| Your notes are secure from the Company | Apple Notes | Apple keeps the keys to all your Notes at Apple; so, even though your Notes are encrypted on the server, if ordered to, Apple can (and will) provide the keys to the Government. This also means they must be accessible to Apple if, e.g.,a malevolent actor accessed or Apple was hacked. (Only padlocked Notes are secure from the Company and Apple Notes only offers a single Padlock that, if used, is the same for all Notes that are padlocked.) |
| Standard Notes | Standard Notes is fully secure using a 256-bit key where user password is augmented by Argon2 for the symmetric input to the XChaCha20-Poly1305 symmetric encryption algorithm(as strong as better known AES256/GCM) for encryption of Notes on the server, where server does not have the public key. This algorithm is currently regarded to be quantum-safe (even considering Grover’s algorithm that would enable the key length to, effectively, be cut in half). Unlike Nandemo, however, Standard Notes does not have the capability to share these Notes in a zero-knowledge manner, internally, where only the user and user’s shared-with have access. |
| Evernote | Evernote can see the contents of your notes. It does not use end-to-end encryption and does not protect your notes’ content. It uses this for indexing and for ai learning, which, as per their materials, is for their users benefit (but could be accessed by a malevolent actor within the organization or if the company was hacked). |
| Nandemo | As a part of Nandemo’s proprietary symmetric encryption algorithm, there is an AES256/GCM pass. Like Standard Notes, Nandemo operates on a zero-knowledge basis,where, although the data is sync’d with our servers, Tessellation Software has no ability to view users’ notes,nor to provide to any government — even if ordered to do so. The AES256/GCM pass alone renders Nandemo, what most experts consider to be quantum-safe, though Nandemo goes far beyond this: Our proprietary algorithm is designed to be quantum-safe into more than the foreseeable future. Our algorithm generates its parameters from a 501-byte,randomly-generated password that is unique for every note, media, or other document. (Note that Governments are currently storing up AES256 content with the expectation that they can eventually break it.) |
| Your notes are secure from governments | Apple Notes | Since Apple has the keys to your Notes and would have to provide to any Government with a proper (or, in some countries improper order), your Notes that are not padlocked are not safe. While Apple does not have the keys to your padlocked Notes, the level of encryption Apple Notes uses for its padlocked Notes is AES128. (This is not strong enough in a post quantum world, where there are attacks that would be able to break a key of that size in a timeframe of a current 64-bit key [Grover’s algorithm]. Even today, it is not the level required by governments currently for what they regard as their most sensitive information.) Also, you can only have one padlock password and that single password applies to all your padlocked Notes – not sufficient for sharing different Notes with different groups of people where a user may wish to protect within just that subset of shared-with users. |
| Standard Notes | See information from above |
| Evernote | Since notes are not encrypted on Evernote’s servers (or, at least, can be decrypted and are indexed within Evernotes servers for purposes such as indexing), they are available to any government. |
| Nandemo | See information from above |
| Your notes are safe from hackers | Apple Notes | Apple keeps the keys to all your Notes at Apple; so, if a hacker were to breach Apple’s security (unlikely), they would have access to your Notes’ content. Furthermore, whether encrypted by padlock (and there is only a single padlock available for all notes that are padlocked), or by the device’s passphrase (as all notes that are not protected by padlock are), Apple only uses AES128 byte protection – not considered enough for governments’ most sensitive information and not considered a post-quantum-safe algorithm due to key length. Also, on your own device, Apple Notes’ notes are not encrypted (unless padlocked – and then: only AES128 encryption; and, every Note that is padlocked has the same padlock). |
| Standard Notes | Standard Notes keeps your records encrypted on device in case device is compromised with a standard currently believed to be quantum-safe and with as strong encryption as AES256/GCM provides (but using the XChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithm). |
| Evernote | Does not encrypt your content (so that it can provide server-side indexing and other ai functionality), but this makes your information very vulnerable to hackers who might be able to breach their security. Also, on your own device, Evernote’s notes are not encrypted making all information in Evernote available to hackers who successfully gain access to your devices. |
| Nandemo | Nandemo follows the principle of encrypted in transit and encrypted at rest. Even non-padlocked Notes are protected with their own randomly generated, 501-byte password (where these passwords themselves are protected by a password formed from a user’s app password and PIN and augmented to 501 bytes). If padlocked, a double level of encryption is provided. In that case, the Note and attached Media is encrypted again using the padlock password augmented to 501 bytes after being encrypted with the randomly generated password. For the AES256 pass, Argon2id is used to augment the padlock password to the requisite 32 bytes. With padlocked Notes/Media, both the App password and Pin are needed AND the padlock password is needed to decrypt and view content.
