Bending Spoons Price Increases Begin

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,986]

7 hours ago, eric99 said:

This is what happens on mid range android phones all the time, with delays of 1 minute or more. I'm surprised that it occurs on a S22, one of the most powerful phones on the market.

The problem is not so much that syncing itself takes a long time, but that the foreground sync  blocks the entire app for minutes until the note is closed. To prevent data loss, you need to keep the app open until the note has been saved. Therefore, the android app can't be used for quick note taking anymore, the very feature that made evernote so succesfull in the begin years.

So, before increasing the price of the product, BS should first fix these fundamental race condition bugs in the mobile apps. Why should we pay for a crappy app?

Points taken. I'm just going to suggest that, to prevent thread drift, if anyone wants to discuss the specific Android sync issues any further we do so in the Android forum, for instance on this existing thread:

 

[AlanH 64]

So I give up. I have yet another response from Evernote restating my increase to USD180, and they have not answered any of my specific questions. I've spent enough time trying to get an answer from them that justifies this level of increase. So I will be cancelling the auto-renewal on my subscription and using alternatives.

The next comments are about what I will do instead, so if this is not of interest, thanks for reading this far!

I've moved away from Evernote as my daily note application since Roam Research was released, and I have since moved to Logseq, and I am now experimenting with Tana. I'm finding Tana an excellent place to capture information and make it searchable with its combination of bidirectional linking, transclusion and super-tags, a very useful combination. 

Evernote is a very long way away from matching those features.

I use todoist for task management and Fantastical for calendar management. Fantastical is particularly good at handling multiple calendars, and todoist offers very powerful capabilities for managing my tasks. Yes, I pay extra for those, and the integration of tasks and calendars that Evernote is developing into one tool is of limited benefit to me, and it is a long way behind these specialist tools.

Evernote has become a document reference as none of the tools I've mentioned handle documents well. Over the years, I have loved Evernote's ability to find obscure documents because of its full-text indexing of file content, including the OCR of handwritten stuff. I have also used tags extensively as another way of finding documents.

I'm a little surprised at what I will use to replace this use case - Google Drive. I use Google as the basis for my "business" (it's just me), so I have access to the full range of corporate tools Google provides. As you would expect, the search is at least as good as Evernote, and I can find any content in a document, including handwritten images. 

Over the past few days, I've started experimenting with Google's "labels" to replace the tags. My most common tags are for the organisation, person and project, so these structured ones seem to work well. I used to tag notes with subject notes, but I am finding I use Search to find notes related to subjects now, so I've largely stopped doing this.  And Google also seems to be pretty good at "fuzzy" searches, such as when I misspell something in my notes. For example, searching for "corproate" in Evernote returns only notes where the misspelling occurs. Google returns documents where both "corporate" or "corproate" appear. 

And I can use these features without paying extra, now saving myself almost NZD300. 

As long as Bending Spoons allows me to access the archive of notes that Evernote is becoming for me, I will continue using it. But I am saying goodbye to the elephant as part of my toolset with regret and sadness. It has been through a lot with me!

[AlanH 64]

So I went to my Account page to cancel my subscription, and guess what, I can't! I go to my Account Summary, click on Manage Subscription (see the first screenshot), then the Billing option gets displayed, and there are not details displayed. These have disappeared in the last 24 hours. 

First time in my dealing with Evernote that I have wanted to swear at their actions. 

So they increase my subscription by 80% and now have removed my ability to cancel it. I can't wait to hear their response to this.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

Heroic ...

Tried to contact support already ?

[lost_gweedo 73]

@AlanHSo weird.  Have you tried turning it off and on again 🤣(kidding)

[AlanH 64]

2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Heroic ...

Tried to contact support already ?

Yes, I did. They said it was something to do with the browser and suggested I use Chrome (which I was) so I tried Safari and it worked. So on 17 March, I become a non-paying user.

[emuell69 1]

@AlanH I would be interested to know what prices you see once the subscription has ended. Could you take a look at the prices on March 18th? I don't mean any discounts Evernote might offer you. List prices only. Thank you.

