How to Build an App like Evernote? A Comprehensive Guide to Cost & Features

Managing work and life requires a lot of effort, as organizing and completing the checkboxes that you have set as an objective for the day becomes essential as well as challenging in a limited time. In the early days, pen and paper were the best friends of people for easy management and recalling their tasks.

As time proceeded, digital devices started dominating the usual note-taking methods. Smart handheld devices became essential with time not just for entertainment, but to enhance productivity as well.

What Does the Stats Say about the Productivity App?

As per the stats of Statista, in 2017 178.1 billion mobile apps were downloaded and are likely to reach 258.2 billion in 2022.

Among 32 mobile app development categories in Google Play and 28 in Apple App Store, 4 are the most dominating of all. Productivity apps are one of the four dominating apps with 96.77% users recorded.

Technology plays a major role in assembling and aligning everyday deeds. One of the biggest examples of technical assistance has emerged, Evernote. Evernote is a perfect enterprise mobility services for people who are looking to organize their life efficiently.

What you leverage from Evernote is –

  • The freedom to work anytime and anywhere.
  • To make notes in any form, such as images, texts, audio, scans, and PDFs.
  • A quick search of a particular file or note.
  • Easy way to write with the help of formatting tools.

What makes Evernote Captivating?

Evernote is a productivity app that assists you to stay creative and prolific. This cross-platform application can easily be accessed through any device, so you never miss out on a thing. Some of its features that you would like to integrate into your app to make it productive are –

1. Organization of Task Through Optimum Syncing

To ensure the success of a mobile app such as Evernote, you must understand the everyday struggle of the customer. This app must inspire them to use it, not abandon it. Hence ensure that your application features can easily sync with whichever device a customer uses.

– Seamless Syncing

Users must have the leverage to begin their task on one device and continue with the same data on another device seamlessly without missing them or the need to begin from scratch.

– Security

Seamless syncing should also come with security. As the risk of losing data is more dangerous than working from scratch. Hence, you can sync data integrating cloud computing services for extra security, assurance, & data validity.

– Offline Access

An important feature to keep the work mode on is offline access. Providing an offline mode to work, allow your users to eradicate any excuse that can curtail productivity.

Special Features

There are a few additional features that you can incorporate to ease the assembly and classification of files and documents.

  • Adding a search bar can help in easily locating documents within seconds.
  • Enable keyword tagging to sort and organize documents seamlessly.
  • Extra search filters, such as titles, dates, & much more keywords for quick results.

2. Using a Screenshot Saver Feature to Save What You Like

There may be times when you want to store or save information mentioned on an online clip or article. Web page clipping feature lets you save full-screen size information, be it in the form of pdf, web page, or article.

– Add Annotations

Saving the information in the form of a screenshot is customary, but having a rich feature to let users remember the stored image, even after years, gives real meaning to this feature. Yes, through annotations, one can easily highlight the essential information within the screenshot in order to remember the reason behind saving them.

– Customizing Screenshot

Not just annotations, a great feature of this remarkable mobile application is its leverage to tag, edit title, and add remarks to the content. All these changes can be saved and stored in the account for future references or use.

3. Template for Every Need

You can easily scale your application by integrating quick and easy to use templates. This futuristic on-demand mobile app can ensure your app scalability with a fully customizable and endlessly reusable template that can fit every need.

Whether it is a habit tracker plan or a project tracker, you have a template for every purpose ranging from personal to professional use.

4. Search Your Document or Keyword Wherever It Is

Evernote comes with a myriad of features. You can build your hybrid mobile app that lets your users seamlessly attach files to their notes.

– Advance Features

Evernote let you search and add texts, PDFs, Office docs, presentations, scanned documents, as well as images. These features are only accessible if you purchase the Business or Premium plans offered by the app. For the trial, you can offer these features for free and after a good response, you can also turn them into a paid category.

Deep Scanning

This feature enables the user to quickly find the keyword in the text, despite the font size or style. The deep scanning property ensures you get the complete result from the search.

5. Smart Algorithms to Read Handwriting

The smart and intelligent Evernote has a feature to identify and read user’s handwriting, be it in notes, whiteboards, to-do lists, photos, & more.

– Recognizes 28 Different Languages

The smart and brilliant app developed by the creative, innovative dedicated software development team has integrated a plethora of languages, during the development phase, for this app to read.

– Integrated Scanner

This cross-platform application also comes with a scanner. This pocket-sized scanner uses your device’s built-in camera to capture handwritten ideas, both on iOS as well as Android devices.

– Work with iPad Pen

The latest and most-awarded feature of Evernote is compatibility with Apple Pen. This feature enables the user to write or draw with their natural handwriting and sync with any document they want.

