Evernote

Pros

Evernote is the ultimate personal digital notebook. It's actually built as a collection of notebooks which allows you to document, well, everything you need to in a highly organized way. I've found that almost all of my thoughts start with Evernote and it serves as a great foundational app for lists, ideas, and concepts that you need to jot down and reference later. The cloud-based approach means your notes instantly live everywhere across all of your devices which is essential, especially because 80% of my use within Evernote is short, quick interactions and I never know on which device I'll need to access something. I don't have time to wait for it to load or to go through a bunch of UI to decide where to put my note.; luckily - Evernote does a good job of keeping the notebook selection process fairly simple so you can make your note and move on with life. I've also found Evernote's search feature to be very strong compared to other applications. I've grown to rely on the search more heavily as my notebook collection has grown.

Cons

Sometimes note creation is a tad clunky, mainly related to the "Name" of a note. I'll start typing out my note very quickly and then realize that i'm actually in the Name field which is disorienting and leaves my having to cut/paste the Name section into the description. I typically don't know what I want to name a note until I've finished writing it. This problem exists in both the mobile app and desktop versions.

Pros

Overall I started using this application for my notes while attending school and I learned more of the in's and outs and the power of taking notes with this app. This app is great if you are in need of having to take notes on the go and having them organized at the same time which the app does for you.

If you answer yes to the following questions you will benefit from this application:
Do you often have trouble finding something to write with or paper to write notes but you only carry your phone at all times?
Do you often talk to your self and come up with good ideas but not enough time to write them down?
Do you take pictures and save them in your phone as notes but have trouble sorting through embarrassing photos?
Do you have a scanner app on your phone to scan documents just to be able to e-mail that as an attachment?
Have trouble keeping your thoughts and notes organized?

If you answer yes to one or all those questions basically this app does this for you on the go all in one app. You can take regular notes like a traditional pen on paper on your screen with the widget. You can make a voice note from the widget as well without having to open the app fully. If you think it's a waste of time trying to scan a paper on a physical scanner and then transfer that to your computer and send that important e-mail because you are always on the go or out of the office? No problem this app does that for you.

Cons

I have been using the app for more than 2 years and I have to admit that even though it's a great app it does have a few flaws but they are just minor in comparison to all the good things it gets right.

You can only have 3 devices per account unless you pay for the premium version. I personally think that the premium version offers a lot of more versatility to the app but I don't pay for this service and keep using the free version. I normally carry this app on my phone, tablet, and have it on my computer so I can sync all my notes together. I understand that this might not be too much of a con but I don't need much of the premium features that come with that premium fee. You might keep getting ads to upgrade every once in a while if you are a free member. Another drawback that I have is that sometimes the app will randomly crash while typing my notes and even though it does save this before exiting the app making sure that I don't lose any of my work. I do find that this does get me a bit frustrated and sometimes I have to be restarting my device or just the app itself losing some of my valuable time. I value my time and when you are either a college student or a business sometimes you cannot afford to lose that important test notes for your midterm or client information.

Pros

This is by far the best and the most functional software to make notes of any kind, keep necessary information and synchronize it across any type and any number of platforms: I use it simultaneously on Macbook, two Windows computers and iPhone and it always synchs smoothly. Unlike many other alternatives, there is a great system of nested notebooks which makes it super easy to group and arrange the information. Other great options: saving PDF files inside, add notes by sending whatever to an assigned email address, tagging, search in everything, and of course, collaboration options. Other small but great add-ons are Web clipper for desktop and mobile browsers and external mobile apps.

Cons

I've been using this software since 2010 and still sometimes feel overwhelmed with a plethora of settings and tweaks. I understand how overly complex and frightening it can look to a new user, that will most likely compare it with Apple Notes or so. Over the past years, Evernote has made some positive changes in the overall design, as well as the functionality (and simplicity of creating) of tables and pictures editing. However, this is still not enough to be called easy. Additionally, there can be great problems with document formatting when copying something from Web.

Pros

Love the flexibility, especially the way you can embed different files within Evernote, and render them within itself (e.g. you can view Office, Xmind, PDF and other files in your notes, either as attachment or as inline render (which is very useful).

There's also some nice features like password-protected redaction of words/information in a note, classic note links (useful for cross-linking of notes) etc.

And all these wrapped within the most important thing about Evernote - its platform agnostic nature, and very robust search engine (OCR enabled).

Cons

It is hard to use - the use case is not obvious and many users and companies failed to harness its power because Evernote doesn't have a very natural way of using it "correctly". There's just too many ways to use it. And it is really difficult to keep Evernote "organised" - for personal Evernote, you can say that's perfectly fine because you probably shouldn't have tried to organise your notes (you should treat it as a brain dump, and use search instead of trying to find things navigationally), but for business, you need to organise your stuffs and Evernote still lacks the ability to enforce certain control on that. You have to rely on your team members' ability to regulate themselves and tag notes rigorously and consistently.

It also has certain limitation that's not very desirable, e.g. lack of password-protection feature of an entire note, lack of more levels when it comes to organisation of notes in notebooks (no further stacking, bundle of notebooks etc.), and you almost certainly have to use Tags instead of Notebooks to effectively organise your notes.

Pros

I use Evernote personally for about when it first emerged on Iphone and Ipad. Since then it went up and down and donw and up, it was a Rollercoaster Ride. Sometimes I came close to quiting, the again I carried on with it. Everything became more severe when I started to invite Colleagues and Friends for personal and professional Projects. a great Boost always was - most knew the product and had next to zero animosities or better to put it the other way round: Even the not-so-much bunch of people were okay in colaborating via Evernote. On Top of it, it was available on their favourite Platform (no one had to switch form Android to iOS or vici versa). Everyone knew how to use the editor, things didn't look to pretty at the start but then, after a while, like a game you get the hang of after a couple of rounds, it got better and better. Tables, Images, even embeded Videos. It all got together. Also we could choose which data would be encrypted and which was okay to stay unencrypted. Thinsg synced fine and we also had an integrated chat. Basically, Evernote had covered a lot of the needs we had as a team as wel as a band of friends in private Projects. The Features you require are there and they are easy to use.
Also, the team behind evernote is quick regarding upcoming Platform changes and usually Evernote is up to the newest iterration of the Operting System it runs on verry quickly.

Cons

Speaking of the features which are there...as it is often the case with growing platforms, there are some which are just not...my type of thing. Document templates might be something for some people, but not for us. Also, the Features are not homogenous on the different platforms. Thats right, if you want to do search-and-replace you better do not try to do it on a mac. Right Features like this are missing. Inviting People also can get a real pain in the arm in case they use Evernote privately without a busines account, as can the abominable dialogue for sharing notes on mac. It is absolutely clear that evernote is incredibly ambitious by supplying native clients for iOS, Android, Windows, MacOs PLUS a Webfrontend. This realy is awesome but it leads to raged edges when you are power user, save a team of such working cross Platform un complex projects.