Choosing the most suitable note app for collaboration and productivity can be quite difficult. With so many options out there – like Almanac, Notion, Evernote, Coda, and OneNote – you’ve probably since realized that your choice should transcend just note management.
As the most popular ones may have their unique features, finding the documentation platform that serves you best is incredibly important for making the writing and creating process easiest for you.
Almanac
With more demand for collaboration in workplace documents, Almanac is quickly becoming the most functional platform for collaboration seen in recent years. With this remote team management tool, you get all the resources you need for work in the same place.
Whether your team is working in one room or from different parts of the world, Almanac’s cloud-based asynchronous collaboration makes it easy to work on the same project meaningfully.
Almanac Features:
Dynamic Editor. Once you use Almanac, you may never want to use any other document editor. In fact, Almanac was designed to replace your Google Docs and Microsoft Office, while offering you rich text formatting and live analytics on your documents. Swiftly take notes or write a full-fledged document, and easily link them to other documents for continuous flow of knowledge.
Version Control. With Almanac’s powerful version control, branches of each shared document are created so that everyone can work easily without overwriting the main doc. Version control allows you to easily track and control changes for the main and final product of every document.
Asynchronous Collaboration. While every other app is still notifying you of collaboration requests via emails, Almanac brings this into your document editor. That way, notifications are not lost under a series of emails. You get detailed insights on every activity in real-time, so you can track changes and compare version edits.
Curate and Manage Knowledge. Knowledge management on Almanac is practical. You get to control what’s added or changed in your company’s knowledge. In fact, you can easily keep processes and procedures updated, by organizing your information in a way that benefits everyone, and even publish to the web.
Seamless Organization and Management. With the way Almanac notifies you of changes, you can stay on top of every change in your workflow. You can also customize your workspace so that all team members can see the same thing as it happens.
Power Features for Developers. With amazing tools like branching, command line, and bi-directional mentions, Almanac is catching the eyes of developers and power users. You will love the ability to create dynamic documents that house embedding and tables, or even code blocks.
Almanac Pros:
Vibrant document creation that encourages creativity
Enhanced tracking, organization, and management of tasks, documents, and processes
Version control for revisions and edit management.
Power features that suit developers
Swiftly share and publish documentation, and efficiently manage guest collaborations
Real-time analytics on shared documents with read receipts
Crowdsource knowledge from your community to update your company information
Almanac Cons:
While Free Plan allows unlimited guests, you may have to upgrade plans to enjoy unlimited docs.
Almanac Pricing:
Basic: Free to use
Team: $49 per month for small teams (up to 10 seats) and unlimited storage
Pro: $129 per month for growing teams (up to 30 seats)
Notion
Another productivity app in today’s market is Notion. As an app that makes collaboration easy, Notion allows users to take notes, collaborate and manage tasks. Users can sync their information across all their connected devices. With calendar integrations, timelines, and Kanban boards, everyone sees and knows what to do.
Notion Features:
Project Management. You can track and manage your projects with Notion, keeping your team members and project details in one place, with real-time updates and notification of changes.
Real-Time Collaboration. Collaborating is swift with real-time editing and brainstorming. Manage documents, contents, and tasks with just a few clicks.
Note Taking with Synchronized Block. Notion uses a system called “blocks” for note-taking. To create a new note, a user creates a block. New pages and blocks can be created existing in ones, and they are all synced across all your devices.
Drag and Drop for Customization. With Notion, you can customize your plans, or create tasks with its integrated drag and drop features.
Task Management. You can create a task and assign it by tagging your team members. Get your to-do lists active and manage them accordingly as you go.
Wiki Pages and Knowledge Sharing. Notion offers wikis that you can keep updated to provide knowledge sharing.
Notion Pros:
Note-taking can be easier with blocks, as related notes can be nested within each other
You can manage and track tasks and projects
Ability to customize with drag and drop functionality
Changes in the app are synchronized across all workspaces
Notion Cons:
Setting up an indigenous workspace on Notion can take a significant amount of time
Using Notion for small tasks can be quite technical and difficult
Managing multiple projects may see some lags in the native app
Some advanced security features can only be assessed in the Enterprise plan
Notion Pricing:
The basic app is free and includes use of pages and blocks, but content sharing is limited to 5 guests.
Pro plan for Personal use costs $5, or $4 if you are paying annually.
For small teams, there is a plan that allows collaboration at $10 a month, with a 20% monthly discount if you are paying for a year.
Enterprise pricing provides the most benefit, but requires a direct contact with their sales team for details.
Evernote
As an app that is centered on note-taking, Evernote has been live since the early 2000s. Evernote proves very useful when you want to take quick notes, jot down ideas from a brainstorming session, take pictures and clippings from the web, and much more.
Evernote Features:
Note Taking. You can put down your ideas with basic formatting, bullets, and checkmarks. All notes are saved in one space and can be organized to your preference.
