In the world of productivity apps, two popular choices often debated are Evernote and Todoist. Both applications offer unique features to help users organize their personal and professional lives, catering to different needs and preferences. Comparing these two applications can provide valuable insights for users who are looking to maximize their efficiency and time management.
Evernote primarily focuses on note-taking and document management, allowing users to create, store, and organize notes in an easily accessible manner. Its powerful search function makes it easy for users to find information quickly, giving an edge to those who need to access content on the go. On the other hand, Todoist is more task-oriented, offering comprehensive to-do list management with project organization and deadline tracking capabilities. It is designed for users who want a straightforward tool to manage their tasks and goals efficiently.
While both apps have their strengths and unique features, the choice between Evernote and Todoist ultimately depends on the specific requirements of each user. Understanding the key differences in their functionality and user experience can help individuals make an informed decision about which application best suits their needs and preferences.
Overview of Evernote and Todoist
Evernote and Todoist are popular productivity tools that help individuals and teams manage their tasks, notes, and ideas effectively.
Evernote is primarily a note-taking app that enables users to create, organize, and store notes across various devices. With Evernote, you can create text-based notes, audio recordings, checklists, and even save images and web pages. It also allows users to use tags and notebooks to categorize their notes effectively. Evernote also provides a powerful search function, making it easy to find any note or piece of information quickly.
Some notable features of Evernote include:
- Cross-device syncing
- Web clipper for saving articles and web pages
- Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for scanning text from images
- File attachments
- Collaboration features like shared notebooks
Todoist is a task management app that focuses on helping users organize and prioritize their tasks efficiently. With Todoist, users can create tasks, set due dates, and organize them into projects. Todoist also offers a natural language processing feature that enables users to type out tasks as they would say them and have the app automatically parse the due date, priority, and more.
Key features of Todoist include:
- Cross-platform availability
- Recurring tasks and reminders
- Labels and filters for organizing tasks
- Collaboration features like shared projects
- Karma system to track productivity
Comparison Table
| Feature | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Primary Focus | Note-taking | Task Management |
| Collaboration | Shared Notebooks | Shared Projects |
| Organization | Notebooks and Tags | Projects, Labels, and Filters |
| Cross-device Sync | Yes | Yes |
| Offline Access | Available on Some Plans | Available on Some Plans |
In summary, Evernote is an excellent choice for users looking for a powerful note-taking app to store and organize their ideas, while Todoist is ideal for those who need a robust task management tool to keep track of their activities and prioritize effectively.
Core Features Comparison
Task Management and Organization
When it comes to task management and organization, Evernote and Todoist offer different approaches. Evernote focuses mainly on note-taking and content organization, while Todoist is specifically built for productivity and task management.
Todoist excels in organizing tasks in hierarchical projects with support for subtasks, priorities, and due dates. You can also set reminders, recurring tasks, and create custom filters to view specific subsets of your tasks.
| Feature | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Task creation | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Subtasks | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| Task priorities | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| Due dates | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| Reminders | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Recurring tasks | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| Custom filters | ✖️ | ✔️ |
Note-Taking and Content
Note-taking is where Evernote shines. Its search function allows users to easily locate notes even within images or handwritten text. Evernote supports attaching files, web clipping, and creating to-do lists. However, it does not offer the same level of task management as Todoist.
Todoist has limited note-taking capabilities compared to Evernote; it allows you to add comments or attachments to tasks, but it doesn’t support rich content or advanced formatting.
| Feature | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Rich content | ✔️ | ✖️ |
| Advanced formatting | ✔️ | ✖️ |
| File attachments | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Web clipping | ✔️ | ✖️ |
| To-do lists | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Integration and Collaboration
Both Evernote and Todoist offer integration with various platforms and third-party applications. Evernote has access to features like IFTTT and works across multiple devices, whereas Todoist also provides excellent cross-platform support, integrating with tools like Google Calendar and Trello.
