Notational Velocity is an open-source note-taking app (or website) that is designed to help users organize and store their thoughts, ideas, and notes quickly and efficiently. It works by creating a database of your notes, so you can search and access them quickly. It allows you to create notes on the fly, with an auto-complete feature to help you quickly find the notes you need. You can also store images and links in your notes. It is designed to be simple and fast, so you can easily capture and access your thoughts, ideas, and notes.
NV is a small and highly focused utility for quick annotations and retrieval based on instant search feedback. In addition, the use of plain text and the file system allows interoperability not only with other applications, but also with operating system tools such as grep. Evernote is a large, cumbersome and highly proprietary application without any of these features.
Evernote
Microsoft OneNote
Simplenote
Zim
Todoist
CherryTree
Tomboy
Google Tasks
Notezilla
OpenNote
ToDoList
wikidPad
CintaNotes
RedNotebook
QOwnNotes
Toodledo
nvALT
NixNote
Omni Notes
Leanote
Notational Velocity focuses on plain text notes, while Evernote handles them in a proprietary formatted format and files are not saved to your hard drive for easy access.