Customized Notes and Templates. Evernote has options for customized meeting notes and also a Work Chat mode. These allow you to share and collaborate with others. Also, you get a collection of templates for your needs.
Clippings and Snippets. From images to texts, or even complete web pages, web clipping allows you to save web information to your notes for future use.
Collaboration with Spaces. Spaces is Evernote’s attempt at a collaborative workspace like slack. It allows every member of a team to assess every piece of information in a space. However, the major functionality that is necessary for team members to collaborate effortlessly is missing on Space.
Evernote Pros:
Notes can be taken in any form and even has handwriting support.
Create to-do lists and check them off as you go.
A collection of customizable templates to quickly start taking well-formatted notes in any situation.
Web clipper allows you to take snippets of literally anything from the web for your notes.
Evernote Cons:
Pricing is quite steep for what its respective plans actually offer
Collaboration is not as smooth as other productivity apps
App integrations are only available for business plans
Evernote Pricing:
Evernote offers freemium for personal use, but its monthly upload is limited to 60Mb, which is insufficient for power users.
Personal paid plan starts at $7.99 per month with more features such as a 10Gb monthly upload limit.
Professional plan gets you app integrations, create, manage and assign tasks to different people at $9.99
At $14.99, Teams plan allows for the management of your team for collaboration and work on projects.
Coda
Coda is an app that allows you to create important documents without coding. It is a no-code canvas that blends docs, spreadsheets, and presentations together. With Coda, you get blocks of tables, kanbans, and text documents that you can use to create your documents.
Coda Features:
Pages. To create a new Coda document, you start with a new page, which can multiply as much as your project or document requires.
Tables with Views. Since Coda is a developed spreadsheet, using a table can be dynamic. From a simple list to a complicated database, you can simplify how everyone works on each table with views.
Controls and Automation. Coda can go from a simple document to a convenient app with the use of buttons, and sliders for control. You can also reduce repetition by automating tasks.
Easy Integrations. With packs, you can connect any Coda file to your daily use apps. This helps your team to code, design, and communicate without confusion.
Collection of Templates. Templates are available in your file, so you can use them to create documents.
Coda Pros:
Automating tasks and processes can save you time.
Coda provides integrations to apps you use regularly.
Coda allows customized document creation so you can create databases with formulas and packs
Coda provides unlimited version history, but only for team plan
Coda Cons:
Interfaces can take some time to get used to, as it’s not very intuitive
Simple functions such as copy and paste across other apps do not respond the same in Coda
Collaborations can be difficult with Coda
Complex and large information can prove difficult to manage
Pricing is not cheap
Coda Pricing:
Free Coda plans come with size limits on doc creation, with access to packs and collaborations.
The Pro plan is set at $10 per doc maker per month. This gives you access to everything the free has to offer with an unlimited doc size. You also get pro packs.
Team Pricing starts at $30 per month per doc maker, giving you unlimited automation and unlimited version history.
Enterprise pricing offers everything all the other plans have, plus Enterprise users get audit events and advanced access controls.
OneNote
Another typical digital note-taking app, OneNote from Microsoft is an app that allows you to take notes and organize them. This tool is available for all persons who install the Microsoft Office Suite and can be installed from app stores for mobile.
OneNote Features:
Notes and Data Organization. A file in OneNote is called a notebook and can have different sections and subs nested in them. Also, each of these can easily store your notes in any form.
Tags for Easier Organization. OneNote allows you to tag each note so that you can sort them into categories. Tags help you search and find old notes.
Assortment of Templates. You can get started with study notes or work notes from the wide collection of templates. You may need to change a few things to get started.
Ink-To-Text and Equations. A function of OneNote is its ability to input equations into your notes. These equations may be handwritten by you or pulled from a library of equations.
Clip and Save. Just like Evernote, you can save web clippings to notes, making edits or customizing them for sharing.
OneNote Pros:
Organization of notes and nested notes
Ability to pull texts from images
Sizeable amount of storage
Equation solving functions
OneNote Cons:
Starting OneNote can take some time, and responsiveness is usually slow
Web clipper is not as improved as other tools
Task management is not swift
Lacks adequate Integration with other apps
OneNote Pricing:
OneNote comes free, as long as you install it from the Microsoft Office Suite. However, you may have to pay for OneDrive storage if you require more storage than the freemium.
Which is Best: Notion vs Evernote vs Coda vs OneNote vs Almanac?
Certainly, our review of these note apps has enlightened you on their pros and cons, and you can see how each one functions. However, as it may be cumbersome to select more than one of them, you would want to choose one that is tailored to your specific needs.
Without a doubt, Almanac provides the most flexibility. Its freshness means it is ahead of its peers in most categories. Its features make it the perfect choice for anyone, irrespective of the complexities of their teams and tasks. And with its async collaborations, you can really enjoy working without limits.To learn more about how Almanac can help you improve collaboration among your teams, reach out to their friendly sales team today to get started.