6. A Scanner to Remember

Evernote is a revolutionary cross-platform application that has emancipated its users from using pen and paper to store critical information in small handheld devices. A simple eco-friendly step also frees you from the burden of carrying multiple documents and keeping track of them.

– Scan the Essentials

Whether it is healthcare insurance files, product warranty, invoices, receipts, or any other important document to scan. This feature of a highly productive app assures scanning of all documents without the need for additional resources. Companies offering professional IT services can integrate scanners that render extra support to the users.

– Easy Bills and Business Card Scanning

Keeping track of important bills, phone numbers, and email addresses are simplified with the help of a scanner. The integrated feature ensures that you have everything in hand.

7. Integrate With Any Third Party Applications

A myriad of applications available today render productive business outcomes, such as Google Services, Microsoft as well as Salesforce Services. These services seamlessly run on a device and can sync easily. Hence, to scale your note-taking productive app, they must get easily synced with the third-party software.

– Keep Mails and Documents Synced

Evernote can easily get synced with Outlook and Gmail. Syncing mails will allow you to share & store attachments without opening up a browser. This way, business managers and operators can easily strategize their plans and share them with their collaborators.

– Collaborate through Teams and Slack

Notes made in Evernote can be compiled and clipped to the important conversations in Slack as well as Microsoft Teams. You can also integrate a clipping feature in your clone app to locate important docs, images, & more without the need for switching between the apps.

Just like an Evernote business allows quick access to notes while chatting. You can also instigate a feature in your productive app to comprehend and access the full context of the project with just a click away.

8. Bring Ideas and Innovations to One Place, Spaces

This feature of Evernote lets you and your team members collaborate in order to share ideas, projects, and relatable together.

– Collaborate Easily

This feature gives users a special space for the business class people who wish to share documents, insights, & other knowledge with their team members.

– Access to Important Documents

Sharing here is not limited to viewing the documents. Any information available in this special area is accessible to anyone without the need for prior permission.

Evernote keeps on enhancing new features for its users to stay ahead of the competition. Hence new features, such as Bulletin Boards and Directory that allow you to learn more from the ideas, insights, and knowledge shared by others and stay updated all time.

Key Points to Note for Developing Mobile App

In order to stay competitive in the ever-evolving market, one should offer these key features in their mobile app-

  • Compatibility with different devices is a must.
  • Integrating an Offline Mode is an add-on for the users.
  • Easy synchronization with files and folders to easily manage them.
  • Quick and seamless collaboration, as well as sharing of files, images & other data.
  • UI must be intuitive and users must be able to navigate through all features easily.
  • Additionally, templates can be helpful in effective project management.

What Approach should you take to Develop a similar App like Evernote?

The cost for developing an app can be evaluated from the number of resources needed to assign into the app development and designing process. With the help of an MVP (minimum viable product) you get the right response about your product. Hence you get enough room to make improvements and then launch your final product to ensure scalability.

1. Front-End Development

Keeping a simple yet captivating UI/UX makes it easy for users to use and navigate features within the app.

  • Pick the right color theme, keeping the category of the app in mind.
  • Icons in the app must be comprehensive. They help in reducing the excessive content in the app.

2. Addressing Core Functions with API

For common note-making functionality, and for seamless communication of product with other services, you may require a combination of API.

Evernote also offers SDKs for Android as well as iOS app development, which you can incorporate in your app for –

  • Creating & sharing notes
  • Adding reminders
  • Creating notebooks & sharing them
  • Search functionality
  • Attachments & permission restrictions
  • Additionally, you can use the GitHub repository to integrate SDK for both operating systems.

– MyScript SDK and API

MyScript offers extensive services, inclusive of custom API development services for the note-taking app is one of its use cases. MyScript SDK can be used for integrating the ‘Search Handwriting’ feature. Moreover, the SDK also allows the user to easily fill forms and integrate diagrams.

– Collaborating with Quip

To integrate an API for building an app like Evernote, Quip aids the dedicated development team to offer rich communication with the documents.

3. Back-end Development

An app development undergoes various steps from – mobile app prototyping to testing & support. Hence, all aspects are requisite for a smooth and effective app.

Back-end software developers are responsible to address aspects, such as requisite infrastructure and database, substantial storage, as well as integrating user management for mobile apps.

Other than these, security is the key aspect that any user would need while sharing and storing critical information. Any enterprise software development company can reckon about integrating back-end components from AWS Mobile, Google Firebase, and Kinvey service providers.

