Evernote keeps your notes on its servers, behind a subscription that only ever moves one way. NotePrivate keeps every note encrypted on your own Mac or Windows PC with a key only you hold, imports your Evernote ENEX export straight in, and charges one flat yearly price with no tiers to climb.
macOS and Windows · You hold the keys · Import from Evernote, Apple Notes, Standard Notes and more
NotePrivate is an encrypted Evernote alternative for Mac and Windows, built for the people who leave Evernote over where the notes live and what the plan costs rather than over features. Evernote keeps your notebooks on its servers, which means Evernote can read them and your access depends on a subscription that has only moved one way since Bending Spoons took over the company in 2023 and cut the free plan to 50 notes in a single notebook, synced on one device. NotePrivate encrypts every note and attachment with a master key wrapped by your password, keeps the vault on your own disk, opens with the network switched off, and imports your Evernote ENEX export so the years of notes come with you. The NotePrivate price is planned at one flat $59 a year covering both macOS and Windows, every feature in the box, no tier to climb. NotePrivate is not on sale yet, so every button on this page joins the NotePrivate waitlist.
Named products are market context, not reviews or endorsements. Check each vendor's own site before you commit.
The Evernote questions that come up most, answered plainly, with where NotePrivate lands on each.
Evernote's fall is usually told as a slow one. It led note taking in the early 2010s, then spread into chat, presentation and scanning features while the core app got heavier, and the 2016 change that limited the free plan to two devices and raised paid prices is the moment long-time users point to. A full rebuild of the apps followed, then the sale to Bending Spoons completed in 2023, deep layoffs, and a free plan cut to 50 notes in a single notebook. NotePrivate exists because of the lesson in that story rather than the drama: when a company holds your notes, its business decisions become your problem, so a NotePrivate vault is encrypted on your own Mac or PC with a key only you hold.
Evernote is still a working notes app in 2026 and it is not being discontinued, so NotePrivate is only the better pick if who can read your notes matters more to you than phone apps and shared notebooks. Evernote's download page lists apps for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android plus a web version, its plans page still sells Free, Starter, Advanced and Enterprise tiers, and Evernote says offline notes are now available to free and paying users alike. The catch is the Evernote Free plan, which its own plans page caps at 50 notes, 1 notebook and sync on 1 device. If you will pay for a Starter or Advanced plan and you are fine with Evernote holding notes it can read, staying put is reasonable. If that second part is the problem, NotePrivate keeps every note encrypted on your own Mac or Windows PC with a key only you hold, planned at a flat $59 a year.
Evernote is still running, owned since January 2023 by Bending Spoons, the Italian company that bought it. Most of the original US team was let go and the work moved to Europe, the free plan was cut to 50 notes in one notebook at the end of 2023, and paid prices rose. The app is still maintained and still syncs, so nothing has been switched off. What changed is the trade: more money for the same notebooks, with the notes still sitting on servers the company can read. NotePrivate is the other trade: a planned flat $59 a year, notes encrypted on your own machine, and an ENEX importer for bringing across your notes and tags.
The best Evernote alternative in 2026 depends on which part of Evernote you are leaving. If the problem is the bill, OneNote, Joplin, Google Keep and Simplenote cost nothing. If you want databases and shared team pages, Notion is the closest match. If you want a local Markdown vault you assemble yourself, Obsidian and Logseq are the names that come up. If you want your notes encrypted with a key only you hold on both Mac and Windows, that is NotePrivate, planned at one flat $59 a year with every feature included. Sort yourself by the single requirement that made you search, because no two Evernote alternative roundups agree on a winner.
Yes, plenty of people do. Evernote is still operating, its own user forum still fills with threads from people weighing whether to leave after years of use, and the r/Evernote alternatives mega thread stays busy, which is a fair sign of both use and restlessness. Inertia is the real reason people stay: a decade of notes is already in there. Getting out is smaller than it looks, because you export each notebook as an ENEX file, import the files into NotePrivate, and keep the export until you have opened the notes you care about. NotePrivate then holds those notes encrypted on your own Mac or PC.
Already know which app you are weighing NotePrivate against? There are direct comparisons for the Notion alternative, the encrypted Obsidian alternative and the Standard Notes alternative.
