Design & Customization
One of the premier features Evernote offers that Springpad doesn't is it's ability to partner with 3rd party apps to allow for extended functions such as scanning documents and photos directly into the program to create notes, save directly from PDF, integration with GTD-like apps, create screenshots as notes, and other note-taking apps that will integrate with software to create new notes, etc. Evernote also has the ability to encrypt specific notes, integrate with Microsoft Outlook, allow others to create, edit & delete notes in shared notebooks. Evernote also has advanced search by title, notebook, tag, without tag, creation date, whether the notes have audio, images, etc., by where you wrote the note (GPS), whether the note was done on a mobile device, sent via email, web clip, has speech, image recognition, if its encrypted, and whether there are any todo's.
Springpad has the ability to add notes by looking up products, businesses, recipes, movies, albums, wines, etc in the search bar. It also automatically detects the informaiton you're saving and helps categorize your notes such as recipes, movies, albums and then provide quick links to affiliates such as Epicurious, Coupon finder, Wine.com, Snooth.com, Amazon.com, IMDB, Freebase, iTunes, Google Maps, Foursquare & many more.
Ease of Use
Unlike Springpad, Evernote offers offline capability with a desktop app and mobile OS apps and automatically syncs with mobile devices. Evernote also has global hotkeys to copy/paste into a new note, create a new note, and search and create screen grabs from any application.
Like Evernote, Springpad automatically syncs with mobile devices and has offline capability
Springpad can save multiple types of notes: Item, Task, Brand, etc. It has an integration with e-commerce website such as eBay, so when you try to add an item you want to buy, i.e. "BoA HURRICANE VENUS CD", it will try to search the item at certain website and provide purchasing information which is brilliant. The website and android application user interface provides a customizable background and notebooks are presented as a sticky notes. Also, the website has a pretty neat function: "Send to phone" pushes a note to your android phone so you dont have to navigate through notebooks. I think Springpad was made to be a more personal note taking application. One major feature it lacks is the window based client (which allows offline access to data). So during my evaluation, I wasn't able to use it for taking notes during meetings. Other than that Springpad is promising.
Evernote has a windows client - This is the major advantage of Evernote that gives you offline access to the data you sync between your devices. Evernote also offers a nested notebook - This is good when you want to organize your notes by work/project. Evernote is geared towards more professional or business use. With Evernote, I can fully replace my use of OneNote.
Organization
- Simple options like tagging and notebooks
- Allows handwriting attachments
- More detailed options like item types e.g. bookmarks, places, recipes as well as tagging and notebooks
- Also includes a whiteboard kind of option where notes can be arranged as a mindmap maybe?
- Attachments to notes can be notes again and very different types
Springpad wins here because of its variety. But like it was said in the overall conclusion they are both note takers but not exactly competition for each other. Totally different audiences.
Summary
The reality is that they are two different products with many similarities. They appeal to different target audiences with the same end game in mind. Both apps, I believe have their place with a specific segment in the note-taking-remember-everything space. Evernote has been pushing educational, photographer & visual arts, musicians use cases in a big way. Springpad has been really amping up their usefulness when shopping, cooking, sharing bookmarks, and of course, it’s overall usefulness in sharing notes with the world. There’s definitely a cross-over market for both sets of people as well. I’m the perfect example. Evernote is really for business and Springpad is for everything else in my life. I use Evernote in business meetings, jotting down notes on client calls, storing customer literature pieces, presentations, managing expenses, and anything else that you can think of that requires stuffing digital files into this online repository for work. I love the OCR & advanced search capabilities, nested notebooks & tags. Springpad has its home for me for being able to “semantically detecting what you’re saving and structuring the data so that we can use the meta data to add relevant information and useful offers to help you save time and money.”, which include my recipes, shopping lists, todo’s, and bookmarks. I love The Board for the ability to visualize and brainstorm projects. Can you accomplish all of the above? Well, sort of. That’s the reason I sincerely don’t believe one will dominate the next.
You can read my original article comparing these items here
My suggestion: Use Springpad if you're mainly going to use it for personal uses and use Evernote if you need it for business/professional purposes.
You can read my original article comparing these items here
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I've been playing around with both apps on my HTC phone recently and whilst I prefer the look and feel of Evernote the one feature that I am really missing is being able to make To-Do lists and setting reminders on those To-Do items. I don't use the calendar on my phone or do any kind of syncing. I just need to be able to set reminders on tasks which Springpads lets me do.