Our encryption provides protection with both AES256/GCM (the standard the U.S. Gov’t currently uses for its most sensitive information) AND with our proprietary encryption algorithm (which, as just mentioned, includes an AES256/GCM pass, and, beyond this, is designed to be quantum-safe and far stronger than AES256/GCM even without that pass as part of it). |
| Cost per month for sufficient capabilities | Apple Notes | Free, but missing many of the features and capabilities offered by other products.
Among the capabilities missing from Apple Notes (relative to Nandemo)
- Security related: Only a single padlock for those notes that are padlocked (preventing secure sharing with different groups of people or individuals without providing your padlock password to all).
- Sharing: In any case, Apple does not allow for the sharing of padlocked Notes.
- Organizaiton:
- Apple allows you to group Notes into Folders/Sub-Folders. This does not offer the more powerful and robust capabilities afforded by Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category grouping capabilities that enables users to jump back and forth between Notes in different parts of the hierarchy without traversing up and down deep hierarchical Folder/Sub-Folder structures (or, if viewing all Notes in a list, without finding Notes that might be very far spaced apart). This is especially important for users with large numbers of notes.
- Apple Notes has no custom ordering of Notes (only pinning).
- Searching/Finding information: Apple does not offer an integrated global/local search capability. (In fact search within a single note is problematic in long notes.)
- Usability: Very difficult to create a rich text note with various formatting (e.g., underlining, bold, change of fonts or sizes [of which only very limited sizes are offered]), so if a user wants to create more than plain text content, though they can, it takes a lot of clicks to change formats and interrupts the thought and creation process.
- Note versioning/history: None.
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| Standard Notes | Free version (compared with Nandemo $2.50/month version): - Security: Full security on server w/Zero-knowledge architecture (like Nandemo)
- Note versioning/history: None. Nandemo keeps note version history for any note user desires to have history. Nandemo allows the owner to revert to any prior version, delete prior versions that are no longer wanted, and decide whether to share history as well if the Note is shared.
- Sharing: No internal sharing with other users. Nandemo provides for secure, internal sharing: User can decide whether each user a note is shared with has edit permission; receives history; is able to extract the content shared outside of the Nandemo app, etc.
- Editing: Plaintext only. Nandemo offers plain text and rich text capability.
- Organization: Only keyword tags; no Folders/Sub-Folders in the free version.
Productivity version: $7.50/month (compared with Nandemo $2.50/month version): - Security: Full security on server w/Zero-knowledge architecture (like Nandemo)
- History: Versioned Notes available (as with Nandemo) (but only keeps prior versions for 1 year; Nandemo is unlimited in this regard, though Standard Notes offers unlimited Note History for $10/month)
- Sharing: No intenral sharing with other users
- Editing: Both RichText and PlainText (as is the case with Nandemo)
- Organization: Folders and keyword tags; Sort by modified date or alphabetical.
(Though the paid version has Folders/Sub-Folder organization, it does not possess the superior organizational capabilities provided by Nandemo’s Category/Sub-Category organizational structure that enables users to jump back and forth between Notes in different parts of the hierarchy without traversing up and down deep hierarchical Folder/Sub-Folder structures (or, if viewing all Notes in a list, without finding Notes that might be very far spaced apart). This is especially important for users with large numbers of notes.)