The same everyday notes, but encrypted with a key only you hold and stored on your own machine.
| Capability | NotePrivate | Evernote |
|---|---|---|
| End-to-end encrypted | Yes | No |
| You hold the keys | Yes | No |
| Works fully offline | Yes | PartialCloud oriented |
| One flat price | Yes$59/year | PartialRising subscription |
| Code, spreadsheet, one-time-code notes | Yes | No |
| Full export, no lock-in | Yes | Partial |
| Web and mobile apps | NoiPhone app in progress | Yes |
Competitor details are a general reading and change over time; verify on the vendor's site.
Also moving off Notion? The Notion alternative page covers the same ground for pages, databases, and offline access.
Almost nobody leaves Evernote because the writing is bad. They leave because of where the notes live and what the plan costs, which is the pair of problems NotePrivate was built to answer.
The plan you signed up for is rarely the plan you are on now, and basic things keep drifting behind a higher tier. NotePrivate is one flat yearly price, planned at $59, with every feature in the box.
Evernote can read what it stores. NotePrivate encrypts every note and attachment with a master key wrapped by your password, on your own Mac or PC. Not even we can read them.
Evernote is built around its cloud. NotePrivate opens, searches and edits your whole vault with the wifi off. Sync runs through a cloud folder you already own, still encrypted, and you can skip it.
Rich text, code, checklists, spreadsheets, one-time codes and saved web pages all live in the same encrypted vault, with on-device OCR so text inside images and PDFs is searchable too. If one of those notebooks is a diary, NotePrivate has a page on keeping a diary that stays encrypted on your own computer.
Ten years of notes is the real reason people stall. Here is the whole move, including the parts that do not survive it.
Coming from more than one app? The same importer reads Standard Notes backups, Google Keep, Simplenote, Markdown, HTML, DOCX and plain text, so the scattered years come in with the Evernote years.
Images and file attachments embedded in Evernote notes stay behind. If your archive is mostly scanned receipts and PDFs, that is a real reason to wait rather than switch.
Eight apps people move to from Evernote, scored on the four things that actually decide it rather than on feature counts.
| App | End-to-end encrypted by default | Notes stored on your own device | Works fully offline | Free option |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NotePrivate | Yes | Yes | Yes | No$59/year planned |
| Evernote | No | NoCloud first | PartialDesktop access; offline notes on Free | Partial50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device |
| Microsoft OneNote | No | PartialLocal cache, OneDrive is home | Partial | Yes |
| Notion | No | No | PartialLimited offline | YesFree tier |
| Obsidian | NoPlain Markdown on disk | Yes | Yes | YesPersonal use |
| Joplin | PartialYou switch it on | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Standard Notes | Yes | Yes | Yes | YesFree tier |
| Apple Notes | PartialLocked notes, or all with Advanced Data Protection on | PartialiCloud copy | Yes | Yes |
Named products are market context, not reviews or endorsements. Plans, platforms and pricing change; verify on the vendor's site before you commit.
Reading the table for a free Evernote alternative: Obsidian, Joplin and Standard Notes are the three free rows that also keep notes on your machine, and Joplin needs you to turn its encryption on yourself. NotePrivate is the paid row, planned at $59 a year, and the only one that is encrypted with a key only you hold, stored on your own disk and complete on the day you install it, with no plugin, backend or sync service to set up first.
Most Evernote roundups rank by feature count. The honest split is what happens to your notes when you close the laptop, and NotePrivate is only one of the six answers below.
Free, quick, and tied to a Microsoft or Google account. If cost is the deciding factor these win, as long as you are comfortable with notes stored on an account you do not control.
Databases, wikis and teams, which is more machinery than most people leaving Evernote wanted. If you like the structure but not the hosting, read the private Notion alternative comparison.
Local-first and free, which is the right instinct. Obsidian's files sit on disk as plain Markdown anyone with your laptop can open, and Joplin asks you to set encryption up. Here is the encrypted Obsidian alternative comparison, and the Joplin alternatives compared with prices.
Encrypted, privacy focused, with a free tier, and extras arrive on paid plans. See how the feature split differs on the Standard Notes alternative page.
Free and already installed, and fine until a Windows PC joins the household. NotePrivate covers that jump on its page about leaving Apple Notes for a Mac and Windows app.
Encrypted on your own disk with a key only you hold, on both Windows and Mac, one flat price, and rich enough to be the only notes app you keep.
Details on other apps are a general reading and change over time; check the vendor's site before you decide.
Five checks, in the order that saves you a second migration a year from now.