[Frki2 77]

14 hours ago, AlanH said:

So I give up. I have yet another response from Evernote restating my increase to USD180, and they have not answered any of my specific questions. I've spent enough time trying to get an answer from them that justifies this level of increase. So I will be cancelling the auto-renewal on my subscription and using alternatives.

The next comments are about what I will do instead, so if this is not of interest, thanks for reading this far!

I've moved away from Evernote as my daily note application since Roam Research was released, and I have since moved to Logseq, and I am now experimenting with Tana. I'm finding Tana an excellent place to capture information and make it searchable with its combination of bidirectional linking, transclusion and super-tags, a very useful combination. 

Evernote is a very long way away from matching those features.

I use todoist for task management and Fantastical for calendar management. Fantastical is particularly good at handling multiple calendars, and todoist offers very powerful capabilities for managing my tasks. Yes, I pay extra for those, and the integration of tasks and calendars that Evernote is developing into one tool is of limited benefit to me, and it is a long way behind these specialist tools.

Evernote has become a document reference as none of the tools I've mentioned handle documents well. Over the years, I have loved Evernote's ability to find obscure documents because of its full-text indexing of file content, including the OCR of handwritten stuff. I have also used tags extensively as another way of finding documents.

I'm a little surprised at what I will use to replace this use case - Google Drive. I use Google as the basis for my "business" (it's just me), so I have access to the full range of corporate tools Google provides. As you would expect, the search is at least as good as Evernote, and I can find any content in a document, including handwritten images. 

Over the past few days, I've started experimenting with Google's "labels" to replace the tags. My most common tags are for the organisation, person and project, so these structured ones seem to work well. I used to tag notes with subject notes, but I am finding I use Search to find notes related to subjects now, so I've largely stopped doing this.  And Google also seems to be pretty good at "fuzzy" searches, such as when I misspell something in my notes. For example, searching for "corproate" in Evernote returns only notes where the misspelling occurs. Google returns documents where both "corporate" or "corproate" appear. 

And I can use these features without paying extra, now saving myself almost NZD300. 

As long as Bending Spoons allows me to access the archive of notes that Evernote is becoming for me, I will continue using it. But I am saying goodbye to the elephant as part of my toolset with regret and sadness. It has been through a lot with me!

Offtopic, I plan to go in your direction, but with a combo: Bear ( quick notes, meeting notes, capture, next week should upgraded beta Bear 2 also come ) + Notion ( summarization, projects, different tables) + Todoist ( task manager ) + Googe Drive/Synology/Icloude - still to decide ( storage manager). Also playing a little with Mem, whom I find very interesting + has a nice send email functionality.

Was looking at Tana, but tbh looks confusing.

 

 

[bearbecue 13]

Got an 80% price increase on my premium plan as well. This is ludicrous.

I'm cancelling my subscription as well

goodbye evernote, you're not an irreplaceable tool, a *moderate* price increase would have been fine.

[Zach A 4]

I received an email saying my Professional membership will increase from 12.99 AUD to 22.99 AUD. However, my billing details show my next renewal cost to be 36.98 AUD. Not very happy with this increase without any details on what I might get for that additional investment. Currently, looking at alternative options.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

About this (and other „amazing“) calculations my first move would be to ask support.

If they confirm, you are absolutely right to check for options that give you a better balance of cost and value.

[eric99 1,023]

Prices are very unpredictable. Maybe BendingSpoons' AI mines our database calculating how much we can afford. That explains at least why my bill hasn't changed yet 😉

 

[AlanH 64]

11 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

About this (and other „amazing“) calculations my first move would be to ask support.

If they confirm, you are absolutely right to check for options that give you a better balance of cost and value.

Well, I did contact support, and they did confirm that the 80% increase was correct, so I have cancelled my subscription with no acknowledgement from Evernote. So after more than 10 years, that is it. 

And for those of you who have not had an increase yet, I still wonder why what seems like a small percentage of users have seen such a large increase. Maybe they want to get rid of all the high-end users and simplify the product. Oh well, time will tell.