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| Evernote | Starter version: $8.25/month (compared with Nandemo $2.50/month): - Security: Unencrypted notes stored on the server (vs. Zero-knowledge high-level security in Nandemo; Notes not encrypted on device)
- Limited to 1000 notes Nandemo does not limit the number of Notes. As most Notes are small – a few pages or less, one should expect our 2GB could hold ~50,000 notes – even if we assume a generous 40K/note average.
- Limited to 20 NoteBooks. Notebook is sort of like a folder or Nandemo Category, but far more limited in that Notebooks cannot be put into other Notebooks.
- Limited to 2-level hierarchy: “Stacks” that can contain Notebooks; Notebooks contain notes. Evernote’s 2-level hierarchy is limited even beyond that: Stacks cannot themselves contain notes. So, in this 2-level hierarchy, only the “leaf” level [i.e., the Notebook level] can contain Notes. At least, the Apple Notes App and the paid version of the Standard Note App offers a Folder/Sub-Folder structure of unlimited depth where Notes can be kept at every level. With Nandemo and as with a Folder/Sub-Folder hierarchy, a user can have any number of Categories, with each Category having any number of Sub-categories, and each category/sub-category can contain notes and other categories/sub-categories. But, Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category hierarchy takes this a step further in that the Categories/Sub-category structure enables notes to be viewed in a “flat manner” – but, within their categories and sub-categories (where jumping from note to note at different levels and parts of the hierarchy can be achieved from the same screen – without the user having to navigate up and down a hierarchical folder structure to view/edit two or more notes in different areas of the hierarchy).
- Organization:
- Sort orders supported: Modified Date, Alphabetical (Title), Creation Date
Sort orders Nandemo: Modified Date, Alpahabetical (Title), CUSTOM - Pinning: Supports pinning any number of Notes to top vs. Nandemo’s capability of putting all Notes in any desired order, where order is maintained in both Category View and “all-notes” view (Classic View).
- History: Has Note versioning, but only able to see and go back to prior versions using the PC/Mac version of the app (not from Apps on iPhone/Android).
Starter version: $8.25/month (compared with Nandemo $2.50/month): - Security: Unencrypted notes stored on the server (vs. Zero-knowledge high-level security in Nandemo; Notes not encrypted on device)
- Limited to 1000 notes Nandemo does not limit the number of Notes. As most Notes are small – a few pages or less, one should expect our 2GB could hold ~50,000 notes – even if we assume a generous 40K/note average.
- Limited to 20 NoteBooks. Notebook is sort of like a folder or Nandemo Category, but far more limited in that Notebooks cannot be put into other Notebooks.
- Limited to 2-level hierarchy: “Stacks” that can contain Notebooks; Notebooks contain notes. Evernote’s 2-level hierarchy is limited even beyond that: Stacks cannot themselves contain notes. So, in this 2-level hierarchy, only the “leaf” level [i.e., the Notebook level] can contain Notes. At least, the Apple Notes App and the paid version of the Standard Note App offers a Folder/Sub-Folder structure of unlimited depth where Notes can be kept at every level.
With Nandemo and as with a Folder/Sub-Folder hierarchy, a user can have any number of Categories, with each Category having any number of Sub-categories, and each category/sub-category can contain notes and other categories/sub-categories. But, Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category hierarchy takes this a step further in that the Categories/Sub-category structure enables notes to be viewed in a “flat manner” – but, within their categories and sub-categories (where jumping from note to note at different levels and parts of the hierarchy can be achieved from the same screen – without the user having to navigate up and down a hierarchical folder structure to view/edit two or more notes in different areas of the hierarchy). - Organization:
- Sort orders supported: Modified Date, Alphabetical (Title), Creation Date
Sort orders Nandemo: Modified Date, Alpahabetical (Title), CUSTOM - Pinning: Supports pinning any number of Notes to top vs. Nandemo’s capability of putting all Notes in any desired order, where order is maintained in both Category View and “all-notes” view (Classic View).
