Evernote alternative
A fast Evernote alternative that actually stays fast.
Slate keeps the parts of Evernote you actually use — instant search, attachments, web clipping — and drops the parts that slowed it down. Markdown-first, OCR-searchable, and bundled with seven other tools for the price of Evernote Personal alone.
Why teams leave Evernote
It got slow somewhere around 5,000 notes.
If you've used Evernote for more than a year or two, you know the feeling: the app launches, hangs, and you wait. Search isn't fast anymore. Sync stalls when you switch devices. The desktop client uses 1.2 GB of RAM idle. Evernote's been rebuilt twice since 2018 and the performance regressions stack on top of each other. For users with 10k+ notes — exactly the people Evernote was supposed to serve — the daily friction adds up to minutes a day.
Pricing creeps higher every year.
Evernote Personal is $14.99/month — for one tool. Professional is $17.99/month, and Teams starts at $20.83/user/month. Each plan layers AI features as upsells, gates exports, restricts uploads. The free tier limits sync to two devices, which makes it useless for anyone with a phone, laptop, and tablet. None of these prices reflect what notes software costs to operate; they reflect that Evernote knows you have years of locked-in notes.
Export is a hostage situation.
.enex is a bespoke XML format only Evernote really speaks. Other tools have to write parsers, reverse-engineer attachment paths, and lose formatting. Markdown export is a paid feature on Personal+. Bulk export is rate-limited. The path of least resistance is to stay — which is exactly what Evernote is counting on. Slate import flips this: Slate's .enex importer reads your archive directly and converts attachments, tags, and notebooks losslessly.
Mobile search doesn't really work.
Type a query on your phone and wait. The mobile app fetches search server-side, paginates results, and the OCR layer over images is a separate request. By the time results come back you've forgotten what you were looking for. On Slate, the entire search index is local-first; OCR text is included in the index; results appear as you type. On a 12,000-note workspace, queries return in ~80 ms.
What Stack Slate does differently
Markdown-first, plain-text under the hood.
Every Slate note is a markdown file with optional rich-text renderers. That means: copy a note out and it's still readable. Pipe a note into a script. Diff two versions. Search for `# Heading` syntactically. The format is open and stable; in five years it'll still be markdown. Evernote's ENML format requires a parser. Notion's content is JSON blocks. Slate's is what you'd write in a text editor.
Search includes OCR and attachments — for free.
Drop a screenshot of a whiteboard, a PDF receipt, a scanned business card. Slate runs OCR on every image at upload, indexes the text, and surfaces matches alongside note content. No Premium tier required. The OCR layer is updated incrementally so a 12k-note library catches up in under 60 seconds after a fresh install. Evernote charges Personal+ users for image search and gates PDF search behind Professional.
Quick capture in 200 ms — anywhere.
⌘⇧S anywhere on macOS pops a Slate quick-capture window. Type or paste, hit ⌘↵, the window dismisses, the note is saved and synced. The capture window is a separate process that pre-warms — there is no Electron splash, no auth check, no "fetching workspace data". Evernote's quick note shortcut takes 1.2–2.5s on the same hardware, because it spins up a full editor view first.
One subscription, eight tools.
Evernote Personal is $14.99/month, just for notes. Stack is $20/month for Slate + Stack Sync (scheduling) + Stream (screen recording) + Scribble (AI meeting notes) + Momentum (tasks) + Stack Chat + SpeakBar (dictation) + Stack Timekeeper. If you'd otherwise be cobbling Evernote + Calendly + Loom + Otter + Asana — Stack pays for itself in week one.
Where Evernote still wins
Honest tradeoffs — read this before switching.
No native handwriting / Apple Pencil notebook layer.
Evernote (and especially Apple Notes) handle direct stylus input as a first-class surface — handwritten notes that recognize and index ink as text. Slate is keyboard- and clipboard-first; you can drop ink screenshots in (and OCR will index them), but you write notes by typing. If your daily input is mostly Apple Pencil on iPad, Slate may not be your tool yet.
No third-party app marketplace.
Evernote ships an extensive integrations directory — Outlook, Salesforce, Google Drive, Slack and a long tail of niche apps with pre-built sync. Slate has open APIs and a webhook layer, but the prebuilt-integration count is small and growing. If your workflow depends on a specific Evernote integration today, check whether Slate's API covers it before you migrate.
Web Clipper is good but not yet best-in-class.
Evernote's clipper has had a decade of polish — it captures full pages, simplified articles, screenshots, and selections cleanly. Slate's clipper captures all of these too, but the simplified-article algorithm doesn't yet match Evernote on cluttered news sites. We're investing here, but if perfect article extraction is the single feature that defines your Evernote use, evaluate before switching.