[Reuven 31]

1 minute ago, AlanH said:

Well, I did contact support, and they did confirm that the 80% increase was correct, so I have cancelled my subscription with no acknowledgement from Evernote. So after more than 10 years, that is it. 

And for those of you who have not had an increase yet, I still wonder why what seems like a small percentage of users have seen such a large increase. Maybe they want to get rid of all the high-end users and simplify the product. Oh well, time will tell.

What country are you in and what plan did you have?

[AlanH 64]

35 minutes ago, Reuven said:

What country are you in and what plan did you have?

New Zealand and Professional, why do you ask?

[Reuven 31]

4 hours ago, AlanH said:

New Zealand and Professional, why do you ask?

I am trying to find out whether the price increases are geographically oriented.

[l0nEr 7]

can they at least implement AI writing first before increasing the prices?
i still dont see any price changes on my end, but mine ends in August.

i really like Notion AI and Mem.Ai looks promising. Just that both cant seem to read/search inside PDF at this point.

 

[AlanH 64]

14 hours ago, Reuven said:

I am trying to find out whether the price increases are geographically oriented.

I was wondering the same thing, although I don't understand why they would choose to do that unless they want to be paid more for their "out-of-hours" support time.

[Wanderling Reborn 186]

 

On 3/7/2023 at 3:42 AM, Sayre Ambrosio said:

If you are on Mac it doesn't. OneNote is missing features on the actual app and they did away with the Safari web clipper years ago with promises to bring it back and never did. I brought over a lot of educational people then and now I'll have to move them back out to something else, which honestly will probably be notion because they have a great education plan.

As an Expert I'm hanging around to see what plays out, but I have already started looking for an alternative for my personal use.

FYI, the trick for clipping to Onenote on Mac is to use Share then Email this Page (I use Outlook as my email client). Send to me@onenote, you should get a whole page clip with the link to the original page. I actually like it better than the original web clip client. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,986]

22 hours ago, AlanH said:

Well, I did contact support, and they did confirm that the 80% increase was correct, so I have cancelled my subscription with no acknowledgement from Evernote. So after more than 10 years, that is it.

If I get an 80% bump I will think long and hard about it, to be sure. But I think I would drop back to a free subscription rather than cancel the service altogether, in order, if nothing else, to continue to create and access notes on some level while I ponder other solutions.

[Paul A. 652]

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

If I get an 80% bump I will think long and hard about it, to be sure. But I think I would drop back to a free subscription rather than cancel the service altogether, in order, if nothing else, to continue to create and access notes on some level while I ponder other solutions.

Effectively, canceling one's subscription does just drop you back to Free. Completely deleting one's Evernote account is a different process and as you point out, isn't necessary when the Free account continues to allow unlimited access to all previously created notes and continues to allow fairly full-featured new note creation.

However, this assumes they don't severely restrict the free account as a next course of action, and if 80% subscription increases become common, I fully expect the Free service to be drastically pared back as a further "incentive" for people to stay subscribed. 😕

[Sayre Ambrosio 520]

5 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

 

FYI, the trick for clipping to Onenote on Mac is to use Share then Email this Page (I use Outlook as my email client). Send to me@onenote, you should get a whole page clip with the link to the original page. I actually like it better than the original web clip client. 

I tried that and it does work. It’s a long story but I reached out to someone at OneNote and had a bad experience with it. Like condescending, if you don’t like it by a Windows machine or use a different browser type response. I wasn’t looking for them to rebuild the clipper. I know they dropped it because Apple changed things up but that particular person‘s response turned me off of OneNote and subsequently all Microsoft products. I refuse to use them now. If they have just been decent in their interaction, I would probably have it in my arsenal of tools but because of that one person I will never recommend or use their products to someone that doesn't use them already. 
 

But then again, I'm the type of person that I rarely forgive, and I don't forget, especially with businesses that treat their customers that way. 
 

I am not even going to get started on my current opinion of the whole situation with Evernote. I'm waiting to see where it goes and what bending spoons response is but it's not looking good.

