When I first discovered Mem.ai, I was excited by its potential to simplify how I take notes and organize information. However, after months of use, I found that it’s not quite a good fit for my requirements—at least, not yet.
The biggest issue with Mem.ai is its slow update cycle. New features and critical improvements take too long, leaving users like me waiting indefinitely for bug fixes and enhancements.
Then there’s Mem.ai’s not-so-reliable tagging system. There have been several instances where tagged items don’t appear when I search for that tag, making it difficult to find information quickly.
As someone who manages hundreds of notes and documents daily, I need a more reliable AI note-taking tool. After extensively testing various apps on the market, I’ve compiled a list of the 10 best Mem alternatives to streamline my note-taking process and yours, too! Let’s explore them.
- What Should You Look for in a Mem Alternative?
- The 10 Best Mem Alternatives to Use in 2024
- 1. ClickUp—Best for AI note-taking
- 2. Notion—Best for analyzing large volumes of text-based data
- 3. Obsidian—Best for graph view
- 4. Writesonic—Best for fact-checked and SEO-optimized content creation
- 5. Jasper AI—Best for AI-writing templates
- 6. Copy.ai—Best for producing on-brand content
- 7. Reflect Notes—Best for backlinking
- 8. MyMind—Best for intuitive web clipping
- 9. Craft—Best for collective brainstorming
- 10. Evernote—Best for multimedia search
- Embrace AI-Note Taking with ClickUp
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Should You Look for in a Mem Alternative?
These key features are non-negotiable for me in a Mem alternative:
- Supports NLP: I appreciate a tool that uses natural language processing to set actions, triggers, and conditions. This allows me to interact with the tool intuitively and set task automations faster
- Customizable formatting: The tool should let me personalize the formatting of my notes— from font styles, sizes, and colors, to the ability to create headings, lists, and tables. It must give me the freedom to structure my content in a way that suits my needs
- Writing assistance: I value a tool that offers writing assistance features such as grammar and spell checking, suggestions for improving my writing, and perhaps even AI-driven content generation. These features help me maintain a high standard of writing without needing to use additional tools
- Easy tagging: Organizing my notes is crucial, so I look for a tool that supports easy and intuitive tagging. The ability to quickly tag and categorize my notes helps me find and retrieve information efficiently
- Smooth experience: The overall user experience is important to me. I want a tool that’s responsive, easy to navigate, free from bugs, and offers regular updates. A smooth experience ensures that I can focus on my work without unnecessary distractions
- Flexibility: I prefer a flexible tool to accommodate different types of content and workflows. Whether I’m jotting down quick notes, creating detailed documents, or managing group projects, the tool should adapt to my varying needs
- Collaboration: Since I often work with a large team, I want a tool that supports seamless collaboration. Features such as real-time editing, comments, and sharing options are essential for effective teamwork and communication
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe 10 Best Mem Alternatives to Use in 2024
I’ve reviewed the top 10 Mem AI alternatives here. Each tool excels at a different feature. Some are great for AI-assisted note-taking, some offer extensive structural options to keep things organized, while some boost your content production capabilities with AI-generated content. Pick one that fits your needs, expectations, and budget.
1. ClickUp—Best for AI note-taking
I use a notes app for two primary reasons: to take notes on the go or to dump my thoughts (mostly related to work) and collaborate with my teammates on a piece of writing.
Luckily for me, ClickUp serves both purposes. For quick notes, to-dos, and checklists, I prefer to use ClickUp Notepad. It offers checklists to organize to-do lists or reminders that aren’t necessarily part of a larger project. The notepad also helps me capture notes from meetings, lectures, or research. I later format these notes with bold, italics, headings, and more using ClickUp’s slash commands.
For more elaborate writing, such as jotting down meeting agendas, meeting notes, project briefs, blog posts, etc., I use ClickUp Docs. The best part is that I can have multiple people work on the same document simultaneously and see edits in real time.
As a cherry on top, both tools come with ClickUp Brain, a built-in AI writing assistant that makes note-taking easier.
What I love the most about ClickUp Brain is its adaptability. This AI tool produces high-quality, research-backed content based on the specific prompts I input. For example, the tone of writing I use for creating user guides vastly differs from the tone of our social media posts. Brain smartly tailors the content based on prompts and writes in an appropriate tone and style.
