Why Harbor
Your second brain deserved better.
Evernote had the right idea — one private place for everything you keep. Then it broke the promise. Harbor picks it back up.
Free plan to start · No credit card
What went wrong
You spent years building a second brain. Every note. Every scanned bill and contract. Your kid's drawings, the report cards, the recording of the meeting you'll need three years from now. You handed it all to Evernote because it promised to keep it safe, forever.
Then Evernote was sold to a private-equity firm. The price nearly doubled. Most of the staff was let go. Bugs piled up and stayed. They bolted on an AI nobody asked for and used it to justify charging more. The fast, native app became slow, heavy software that pins your CPU and feels like a web page wearing a costume. And your notes — years of your life — still sit on their servers in plain text.
"That's not a second brain. That's a hostage situation."
And the cruel part is that leaving means abandoning everything you trusted it with. We think the original promise was right: one private place for your whole digital life, something you own, something that lasts decades. Someone just has to actually keep that promise. So we're building Harbor.
To harbor something is to hold it, keep it, shelter it. That's the whole product. Harbor your thoughts. Harbor your documents. Harbor your everything.
Our commitments
What we promise, in writing.
It's yours.
A personal second brain, not a company's. No teams, no enterprise pivot. Your data is yours forever — never sold, never mined, never held over your head.
It's everything, not just notes.
Scanned mail, PDFs, receipts, drawings, meeting recordings — captured, kept, and searchable to the word with real OCR. Even your handwriting.
It follows you.
Mac, Windows, iPhone, Android. Switch anything, lose nothing. A second brain has to outlive whatever device you're holding today.
It won't clog your computer.
Your brain grows for decades. We keep it in the cloud and sync down only what you need, so it never eats your hard drive.
It's simple.
Notebooks and notes — the model you already understand. No Markdown to learn, no clever tag system to fight.
It's private — when you say so.
Zero-knowledge encryption for any note or notebook you choose. Not even we can read it. An option you control, never a default that weakens the rest.
Bring your own AI.
You already have one you trust. Connect it and let it search, add, and organize your Harbor. We won't force a worse one on you to pad the bill.
A price you can trust.
We won't raise your price for three years. After that, never more than 10% a year. In writing — because you've been burned before.
You're never held hostage.
Stop paying and your memories don't vanish; they stay, read-only, free. And you can take everything with you anytime — open export, a real API, your own AI.
We're not chasing an exit. We're building the place we want to keep our own lives in, for the rest of our lives — rock-solid, native, and meant to still be here in twenty years. We'd like you to keep your life here too.
Spicer Matthews
Founder, Harbor
Side by side
Harbor vs. Evernote
Bear, Obsidian, Notion, and Apple Notes are great tools — but none is built to be a durable, personal, own-it-for-life second brain. Evernote was. Here's how Harbor keeps that promise.
| Harbor | Evernote | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $9.99/mo or $99/yr — locked in writing for 3 years, then capped | Roughly doubled under new ownership |
| Free plan | Enough to genuinely try it — and your data never held hostage | Gutted to 50 notes |
| If you stop paying | Read-only account; export and delete anytime | Locked behind limits |
| Encryption | Optional zero-knowledge encryption per note or notebook | Notes stored readable on their servers |
| Apps | Genuinely native on Mac, Windows, iOS & Android | One slow Electron app everywhere |
| Offline | Full offline everywhere — even search, even in the browser | Limited, plan-gated |
| Search inside files | OCR in photos, scans & PDFs; searchable audio transcripts | OCR gated to paid tiers |
| AI | Bring your own — open API, CLI & MCP for your ChatGPT or Claude | A weaker built-in AI, used to justify price hikes |
| API | Open REST API + OpenAPI, first-class | Public API abandoned |
| Leaving | One-click full export (HTML or Evernote ENEX) | Harder than it should be |
Swipe the table to see the Evernote column →
Harbor is for you if…
- You want one private, permanent place for your whole digital life
- You keep documents, scans, and recordings — not just text notes
- You've been burned by pricing games and want a promise in writing
- You want your notes on every device, even offline
…and not for you if
- —You need team workspaces and real-time collaboration — Harbor is personal, on purpose
- —You want an AI built into your notes app — we open the door to your own instead
- —You prefer plain-text files on disk over a synced, searchable archive
Anchored. Private. Yours.
Keep your life somewhere that keeps its promises.
Free to start, no credit card — and everything you add is yours to export, always.
Free plan to start · No credit card
Switching from Evernote
Bring your whole Evernote with you.
One-step import brings your notebooks, tags, checklists, attachments, and clips — nothing left behind.