Evernote runs almost everywhere, so the device you use most narrows the field before anything else. NotePrivate runs on macOS and Windows only, and here is what that means for each platform.
NotePrivate runs natively on macOS, and for a Mac user leaving Evernote the difference is where the notes sit: the NotePrivate vault is encrypted on the Mac's own disk and opens with the wifi off, while Evernote syncs your notebooks to servers it can read. Apple Notes is the free option already installed on the Mac, and it end-to-end encrypts locked notes by default and every note only if you switch on Advanced Data Protection for iCloud. Bear is the other name Mac users leaving Evernote often land on, and it imports ENEX files too, but it has no Windows app and keeps sync behind Bear Pro, which the Bear notes alternatives comparison covers with prices. If you also own a Windows PC, NotePrivate covers both machines with the same vault format.
NotePrivate runs on Windows with the same encrypted vault as the Mac version, on one license for both. Evernote's Windows app keeps its notes on Evernote's servers, and NotePrivate keeps them encrypted on the PC itself, with sync through your own cloud folder as an option you can skip. If what you actually typed was something like "is there an encrypted notes app for Windows", the NotePrivate guide to encrypted notes on a Windows PC goes further than this page does.
NotePrivate has no iPhone or Android app today, which matters if Evernote on your phone is where most of your notes start. An iPhone companion app with encrypted iCloud sync is in progress, and there is no Android app. Evernote itself ships iPhone and Android apps, and so do Joplin, Obsidian and Standard Notes according to their own download pages, so if you capture most notes on a phone, one of those is the better Evernote alternative right now.
NotePrivate does not run on Linux, and neither does Evernote, whose download page lists Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android and the web but no Linux app. Joplin, Obsidian and Standard Notes all offer Linux builds on their own download pages. Joplin and Standard Notes both offer end-to-end encryption, with Joplin's switched on by you, so those two are where a Linux user leaving Evernote should look instead of NotePrivate.
NotePrivate is built for one person: one vault, one key derived from one password, and no shared notebooks or team permissions. That suits an individual moving a personal Evernote archive of notes, records and drafts, and it is a poor fit for a team that relied on Evernote's shared notebooks. If much of that personal archive is written in Markdown, NotePrivate explains its editor on the page about Markdown writing that stays encrypted.
NotePrivate is planned at $59 a year. If the budget is zero, Joplin and OneNote are the sensible Evernote replacements, and saying so here beats wasting your afternoon.
NotePrivate is a single-person vault. Evernote's shared notebooks, comments and team permissions are not the job NotePrivate does.
NotePrivate runs on Mac and Windows today, its iPhone app is still in progress, and there is no Android app. If most of your Evernote capture happens on a phone, wait or pick an app that has one.
Yes. Export your notebooks from Evernote as ENEX files and import them into NotePrivate. Note titles, formatted text and tags come across, and each file lands as its own folder.
ENEX is Evernote's own export format. A single .enex file is one XML file holding every note in one notebook, which is why exporting notebook by notebook gives you tidier folders after the import.
Not yet. The importer carries titles, formatted text and tags, and leaves embedded images and file attachments behind. Keep your Evernote export until you have checked the notes you care about most.
Several. OneNote, Joplin, Google Keep and Simplenote all cost nothing, and Standard Notes has a free tier. NotePrivate is planned at one flat $59 a year with every feature included, and what that buys is a vault encrypted with a key only you hold.
Evernote can read the notes sitting on its servers. NotePrivate encrypts every note with a key derived from your password that never leaves your device, so NotePrivate cannot read them either. Encryption is not a force field for the rest of your machine, but nothing readable leaves it.
Both. NotePrivate runs on macOS and Windows, and the vault works the same way on each. There is more detail on the encrypted notes app for Windows.
Not yet. NotePrivate runs on macOS and Windows, an iPhone companion app with encrypted iCloud sync is in progress, and there is no Android app. Joplin, Obsidian and Standard Notes all have phone apps today.
Always. Your vault lives on your Mac or PC and the app works with no connection. Sync runs through your own cloud folder, still encrypted, and you can skip it entirely.
Yes. Export the whole encrypted vault, or every note as Markdown, whenever you want. Leaving should be as easy as arriving.
NotePrivate is encrypted by design, rich enough to be your only notes app, and the vault stays on your machine. Join the waitlist and we will write the day it opens.
NotePrivate is not on sale yet. Leave your email and we will write to you the day it opens.
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