Evernote user since 2011 with a lot of data, I'm considering switching to Joplin but need reassuranc

nonobio · 2024-04-03T14:07:47.294Z

Hi

I'm very tired of Evernote's slowness and bugs and I'm considering switching to Joplin, but with around 10 GB of data including 27000 notes, 207 notebooks and 5200 tags, I'm a little apprehensive about switching applications.

Can Joplin handle this amount of data and will it be fast and responsive?

Long version :

I have used Evernote since 2011 and version 10 since 2021.

Things weren't always perfect with Evernote legacy (before v10), but when it worked, it was fast, thanks in part to the fact that the Evernote Legacy Windows application was native.

Since Evernote v10, which uses an Electron application, I have had to learn to do without some abandoned features, find workarounds for others, and above all, get used to waiting for most actions.

When the application works "well", most actions take between 2s and 8s (creating or displaying a note for example), but the thing is that it often works "poorly", as has been the case for me since versions 10.70x where hardware acceleration was disabled, which creates heavy usage of my GPU for most tasks in Evernote. With this problem, creating a simple empty note takes at best 15s and at worst 2min, or even crashes the application. See my topic on the Evernote forum (evernote-very-slow-if-hardware-acceleration-is-enabled).

What doesn't help matters is that Evernote's support isn't responsive: it's been 2 months since I talked about my problem and still no solution, and maybe there never would be one.

In short, I've always dreaded this moment, telling myself that I had better accept the bugs and slowness rather than change applications, but now I think I'm ready.

I first did a comparison of the functions between Evernote and Joplin, and I found that I might miss these, because they are absent in Joplin (the most important at the top):

No Suggestions for existing labels and notebooks when doing a GLOBAL search
Opening notes in a separate window is not possible (or with an external editor?)
No note reminders
No Today List or Today Reminders
No text encryption
No Recycle Bin for deleted items
Android web clipper only capture link?

If you also have any suggestions for these features that I'm going to miss, they're welcome, but my biggest fear is Joplin's performance once I import all my Evernote notes... will it be efficient?

I would like to have feedback from "heavy" Evernote users, like me, who have imported their data into Joplin.

By doing my comparison of functions, Amplenote also made it into my top 2. If you also have opinions on this app I am interested.

Oh, one last thing, is Joplin under active development and has responsive support?

Thanks

laurent · 2024-04-03T14:20:02.238Z

If you have a lot of notes, one advice would be to use WebDAV, Joplin Server or Joplin Cloud for sync. Anything else, in particular Dropbox and OneDrive, will be too slow for that many notes.

nonobio · 2024-04-03T15:09:26.227Z

Damn, I was just thinking of using a large unused Dropbox space that I have to sync Joplin

If I use Dropbox, would Joplin slow down in general, or just for syncing?
And if I still try to use Dropbox sync to begin with, can I easily switch to another type of sync if necessary? (from Dropbox to Joplin Cloud for example).

laurent · 2024-04-03T17:21:06.370Z

Yes just syncing will be slow. It might work for you though, as long as you're fine with letting your laptop or mobile device sync overnight for example. The problem is the initial sync and after it shouldn't really be noticeable. And yes you can switch to something else later on

nonobio · 2024-04-04T09:03:12.163Z

Thank you, between your responses and those I got on Reddit, I am reassured
So I start exporting my Evernote notes, then import them into Joplin

laurent · 2024-04-04T09:43:07.720Z

A post was merged into an existing topic: Is Slow Synchronization in Joplin a Manipulation or a Necessity?

Rootman · 2024-04-04T10:23:26.327Z

OP, all I can offer here is what is it going to cost you to try the switch, a few hours of your time? With that many note and notebooks, probably a day or so.

What I would recommend is that you try the Joplin Portable, that requires no installation, it keeps everything in one folder. Or go ahead with the full Joplin installation, it should not impact your Evernote install in any way. Setup the encryption, then the sync. Make sure it works OK. Then as a trial export a smaller notebook from EN and import it into Joplin. Play with it and ensure yourself that it is what you want and need.

If everything is OK, then export the rest of your Evernote notes one notebook at a time and import it into Joplin. Do the sync. Remember static notes, ones that never really change, are not resynced again, once they are on the sync it's there. It does sound like you do lots of notes daily though.

Give it a whirl, like I said there is no cost to you other than your time. I switched from EN to Joplin years ago and am completely happy. To see if you will be satisfied you need to test it out. If the sync time is the only thing that bothers you then consider setting up a WEBDAV sync, setup a Joplin server of your own or spring for the Joplin cloud service, it might even cost you less than EN does.

ParanoidShiba · 2024-04-04T12:30:26.315Z

Hi and welcome.

I moved from Evernote to Joplin last year. I had about 10k notes, 100 notebooks, 100 tags, 10GB on Evernote.
Note that when you turn on encryption in Joplin, that 10GB becomes 15GB.

I now use Joplin Cloud. I tried other options, but the speed wasn't great.

