Simplenote (Web)

Pros Simple online note-taking app. Unique collaboration and sharing feature that turns notes into Web pages. Includes tags and decent search.

Cons No notebooks or folders for organizing notes. Unusual selection of third-party apps; missing key players. Free versus paid account benefits unclear. Bottom Line Online note-taking and -syncing app Simplenote offers an unusual list of features and even more unusual list of third-party with which it integrates. It could be a good note-taking app if you aren't in the market for something more standard.

By Jill Duffy Simplenote (free to $1.99 per month) is a note-taking app available online as well as in an iOS app (see my review of the Simplenote iPad app). It reminds me of Writebox in many ways. Both have iPad apps that sync with a Web app, all used for typing notes in a fairly distraction-free environment. They're both rather plain without a lot of fluff, but Writebox syncs via Dropbox, whereas Simplenote provides its own storage.

What's unusual is that Simplenote doesn't give you the option to use Dropbox—or Box or any other major storage service for that matter. The list of services that Simplenote does support is an eclectic little group, including Click.to, Scrivener, Tinderbox, and a few other apps that slightly favor Macs over Windows PCs.

As its name suggests, it's simple, at least in its design and what it attempts to do, which is provide you with a place to take notes and sync them in the cloud so that you can access them via a Web app or supported third-party app. Simplenote is also rather unusual, though, in that it has one or two unique features—and yet lacks some fairly standard features.

The most powerful note-taking and syncing app in my experience remains Evernote (an Editors' Choice), which blows Simplenote out of the water in terms of capabilities and features. Evernote does have a relatively clean and clutter-free view for typing new notes and editing existing ones. But it also has a voice memo recorder, photo upload functionality, and OCR for searching any text that might appear in your images.

In terms of note organization, Simplenote relies entirely on search. You can add tags, although it's a little wonky because you can only add single-word tags. Evernote, meanwhile, lets you organize notes into notebooks, and you can even organize your notebooks into "stacks," which function more like projects or sections of your life. Simplenote's search is pretty good, but considering its only looking at text and tags, it's nothing to write home about.

There are two unique features in Simplenote that I found both quirky and endearing. The first is how it handles collaboration. You "share" any note by pressing a button that turns it into a Web page. You can send a link to that page to anyone you want, and if the recipient signs up for Simplenote as well, she or he can edit the very same note. Then, all the parties working on the note can see it any time via the URL. It's a strange strategy, although I could imagine situation when it would be very useful.

The second oddball feature is a revisions history button, which works via a slider bar. Open a note, and you can revert it to an earlier draft by simply sliding your finger along a line and seeing the note change to its earlier state. Keeping a change history isn't a wildly innovative feature in note-taking apps, but using a slider bar to move backward and forward through time isn't something I've seen before.

Simplenote might be a good note-taking app for you if use the apps that it connects with, or if these unique features seem like they'd come in handy, and you don't need some of the stock features you might expect. It's also not available on Android (yet), so mobile users will need to have an iOS device. If you want the whole kit and caboodle in a note-taking and syncing app, go for Evernote. And if you need an app that supports handwriting and lets you markup PDFs, you'll need something like the Noteshelf iPad app or better, Note Taker HD, our Editors' Choice in that category. 

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