Here’s how I use ClickUp Brain in my daily workflow:
- Pull out a list of actionable items from ClickUp Tasks and Docs (for instance, if I ask Brain to create a project brief for an upcoming product launch, it gives me a checklist of steps after analyzing the information available in my Workspace)
- Summarize big blocks of texts, meeting transcripts, and Task comment threads
- Beat writer’s block by creating content based on specific prompts
- Adjust the tone of voice and creativity level to meet my requirements
- Edit and improve my existing drafts, fix spelling and grammar, and simplify the content
- Create wikis, SOPs, and knowledge bases stored within an AI-powered, secure Workspace
- Make the content more concise or longer (for example, creating an email newsletter/LinkedIn post out of a long-form blog post, or vice versa)
Besides letting me use Brain to speed up my work, ClickUp also helps me stay more organized. When I have multiple similar documents, I use ClickUp Doc tags to mark relevant content.
For instance, I’ve tagged my bottom-of-the-funnel blog briefs as ‘BOFU’. So when I need to access those, I simply type the tag ‘BOFU’ and locate the Docs I’m looking for. It’s always accurate and retrieves my documents in seconds. A lifesaver when I’m in a hurry!
ClickUp best features
- Collaborate with teammates in real time to write notes, share ideas, edit content, and tag each other using comments
- Execute ideas faster with superior task management. Turn a comment into a ClickUp Task and populate it with details such as assignees and deadline
- Use natural language to set actions, triggers, and conditions for automation
- Translate text into multiple languages, including English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic
- Embed tables, bookmarks, PDFs, screenshots, and files to make my notes info-packed
- Access markdown language with /Slash commands and add color-coded banners, bullets, bold, italics, and strikethroughs
- Securely share docs with team members or external stakeholders, control edit access, or keep them private
ClickUp limitations
- The mobile app may not be as smooth for taking notes as the web version
ClickUp pricing
- Free Forever
- Unlimited: $7/month per user
- Business: $12/month per user
- Enterprise: Contact for pricing
- ClickUp Brain: Add to any paid plans for $7 per member per Workspace per month
ClickUp ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (9,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.6 (4,000+ reviews)
Also read: 13 Best AI Writing Tools for Content in 2024
2. Notion—Best for analyzing large volumes of text-based data
While trying Notion AI, one feature stood out—the tool’s ability to quickly sort through large data sets.
My team frequently conducts customer surveys to understand group sentiments better. These are usually open-ended surveys, so extracting insights from them is quite a task.
With Notion AI, I could highlight a large section of text and get a bulleted summary or key insights from it. For instance, we surveyed our customers’ post-purchase experience, asking for feedback to improve our product further. I pasted the results on Notion and asked AI to count how many requests mentioned ‘self-service options’. It gave me the results instantly—something that would’ve taken hours of manual work!
Notion best features
- Get synonyms and definitions of technical jargon while reading/writing notes
- Create detailed paragraphs out of messy notes or bulleted lists
- Use collapsible toggles to make notes more readable and organized
- Analyze meeting notes with AI and create action items based on the meeting’s discussions
Notion limitations
- Has a steep learning curve
Notion pricing
- Free
- Plus: $12/month per seat
- Business: $18/month per seat
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
- You can add Notion AI to your workspace for $10/month per member
Notion ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (5,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.7/5 (2,000+ reviews)
Also read: 10 Best AI Tools for Meeting Notes in 2024
3. Obsidian—Best for graph view
Obsidian doesn’t have a built-in AI feature for note-taking, but it supports many third-party plugins developed by the community. Its AI Assistant plug-in is a good fit for my workflow. I could generate contextual images using DALL-E 2 and dictate my notes with Whisper’s speech-to-text command.
Now, coming to the native features, I love its Graph View—it visually represents how my notes are connected. I used it to get an overview of our SEO strategy.
I created nodes for the top SEO keywords and topics relevant to our product and linked each node to specific blog posts, landing pages, and other content pieces we’ve optimized for those keywords. This way, I could see how well we cover targeted keywords across our website.