The biggest warning I have is, the first sync takes a long time. It took me 3 days. Of course it will depend on your network and your PC, but in any case, don't give up with just one night.
I can tell you that Laurent's support was great throughout the process.
Once initial sync is done, Joplin Cloud has been responsive for me and I am a happy user.

Hope you find a good home for your data.

nonobio · 2024-04-04T14:18:04.612Z

Thanks

jpservices · 2024-04-04T18:32:13.451Z

Just on the process of completing the migration from evernote on my side. I have half of your notes but quite a lot of attachments. A few comments:
I hope will help

one of the key feature I miss at this point is an easy edit on a mobile in particular on check lists. Just marking the a item as done while editing and adding did not work under the heat of a meeting
I also miss on the pc/Mac the ability to have multiple notes open
I also miss the thumbnail for notes with pictures but there is a plug in (note overview)that brings almost an evernote kind of note list
the concurrent edit of evernote notes is not on joplin but I assume that joplin is in this regard at least as good as Legacy
the first sync has been a pain but on evernote I had multiple notebooks that never synced completely. Lately the offline feature also broke and although I spent hours to sync when offline I could not open the note. With joplin once sync all is fine even if you want the pictures and attachments. I use joplin cloud. Dropbox did not work for me.
encryption is great but did not work for me for everything because of the mobile sync (time again). On a station its fine though. So I have 2 accounts one encrypted and one not. Would be great to encrypt at the notebook level rather the entire account
first sync and more so encryption was particularly painful because our IT block the always on possibility on mobiles. Joplin cannot sync in the background. Finally I had second app running on a second window on Android that keeps the screen on and then let it run overnight.
Be aware that v10 of Evernote did export quite a few notes with Untitled Notes title. Legacy worked though. I reported this bug recently but others did it already in 2020! I ended up exporting everything from Legacy and just incremental work with v10 creating some duplicates.
I also used the enex markdown import on joplin. You lose some more formatting (but the result is so far great) than when enex with html. But the resulting note is then update able on a station. With html when editing you are hard core on your own.
I also tried the backup and restore. All fine and super fast. The must be a trick to bypass the first sub hassle. The is a documented work around with file sync.

So far things have been smooth and after first sync super fast and really reliable but I have not tried yet in the fire of office work mostly because of this limited editor that does not handle checklist well enough on mobile. There are multiple prototypes that would fit my needs that I hope will make a release soon though.

Good migration.

nonobio · 2024-04-05T06:31:58.360Z

Hi,

I'm reading the Joplin doc and I'm at the WebDAV sync page. This is one of the services that you (@laurent) recommended to me for my numerous notes.

laurent:

If you have a lot of notes, one advice would be to use WebDAV, Joplin Server or Joplin Cloud for sync. Anything else, in particular Dropbox and OneDrive, will be too slow for that many notes.

I have never used WebDAV but I see that there is the service Synology WebDAV Server and I have a NAS Synology (DS116)!

Is this really one of the solutions that you recommend that will be faster than using Dropbox?
Is it easy to set up? (I come from Evernote sync where I just had to log in to my account - simple but it didn't work -)

I will primarily be using Joplin on 2 Windows desktops located on the same local network as my NAS, but I would also like to use the Android application if it works well (Evernote Android worked very poorly and I had learned to do without it). Although I will use my Android smartphone mainly at home too, I might use it occasionally outside of it.
Will Joplin sync with Synology Webdav be easily accessible from outside my home? Otherwise, I could do without it I think.

A surely important element: I have a small ADSL internet connection with around 8Mbs for download and 1Mbs for upload, but if I don't use Joplin too much outside of my house, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Another element, when reading the part on encryption, I chose not to activate it because I understood that it could slow down the synchronization.

So, is choosing Synology WebDAV Server the best choice for my needs?

I also think I heard about a Joplin server installed on NAS Synology, is that something else?

One advantage I see in using Dropbox is that it gives me a backup of Joplin online...

Thanks

sttrebo · 2024-04-05T13:31:55.628Z

for me, I sync'd to my Synology WebDAV and had very good results. seemed to be faster than when i was syncing to a Nextcloud instance. speed was good and I never ran into sync problems. I connected my home PC, work PC, android tablet and android phone and all stayed in sync without issues. I did migrate to hosting Joplin Server on my NAS (out of curiosity rather than need) and it's been great. fast sync times and no conflicts and automatic backups thru synology hyperbackup.

nonobio · 2024-04-05T14:13:06.795Z

Thank you for your message, so do I understand correctly that it works even better with Joplin server than with the Synology WebDav server?

But is this Joplin server developed by Joplin, and is it as easy to install as the WebDav server? That said, I haven't yet installed the Synology WebDav server, I just saw that it was offered in the Synology packages when I did a search, so I tell myself that it will be easy to install...

sttrebo · 2024-04-05T15:22:32.048Z

faster sync's with Joplin Server than WebDAV server. But Synology WebDAV server is easy to install and works right out of the box. My Joplin Server uses docker (Portainer actually which is kinda a front end to docker) so it's a bit more work to setup than just using the WebDAV. But once it's up and running, seems to be very stable.

canadrian · 2024-04-05T19:37:17.764Z

About 10k notes here, fairly recently migrated from Evernote.