- History: Has Note versioning, but only able to see and go back to prior versions using the PC/Mac version of the app (not from Apps on iPhone/Android).
Advanced version: $20.83/month (compared with Nandemo $2.50/month): - Same as starter version but unlimited Notes (like Nandemo) and unlimited NoteBooks and Stacks (but still 2-tier limitation – see above).
- Same advantages/disadvantages vs. Nandemo as otherwise listed for Starter version.
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| Nandemo | - Security:
- Algorithm: Nandemo uses a proprietary symmetric encryption algorithm that includes an AES256/GCM pass. AES256/GCM is the algorithm currently used by the U.S. Government for its most sensitive information and it is believed to be quantum safe [though not all experts are confident].) Our patent pending algorithm has far greater strength and is designed to be quantum-safe even without this pass. We include AES256/GCM because our algorithm has not been accepted by certified authorities and we want our app to be able to be used with confidence. Note that some governments are currently storing AES256/GCM encrypted content with the expectation that they will be able to decrypt it in the future. Our algorithm renders your information future-proof and, so, is superior in this aspect to any other Notes app we are aware of in the market.
- Zero knowledge and with sharing: Nandemo enables you to sync your notes and attachments to our server in a zero-knowledge manner, where we are unable – even under order to provide it to any government or third party. Unique to our app is its ability to share these Notes with multiple other parties in a manner where only you and those shared-with have visibility to content. You can’t share notes securely or otherwise in Standard Notes.
- Padlock: This provides for external password unique to each particular padlocked note. The padlocked password is augmented to 501 bytes and used to doubly encrypt the Note and its attachments (on top of the encryption from the randomly generated 501-byte password for the Note and each attachment). Unique to Nandemo: Padlocked notes can be shared. You can’t assign different padlocks to different notes or share a padlocked note in Apple Notes.
- Organization:
- Categories and Sub-Categories: Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category grouping capabilities enable users to jump back and forth between Notes in different parts of the hierarchy without traversing up and down deep hierarchical Folder/Sub-Folder structures (or, if viewing all Notes in a list, without finding Notes that might be very far spaced apart). This is especially important for users with large numbers of notes.
- Sort orders and Views: By modified date, alphabetical (by Title), or CUSTOM. In Classic View (where all Notes a appear in the Preview screen as a list [i.e., outside of their category or sub-category]), the sort order selected applies across all notes. Here, you can switch to CUSTOM sort order and arrange the Notes in any relative order you choose. In Category View (where Notes are in their categories and sub-categories, and where these categories and sub-categories can be expanded or collapsed within their “flat” [easy-to-access structure]), the sort order selected applies within each category or sub-category. If CUSTOM sort order is selected, the order of notes that was set among all notes is respected within the category or sub-category. This capability far exceeds the “pinning” capability offered by some other apps.
- History and Versioning: Versioning for any note can be turned on when the note is created. Past versions that are not wanted can be easily deleted and there is even the capability of sharing with and without prior versions. The creator of a note may revert the note to any prior version.
- Superior search: Supports global to local search (where item being searched for carries forward into the note selected).
- Usability: We believe our editor offers a superior interface that enables formatting flexibility with far fewer keystrokes. Disadvantages: No PC/Mac version yet, but these are in progress. In the meantime, Nandemo provides the capability to extract notes and their attachments where notes can be edited by the TextEdit App on a Mac or WordPad on a PC.