| Feature | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-platform support | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Integration with IFTTT | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Google Calendar integration | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| Trello integration | ✖️ | ✔️ |
For collaboration, Evernote allows sharing notes and notebooks with other users, while Todoist enables sharing tasks and projects with team members, making it great for work or group assignments.
| Feature | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Sharing notes | ✔️ | ✖️ |
| Sharing tasks | ✖️ | ✔️ |
| User collaboration | ✔️ | ✔️ |
Interface and Usability
User Interface
Both Evernote and Todoist have clean and modern user interfaces, making it easy for users to navigate through their apps. Evernote offers a hierarchical organization with notebooks, stacks, and tags for categorizing and compartmentalizing notes and tasks. Todoist, on the other hand, focuses on task management through projects, labels, and filters.
Key UI elements in Evernote:
- Notebooks for organizing notes
- Stacks for grouping notebooks
- Tags for categorizing notes
Key UI elements in Todoist:
- Projects for organizing tasks
- Labels for categorizing tasks
- Filters for custom task views
Ease of Use for Beginners
Both apps are fairly easy to use for beginners. Evernote has a straightforward flow where users create notes and organize them with notebooks and tags. Todoist keeps it simple when it comes to managing tasks, with the option of adding labels and filters for further organization.
Customization
Customization options are available for both apps to make them suit personal preferences and workflows. Evernote allows users to change the appearance and layout of the app, such as displaying notebooks in list view, grid view, or as a hierarchy. Todoist lets users switch between different themes and customize the appearance of projects with custom project icons.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are essential for efficiency and an enhanced user experience. Both Evernote and Todoist provide a wide range of keyboard shortcuts for navigating through the app, creating and editing notes or tasks, and managing tags or labels. Some examples of keyboard shortcuts include:
| Apps | Creating a New Note | Creating a New Task | Search |
|---|---|---|---|
| Evernote | Cmd/Ctrl + N | N/A | Cmd/Ctrl + S |
| Todoist | N/A | Cmd/Ctrl + N | Cmd/Ctrl + F |
Evernote and Todoist both provide an intuitive interface and usability for users, with key differences seen in their core purposes. Evernote excels in note-taking and organization, while Todoist focuses primarily on task management. Both apps offer customization options and keyboard shortcuts for an improved user experience.
Pricing and Plans
In this section, we will compare the pricing and plans of Evernote and Todoist, focusing on their Basic and Premium Plans, followed by their Business and Plus Plans.
Basic and Premium Plans
Evernote offers a Basic plan, which is free and allows users to create, edit, and sync notes across devices, as well as clip web pages. However, it has limited features and a sync limit of 60 MB per month.
Evernote Premium is priced at $7.99 per month or $69.99 per year, and it offers additional features such as offline access to notes, a larger sync limit (10 GB per month), a full-text search of documents, annotations on PDFs, and more.
On the other hand, Todoist offers a Free version with basic features such as task management and basic collaboration. It allows users to create up to 80 active projects and share them with up to 5 people.
Todoist Premium costs $3 per month, billed annually, or $4 per month, billed monthly. Premium users can collaborate with up to 25 people per project and enjoy additional features such as reminders, labels, comments, file attachments, and more.
| Plan | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Basic/Free | Free | Free |
| Premium | $7.99/month or $69.99/year | $3/month (billed annually) or $4/month (billed monthly) |
Business and Plus Plans
Evernote also offers a Business plan, which comes with all Premium features, as well as team collaboration and central account management. The Business plan costs $14.99 per user per month.
Todoist has a Business plan priced at $5 per user per month, billed annually or $6 per user per month, billed monthly. This plan includes all Premium features, along with team collaboration features such as team inboxes, activity and data exporting, and centralized billing.
