There are many ways for us to capture and document our thoughts and ideas, and we’d all like to be using the best note-taking app to undertake this effort. We can choose from mobile apps designed for discrete note taking, web-based tools for scribing long-form thoughts and ideas, and native desktop apps that make an appearance in our application trays on Mac and Windows.

These are the apps that have become an integral part of our daily workflows as they are present and center to how we plan and get work done. There are even note taking apps that manage different types of content. Not just textual based content, but visual content and also voice to text offerings. But what would the best note-taking app look like?

Hello Papermind - a new entry in the note-taking app landscape

Papermind is a new entrant into the note-taking app landscape, and there are some key reasons we developed it.

The art of note-taking has evolved considerably. Just like traditional media has been transformed by digital technology, the art of note taking has evolved to be something we can now do elegantly on our personal device. Note-taking at its core remains a personal exercise, connecting our intimate thoughts on paper, on the PC, and now more recently through mobile. No matter where we might be, we can start a new note on our phone, tablet, or laptop. And there are many solutions that would claim to be the best note-taking app for capturing and categorizing our personal thoughts. 

Take notes to share with your team directly in Slack

Papermind supports the personal exercise of note-taking, but it also enables you to share your notes directly with your team. Picture a notebook that you fill with your thoughts, and then consider the ability to share certain pages of your notebook with your team directly inside Slack.

And that’s the biggest differentiator between Papermind and other note-taking apps. Papermind seamlessly integrates with your Slack workspace. 

Make your notes private or share them with your team 

If Slack is the waterfall of conversation, then Papermind is the lake in which your long-form content can be stored and accessed from within Slack - ok, enough with the analogies. But seriously, Papermind provides the best note-taking app experience that seamlessly integrates with your Slack workspace right on your desktop. Articles in Papermind can be public and be accessed by your team from within Slack. Articles can also be private and only be viewable to you and accessible by you.

Make Note Taking even better with video, images and links to 3rd party content

Papermind lets you take notes in a variety of ways. In fact we don’t refer to them as notes - we’ve labelled them as articles because articles are capable of being more rich in the content they contain more than your everyday note.

The native text editing experience within articles supports dragging and dropping of images and video directly into your authoring experience. You can also link to other articles created by other team members within your Slack workspace. Adding tags to articles enables you and your team to link to associated articles simply by clicking on a tag to view everything related. Once you’ve crafted your articles in Papermind, you can export them. The export function will render your articles into PDF format for sharing with third parties. For an overview of this and more awesome features of Papermind, check out the gallery that contains a library of how-to videos. 

Sharing made easy for your notes

Promoting articles from Papermind is as easy as choosing to share an article with individual team members or channels by posting a link to the article within Slack. The best note-taking app should allow your team members to get notified when someone has shared a new article or when they’ve created a new version of an existing article. Clicking on the notification in Slack will launch Papermind on your desktop and present the article. 

Note Taking - Review and select the best version. 

Papermind takes note taking to another level by supporting versioning. Now you can shuffle back in time and see previous versions of articles that you and your team members have modified and worked on overtime - a hallmark of what the best note-taking app should look like. Collaborative article editing enables you to start with a private note, promote it to an article that your whole team can see, and then allow other team members to actively contribute, modify and publish the article themselves. You might even say that Papermind gives you and your team collaboration superpowers when working together on long-form content. Some might even say that Papermind goes well beyond being just another note-taking app, and be very suitable as that new wiki that you’ve been looking for that integrates seamlessly with your Slack work experience. 

Manage and organize all of your files with Papermind

Uniquely as a comprehensive note-taking app, Papermind provides you with the ability to manage files as well. You and your team can manage a collection of native document types; Microsoft Office, Adobe Document Types & PDF, MP4 videos, and much more. You can also link to online files via a URL. For example, creating a collection of YouTube or Vimeo video’s links to files stored in your Google Drive or Dropbox repository. In the same way, articles allow you to add tags, you can do the same with your files and these will be included in tag collections when team members click to view everything related to the chosen tag.

Star your notes - keep them handy from one view inside the Papermind note-taking app

In addition to tags, Papermind supports the ability to star your favorite articles, files, and even team members. Clicking on the star icon displayed within articles, files, and team profiles will automatically add these items to your personal starred collection. Click on your Starred items will display this collection enabling you to quickly jump to the items that matter most to what you might be currently researching or developing.

Get that sense of security

The security of most note-taking apps is based on creating an account with the service, so your username (usually your email) and a password are all that’s required to access your personal information. This might not be the most secure approach for protecting your personal thoughts and information. Papermind requires you to connect with your Slack workspace, thereby relying on the authentication of your Slack account in order to access and use Papermind.

Note-taking app for Mac and Windows

Note-taking apps are evolving to support our need to work and share within teams. Papermind for Mac and Windows is a native desktop experience that compliments your conversations and allows you to document your thoughts both privately and share with your team members. 

Is pricing going to hurt? Nope

How much does a note-taking app like Papermind cost? They vary in price, with Papermind offering a tiered pricing model depending on how many team members you have in your Slack workspace. Our pricing caters to all team sizes, with affordable monthly plans for up to 100 Slack team members, and then a simple monthly price for enterprise teams greater than 100 people.