About Gempen Annotator:
Gempen was created to offer a better digital inking and drawing solution for classrooms equipped with touchscreen TVs.
It was born directly from the need to overcome the technical shortcomings of IPEVO Annotator and the restrictive pricing of Epic Pen.
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IPEVO Annotator:
With its last major update in 2022 and only a single minor patch in 2025, IPEVO Annotator has effectively become abandonware. Furthermore, because it was built specifically for IPEVO hardware, many of its features are entirely incompatible with modern touchscreens and smart TVs. The harsh reality is that it is often unintuitive, glitchy, and frustrating to use in a fast-paced classroom.
Gempen takes the core features users need from IPEVO Annotator, adds powerful new tools, and ensures seamless compatibility across virtually every touchscreen and smartboard on the market today. Best of all, Gempen does this while consuming ~80% less RAM and ~50% less system disk space than IPEVO.
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Epic Pen:
While Epic Pen offers a comprehensive annotation suite, its basic version is severely restricted. Essential tools for everyday annotation are locked behind a steep paywall. Without a premium subscription, users are blocked from using shapes, text insertion, disappearing ink, whiteboards, and even a basic color wheel. Charging users for these foundational features simply doesn't make sense to us.
Gempen delivers all of these premium features—and more—at absolutely no cost. Gempen is completely free, forever, with no account logins or subscriptions required. We believe educators and presenters should have unrestricted access to infinite color choices, dynamic shape tools, whiteboards, protractors, and more, right out of the box.