and I'll read the title here, “Evernote Lost Its CTO, CFO, CPO, and HR Head in the Last Month,” as it's approaching its public listing, which is pretty crazy. Now Evernote has been around for quite a long time. They're one of the first cloud companies that really got cloud synchronization right.
I got an iPad delivered to me on the day of release, and I remember the first app that I downloaded and installed was Evernote, and having Evernote on my iPad on my mobile phone, and then on my computer at the same time with all the synchronization of all the notes was awesome, and that was really the first really great cloud app that took advantage of a mix of local and online synchronization, and eventually they brought out the web interface and everything else, but Evernote's kind of gone a bit of wayside over the last couple years.
There's certainly still some diehard fans out there, but most people that I talk to tell me that they don't really use it all that much, and it's a place where they kind of dump information, and then don't often go to retrieve it that long. Personally, I switched over to Google Keep a couple of years ago, and I had kind of forgotten that Evernote existed until Dan Noros posted a thread with that article from Tech Crunch saying what's going on with Evernote, and a lot of people commented on that post saying, “I've canceled my subscription,” or, “I went back down to the free plan,” or, ” There's no features that have been released lately that have been useful for me.”
I thought, “I should do a video on this, and share the reasons why I switched from Evernote over to Google Keep and why you might want to consider doing the same. Okay, so let's get the basics out of the way. Google Keep is pretty much a rip off of Evernote, right? It's basic note taking. You can do text notes. You can drop images in. You can't do any of the fancy stuff like dropping in PDFs like you can do in the paid version of Evernote, but it's great for things like lists, like shopping lists.
I love using it when I'm going around Ikea. I actually snap all the different stuff that I'm looking at into Google Keep and then I can just use the note archive feature to archive those notes when I've picked them up from the collection area, but what Google Keep is great for is obviously like any note taking app, having your notes and your lists available on any device, having a killer web interface so you can access it from your computer when you're sitting down on your machine, and then when you're on the go, even if you're offline being able to add and update and change notes and have them synchronized to everywhere that you go.
That's the great thing about something like Evernote or something like Google Keep. Now, here's where they fall down, and here's where I think the limit is of these kind of apps. When you're entering data in these and you're trying to start collaborating, Evernote had a shared note feature, shared notebooks feature. There's also an Evernote for business, which I think is a bit ridiculous, but apparently some people use it. Not that many, though, because their IPO isn't going that well, but with that kind of data and that kind of sharing, honestly, it would be better to have your notes in a different app, and that's because when data is contextual, that means when it needs to be structured, when it needs to be maybe connected to other elements of data, having it in just a simple note that you share, might not be the best place for your data.
For example, if you have a to do list, and you've got a set of tasks, and you want to assign those tasks to different members of staff, then it's probably best to have a task management app. Something like Trello or Asana, or anything else online that you can use to make sure that you have reminders and context on whose assigned to something, and everyone can see what's going on. You can't really do that in a note taking app, unless you start putting people's names in there.
Secondly, things like reminders are pretty handy, but if you want to collaborate on them, then it's hard to do it if it's all kind of stuck in that one app. Think about another scenario, a customer list, or a registration list for an event. That's not the kind of thing that you would put down into a note, because that's going to be stuck in one place. You probably want to have that in a CRM or a spreadsheet, or in a Google form, or basically anywhere else apart from notes.
What does that leave how note taking tools left to do? Well, they're great for shopping lists. They're great for going around Ikea. They're great for snapping things like warranties into one place, which is all searchable, and all their images are searchable as well. You've got a copy of your receipts and warranties, just in case the receipts fade. I also use it. I've got a list down here. Oh, of course, my personal documents. I've got my passport, and my license, and my boat license, and all of those personal documents that I may lose, or if I'm overseas traveling, I may lose place of, and I've got a digital copy of all of those nice and safe and secured in my account.
That's the kind of thing that you want to use note taking tools for, and for that I think the downfall of Evernote will be that they were a note taking app which was amazing in their time. It was before any other applications got that cloud syncing perfect, and got that easy to use brain dump style digital notebook note taking app that you could just throw everything in.
I know there's some features that Keep doesn't have, like audio note recording. They've got a voice to text feature, but it's not quite the same. They lack the integrations that Evernote has with third party applications and other cloud based applications, but what Keep is really, really great for, that's what Evernote should have stuck to, is simple note taking. Simple information retrieval. Simple, unstructured data. This is basically the digital version of the bits of paper that sit on your desk and kind of fly around everywhere.