 

[Frki2 77]

6 hours ago, Sayre Ambrosio said:

I tried that and it does work. It’s a long story but I reached out to someone at OneNote and had a bad experience with it. Like condescending, if you don’t like it by a Windows machine or use a different browser type response. I wasn’t looking for them to rebuild the clipper. I know they dropped it because Apple changed things up but that particular person‘s response turned me off of OneNote and subsequently all Microsoft products. I refuse to use them now. If they have just been decent in their interaction, I would probably have it in my arsenal of tools but because of that one person I will never recommend or use their products to someone that doesn't use them already. 
 

But then again, I'm the type of person that I rarely forgive, and I don't forget, especially with businesses that treat their customers that way. 
 

I am not even going to get started on my current opinion of the whole situation with Evernote. I'm waiting to see where it goes and what bending spoons response is but it's not looking good.

 

I am still shocked by no Bednig spoons response or any kind of notification about all of this. Did they gave any hints to you "Evernote Experts" or any road direction where all of this is going?

[Sayre Ambrosio 520]

4 hours ago, Frki2 said:

I am still shocked by no Bednig spoons response or any kind of notification about all of this. Did they gave any hints to you "Evernote Experts" or any road direction where all of this is going?

I haven’t heard anything but I can’t speak for all experts. Full disclosure. I’ve been kind of absent from expert communications and get together due to a family illness so I could have missed something. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,986]

4 hours ago, Sayre Ambrosio said:

I haven’t heard anything but I can’t speak for all experts. Full disclosure. I’ve been kind of absent from expert communications and get together due to a family illness so I could have missed something. 

Good to see you back here!

[Sayre Ambrosio 520]

10 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Good to see you back here!

Aww thanks. Trying to make it in more. Life hit hard so working back slowly. 

[AlanH 64]

17 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Effectively, canceling one's subscription does just drop you back to Free. Completely deleting one's Evernote account is a different process and as you point out, isn't necessary when the Free account continues to allow unlimited access to all previously created notes and continues to allow fairly full-featured new note creation.

However, this assumes they don't severely restrict the free account as a next course of action, and if 80% subscription increases become common, I fully expect the Free service to be drastically pared back as a further "incentive" for people to stay subscribed. 😕

@Paul A. I suspect you are right on the restrictions on the free version. I'm only going to be using it as an historical archive. I won't be adding anything new to it, so as long as I can do simple searches, I will keep using Evernote. And perhaps in the future, they may give me enough reason to take up a paid subscription. So many new ways of doing things now that did not exist when Evernote first launched.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,986]

22 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

If I get an 80% bump I will think long and hard about it, to be sure. But I think I would drop back to a free subscription rather than cancel the service altogether, in order, if nothing else, to continue to create and access notes on some level while I ponder other solutions.

Revisiting my own thought process ... If it goes up to US$180/year for me (which I sincerely hope it doesn't), that's still only $0.50/day. I'm positive that I get at least that much value from it each and every day. I know that Evernote no longer provides the tools and features that some users need, but it does for me (indeed, there are things I haven't explored yet, like tasks), and the burden of changing to something else and probably losing some features I rely on would give me more aggravation over the course of the next year than the cost of the increase. But I still hope it doesn't do that.

[Paul A. 652]

1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Revisiting my own thought process ... If it goes up to US$180/year for me (which I sincerely hope it doesn't), that's still only $0.50/day. I'm positive that I get at least that much value from it each and every day.

Shhh, don't say that too loudly or too publicly, or you'll just encourage them. 😬

[AlanH 64]

2 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Revisiting my own thought process ... If it goes up to US$180/year for me (which I sincerely hope it doesn't), that's still only $0.50/day. I'm positive that I get at least that much value from it each and every day. I know that Evernote no longer provides the tools and features that some users need, but it does for me (indeed, there are things I haven't explored yet, like tasks), and the burden of changing to something else and probably losing some features I rely on would give me more aggravation over the course of the next year than the cost of the increase. But I still hope it doesn't do that.

