I finally ditched Evernote for Joplin, and my only regret is not doing it sooner

Evernote was my go-to note-taking app for years, both on my smartphone and on my desktop. It has been the gold standard of note-taking for millions across the globe. I used to toss everything into it: article drafts, random ideas, pitches, grocery lists, and web clippings. It just worked. But over time, the app got bloated; the interface became heavier, and the upgrade prompts just became relentless.

One day, Evernote hit me with two pop-ups before I could even reach my notes, and that was the last straw. I started looking for a better alternative and found Joplin, which has genuinely changed the way I take notes.

Evernote finally pushed me away

The clutter and the cost are a joke

As mentioned above, I do take notes quite frequently, and the free tier is the most obvious reason I jumped ship to Joplin. If you are on the Evernote free plan, you are capped at 50 notes and a single notebook, which, in my opinion, is like a demo.

While some suggested OneNote as a free Evernote alternative, I was looking for something different. I wanted something not tied to an ecosystem that didn’t treat my data as a monetizable asset. With only 50 notes allowed on the free plan, I was just one note away from hitting the ceiling. You either have to delete your old notes, manually move them somewhere else, or pay for a subscription.

Then there is the issue of upgrade prompts that never stop. Recently, I wanted to follow up on the thought I had the other day and work on it. As soon as I opened Evernote, I was bombarded with a pop-up, a banner, and whatnot. It was so frustrating that I closed the app and just forgot about what I wanted to work on.

It just feels less like a tool and more like a flashy storefront that just wants to sell you anything and everything they have. On top of this, the app's performance has declined over the years. What was once a snappy note-taking tool is now filled with unnecessary options and a complex UI that, instead of making things easier, makes them more difficult.

Joplin is the open-source savior

A snappy interface that you need

When I first installed Joplin, I was impressed by how familiar the interface looked to Evernote, minus the bloat. Joplin is incredibly snappy. There is no homepage cluttered with suggested content or upgrade banners. It is a clean, three-pane layout: your notebooks on the left, your notes in the middle, and your words to the right. It feels consistent whether you are using Joplin on your mobile or a desktop.

This open-source note-taking app is available on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and Linux. Unlike Evernote, which stores your notes on its own servers, Joplin saves your notes as plain Markdown files locally on your device. If you want to sync your notes across your devices, then you have several options, such as Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.

Additionally, there is no sign-up, and no account is required to use Joplin. You don’t need to pay to unlock any of its features, as there is no paywall. You can even sync your notes across multiple devices using its optional cloud sync service, Joplin Cloud.

The features that actually won me over

Notebooks and tags are better in Joplin

Joplin feels instantly recognizable if you have used Evernote. You can have notebooks, and inside the notebooks, you can create sub-notebooks, giving you as many levels of hierarchy as you need. On top of this, there is a handy tagging feature when you want a note to belong to more than one category.

What makes Joplin better than Evernote isn’t the structure itself; it's the fact that none of it is locked behind a paid tier. Once you install it, you can have as many notebooks and notes as you want from day one.

Another good thing about Joplin is that it doesn’t force you to use your own servers. It is an offline-first app, meaning your notes live on your device. You don’t even need an account to start using it. When you are ready to sync your notes across your laptop and smartphone, you can use different cloud services.

We use note-taking apps to do a bunch of private tasks. You might be storing passwords, journal entries, or sensitive work documents. Joplin offers robust end-to-end encryption (E2EE) right out of the box. Once the feature is enabled, your notes are secured. Even if someone hacks your cloud storage provider, all they will see is unreadable gibberish.

The switch is quite easy

It happens seamlessly

The biggest hurdle that kept me stuck in Evernote longer than I should have been was the thought of migrating everything. Hundreds of notes, scattered across dozens of notebooks, manually recreating any of that was practically impossible.

Thankfully, Joplin has a built-in importer designed specifically for migrating away from Evernote. All you have to do is export your Evernote notebooks as an ENEX file and feed it into Joplin. Within minutes, all my notes, tags, and even my image attachments were seamlessly imported into Joplin.

But a bunch of my Evernote’s specific formatting notes did not survive the journey. The actual content did come through cleanly. Text, images, attachments, and structures were intact. Since Joplin is a community-driven project, it is highly customizable. If there is a niche feature from Evernote that you miss, chances are you will find a plugin for it.

Here are a few that I liked:

• Inline tags: You can use this to add and view tags directly inside your note editor
• Note statistics: Word counts, reading time estimates, and character counts
• Quick links: You can create a clickable shortcut inside one note that instantly jumps to another note
• Markdown table of contents: If you write a very long note with multiple headers or sections, the app will automatically build a clickable outline for you
• AI integration: You can connect with an AI assistant that runs directly on your computer

From themes to Kanban boards to advanced search filters, the plugin directory had everything I wanted and let me customize Joplin my way.

Take control of your notes again

If you are currently paying for Evernote, the main thing you are getting is basic note organization across devices. Joplin offers all that for free and adds end-to-end encryption on top. On top of this, there are no limits, no ads, and a clutter-free interface. If you are tired of subscriptions, Joplin is the open-source option you should definitely switch to. If you are looking for other open-source note-taking alternatives, there are a bunch of options you can try.