Personal vs Professional

[DavidJE 3]

Hi there, I've subscribed to and paid for Evernote since October 2008. The primary reasons are:

1. The ability to geotag notes and find notes on a map.
2. The ability to scan documents and crop from the outside of the full picture when necessary to focus on what I want to keep.
3. Knowing that my data was mine and I could get to it from any device.

Over the years, the team have changed these functions and added a ton more that I do not use (calendar integration, tasks/reminders, note sharing). I had thought that the viewing notes by geography function was no longer part of the product until I happened to see the differences between the Personal and Professional subscription levels today. I was surprised to see that geographic search was available in the Professional version and I would have to pay $2/more to simply restore functionality that I had in 2011! There is nothing else in the Professional subscription that I find valuable.

I would happily trade these features: Connect primary Google Calendar account, Add due dates, reminders, and notifications to your task, and Manage tasks in one place for these: Find content by location with geographic search and the ability to pin more than one note to my home screen.

I would much rather the distinction between personal and professional be focused on task and team features. Anyone who pays for a Personal subscription should be able to find their notes however they want - by searching for text, text in pictures, or by where the note was made. Those who want functionality beyond basic note/document storage (e.g., tasks/reminders, calendar integration, team sharing) should be able to subscribe to higher tiers to obtain that functionality. I would much rather have a streamlined, well-performing product solely focused on storing notes, pictures, manuals, and documents and helping me find them. This is what Evernote used to be the best at.

The other key function - document scanning - is also less useful than it has been. When I scan a document/photo, Evernote determines where to crop an image and I cannot expand that selection beyond what Evernote automatically selects - even if it is only a fraction of the picture.

Please, please, restore search by geography to the Personal subscription plan and fix the document scanning cropped by default behavior.

Regards,
David

 

[PinkElephant 8,197]

You can search for a geolocation, even on the free plan. Just use this:

latitude: longitude: altitude:

Searches for notes that were created at or near the specified coordinates.

latitude:37 will return all notes whose latitude value is greater than 37. Add -‍latitude:38 to your search to show results whose latitude is between 37 and 38 degrees. longitude: and altitude: work exactly the same way.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313828

Saved searches with the geolocation of places can help to search quickly, or a note with a table holding the search strings with the coordinates ready to copy and use. Just be aware that only notes created on mobile with enabled GPS and authorisation for the app to get the geologic data will hold a geolocation in the metadata.

For the scanning there is a simple, but not really convincing option: Drop the Automatic mode, take the pictures manually. Choose Foto instead of Document as image type. You need to crop yourself, and it will not be as neatly looking, but it can be done. When on automatic, using contrasting surfaces helps the system to make better choices of the documents edges.

About the inability to expand the area beyond the automatic crop, you can issue a support ticket.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,979]

@DavidJE, these are basically user-to-user forums and not a reliable way of commenting to Evernote on their plans. That is better handled through a support ticket or feedback from within the app.

One thing I appreciate about Evernote is its flexibility, so that multitudes of users can use it in multitudes of ways for multitudes of purposes. It makes utterly no difference to me where 99% of my notes were created, and it would never occur to me to want to search on that. What Professional does offer is worth the money to me, even if it has some features I don't use or don't use yet (but plan to).

I suppose in an ideal world Evernote would offer a menu of features and let us choose, say, any 5 for Personal, any 10 for Professional. I absolutely guarantee you that if they did, instantly there would be people here complaining that the cutoff was 5 and not 6. Or 9. Evernote has to make what seems to them a rational decision about what to offer at each level, and I assume they do that based on feedback about what most people want (and on technical feasibility, etc.). Because I use Evernote for professional purposes, I'm willing to pay the Professional fee. Paid annually, it costs me $30 more than Personal, averaging $2.50/month. To me, that doesn't feel exorbitant, but I realize that everyone's situation is different.

[DavidJE 3]

Thank you both for your feedback. I agree that Evernote is extremely flexible. That’s another reason I’ve used it for years. I’ve sent similar feedback via the app and surveys and will open a support ticket for the cropping issue. I had thought that the geo-searching feature had simply been removed from the apps and not moved to a new subscription level. Finding that out was disappointing. @PinkElephant,  thanks for the search tip!. That’ll at least help me find notes by geography.

Regards,
David