Evernote vs. OneNote

And the battle goes on. There have been some recent updates to both of these programs that have prompted me to take another look to see which one is better suited for what I need.

Evernote’s general capabilities are still not as rich on the PC/Desktop side as they are in OneNote but it still has a better overall feel and function between all of the different devices that you can bring it up on. I have listed a table below on some of the major features and how each product rates in respect to each other.

Feature	Evernote	OneNote
Notebook –this feature allows you to group notes together to make them easier to access	Two Level-You can create a master Group and then have notebook containers listed within the master Group or container.	On the surface it appears that you only have two levels here as well however, you may have as many Notebooks that you want. The second level is called a section in OneNote but there are two types of sections that you can create, the first is a Section Group which can create one or more Sections or more Section Groups. A Section then is what actually is the container for your note pages.
Free Form Entries	You don’t have this with Evernote	You can place your entries anywhere you wish on the note. I really like this feature and I miss it with Evernote.
Text Style	The basics are here but they are very limited.	A much richer choice of controls to enhance your text styles. You can create a much richer end product here.
Web Versions	Very similar whether you use the Web Interface or the Desktop Interface.	The Web interface is poor at best not only to the desktop version but also to what Evernote provides. This is the one feature that is a tipping point for me to continue using Evernote as my primary note taking application.
iPad App	Again, this is very similar to the both the Web and Desktop Apps. This makes it much simpler to move from one device to another.	Ugh! The newly released app is ten time better than it was but it still is a poor cousin to anything else. Still not good enough. Evernote wins here as well.
Application Interfaces	Evernote is very strong when it comes to integrating on the iPad with other applications. It should since this is the world that it has mostly evolved in. More and more secondary apps that I use have tie ins to not only Evernote but also Dropbox that these features keep me coming back.	OneNote has very strong tie ins with other Office Applications that I use a lot. This makes it very hard for me to stop using it but in reality, other than the task management associated with Outlook many of the other features that I want can also be found in Evernote.

So, for me I still lean towards Evernote as my primary note program but I still find myself jumping into OneNote when I need that extra formatting or connection to Outlook.

Let me know your thoughts!