Stack Slate vs Evernote — feature comparison
| Feature | Evernote | Stack Slate |
|---|---|---|
| Full-text search | Yes | Yes — local-first, ~80 ms on 12k notes |
| OCR search on images | Personal+ ($14.99/mo+) | Included |
| PDF text search | Professional ($17.99/mo+) | Included |
| Markdown export | Personal+ tier | Built-in (notes ARE markdown) |
| .enex import | — (it’s their format) | Yes — full lossless import |
| Web clipper | Excellent, decade of polish | Good, improving |
| Apple Pencil / handwriting | Yes | Not yet |
| Devices on free tier | 2 | Unlimited (no free tier — bundle starts at $20) |
| Quick capture latency (M2 Mac) | 1.2–2.5 s | ~200 ms |
| Workspace size that stays fast | Slows past ~5k notes | Tested to 12k+ |
| Per-user pricing | $14.99–$20.83/mo per user | $20/mo flat (workspace, not per-user) |
| Bundled with other tools | No | Yes — 8 apps for $20/mo |
Pricing — at 5 seats per year
Evernote
Evernote Teams @ $20.83/user/mo (annual)
$1,250 /yr
Stack bundle
Stack bundle @ $20/mo flat (1 workspace, unlimited users)
$240 /yr
Saves $1,010/yr (81% off)
Migrating from Evernote
- 1
Export your Evernote archive (.enex).
In Evernote desktop: File → Export → All Notebooks → Evernote Format (.enex). For very large workspaces, export by notebook — the importer handles multi-file uploads cleanly.
- 2
Drop the .enex into Slate import.
In Slate: Settings → Import → Evernote. Drag the .enex file. Slate parses notes, attachments, tags, notebooks, and creation/modification dates. A 5,000-note archive imports in 2–4 minutes; OCR runs in the background.
- 3
Verify a sample of notes.
Pick 10 notes that span your edge cases — long notes, notes with embedded PDFs, encrypted notes, notes with tables. Open them in Slate. Confirm formatting, attachments, and tags carried over. Anything weird? Tell us — we'll fix the importer for everyone.
- 4
Cancel Evernote at next billing.
Keep your Evernote account on free tier for 60 days as a safety net while you confirm your Slate workspace is the source of truth. Cancel paid subscription at the next billing cycle.
- 5
Set up the global capture hotkey.
In Slate preferences, bind ⌘⇧S (or your preferred chord). This is the single biggest UX win when switching from Evernote — you stop opening the app to take a note.
FAQ
Is Stack Slate a true Evernote replacement?+
For most users, yes — notes, attachments, search, web clipping, sync, tags and notebooks are all there, and Slate's import handles .enex files losslessly. The clear exceptions are handwritten note workflows (Apple Pencil) and certain niche third-party integrations from Evernote's marketplace. If those are your daily must-haves, evaluate before you migrate.
How long does importing 10,000 notes from Evernote take?+
A 10,000-note .enex archive (with attachments) typically imports in 4–8 minutes on a recent Mac, and OCR finishes indexing within another 60 seconds. The importer streams notes incrementally, so you can start using Slate immediately — older notes appear as their batch finishes.
Does Slate work offline?+
Yes — Slate is offline-first. Your full note library lives on disk; sync happens in the background when you have a connection. You can search, edit, and create notes on a plane and they sync when you land. Evernote requires an active connection for search; Slate does not.
What about Evernote Web Clipper bookmarks I already have?+
Web-clipped notes import like any other note — content, source URL, and capture date are preserved. The Slate web clipper extension covers the same workflows: full page, simplified article, screenshot, and text selection.
Can I use Slate as part of a team?+
Yes. Slate runs on the Stack workspace model — one $20/mo workspace, multiple users sharing notebooks. There is no per-user fee and no Teams upgrade — invite as many users as you need (limit is 25 by default; we lift on request).
Is the bundle a good deal if I only need notes?+
Probably yes, even then — Slate standalone would be $15/month. The bundle is $20 — only $5 more — and gets you Sync, Stream, Scribble, Momentum, Chat, SpeakBar, and Timekeeper as free additions. If you ever start booking calls or recording video, you save again.
What happens to my data if I cancel Stack?+
You can export every note as markdown + attachment archive at any time, free, with one click. The bundle is built on the principle that your data is portable — there is no proprietary container, no export tax. Cancel and walk away with everything.
How does Slate compare to Notion or Obsidian?+
Notion is a document/database hybrid optimized for collaboration; Obsidian is a local-first markdown editor optimized for graph workflows and plugins. Slate is positioned between them: simpler than Notion, cloud-synced like Notion, and markdown-clean like Obsidian — but the focus is search and capture speed, not graph-thinking. We have separate comparison pages: see Slate vs Notion and Slate vs Obsidian.
Verdict
If your Evernote use today centers on capture, search, and attachments, Slate will feel like Evernote 2014 again — fast, simple, search-first. The .enex import is built specifically to make migration painless, and the bundle pricing means you stop paying for one tool and start paying for eight. The honest exceptions are handwritten note workflows and a handful of marketplace integrations Evernote built up over a decade. For Apple Pencil-first users and people whose daily flow depends on the Evernote-Salesforce or Evernote-Outlook deep integrations, the math changes. For everyone else — and that's the vast majority of long-time Evernote users frustrated with how slow it became — Slate at $20/month for the whole bundle is the obvious move. Run the importer, verify a sample of notes, and you can be off Evernote in an afternoon.
Ready to switch?
Try Stack — all 8 apps for $20/mo flat.
Stack Slate is one of eight bundled apps. No per-seat fees. Cancel anytime.