Evernote’s Plus plan was discontinued in 2018 and is no longer available for new users. Existing users can continue on the Plus plan, which has features such as offline access to notes, a 1 GB sync limit per month and passcode lock.
| Plan | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Business | $14.99/user/month | $5/user/month (billed annually) or $6/user/month (billed monthly) |
| Plus (discontinued) | NA* | NA |
*Only available to existing users.
These plans cater to different needs and budgets. Consider your priorities and requirements when choosing between Evernote and Todoist.
Productivity and Efficiency
Templates and Productivity Apps
Evernote and Todoist both offer features designed to boost productivity and efficiency. Evernote’s templates can help streamline note-taking and ensure consistency across project documentation. Todoist, on the other hand, focuses on task management with easy-to-create task lists that can be customized according to various productivity methodologies.
Both tools also offer integrations with popular productivity apps, such as Google Drive, Zapier, and Google Calendar. This allows users to easily share and sync documents, automate workflows, and schedule events without leaving their chosen platform.
Labels, Filters, and Priorities
In Todoist, users can organize tasks with labels, filters, and priorities. Labels allow for easy task categorization, while filters help users quickly find tasks based on specific criteria, such as due dates or labels. Users can also set priorities to ensure important tasks are completed first.
Evernote does not have built-in labels or filters but offers a powerful search feature that allows users to quickly find relevant notes. While it does not have a priority system, Evernote’s recent redesign introduced Evernote Tasks, which includes due dates, notifications, and the ability to track task progress.
Shared Notebooks and Project Management
Collaborative features play a crucial role in project management. Evernote offers shared notebooks that allow users to share notes and collaborate with multiple team members. Additionally, Evernote allows users to delegate tasks within notes and import content, including images, PDF files, and other documents.
Todoist, being primarily a task manager, offers a comprehensive project management system using task lists and team collaboration. Users can assign tasks to other members, set due dates, and receive notifications when tasks are completed or changed.
Task and Note Research
Both Evernote and Todoist provide features to simplify research and information organization. Evernote’s web clipper allows users to save web content directly to their notes, while Todoist’s comments and file attachments enable users to add context and supplementary material to tasks.
Furthermore, Evernote has a knowledge base that can be searched using keywords and phrases, making it easy for users to find relevant articles or notes quickly. Todoist users can leverage similar functionality through integrations with Google Calendar for scheduling tasks and Google Maps for location-based reminders.
| Feature | Evernote | Todoist |
|---|---|---|
| Templates | Yes | No |
| Labels and Filters | No | Yes |
| Priorities | No | Yes |
| Shared Notebooks | Yes | N/A |
| Project Management | Limited | Yes |
| Task/Note Research | Yes | Limited |
| Integrations | Yes | Yes |
| Collaboration | Yes | Yes |
| Offline Access | Yes | Yes |
| Customization | Limited | Yes |
| Import/Export Features | Yes | Yes |
Conclusion
Evernote and Todoist are both powerful tools designed to help users manage their tasks and information. Evernote excels at note-taking, organization, and archiving, while Todoist focuses on task management and prioritization.
Evernote’s versatility allows users to create different types of content, such as text notes, voice recordings, and web clippings, all within the app. These features make it suitable for individuals who need a comprehensive solution for managing various types of information. Users can also take advantage of Evernote’s powerful search capabilities to find content quickly.
On the other hand, Todoist is a dedicated task management tool that helps users stay organized and on top of their daily tasks. It offers the ability to create projects, assign tasks, and set due dates. Additionally, Todoist includes useful features such as task recurrence, collaboration, and priority levels for enhanced productivity.
In conclusion, the choice between Evernote and Todoist largely depends on the user’s specific needs and preferences. If note-taking and information organization are the primary requirements, Evernote might be the better option. However, if task management and prioritization are essential features, users may find Todoist to be more suitable.
It’s worth noting that both tools can be used simultaneously as complementary tools, with Evernote serving as the primary note-taking and information storage system, and Todoist focusing on task management. By leveraging the strengths of both apps, users can achieve a more efficient and organized workflow.