Springpad beats Evernote and why you should care.

by Andrew Gertig on June 21, 2010

I went on a Springpad spree today! Every day I start springpadding more and more stuff.  Springpad and Evernote are at their base note taking apps for iPhones and Android devices (like my Droid), and each also have a wep app component.  Springpad has a cleaner interface to me than does Evernote and it has better options for what to classify your notes as. Whether it be as a book, a movie, a shopping list, a great wine, or whatever it is Springpad does it better.  So if you want a way to not forget that thing you are about to forget then you should go to springpadit.com and signup, or you can just download the app from the Android Market or the iPhone app store and start cruising from there.

Here is a real life example of me using Springpad:  As I’m walking out the door my wife says (two weeks before her birthday), “Hey, I want the new Francine Rivers book Her Mother’s Hope, for my birthday!”  I’m not going to lie, I am a forgetful dude sometimes, okay a lot.  I love my wife so I immediately opened up my Springpad app on my Droid, hit the plus symbol, chose “Search/Create”, chose “Book”, typed “Her Mother’s Hope”, and BOOM the first item on the list was the book.  I then chose “Add This” and it immediately pulled in the book’s data from Amazon with a price and an option to buy it online with one click purchasing.  Done and done.

Here’s to not forgetting the name of that book your wife wants or that thing you needed to buy at CVS.

Update: A few more thoughts on the two platforms: Springpad allows you to select what type of a note you are making whether it be a text Note, Task, name of a Business, a Restaurant, a Wine, a Book, a Movie, and more, while Evernote limits you to just a text note.  Evernote does have two features in its favor, audio recording and making images text searchable, though neither of these was useful enough for me to continue using the app.  Springpad and Evernote both have the option to share items.  Springpad gives you greater flexibility over what items you share and has the ability for social interaction with shared items though the web implementation of this feature is somewhat lacking.

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  • http://rlieving/blogspot.com Rob

    Not to be too much of a downer, but this example isn’t very good. You could have achieved the very same thing on an iPhone with the Amazon app.

    For me, Evernote and Springpad are about saving information that you might use in the future. I have an iPhone, so I cannot speak to Android. But the iPhone app has a host of UI issues. It isn’t easy to make lists – it isn’t clear what the end list will be.

    I will charitably call the Evernote UI ‘limited’. But it isn’t confusing and you know what you get at the end of the day.

    I want to agree with you because I think Springpad has a lot of potential. But your example doesn’t address how Springpad is good at managing data over Evernote. One-click purchase is available in a lot of apps. I hope that is not what your trying to convey as Speingpad’s strengrh here.

  • http://andrewgertig.com Andrew Gertig

    Rob,
    I agree that it is not the best example to showcase what Springpad can do but it was one that I had used just recently and so was fresh on my mind. I thought about the Amazon app that I have on my Droid as well after I had posted this and should have noted in the blog that I actually didn’t use the one click option but ended up going by Books-A-Million a couple days later, where I did pull out Springpad to recall the name of the book.

    I can’t speak to the iPhone UI but I do like the Springpad UI better than Evernote’s on Android. Evernote is not a bad app at all I just like Springpad better. I’ll add some clarity in a post update.

    Thanks,
    Andrew

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