I agree, it is a "first world problem" really, as it is only an extra couple of coffees a month. But they haven't delivered enough functionality in tasks and calendars to replace the tools I am already paying for, so the increase is on top of those other things. The reality for me is it doesn't offer enough to mean it needs to be part of my paid-for tool set. 

But USD180 per annum is NZD290 which equates to 6 extra coffee I can have a month. I would rather have the coffees!

[Boot17 1,490]

2 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

If it goes up to US$180/year for me (which I sincerely hope it doesn't), that's still only $0.50/day. I'm positive that I get at least that much value from it each and every day.

I think that is probably what Bending Spoons is hoping the majority of paying users will think/say... even if most grumble as they do it.

It's crazy to me that it sounds like Bending Spoons has (all but officially) confirmed that they are having variable pricing now, but they don't say exactly *what* that variance is.

[Boot17 1,490]

Saw this on Twitter just now:

[PinkElephant 8,305]

Thanks for posting. It tells all about capitalism at work in a Tweet: We are thinking permanently about how we can optimize our profits, so prices will go up, eventually, we just don't know (or tell) how much, where and when.

OK, now we are much better informed  😎

But hey, there is a sign of hope: It seems they still have enough money left in the bank to pay for the blue swash on their Twitter account. Gosh, and I was afraid they had everything stashed away at SVB ...

[Sayre Ambrosio 520]

16 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Thanks for posting. It tells all about capitalism at work in a Tweet: We are thinking permanently about how we can optimize our profits, so prices will go up, eventually, we just don't know (or tell) how much, where and when.

OK, now we are much better informed  😎

But hey, there is a sign of hope: It seems they still have enough money left in the bank to pay for the blue swash on their Twitter account. Gosh, and I was afraid they had everything stashed away at SVB ...

It's one of the legacy ones. I thought you would get a kick out of the wording on Legacy verified accounts. Um, if I find anything sketchy when it comes to be notable it's gonna be people that pay for a checkmark. I worked hard for the one I have on the platforms I have it on. Irritates me to no end for people to be able to buy one.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

It seems everything in that place is for sale now, including the sinks. When it sinks in you have less people, you can sink some of them.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,986]

4 hours ago, Paul A. said:

Shhh, don't say that too loudly or too publicly, or you'll just encourage them. 😬

Yeah, I actually did think of that. Ack. Too late now.

[Frki2 77]

So, this is what i got this morning 🤩...from 8.99 to 13.49...

 

 

 

And this is new price structure i get

 

[ghon 81]

can you also post the cost on a yearly rate?

[Frki2 77]

7 minutes ago, ghon said:

can you also post the cost on a yearly rate?

Sure

[WilliamL 658]

The irony for me is that if BS had communicated with users, explained they were raising prices, engaged in some way that communicated they didn’t see us as worthless, I would have paid an increase! I love the product but I detest how it is run now so it’s a principle thing for me now more so than cost (though I wouldn’t have welcomed an increase I would have begrudgingly accepted it). As others have said I will run the free account as an archive though I also plan to download it all as html and Evernote files to protect against any future changes. I am trying out craft which seems really good, had a wee look at men.ai though it seems to be just at beta just now with its apps, also testing out Microsoft 365 and OneNote with it having the email forwarding feature. 

It’s a shame as Evernote ticked literally every box but I would feel like a mug continuing to pay for it after all this so it’s me that has to adjust how I work, which may lead to something useful in the end (unlikely lol!). 

[eric99 1,023]

1 hour ago, WilliamL said:

The irony for me is that if BS had communicated with users, explained they were raising prices, engaged in some way that communicated they didn’t see us as worthless, I would have paid an increase! I love the product but I detest how it is run now so it’s a principle thing for me now more so than cost (though I wouldn’t have welcomed an increase I would have begrudgingly accepted it). As others have said I will run the free account as an archive though I also plan to download it all as html and Evernote files to protect against any future changes. I am trying out craft which seems really good, had a wee look at men.ai though it seems to be just at beta just now with its apps, also testing out Microsoft 365 and OneNote with it having the email forwarding feature. 

