A beautifully designed, silky-smooth note-taking app with full cross-platform sync—completely free and ad-free.
About Zoho Notebook
Zoho Notebook is a note-taking and knowledge-management tool much like Evernote. Use it for notes, checklists, documents, voice memos, videos, and more. It’s a free note app from veteran vendor Zoho.
Feature Highlights
- Capture text, audio, images, checklists, and hand-drawn sketches
- Notes appear as elegant “cards” that are both gorgeous and personal; interactions feel fluid
- Web, macOS, iOS, Android, plus browser clipper—sync everywhere with zero friction
First-Hand Impressions
Like many, I was once wowed by Evernote’s polish, but its later limits—60 MB monthly upload, sync on only 2 devices—made the free tier unusable.
Zoho Notebook bills itself as an Evernote replacement. When I tried it back in 2017 it was rough around the edges, but years of steady updates have turned it into a mature, award-winning product: Apple’s App Store Best and a Chrome Recommended extension.
Core note-taking is solid and clean. On mobile, every swipe and tap is polished—small delights that also speed up real work.
Clean, Efficient Card-Based Notes
The card UI is tight and tidy; even rushed notes look organized. On my phone I live in quick doodle mode and voice notes, capturing thoughts on the fly and tidying them up later on desktop. PDF/DOC upload is there, but the stars are mobile sketching, document scanning, web clipper, audio & file previews, plus smart notes that auto-pull article content from a URL.
Quick Notes
No native Windows or Linux client yet, but the web app is so responsive you may not miss one.
Download & Use—Free Forever
Zoho Notebook gives you unlimited uploads, storage, and devices—no ads, no paywall. How? Zoho’s ecosystem of paid business apps (CRM, mail, projects, etc.) foots the bill. In their own words:
For over a decade Zoho has offered free productivity software. Development and hosting are funded by our growing suite of paid enterprise products. Notebook is no exception.
—Zoho
Bottom line: Zoho Notebook now out-classes Evernote in polish and remains 100 % free. Give it a shot.