Obsidian best features
- Create connections between multiple notes for building a strong knowledge repository
- Access notes offline. Obsidian Sync merges the changes when internet connection is available
- Brainstorm, draw diagrams, and embed notes with PDF, image, audio, and video on Obsidian Canvas
- Track version history of notes for up to one year
Obsidian limitations
- More suitable for personal use than collaborative work
Obsidian pricing
- Personal use: Free
- Commercial use: $50/year per user (billed annually)
Obsidian ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: 4.9/5 (20+ reviews)
4. Writesonic—Best for fact-checked and SEO-optimized content creation
Writesonic’s ability to generate fact-checked content quickly is a big plus for content teams—it streamlined research, fact-checking, and citation so that we could dive straight into writing.
The automated internal linking feature is handy, too. It connected related topics smoothly, improved the flow of my articles, and helped me with my SEO topic clusters. While it did a great job overall, I still had to spend time on manual refinements to make the content publish-ready.
Beyond AI writing, I loved its SEO content quality check feature. It’s built into the tool, so I didn’t need external plugins or tools to optimize my content for the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Writesonic best features
- Generate long-form content with up-to-date information
- Analyze competitor’s strategy to the granular levels, from word count, headings, topics to keywords and more
- Generate images automatically based on the context of the article
- Create personalized content to suit a specific brand voice
Writesonic limitations
- The pricing may be on the expensive side, especially for smaller teams
Writesonic pricing
For professionals and teams
- Standard: $99/month per user
- Professional: $249/month for 3 users
- Advanced: $499/month for 5 users
Writesonic ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (1,900+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (2,000+ reviews)
5. Jasper AI—Best for AI-writing templates
Jasper is not a note-taking app per se, but it did a great job of expanding my existing notes and writing original content based on my input.
I enjoy systems and structures that boost productivity and save time. So, I’m always on the lookout for good writing templates. While exploring Jasper, I came across its template library with over 50 templates. I tried a few to create blog post outlines, write conclusions, and generate social media posts under 140 characters. The templates were simple to use and helped me speed up my work.
Jasper may not be tailored to my specific note-taking requirements, but it’s good to give a headstart to one-person content marketing teams.
Jasper AI’s best features
- Upload an existing brief or add information manually to create an on-brand marketing campaign
- Optimize content for search engines with the SurferSEO add-on
- Check content for plagiarism with the Copyscape add-on
- Create high-resolution, royalty-free images based on prompts
Jasper AI limitations
- The content it generates can sound generic—it needs manual tweaking
Jasper AI pricing
- Creator: $49/month per user
- Pro: $69/month per user
- Business: Custom pricing
Jasper AI ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (1,200+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.8/5 (1,800+ reviews)
Also read: Jasper AI vs Writesonic
6. Copy.ai—Best for producing on-brand content
Similar to Jasper, Copy.ai is not a traditional note-taking app. However, since I was testing some of the best AI tools, I decided to evaluate Copy.ai’s ability to create checklists and content based on specific prompts.
With AI writing assistants, boring or generic-sounding content is often a big issue. However, Copy.ai attempts to make the content suitable for a targeted brand voice. To help the tool understand what I’m looking for, I added a section of content that accurately reflects my brand’s voice. Then, I added my prompt to generate new content, and it did a good job of capturing the voice I intended to write in.
While it didn’t keep track of my notes, it did help me create a checklist of tasks for editorial review. I can trust it to create an actionable list of steps for different tasks with little to no manual effort.
Copy.ai best features
- Generate high-quality copy with prompts from Copy.ai’s prompt library
- Deploy a hyper-personalized outreach strategy at scale
- Convert sales call transcripts into blog posts
- Create product FAQ docs with accurate information
Copy.ai limitations
- Content often lacks a nuanced approach and needs human intervention to improve quality
Copy.ai pricing
- Free
- Starter: $49/month per user
- Advanced: $249/month for up to 5 users
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
Copy.ai ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.7/5 (100+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.5/5 (60+ reviews)
7. Reflect Notes—Best for backlinking
From recording ideas to jotting down daily task lists with AI, Reflect offers a comprehensive note-taking experience.