It’s a shame as Evernote ticked literally every box but I would feel like a mug continuing to pay for it after all this so it’s me that has to adjust how I work, which may lead to something useful in the end (unlikely lol!). 

As I already mentioned before, only use the legacy windows client html exporter, the other legacy and especially V10  html export is worthless as stand alone archive.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

@WilliamL Maybe this upping is just for inflation ....

Brace for the impact of the "real" increase - that's when new features roll out of the barn door. Some people are whining here to get "AI" - I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate question posted in the internal test runs would be "How much more can we raise prices now to hit the sweet spot, if calculated against user losses". AI is super on that (given it gets the training data) - just an example for pattern recognition.

[WilliamL 658]

40 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

@WilliamL Maybe this upping is just for inflation ....

Brace for the impact of the "real" increase - that's when new features roll out of the barn door. Some people are whining here to get "AI" - I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate question posted in the internal test runs would be "How much more can we raise prices now to hit the sweet spot, if calculated against user losses". AI is super on that (given it gets the training data) - just an example for pattern recognition.

Could be likely, personally I dont really have a use case for AI, Craft already has it implemented, but other than writing some pretty cool poems I am not sure how I would use it.  I will be keeping an eye on Evernote - I do hope there is a change through for me I think now there is too much water under that bridge and a deep loss of trust.  When I think I can get the family version of Microsoft 365 for the price of pro Evernote it becomes pretty difficult to justify the cost.

[eric99 1,023]

45 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

"How much more can we raise prices now to hit the sweet spot, if calculated against user losses". AI is super on that (given it gets the training data) - just an example for pattern recognition.

They better add software quality / reliability  to their equation as well

[Frki2 77]

9 minutes ago, eric99 said:

They better add software quality / reliability  to their equation as well

I think soon the situation with Evernot will be that we are paying Ferrari and getting Fiat...😂

 

[Paul A. 652]

13 hours ago, Frki2 said:

So, this is what i got this morning 🤩...from 8.99 to 13.49...

OUCH. That is a 50% increase. Better than a 80% increase, but not by much...

[Frki2 77]

1 hour ago, Paul A. said:

OUCH. That is a 50% increase. Better than a 80% increase, but not by much...

Yup. It is crazy increase. I would understand one from 8.99 to 9.99 but 13.49? That is crazy. And just squeezing the customer out. 

[bearbecue 13]

On 3/14/2023 at 11:35 AM, WilliamL said:

Could be likely, personally I dont really have a use case for AI, Craft already has it implemented, but other than writing some pretty cool poems I am not sure how I would use it.  I will be keeping an eye on Evernote - I do hope there is a change through for me I think now there is too much water under that bridge and a deep loss of trust.  When I think I can get the family version of Microsoft 365 for the price of pro Evernote it becomes pretty difficult to justify the cost.

Yes, exactly my feeling as well. It's a nice curiosity right now.

Personally I couldn't care less about these features they use to justify the price increase. Again if it was something like 10%, yes okay. inflation is here.
The issue is the combination of the massive increase, plus that the justification for it gives a feeling of: meh, don't care about all that, focus on the things that piss people off instead, such as bugfixes or actually useful things people have been asking for years ? and none of this should be a justification for a price increase, it's the base you expect for product maintenance and improvements over time? Here especially with no communication around it, it just looks like, how more can we milk the cows until they bugger off someplace else ?

Also for the question about the location of users that got the price increase: europe here.

[bearbecue 13]

... plot twist: I just tried cancelling my subscription, gave feedback that it was because it was too expensive. which instantly popped a dialog saying we don't want to see you go, and offered a.... 40% discount. 54 E instead of 90 E.

So, I guess that's a good thing to know if you're hesitating on whether or not to cancel your sub.

Guess I'll be cancelling next year then. good job on the strategy, they still got a price increase out of it, and that user didn't cancel.

It still leaves a bad taste in the mouth tho.

