In accordance to the following announcement:
https://springpad.com/blog/2014/05/announcement-springpad-shutting-down/
the Springpad is shutting down on June 25th.

I used Springpand on both, mobile (Adroid) and desktop systems. Free synchronization and ability to take almost any kind of notes (including drawing, and audio) was essential, when I migrated to Springpad from Catch (which has stopped about a year ago).

So far, the following alternatives are known to me:
Google Keep, https://keep.google.com/
Evernote, https://evernote.com/
OneNote, http://www.onenote.com/
Zimilate, https://www.zimilate.com/
Memit, http://memit.com/

I do not have yet any experience with the last two.

What does community think, what would be the best replacement for Springpad?

If you use a Windows PC as your desktop, OneNote would be a great choice. OneNote still needs a lot of work for the Mac.

Evernote is probably the safest bet, as I doubt it is going to fold its tent any time soon. I don't find it all that inspiring, but it works solidly.

Steve Z.

I second Evernote, as a user of many years.

I would stay away from anything that is completely free (gives you no information on how staff and servers are paid) or in beta. More on this here:
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5164/0/the-cloud-shooting-itself-on-the-foot-dispatchiocc-and-docom

I would also stay away from Keep. If Google can shutdown Reader, it can surely shut down Keep without second thoughts.

I'm experimenting with Hacknote, which is remarkably powerful, but a tiny bit slow. But it's been taken over by Dropbox, so should be a keeper - certainly worth keeping an eye on.

I believe that was in response to Box's new note-taking app, but I haven't tried that and can't remember what it's called.

Of course Automattic (creators of WordPress) have taken over SimpleNote, so it might be worth taking another look at that as an alternative?

Increasingly I use OneNote, Notebooks and occasionally Evernote as my main notebooks. The advantage of Evernote is the open API - quite a few rather good notetakers now use Evernote as their backend database (e.g. Awesome Note, Metanota and plenty of others). OneNote is improving steadily (on the sync side), and Notebooks simply uses Dropbox, which is rock-solid.

Hacknote - duh! Sorry, I meant to write Hackpad.

Thank you all for replies!

MadaboutDana, I am adding your suggestion to the list:
Hackpad, https://hackpad.com/
I suppose, Dropbox will develop it further, they need that kind of application.


Yes, i also use Evernote for many years, but just for non-professional web clipping. Probably, now I need to review its abilities.

Good discussion. I am very disappointed at the loss of Springpad. Unfortunately, I haven't found another that really serves my needs. Keep is good, but the inability to organize into folders/notebooks ruins it for me. I'm going to give Evernote a spin again, but I remember the $5/mo. charge for offline access was what led me to Springpad in the first place.

I just took a look at Hackpad, but no Android app????

Here's another one for you, in fact: Quip 2.0. In terms of look and feel, I rate Quip very highly, but it's always been a bit short of features I regard as essential, notably full-text search. Well, the new version solves that, and adds a whole bunch of other goodies.

It's available as an app for most mobile platforms, too. You'll find it at: https://quip.com

... although Quip 2.0 still has one seriously irritating feature: although it produces proper, curly, writer's quotation marks, it doesn't do the same for apostrophes/inverted commas, which remain resolutely straight, computer-generated ones. Grrrrrr!

cyberwolf wrote:

Good discussion. I am very disappointed at the loss of Springpad.

[...]

I'm going to give Evernote a spin again, but I remember the $5/mo. charge
for offline access was what led me to Springpad in the first place.

I assume that you refer to offline access _in_mobile_platforms_ as this is indeed a premium feature http://evernote.com/premium/ whereas offline access in desktop platforms is available to all users. As a premium user I can tell you that this particular feature does not work as well as I would have liked, in Android at least. I don't use it much but my understanding is that in order to have offline access to a particular item/record, you should have previously opened it while online--i.e., the full notebook is _not_ downloaded by default beforehand, only items already visited.

In respect to your disappointment, I would suggest that you prepare yourself for more in the future, in particular as you want to rely on free services. I would again suggest you read the full thread on the subject which I mentioned earlier, and in particular this post by Paul http://www.outlinersoftware.com/messages/viewm/19345 which for me was an eye-opener: everything I had seen fell in place. In brief: many cloud-based apps may have an expiry date hardcoded in their DNA. Be particularly cautious of apps which _don't_ offer premium options or any other visible way to generate the income which will keep them alive. To have _failed_ in the market is one thing, to have taken advantage of trusting users to prove one's worth as a developer is another.