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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    OneNote

    Score7.8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft's OneNote is a digital note-taking app, supporting photos, annotating, web page clipping, emailing, and synchronizing notes across devices.N/A

    Zotero

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AZotero is a free reference management tool developed as a project developed at Carnegie Mellon and supported by a small team at George Mason University.N/A
    Pricing
    OneNoteZotero
    Editions & Modules
    Microsoft OneNote
    Free
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    OneNoteZotero
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    OneNoteZotero
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Open Source
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    25 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    16 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    OneNoteZotero
    Small Businesses
    Google Keep
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Google Keep
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Google Keep
    Score9.2 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    OneNoteZotero
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (74 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (13 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    7.7
    (14 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.8
    (3 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (10 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    OneNoteZotero
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    In my opinion OneNote is a must for anyone who does business. It’s versatile, stable and sustainable. It can keep private information private - like passwords. It can be used for collaborative work - like standard operating procedures. It is fairly easy to use and far superior to pen and paper. When used for meeting notes, it can be flagged with icons that are searchable - like ideas or important items. You can even create Outlook tasks on the fly
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    Zotero is well suited for any researcher, student or writer that wants to easily cite sources for web platforms that do not have easy citing tools integrated within the website. There are many browser plug-ins built for Zotero that allow users to click a button directly from the source into the main software and from there can be more organized for citation export. Zotero doesn't work well if you open an external PDF from a website as it cannot pull author information correctly from a PDF source.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Because of its flexibility and ability to hold different types of content (text, images, tables), it is a great tool for collecting content from different resources and organizing it in one place.
    • Technical support analysts are using sections for their support case analysis; they paste pieces of logs, screen-shots, document their steps in troubleshooting etc., all in one section, to get the full picture yet stay organized.
    • The logic of content structure; Notebook>Section>Page>Paragraph, allows you to manage and collect all needed information by the areas of the user's responsibility. For example; each of my projects has its own section, in which each page is a task.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Zotero, when paired with the Zotfile plugin, makes it incredibly easy to index sources and documents on a project-by-project basis. Users can store document files locally in a Zotero project filesystem, or merely store links to files stored elsewhere.
    • Zotero plays extremely nicely with PDF documents, thanks again to the Zotfile plugin: I can highlight sections of a PDF article's text and Zotero indexes these "pull quotes" in a searchable and well-organized manner for easy extraction when it comes time to synthesize my sources into a new paper.
    • Zotero automates the production of properly-formatted references (including APA, MLA, Chicago, and others), making it a breeze to create accurate and complete bibliographies.
    • Zotero's library system provides a straightforward graphical user interface to manage multiple research projects and associated files, including the ability to easily add items to a project by ISBN, DOI, PMID, and arXiv IDs.
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    Cons
    Microsoft
    • The table editing tools are too simplistic and lack the features found in other Office products.
    • Some content loses its rich text formatting when being pasted into OneNote. A workaround is to paste the content first into Outlook or Word and then copy/pasting that into OneNote.
    • Microsoft is moving away from a local install of OneNote, which means notebooks have to be in the cloud in Office 2019. This will actually reduce the usefulness of OneNote in some environments and opens the door to competitor products.
    • Update: Microsoft has now announced that it will continue to support OneNote 2016 through 2023. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Office-365-Blog/Your-OneNote/ba-p/954922
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • Libre office integration was iffy
    • Using different word processors (i.e, Word, then Google Docs on the same file) can "break" embedded citations.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    As this is not a compulsory tool in our organization, I would say all depends on the decision makers, however since this is a part of MS Office, I am sure we will have it for as long as we will possibly need it. However, I would not be so sure, if it was a separate product
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    Open Source
    Zotero is a fantastic software for researchers. We do pay for 6 GB of storage for each user, so their libraries can be backed to the cloud beyond the 300 MB of allowed free storage. It's low-cost, or can be free if you don't opt into that version. No other citation manager comes even close to Zotero in its capabilities, user-friendly nature, and cost, nor do they innovate their features constantly like Zotero and have open source support online
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Microsoft
    I find OneNote incredibly usable. I'm fairly middle of the road when it comes to tech savvy-ness. The platform was very easy to learn and explore. I like that OneNote is no clunky and offers a clean interface. This is important when it comes to deciding if a tool is usable for multiple people.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    once you adapt to the interface, which could feel a bit outdated and old school, its incredible intuitive. An aesthetic improvement could make it reach a whole other level, just if it does not lose any of its usability features. Its quite intuitive and the learning curve is very short.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    Always available. I have it downloaded on my desktop and it opens quickly/immediately, holds open the articles I was reading on the page I was at, and is always ready-to-go for something like Word integration for adding citations
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Microsoft
    Overall, I rate OneNote's performance highly. In general, notebooks, sections and pages load quickly. OneNote integrates with other apps and info ca easily be shared/copied to and from the tool to other tools. Moreover, Notebooks tend to sync quickly meaning shared notebooks are up to date almost immediately provided there are no syncing issues.
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    Open Source
    Everything loads shockingly quickly. PDFs open much faster in Zotero than they do in Adobe Acrobat, all changes to PDFs are saved, the citation manager opens relatively quickly in Word, the tool updates with the online Zotero interface and automatically syncs seamlessly
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    Since it is part of Microsoft Office and used across the globe there are a lot of support options available. It's quickest to just do a google search which will have plenty of articles to help you since there are so many OneNote users but as an Office customer you also have access to Microsoft support and I have had good experiences with their support (probably because I'm with a large company who is a large customer to them).
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    I have never used Zotero support. I can answer the questions I need to from googling or finding others who have asked my same question in the Zotero support community forums
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    I was not involved with the implementation
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    I tried using Evernote and it is an equally usable tool, however, I prefer the interface and capabilities of OneNote. OneNote seems much easier to use and understand. I think that may primarily be because OneNote is a Microsoft application and I am very used to using Microsoft applications such as Word, Excel, etc. I also use OneNote to keep my grocery list. It does as good of a job as the grocery list applications out there, only I like the flexibility I have with OneNote and how I specifically do my shopping.
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    Open Source
    Zotero is much less prone to glitches than Mendeley, and has much easier to use web extensions and word processor plugins. I found Zotero easy and intuitive to use
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    Scalability
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    All features of Zotero have always worked just fine to me. In my many years using it, I've never run into issues. And when I do want to maximize my use of some feature or learn more, the product support communities are helpful. It's an extremely consistent, reliable software
    Incentivized
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    Professional Services
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Open Source
    Skipping - did not work with their professional services for my purchase
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • OneNote has become our organizational standard method of taking electronic notes (though some still prefer pen and paper.) It has been a zero cost outlay due to its freely available nature.
    • Its integration with other Microsoft Office products makes it easy to share notes and content between products, allowing for easy collaboration where needed.
    • OneNote's integration with OneDrive ensures that individual's notes are always safe and secure, taking away the tedious responsibility of backup from the user, and makes it happen seamlessly in the background.
    Incentivized
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    Open Source
    • More Credibility on Our Online Posts that is Informational
    • Less Chances of Potential Legal Issues When Writing
    • Less Time Spent Grabbing Sources from Browser History When Researching
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots