Microsoft seems to be ready to swoop in on troubled Evernote, by means of a new feature created for its OneNote service.
The new OneNote Importer tool is designed to allow easy, convenient transfer of Evernote information to Microsoft’s competing service. Users will need to have a PC with Windows 7 or higher installed, with Evernote for Windows highly recommended. At the moment, it’s not yet available for mobile or Mac users, but it does allow for syncing of notes between Mac, iOS, and Android platforms.
Additionally, the tool allows you to save some money, as Microsoft so helpfully points out. OneNote is free on all supported hardware, and Evernote is also available for free, albeit with a limited set of features. Those looking for a fuller experience would have to pay $50 for Evernote Premium. For marketing purposes, Microsoft didn’t mention that Evernote has a free version, though consumers may already know that; what it did say is that the $50 worth of productivity software available through Evernote Premium can be had for $70 on Office 365 personal, which comes with OneNote, a full suite of Office apps, and far more features.
OneNote and Evernote have long been competing in the note-taking space, and are similar products in the truest of senses. The former product allows you to combine text, images, audio, video, handwriting, and other mediums in one note. The latter product comes with media-collecting tools and allows you to store those tools together with text and other types of content, but differs from OneNote as it’s more geared toward checklists. Evernote does come with work chat and other team collaboration features, and tries to cater to the business sector, but despite this differentiating factor, the company is currently in dire straits.
In specific, Evernote has gone through some organizational changes in the past few months. Company co-founder and chief executive Phil Libin was moved to Executive Chairman, several VPs had exited the company in the wake of Libin’s reassignment, and several apps were canned. In February, Evernote had also done away with its e-commerce campaigns, further adding to the uncertainty the company is going through.