Move from Evernote in one step

If you’ve been searching for an Evernote alternative, the thing keeping you where you are probably isn’t love. It’s gravity. Years of notes, scans, receipts, and clipped articles live in there, and every alternative you look at makes you imagine the move: weeks of copying and pasting, broken attachments, a tag system flattened to nothing.

So we made the move one step. Well, two, and Evernote owns the first one. Here is the whole process, start to finish.

Step 1: Export your notes from Evernote

Evernote can export your notes in its own ENEX format, a .enex file that carries your notes and everything inside them. In the Evernote desktop app:

1. Open Evernote on your Mac or PC (export lives in the desktop app, not the phone app).
2. In the sidebar, right-click a notebook and choose Export Notebook.
3. Pick the ENEX format (.enex) and save the file.
4. Repeat for each notebook you want to bring.

Exporting notebook by notebook keeps your notebook names, and your attachments ride along inside the files: PDFs, images, audio, scanned documents, all of it. When you’re done you’ll have a folder of .enex files. That folder is your life’s notes, finally sitting on your own disk. Worth doing even if you never import them anywhere.

Step 2: Import into Harbor

In Harbor, open Settings, choose Import, and hand it your .enex files. That’s the step. Harbor reads each file and rebuilds your library, with a live progress bar counting through your notes as it works, so a big library isn’t a leap of faith. You can watch it land.

What comes across:

• Notebooks and stacks, with their names and structure.
• Tags, still attached to the right notes.
• Checklists, still checkable.
• Attachments: PDFs, photos, scans, audio files.
• Web clips you saved over the years.

Notes arrive as notes, not as a zip file of exported HTML you’ll never open. And the import runs on the web app or the native Mac app, whichever you prefer.

What doesn’t change

Harbor uses the same mental model you already have: notebooks, notes, and tags. There’s no new organizational philosophy to adopt, no markdown to learn, no folder-versus-link debate to pick a side in. If you could find something in Evernote, you know how to find it in Harbor. The first minute should feel like home; that’s by design.

What’s better on the other side

Moving is only half the story. Here’s what you gain once you’re in:

• Search that reads your files. Harbor’s OCR finds words inside photos and scanned PDFs and highlights the exact match on the page. The receipt you photographed in 2019 is one search away. More on how this works at search.
• Native speed. Real Mac, iPhone, and iPad apps. No Electron, no beach balls, and everything works offline.
• A real lock, when you want one. You can encrypt individual notes or notebooks so that no one, including us, can read them. One honest trade-off: because we truly can’t read an encrypted note, it’s excluded from OCR, search, and any AI you connect. Encrypt the sensitive things; keep the rest fully powered. Details at encryption.
• The door stays open. Export to ENEX, HTML, or ZIP anytime, or pull everything through the open API. An Evernote alternative that traps you is just a younger Evernote. If you ever leave Harbor, the exit is as easy as the entrance.
• A price you can plan on. $9.99 a month or $99 a year, with our no-surprises promise in writing on the pricing page.

One evening, not one month

The honest time estimate for most libraries is an evening: export your notebooks over coffee, start the import, watch the progress bar do the rest. The full switching guide, including answers to the questions we hear most, lives at switch.

Your notes have been ready to leave for years. When you are too, you can start free at Harbor and bring them home in one step.