The best feature was the seamless backlinking. Since I have a lot of documents related to each other (e.g., product brochures, product demos, how-to guides, etc.), I prefer to keep them connected for better organization. Reflect served this purpose and also doubled up as a part AI meeting assistant, creating key takeaways and a list of actions after analyzing my meeting notes.
Reflect best features
- Transcribe voice notes into words with human-level accuracy
- Create and save custom prompts for future use
- Dump scattered thoughts in one place and generate blog post outlines out of them
- Fix grammar and spelling and improve the quality of writing
Reflect limitations
- Not suitable for team collaborations
Reflect pricing
- $10/month per user (billed annually)
Reflect ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
8. MyMind—Best for intuitive web clipping
MyMind drew me in with its simple and inviting interface, and it quickly became my digital scrapbook. I consume different types of content daily, from research reports and blog posts to interesting promo videos, marketing case studies, and more. With MyMind, I could save notes and resources in a centralized repository.
I could save an image with a click, and MyMind AI would automatically understand its details. For instance, when I saved the image of an ergonomic chair, it identified the item and saved it in my wishlist. Loved the smooth and intuitive experience!
MyMind best features
- Keep distractions at bay with focus mode
- Save articles without pop-ups or ads
- Auto-sort saved items into Smart Spaces
- Keep notes private or get a shareable link that expires within 24 hours
MyMind limitations
- No collaboration features
MyMind pricing
- Student of Life: $6.99/month per user
- Mastermind: $12.99/month per user
- Newton: $299/year
MyMind ratings and reviews
- G2: Not enough reviews
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
9. Craft—Best for collective brainstorming
I liked how Craft catered to my team’s collaboration needs. It offered a workspace for us to take notes, create documentation, manage our work, and brainstorm ideas collectively. The ability to switch between devices, from iPhone and Mac to iPad, added to the convenience. My team and I could access our notes from any device.
Another handy addition is its built-in AI assistance. It allowed me to quickly generate ideas, summarize and translate content, and handle document editing tasks efficiently.
Craft best features
- Organize notes using folders
- Trigger push notifications or email alerts for important tasks
- Use tables, bullet points, toggles, subpages, and highlights for formatting notes
- Convert notes into presentation slides automatically
Craft limitations
- No tagging feature
Craft pricing
- Starter: Free
- Plus: $10/month
- Family: $18/month for up to 5 family members
- Team: $60/month for up to 25 users
- Business: $300/month for the entire team
Craft ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.6/5 (20+ reviews)
- Capterra: Not enough reviews
Also read: How to Use AI for Documentation
10. Evernote—Best for multimedia search
With Evernote, I could organize my schedules better. From notes and tasks to meetings, it helped me consolidate all my to-dos in a simple, clutter-free space.
I particularly loved its AI search feature. It accurately retrieved my notes in seconds, even when I had stored hundreds of items. The search function isn’t something new, but I was impressed by how the AI technology instantly combed through PDFs, Office docs, images, presentations, and scanned documents.
Evernote best features
- Edit notes with AI or write new content from scratch
- Access notes offline
- Sync notes across devices
- Collaborate with teammates to stay on track with daily to-dos
Evernote limitations
- Navigating through long notes is a hassle
Evernote pricing
- Free
- Personal: $14.99/month
- Professional: $17.99/month
- Teams: $24.99/month per user
Evernote ratings and reviews
- G2: 4.4/5 (2,000+ reviews)
- Capterra: 4.4/5 (8,000+ reviews)
Also read: How to Use AI for Daily Life Tasks
Summarize this article for me pleaseEmbrace AI-Note Taking with ClickUp
I have high expectations from an AI note-taking tool. There are so many apps out there, but very few tick all the boxes for me.
I want to turn my note app into my knowledge assistant. It will remember all the critical and trivial details about my work and personal tasks, organize them into clean structures/hierarchies, and help me retrieve them whenever possible. I need to stay on the same page with my team members, so collaboration features are a must.
Bonus if the tool can complete my incomplete strains of thoughts and turn them into something meaningful. Too much to ask?
Not really! ClickUp does it all and more. It goes the extra mile to make the note-taking and writing experience smoother, faster, and automated. Whether you’re writing in your own words or with AI, organizing notes and task lists, or breaking writer’s block, ClickUp stays by your side at every step.
Get started with ClickUp today!