I had to export and import in batches because there kept being errors on import and I then had to track down the note(s) causing whatever the problem was. This was a few months ago and some recent Joplin updates claim improvements to the Evernote import process, so perhaps you wouldn't have the same issue.
Running Joplin Server in a docker container on Unraid, and it works well. I reverse proxy it to the outside world through a Cloudflare tunnel via the SWAG docker container. Only issues were (a) I had to turn off caching in Cloudflare (you could skip Cloudflare and just open a port on your router), and (b) Joplin has an upload limit of 250mb per attachment and I had a couple huge PDFs bigger than that. I deleted those notes and moved the PDFs elsewhere, but I still can not seem to get Joplin to stop telling me about a sync error about those notes. There must be a hidden trash folder somewhere?
The first sync, as others have mentioned, and ESPECIALLY with encryption, takes DAYS. Which was fine on my computer, and even kinda fine on my fridge-mounted android tablet, but it annoyed the hell out of me on my phone and pissed my wife right off with hers (we have some shared notebooks).
Speaking of shared notebooks, and probably my absolute biggest disappointment with Joplin, is that tags do not sync between users on shared notebooks. My wife and I heavily used tags for recipes, health records, tax records, and much more, and it's actually a massive f*cker that we can not make use of our carefully curated tags anymore. I really wish I had known this before switching to Joplin. I'm not sure if there would have been a better option, but still, this has had a massively detrimental impact on how we store our digital records.
Lastly, since the addition of OCR in Joplin, I keep getting attachment sync conflicts. Maybe this will resolve, especially once my PCs work through doing all the OCR on existing notes. But like every time I open Joplin I have something like new 30 attachment sync conflicts I need to resolve.

YMMV

nonobio · 2024-04-06T05:35:31.293Z

nonobio:

Things weren't always perfect with Evernote legacy (before v10), but when it worked, it was fast, thanks in part to the fact that the Evernote Legacy Windows application was native.

Since Evernote v10, which uses an Electron application, I have had to learn to do without some abandoned features, find workarounds for others, and above all, get used to waiting for most actions.

I just realized that Joplin also uses an Electron application , I thought that it was native Windows like Evernote legacy, and that this is what could guarantee its speed...
In my head, Electron applications were all slow web wrappers. So I must be wrong...

inivium · 2024-04-06T12:17:08.507Z

I converted from Evernote last summer. I only have 240 notes, but I work with several at a time across 3 devices. Joplin seems to scale. I also have many notes with embedded media (mainly photos). The way Joplin handles that seems to be a plus for handling many notes. I agree with the other observations here about the initial syncing being the part to do while you have some AFK time. If slow, Dropbox offers a lot of advantages in its combination of ease of setting up and one-stop shopping for securing both Joplin and other other directories.

nonobio · 2024-04-06T13:42:18.647Z

I just finished importing my Evernote notes. It took around twenty hours! I excluded a notebook containing around 10,000 notes that I'm not sure I'll keep. In the end, I still imported around 17,000 notes and several hundred tags.

And I rushed to test Joplin's responsiveness..., and there, disappointment:

Joplin is slow (at least on my PC and with my amount of data): when I click on a notebook or a label, it takes several seconds, between 3 and 15 before the list displays the notes
Joplin uses a large amount of data on my SSD: 22 GB for an imported Evernote data size of 10 GB

image830×184 10.9 KB

My PC is not a racing beast (Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4310U processor, 8.00 GB RAM, Intel HD 4400 GPU, Micron M600 MTFDDAT256MBF SSD), maybe that's the reason, but I thought it would be enough for Joplin.

Since Evernote runs in parallel, maybe my RAM is a little light (I saw the Memory Compression process). I also saw the antimalware running: maybe it's scanning all these new files.

What do you think, is this normal?
FYI I have not activated neither synchronization nor encryption.

LeoW · 2024-04-06T13:58:33.811Z

Try running Joplin after a clean reboot, NO EVERNOTE, and no other apps.

I run with 16 and 32 GB on my pcs. 8 GB is not enough in my opinion.

What are your results? And keep task manager open and monitor cpu and ram.

tomasz86 · 2024-04-06T14:58:54.646Z

Have you installed any plugins? If yes, then please try disabling them first, as they can consume quite a bit of RAM on their own, and this will be a problem on a machine that only has 8 GB of RAM total.

You may also want to monitor your overall RAM consumption in the OS, as if you've exceeded the physical memory and are utilising the page file, then everything is expected to slow down drastically.

I use Joplin with no problems on weaker hardware than yours, also with 8GB of RAM, but because of the limitations, I always pay attention to how many applications are open at the same time.