Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A "note" can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten "ink" note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and exported as part of a notebook. Evernote supports a number of operating system platforms (including OS X, iOS, Chrome OS, Android, Microsoft…
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Higher Logic Vanilla
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Higher Logic Vanilla is a customizable and themable forum software. It can be used for support communities, Q&A Communities and more. There are numerous integrations, including SSO, and connectors to popular software such as Mailchimp, WordPress, Zendesk and Salesforce.
Evernote is an excellent tool for keeping track of client relationships and taking notes. The indexing is excellent, with text in images and text. However, a Wiki might be better for large-scale collaboration. It is a perfect use case for it, and it is hard to beat. To-do lists that need to be tracked or have due dates assigned do not work well in Evernote. It's almost like a library that anyone can add to, edit, tag, and reference. Evernote has a limited checklist function in terms of tasks meant to be kept in one place rather than reviewed and organized over time.
For companies that want to customize almost anything and make the forum look like your site, Vanilla Forums is the one for you. Customization and automation of the data via the API with other systems is more than possible and they serve to be great as a hosting provider, dealing with all the upgrades, deployments and maintenance and threat management well. I would say they might be less turn key for a small application but the fact they have an open source community, the ability to find help and information can lower the barrier of entry for most.
Gamification: The ability to incentivise community members to get involved with ranks and badges is one of the main reasons that we purchased the tool.
Support: The Vanilla support team are incredible, often responding to issues very late at night and proactively fixing issues as soon as they occur.
Customisation: Vanilla can be completely styled with css allowing us to match it to the branding of the rest of our website.
There are some features I wish Vanilla would implement that could improve ease of use in our specific community, but some of the ideas we have are not necessarily something that would benefit all of the forums that Vanilla works with.
In the past, we've had issues with releases breaking some of our specific site features they built for us, but this has improved drastically recently.
I can't really imagine how much they'd have to charge me to make me quit Evernote. I can't really think of any technology that has changed my life as much without going back to email in the 90s, or the introduction of the iPhone. I know I sound ridiculous, but it would be really tough for me to live without it. If I were forced to choose between my smart phone (and keep in mind that I get lost in my driveway) and my Evernote, I'd probably choose my Evernote.
Basic visual organization - ability to create a notebook and store user notes inside of it.
Basic easy navigation - You can quickly move in and out of files and notes.
User intuitive addition - whatever you need to add to your document, it's relatively easy to understand and use.
We find overall that we still want some functionality in creating better task lists, boards, and other things that we find in Notion - which is the tool that we use as a team notebook/storage space.
Generally issues are by connectivity and not Evernote availability but I have had issues in the past with cross-client consistency of data which Evernote Support has ID'd as bugs that are still unresolved as far as I know
I bet you won’t even need to call their support. Their product has never failed me. Simply put. But if you were to email them to gather some details or help, I bet they won’t disappoint you. Don’t worry about the support, it’s the last thing you should worry about this product.
Make sure you think about your tags. If you end up with multiple similar tags then things aren't grouped together as you might prefer. For instance if you have a tag called Disney and Walt Disney, this will split up your articles. Evernote makes it simple to correct, but I suggest you make sure your users look closely at the existing tags before creating new ones.
The most similar program I have used is OneNote by Microsoft, and other note taking programs exist like Notepad and Microsoft Word but those programs do not offer syncing like Evernote does. There are newer programs in the space like Dropbox Paper and Google Docs which would be on a list of ones to consider.
From a footprint standpoint, Vanilla has less technical bloat than vbulletin or InVision, and it outdoes Lithium as far as features and service go. The bloat of other services and ability to use new ways of engaging communities such as through Reactions are part of the reason Vanilla was selected. However, the features are better on a couple more seasoned platforms and more equipped to deal with issues and technical problems.
Evernote has allowed our school's over 3000 students and staff members to work more efficiently instead of spending time on making physical notes, clicking pictures, and uploading them to the cloud in order to share them
The investment in Evernote Premium has also allowed for heavier files to be attached in each note such as student work that allows teachers to be certain that students have followed deadlines and finished assigned tasks
Evernote has allowed our school to smoothly transition in and out of online learning as the local COVID-19 protocols change and student work requires one platform to be based on throughout