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| Share padlock notes securely | Apple Notes | You cannot share a note that is padlocked in Apple Notes (and all padlocked notes use the same padlock password, which effectively means that padlocking here is only meant to further protect the data on the end user's devices vs. the capability to also further protect very sensitive data shared among different groups of users). |
| Standard Notes | Has padlocked notes, but doesn’t provide for sharing (even for non-padlocked notes). |
| Evernote | Doesn’t offer padlocked notes. |
| Nandemo | With Nandemo, you can share padlocked Notes and their attachments securely with different padlock passwords protecting each note and its attachments (if any). With Nandemo's zero-knowledge architecture, you can be certain that notes so shared -- even those without padlocks -- are shared in a manner where only the owner and those he/she shares with can view the shared note's content or its attachments. |
Secure and encrypted collaboration
(Internal Sharing) | Apple Notes | If you collaborate on a Note, it is accessible to Apple unless you and everyone else shared-with has ADP (Advance Data Protection) enabled on your iCloud account. ADP setting is cumbersome and impacts far more than the Notes App – it is not a system-wide setting. |
| Standard Notes | No sharing provided for. |
| Evernote | Notes shared are not at all encrypted (and are not encrypted on the server either). |
| Nandemo | With Nandemo, all shared notes (padlocked or not) are shared encrypted in a zero-knowledge manner, where only the owner and those shared with have access to a note and its attachments.
Additionally, with Nandemo the owner can prevent shared-with users from sending the Note outside of the app (and, if the owner chooses to prevent shared-with users from extracting, Nandemo also prevents screenshots of the shared note’s content by this shared-with user).
Nandemo allows the owner to allow or disallow those users shared-with to: - Edit note content (or read-only access)
- Recive note history (if history is on for a note)
- Extract (i.e., export) a note and its attachments outside the app
If history is on for a note, which is controllable on any note the owner chooses it to be, it provides a powerful collaboration feature in that an owner can make any prior version the latest. In this manner, the owner can feel confident that none of his edits are lost by another user who had edit permission changing or deleting the owner's content, as the owner can always go back to a prior version if he/she doesn't approve. |
| Organizational capabilities | Apple Notes | - Apple allows you to group Notes into Folders/Sub-Folders. This does not offer the more powerful and robust capabilities afforded by Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category grouping capabilities that enables users to jump back and forth between Notes in different parts of the hierarchy without traversing up and down deep hierarchical Folder/Sub-Folder structures (or, if viewing all Notes in a list, without finding Notes that might be very far spaced apart). This is especially important for users with large numbers of notes.
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| Standard Notes | Free version- Sort orders: Modified Date, Alphabetical by Title, Creation Date
- Pin notes to top (effectively creating 2 groups, each sorted by sort order selected).
- Keyword tagging No Folder/Sub-Folder or other grouping capability.
$7.50/month- Sort orders: Modified Date, Alphabetical by Title, Creation Date (but missing Nandemo’s CUSTOM sort order).
- Pin notes to top (effectively creating 2 groups, each sorted by sort order selected. (Nandemo’s CUSTOM sort order enables every note, pinned or not, to be put in an exact order – an ordering respected whether all notes are viewed in a flat list [aka Classic View] or when Category/Sub-category View is used.)
- Keyword tagging
- Folder/Sub-Folder capability (but not Nandemo’s more powerful Category/Sub-category that structure enables notes to be viewed in a “flat manner” – but, within their categories and sub-categories (where jumping from note to note at different levels and parts of the hierarchy can be achieved from the same screen – without the user having to navigate up and down a hierarchical folder structure to view/edit two or more notes in different areas of the hierarchy).
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| Evernote | - Sort orders: Modified Date, Alphabetical by Title, Creation Date (but missing Nandemo’s CUSTOM sort order).
- Pin notes to top (effectively creating 2 groups, each sorted by sort order selected. (Nandemo’s CUSTOM sort order enables every note, pinned or not, to be put in an exact order – an ordering respected whether all notes are viewed in a flat list [aka Classic View] or when Category/Sub-category View is used.)
- Keyword tagging
- Only 2 levels of hierarchy (and only the bottom level can contain notes)
- Missing the ability to store more than 1000 Notes or have more than 20 Notebooks ($20/mon for unlimited), and only has a 2-tier hierarchy: “Stacks” can contain “Notebooks” and “Notebooks” contain notes. (This is weaker than both the folder/sub-folder capability of Standard Notes and Apple Notes [in that: hierarchy is limited to 2 levels, and the higher level “Stacks” can only contain “Notebooks”, which are the equivalent of folders]. Nandemo’s even more powerful category/sub-category structure enables notes to be viewed in a “flat manner” – but, within their categories and sub-categories (where jumping from note to note at different levels and parts of the hierarchy can be achieved from the same screen – without the user having to navigate up and down a hierarchical folder structure to view/edit two or more notes in different areas of the hierarchy).