Functionalities to Add in an app like Evernote

A productivity app, such as an Evernote must have essential features that any mobile app contains. Without these features a user will not be able to organize or share requisite information. These features include –

  • Ease of Login/Logout
  • Flexible or multiple options to register
  • Ease of editing the profile
  • Search option for quick location of files
  • Tutorials for quick learning
  • Push-notifications for new feature integration or so.

Cost of Developing an App like Evernote

As aforementioned, the app has three versions – free, premium, and business. Few of its features are not open for free and premium versions, whereas a business plan lets you access all its features.

The cost of developing the free version of Evernote may start from $30k and may range as per the complexity and feature integrated within the app. That said, business and premium versions of the app exceeds the aforementioned cost of development.

We have segregated the cost of app development based on an hourly basis. Different regions have distinct costs per hour for development. Hence choosing a product engineering company within your location is the best choice. The key aspects that define the cost of development are –

  • Designing of the application
  • Platforms of app development, such as Android or iOS or both will determine the language selection for development
  • Size of the app
  • Number of developers needed to develop apps (Time for development can vary the number of resource integration in app development)
  • Wallet Integration
  • Project Complexity

Duration of the Project Development

Sometimes, a simple looking app can be time consuming when developing it. Factors, such as changes in the features or designs or color, can be the reason for delays. Hence, the development time of an app can range from 400 hours and elongate to 1500 hours or even more.

The hourly rate of the region can vary from $50 – $200 per hour. So, as the hours of development increase, the cost of the entire project is affected.

Irrespective of the location, many choose only the best mobile app development company. This ensures reliability, validity, and scalability of the app. Such companies are also known to be transparent with their customers during all phases of development to justify their work and build trust.

Whether it is developing an app or a website, the lifecycle of all remains the same. Hence a company developing an app would ensure dictating the time taken for each process and every phase at the beginning. The time of development is dissected as follows –

  • Project Description may take 3 hours or more.
  • Implementation of REST API may take around 12 hours or so.
  • Database model set up may again take around 12 hours or so.

Basic Functionality Integration

To integrate seamless in and out of the app, you would need substantial time for these features –

  • Flexible registration may take around 4 hours
  • Sign in and out may take around 4 hours or so
  • Editing profile feature integration may take 5 hours or so
  • Offline mode for note and search navigation may take around 6 hours or so
  • Adding tutorials may take around 9 hours or more
  • Push notification and Geolocation in total will take 10 hours or so.
  • Web clipping feature integration may take around 8 hours or so.

Note management incorporates creating, editing, sharing, updating, and sorting of documents or notes. Hence, time needed for similar feature are as follows –

  • Smartphone camera access integration for image capturing may take around 14 hours
  • Attaching a file from the phone gallery feature may take around 22 hours or so
  • Typing with standard keyword integration may take around 36 hours while the handwriting feature may take around 16 hours
  •  Note sharing takes around 6 hours
  • Reminder set up and mark takes around 6 to 8 hours
  • Creating and adding tags takes around 18 hours

Shared access is a feature in Evernote, hence to roll out this feature, the subsequent time needed for –

  • Joint work documentation takes 22 hours
  • Posts such as on Facebook takes around 14 hours

You can integrate the latest technology into the app such as AI, chatbot, and blockchain. Enhancing your basic note-taking app with chatbot solutions will take it to the next level.

  • Chatbot integration and push notification would take another 28-30 hours development time.

Data security is the key feature in any application. Integrating single layer and password authentication characteristics would enhance security.

  • Time for security layer integration requires 3 hours.
  • Integrating HTTPS encryption or third-party encryption, such as STARTTLS for email encryption, HSTS for data transfer security, and AES for data centers encryption. All may take 40-60 hours.

If you want the application to have the feature to add objects, highlight texts, and enable you to write text on PDF documents as well, you will have to give additional 40 hours for this feature integration.

  • The explicit business card and bill scanning feature may take around 32 hours or so.

Back End & Front-End development are the most essential parts for a functional and intuitive mobile app development and website development. 

  • The backend may take around 200 hours.
  • Designing may take around 210 hours.
  • Testing may take around 115 hours or so.

In a Nutshell –

Productivity apps, such as Evernote are a time saver for a lot of users. It allows them to concentrate on their work while the app secures and saves their data. The application is known for its seamless sharing, creating, editing, and updating documents in any form. The valuable app lets you tag your docs so they do not dissipate and you can find them without draining your single minute in searching.

All in all, you can keep all your necessary documents in one place and access them on any device you want, and easily share your knowledge & insights with your team members for business or project scalability with just this one app. However, there is no fixed cost for developing an app like Evernote. Hence, looking for IT consultation services from any software development company can help you with the cost estimation as well time frame to develop the entire app.