Evernote wants $249.99 a year for your archive.
This is the same thing for half that — and it reads your scans.
Unlimited notes, unlimited notebooks, encrypted in your browser. $124.68 a year. Import your Evernote export in a few minutes. Forty notes free forever, no card.
If you have more than 1,000 notes, Evernote has already made the decision for you.
Evernote's Starter plan is $99 a year and stops at 1,000 notes and 20 notebooks. Go over, and their help centre is explicit about what happens: you can still read, edit, share and export what you have, but you cannot create a new note until you are back under the limit. Notes sitting in your trash still count.
So a 3,000-note archive on Starter is a read-only archive. To write in your own notebook again you either delete years of your own material, or move to Advanced at $249.99 a year.
FortyNote Professional is unlimited notes, unlimited notebooks, unlimited devices — $124.68 a year. That is the entire pitch. Everything below is detail.
| Evernote Starter | Evernote Advanced | FortyNote Professional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per year | $99.00 | $249.99 | $124.68 |
| Per month | $8.25 | $20.83 | $10.39billed annually · $15.99 monthly |
| Notes | 1,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Notebooks | 20 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Devices | — | — | Unlimited |
| Notes encrypted before they leave your device | No | No | Yes |
Evernote pricing checked 25 September 2026 on evernote.com. If it has changed since, tell us and we will fix this table — support@fortynote.com.
It takes about ten minutes, and most of it is Evernote's export running.
- 1
Export from Evernote. In Evernote desktop, select a notebook or all your notes, then File → Export Notes. Choose ENEX format. Evernote writes one .enex file containing your notes, their formatting, tags and attachments.
- 2
Make a FortyNote account. Free, no card. Your password unlocks your notes as well as your account, so choose one you will remember — and if you forget it, we can email you a link to set a new one.
- 3
Import. Settings → Data → Import, and choose your .enex file. Notebooks, tags, attachments and formatting come across.
- 4
Search for something you remember. Press Ctrl K and type any word from any note. That is the whole point of moving.
If your archive is large: the free plan holds 40 notes, so a big import needs a paid plan first. Start the 7-day trial, import, and if it is not right, cancel — your export file is still on your own computer and nothing has been deleted from Evernote.
Your notes are encrypted before they leave your device.
FortyNote encrypts each note in your browser with AES-256-GCM, under a key derived from your passphrase. What reaches our servers is ciphertext. Evernote does not do this — your notes sit on their servers in a form they can read. Read the honest version of that claim below. It has a limit, and we would rather you heard it from us.
Scanned pages become searchable.
Photograph a receipt or a printed page and FortyNote reads the text on your device — the image is never uploaded for recognition. Then Ctrl K finds words from inside it. Printed text only; handwriting is not reliably recognised, and we do not pretend otherwise.
Forty notes free, forever, no card.
Not a trial. It is where the name comes from.
In fairness to Evernote
They have more mature phone apps. FortyNote is now on Android and iPhone, but Evernote's mobile apps have years of polish. If you rely heavily on mobile features, weigh that.
Their Web Clipper is better than anything we have. Saving an article to Evernote from the browser is genuinely excellent and years ahead of us.
They read handwriting. We read printed text. Evernote's handwriting recognition is a real feature. Ours is not reliable on cursive and we do not claim it.
They have been doing this since 2008. Integrations, an export format others support, a large community, and a track record. We launched this year. That is not nothing, and if your notes are irreplaceable it is a fair reason to be cautious — which is exactly why our import does not delete anything from Evernote, and why you should keep your .enex file.
Where we think we win: price for an unlimited archive, encryption before upload, and search that reads your scans. If those three do not matter to you, Evernote is a good product and you should stay.
What "encrypted in your browser" means, and what it doesn't
Your notes are encrypted on your device before they are sent. We store ciphertext. Your passphrase never leaves your device.
It is not end-to-end encrypted, and we will not call it that. Here is why. If you forget your passphrase, something has to be able to get your notes back, or they are gone forever. We chose recovery: a copy of your account key is escrowed, wrapped to a key we hold. That means that in principle, for an account with an escrow, we could decrypt it.
We think that is the right trade for most people, because real people lose recovery keys and "your notes are gone forever" is not an acceptable answer. But it is a trade, and you deserve to know which side of it you are on.
If you want genuinely end-to-end encrypted notes with no recovery path, Notesnook and Standard Notes are better choices than us, and we would rather say so than have you find out later.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Notebooks, tags, attachments and formatting come across from the .enex export.
No. You export a copy; your Evernote account is untouched. Keep the .enex file.
Professional is unlimited. Start the trial before a large import so the import is not interrupted by the free plan's 40-note limit.
Yes, any time — full export from Settings → Data. A notes app you cannot leave is a trap, and we would rather you never feel stuck than keep you by friction.
Yes — both are live now. Download the Android app on Google Play, or the iPhone app on the App Store.
Your archive should not be held hostage by a price increase.
Import it, search it, and see whether it feels like yours again.