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| Nandemo | Organization: Nandemo makes it easier to locate and jump between related notes and to find content within these. - Categories and Sub-Categories: Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category grouping capabilities enable users to jump back and forth between Notes in different parts of the hierarchy without traversing up and down deep hierarchical Folder/Sub-Folder structures (or, if viewing all Notes in a list, without finding Notes that might be very far spaced apart). This is especially important for users with large numbers of notes. Every category and sub-category can be collapsed or expanded to view or hide their notes and sub-categories. Independently, a category or sub-category can be collapesed/expanded to hide/show the full depth of their hierarchy.
- Sort orders and Views: By modified date, alphabetical (by Title), or CUSTOM. In Classic View (where all Notes appear in the Preview screen as a list [i.e., outside of their category or sub-category]), the sort order selected applies across all notes. Here, you can switch to CUSTOM sort order and arrange the Notes in any relative order you choose. In Category View (where Notes are in their categories and sub-categories, and where these categories and sub-categories can be expanded or collapsed within their “flat” [easy-to-access structure]), the sort order selected applies within each category or sub-category. If CUSTOM sort order is selected, the order of notes that was set among all notes is respected within the category or sub-category. This capability far exceeds the “pinning” capability offered by some other apps.
- Keyword Tags: Notes may be tagged with any number of keywords.
- Search:
Global Search allows you to search for all Notes containing a particular word within their title or content OR for all those tagged with one or more keywords.
Local search enables you to jump to the possibly many occurrences of a phrase or word within a note.
Nandemo provides for seamless continuation of a global search locally.
On the iPad, Nandemo's organizational capabilities stand out even more. Here, the "flat structure" provided by Nandemo's unique category/sub-category implementation enables the user to jump back and forth between notes in different parts of the hierarchy without even going back to the Preview Screen to do so. |
| Full function Version History on shared notes | Apple Notes | No version history period. |
| Standard Notes | Has version history but does not have sharing at all. History is only available for the paid version ($7.50/month), and, then, is only kept for 1 year (unless the user purchases the $10/month version). |
| Evernote | Has version history, but only for the owner of the note. History cannot be shared. Note owner can view version history or make a historic version the latest only with PC or Mac version of the app (not on iPhone, iPad or Android device). |
| Nandemo | Nandemo enables the owner to decide whether a particular shared with user receives prior versions or only the current version. |
Category/sub-category view
(vs. folders and sub-folders)
and Flat Structure | Apple Notes | Only has folders/sub-folders |
| Standard Notes | Has folders/sub-folders in paid version only |
| Evernote | - Limited to 20 NoteBooks. Notebook is sort of like a folder or Nandemo Category, but far more limited in that Notebooks cannot contain other Notebooks.
- Limited to 2-level hierarchy: “Stacks” that can contain Notebooks; Notebooks contain notes. Evernote’s 2-level hierarchy is limited even beyond that: Stacks cannot themselves contain notes. So, in this 2-level hierarchy, only the “leaf” level [i.e., the Notebook level] can contain Notes.
So, a lesser capability to folders/sub-folders.
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| Nandemo | Nandemo’s Category/Sub-category hierarchy can have any number of Categories, with each Category having any number of Sub-categories. Each category/sub-category can contain any number of notes and other categories/sub-categories. Nandemo’s category/sub-category structure is similar to a folder/sub-folder structure, but is superior in that these can be viewed in a “flat manner” (where jumping from note to note at different levels and parts of the hierarchy can be achieved from the same screen – without the user having to navigate up and down a hierarchical folder structure to view/edit two or more notes in different areas of the hierarchy). |