What can you use Keep for? Some of the cool features, you can categorize by label. It works a bit like Gmail. So, you've got labels. You can archive stuff that you no longer need, but always search for it and bring it back, which is pretty cool. You can pin notes at the top. There's a little pinning feature, which is quite handy, and you can also do reminders based upon your location. So, if you use the GPS in your phone, so if you say, “I want to be reminded of this note when I get home,” ping, it will pop up with a push notification and actually remind you.
That's what I really like. You can share and collaborate on notes. So, you can create a note, collaborating with someone else, but it's nowhere near as good as something like Google Docs and honestly, I wouldn't really recommend collaborating on much more than maybe a shopping list inside of Google Keep. It's just really not designed as a document processor, but I find from time to time that I'll use it for a very simple to do list. I might share that with one other person.
Or, if I'm creating content, I might use Google Keep to start jotting down some notes and then with one button I can convert the Google Keep note over to a Google document, which is really handy. So, the question you're going to be asking me is, “Pete, how do I get my data out of Evernote and into Google Keep if I decide to make the switch?” And the bad news is, I have not yet found a way to make that happen. There are exporting tools which can get semi-structured data out of Evernote, but there is as far as I understand, no API to bring your data into Keep, and I don't think there's a Zapier integration or anything like that just yet. I might be wrong. Let me know if so.
There's no way to get your data out of Evernote cleanly and into Keep cleanly. There's not really a migration path, and that has stopped people from moving across, but for me it was as simple as cutting and pasting the most important notes out of my Evernote, bringing those over into Keep, then deleting any super important data out of Evernote, things like a copy of my passport and driver's license, and other bits and pieces, and what I left in Evernote was all of that history of stuff.
I switched on two factor authentication and I basically left the account. I haven't logged in there for a couple of years now. Hopefully it's still there, but all of those previous notes I just kind of left and I started afresh with Google Keep. This brings me to my final point. If you can't import your data, and you have to go through a bit of a fresh start, that's okay. If you're weighing up the two different solutions, just like if you're weighing up Microsoft Office versus Google Docs, just like if you're weighing up Microsoft Outlook versus Gmail. You're going to find some features in the Google app that just aren't there.
There's features in Evernote which just don't exist in Google Keep, but like many of the Google tools, you're going to have 80-90% of what you need. It's kind of like what Apple was 15 years ago. If you remember when you had Outlook and you had 10,000 different buttons, and then if you switched over to Mac Mail you had like five buttons, but they were the five buttons that you wanted to use. With Google, you usually get five buttons, and you wish you had number six, which is the feature that you were missing, but 80% of the time, you've got everything that you need there, and I'm a big fan of simplicity, and so making the switch over to Keep, I would never look back to Google. It's an absolutely fantastic application.
One great little pointer with Keep is that if you're using Keep in a business account, it's actually covered by the SLA or Service Level Agreement with Google Keep, which means, guaranteed up time. It means support for data loss, and it basically means that it's covered under your G-Suite Enterprise Agreement. So, all of the privacy policies and enterprise data protection policies that Google apply to their G-Suite business accounts are covered in your Google Keep account. So, there we go. That's it. If you've got any questions about making the switch or you're unsure, let me know, and I'm going to make a bold prediction now that in three years time, Evernote is just not going to be useful at all for anyone in a business sense. People will have either moved over to Keep or they'll just be using something like Apple Notes in their phones, which have the population already using now.
The sad thing for businesses like Evernote and I wish it was different, but it's just the way it is, that functions and features of applications like this, which were once leaders, once industry leaders, have become just a feature to Google, or just a feature to Apple, or just a feature to Amazon, and that's sadly the way things are going at the moment, but for you, the consumer, or the business owner, you can take advantage of it by using the best tool for the job for you, and in that case my recommendation is Google Keep for all of your note taking.
That's it. Thanks very much, guys. I'll catch you in the next video. If you would like to get access to these tips, and all of our other tips, which we'll release every single day on our public channels, we only release a couple of videos a week, but nearly everyday we're answering questions in our forum, posting up videos and we have fortnightly webinars where we talk about these kind of productivity tools inside our cloud concierge community, and if you've not already joined, consider joining. Head along to ITGenius.com, and I'll post the link right below where you can chat to the team and get started. Until next time, take care.
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