Google Keep Review 2023: App Features, Pricing, Pros & Cons

The first step to getting organized? Write a note and make a list. 

In this article, we will describe Google Keep, the free note-taking app that will completely change the way you take notes and make to-do lists. 

In this Google Keep review, we'll look at the costs of added data storage to Google Keep, then we will explore many of its core features. From there, we’ll list a few pros and cons and talk about customer support.

Let’s get started!

Google Keep review 2023: Is Google Keep any good?

If you are the type of person who likes to keep notes Google Keep could very well be your new favorite app. As you’ll see in our Google Keep review and many other online reviews, Keep is free, easy, and super effective at saving ideas and organizing them.

Now, Google Keep is a regular on many of the best free note taking app lists. If you feel like comparing similar apps, go ahead and read all about it. For now, we will focus exclusively on Google Keep.

Google Keep pricing plans

First of all, how much does Google Keep cost? Let’s first review Google Keep prices:

How much does Google Keep cost for nonprofits?

Google doesn't offer special pricing for nonprofits, charitable organizations, NGOs, and other institutions.

Are there any Google Keep coupon codes or promo discount vouchers?

It appears that at this time, there are no coupon codes, promotions, or discount vouchers for this or any other Google apps.

Google Keep free vs paid: what’s the difference?

Once again, Google Keep is free. What's more, there are no special premium versions of Google Keep with more advanced features or other special Google services. 

What you need to pay for is cloud storage space. All Google accounts come with Google Drive which includes 15 GB of free storage space. You'll need a premium Google One account if you need more storage space. All your data will be saved to Google One when you use Google Keep. 

Google Keep overview: what is Google Keep & what is Google Keep used for?

In brief, Google Keep is used for making notes, making to-do lists, and saving and sorting interesting or useful content you find online with labels. You can also create notes using voice memos or add images to notes, which could be pictures you saved off the internet or ones you took yourself.

Google Keep features list 

The main features of Google Keep are:

• Notes

• Lists

• Photos

• Audio

• Collaboration

• Filter and search

• Reminders

• Labels

• Archive

• Multiple devices
   

1. Notes

Google Keep is, first and foremost, a note-taking app. You use Keep mainly to jot down thoughts, ideas, and things you need to remember or want to share with others. When you use Keep, you can start writing notes directly in the app, and they will be saved. 

You can save notes directly from any Google Doc by highlighting and right-clicking. Likewise, you can copy text, images, or other content from the internet and save that as a Google Keep note. Collect a bunch of notes together under similar themes for a well-organized notebook.

These text notes can often take the appearance of post-it notes, aka sticky notes, and you can color code them. There's no limit to the number of notes you create, and one note can have up to 20,000 characters. 

One drawback is that there does not appear to be text formatting options now. What's more, as of now, there is no password option to protect your notes with Google, though there are third-party tools that do this.
 

2. Lists

Are you into list-making? Use Google Keep to turn normal notes into lists. Lists are powerful tools to get things done in your life, as they can be turned into to-do lists and even offer you checklist functionality. 

In other words, the plain text format when you take notes is easily and automatically convertible to the to-do or checklist format. This is one of the most common note-taking features in Keep. 
 

3. Photos

Photos, images, pictures, all of these are an important part of this app that lets you create visually-appealing notes. You can easily right-click on any image you see online and turn that into a saved note in your Keep platform. 

Or, you can add images and photos to already-existing notes. Google Keep also offers OCR, or optical character recognition, on the web version. This great tool lets you snap a photo with text in it to extract text from the image into a note as proper text.
 

4. Audio

These days, note-taking is no longer something you only do with a pen and paper, or by typing text onto a computer or mobile device. Google Keep is great because it also lets you create voice memo audio notes. 

This is a good tool that you will most likely use more with your phone. Google has very powerful speech recognition and voice-to-text capabilities so that you can save your audio note as a text note.   
 

5. Collaboration

Want to save and share your thoughts in the form of Google Keep notes? No problem. Google Keep has many features to boost a team's ability to collaborate, which is ideal for team member work and brainstorming. 

You can click the collaborator button on any note and add the emails of those you want to share important notes with. In certain cases, collaborators can edit the note or simply add to it.
 

6. Filter and search

When it comes to note-taking apps, you'd be surprised how much a good filtering or searching tool can make a difference. Google's Keep makes it easy to search all your notes for keywords or phrases for other information you need to access speedily. You can also filter down by other note attributes, like if they are just text, lists, images, or even based on the color-coded system.
 

7. Reminders

Any appropriate app that claims to help you jot down notes, create checklists, and stay organized must have a reminder feature. This is one way to turn notes into events and tasks, which you will be reminded to do based on the time you input with the note. 

These reminders sync up with your Google Calendar app. To go above and beyond time-based notes, you can also set location-based reminders and use your phone's map services. 
 

8. Labels

Labels are actually the backbone of searching and filtering, but let's go into more detail here. You can add up to 50 labels to your Google Keep account. These labels, along with your color selections and other pin features, will not be shared if you share the note, which is a nice touch for personal privacy. Labels are truly an organizational powerhouse in Keep.  
 

9. Archive

To better organize your notes, it is a good idea to take advantage of the archiving feature in Google Keep. 

Archiving is like a special folder for notes that you have already dealt with and will likely not have much use for in the coming future. So when you archive notes, it cleans up the clutter from your main Keep dashboard. But don't worry, those notes are not gone. You can always see them again in the archive folder. 
 

10. Multiple devices

Right off the bat, many will consider Keep a mobile app, with versions available for Android and iOS apps, especially with a brand new Android widget. 

And it works phenomenally well on mobile devices, especially for quick notes and the voice memo tool. But you can also use Keep on your other devices, like a tablet or a desktop computer. Of course, any note-taking or editing gets automatically synced across all your devices inreal timee, as this is a cloud-based platform.

Google Keep pros and cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of Google Keep:

Google Keep advantages

The first benefit to Keep is that many people already like Google products, so there is really no need to look at competitors like Evernote or Zoho Notebook when shopping for a free note-taking app. That being said, the free price tag and the 15 GB of free storage space is far superior to five free GB offered by Microsoft OneDrive.

Keep is great because of its ease of use in getting started and using it to organize notes. You simply need a Google account, and it's in the app launch icon on any Google dashboard. And if you don't have a Google account, it is a snap to create a new one. Clearly, it integrates superbly with other Google apps. 
 

Google Keep disadvantages

One drawback to Google Keep is that it is hardly sufficient for larger teams as a project management software. However, you could still use it as a personal note and list keeper and for setting personal goals.

Google Keep complaints & praise (Google Keep reviews from real customers)

Starting with negative Google Keep reviews, some have bemoaned the lack of formatting, like italics, bold, and underlining. Similarly, there have been negative reviews of Keep regarding the archiving function, as it can be a bit wonky from time to time.

But positive reviews of Keep are more abundant. Many praise the ability to create visually-appealing notes, color code them, use labels, filter by colors, and how convenient it is to share notes with colleagues.

Review of Google Keep support

Customer support for Google Keep is limited. There is a help center, which acts like a Google Keep blog for useful articles about how to use the platform. That is really about it.

Is Google Keep worth it? Our conclusion

And yet you still continue to ask, is Google Keep worth it? The way this tool creates notes, one can really get a jump on organizing their thoughts, ideas, and important bits of content saved form the internet, and often as quickly and as easily as with one click. So Yes, this tool is a regular champion among all the Google Keep alternatives like Evernote or OneNote.

Our final Google Keep rating

4.5/5

Google Keep FAQs

Is Google Keep secure?

The note-taking and list-making app by Google called Keep is very safe and secure. Google has world-class data centers with some of the best digital security ever. And if you ever choose to store your data on your device, you can do that, giving you offline access for maximum privacy.  

What is the Google Keep character limit?

Google Keep has a very generous character limit per note, at 20,000 characters. You also get an unlimited amount of notes. This means if you hit the max of 20,000 characters in one note, you can create a second note to continue from the first one.

What is the Google Keep storage limit?

Google Keeps’ storage limit is based on Google’s cloud-based system data storage system called Google One. With every Google account, one gets the basic Google One storage plan of 15 GBs of storage space for free. For more storage space, one can subscribe to a premium Google One plan.

Is Google Keep encrypted?

When it comes to Google Keep privacy, your data is secure. Google Keep encryption is some of the best in the world. So when people ask, is Google Keep private? The answer is a loud and clear Yes, with data encryption happening at both rest mode and in transit mode.

Can you get a Google Keep app for Mac?

There is no official Google Keep app for Mac, however you can access Google Keep via any browser on your Mac without any issues. You can use Google Keep on iPad, iPhone, or Apple watch by downloading the Google Keep app from the Apple Store.