[Constantine001 27]

According to a Twitter poll where more than 300 Evernote users voted, more than 60% of them said they left Evernote when they heard about the price increase. So I guess the 40% off offer that appears when you cancel either didn't appear to everyone or wasn't enticing enough.

[agsteele 2,985]

Of course these Twitter polls are not randomised or representative of the Evernote universe. They are also self selecting. So all we know is that of that specific 300 individuals around 180 responded as described. It tells us nothing of those that chose not to respond nor of the many, many more Evernote users who weren't invited to respond.

The true level of disgruntlement could be much worse or, indeed, less worse. We don't know.

[Constantine001 27]

1 hour ago, agsteele said:

Of course these Twitter polls are not randomised or representative of the Evernote universe. They are also self selecting. So all we know is that of that specific 300 individuals around 180 responded as described. It tells us nothing of those that chose not to respond nor of the many, many more Evernote users who weren't invited to respond.

The true level of disgruntlement could be much worse or, indeed, less worse. We don't know.

Of course they are not representative, even though a 300+ user sample is a good figure. And indeed this was a while ago and quite a lot of people who commented said they voted that they will stick with Evernote, only because they were not sure yet. So the figure of users who will eventually unsubscribe could be worse than 60%. But then again, this is only an assumption. I personally think that some hardcore Evernote users or people with thousand of notes will remain despite the price increase. But I don't see this as a viable plan for the company in the long run, especially bearing in mind the super-fast pace some note-taking apps keep adding new features.

[Constantine001 27]

Also let me just say this regarding the pace other apps keep adding features. Notion uses Twitter polls every now and then to gather users' opinion about what features they want to see. A couple of times I emailed UpNote to suggest features and saw them implemented in the next version. Craft has also been very responsive to my feedback. Evernote, on the other hand, has no need for polls because all the requested features we users have been asking are right there in the forums, with the number of votes next to them. Yet, they've been focusing on improving minor details and fine-tuning tasks! I just hope Bending Spoons will have a look at the requested features forum and start implementing the ones with the most votes at some point!

[Boot17 1,490]

4 hours ago, Constantine001 said:

I just hope Bending Spoons will have a look at the requested features forum and start implementing the ones with the most votes at some point!

Seems like a good way for Bending Spoons to garner favor with a lot of forum participants and get some positive momentum that way.

I think one of the main reasons that Evernote took a step back with the unified electron version 10 upgrade was so that they'd be able to then move forward more easily once they got their feet back under themselves. I think they were kind of stuck where they were at before -- it was harder to innovate since Evernote had different feature sets on, and different code bases for, different platforms. (Edit: compare this to Notion and UpNote that have had one respective unified/core platform since the beginning.) Over the last few months Evernote has rolled out some pretty cool things like Backlinks. I think even prior to the acquisition by Bending Spoons they were starting to get on a good trajectory.

[Sayre Ambrosio 520]

On 3/13/2023 at 6:22 PM, PinkElephant said:

It seems everything in that place is for sale now, including the sinks. When it sinks in you have less people, you can sink some of them.

Right?! I wanted a Tesla for years and then when we bought my new car I was like WTH is this? The design of that car made me think long and hard about anything Elon has his hands in. Ended up with a Kia Soul.

Edited March 17, 2023 by Sayre Ambrosio
Edited for clarity

[sandrog 4]

Hello everybody, I've just being notified my subscription fee will almost double in 2 weeks... 

I find this very unfair because if the tools is integrated in the personal workflows 2 weeks will not leave really any option if not to accept the new conditions... 

I'm really disappointed obviously, being an evernote user since 2010 and an advocate of this app.

What do you think? Do you have any fast, reliable strategies to migrate to some other platform minimizing the lost of information?

I've more than 10.000 notes all of them labeled in many ways...

Can you suggest other forum or sites where to find alternatives and migration strategies?

Thanks!

[agsteele 2,985]

Remember that you can drop to Free and retain access to your notes. Work with the Free limits while you make your plan for the future.

[BeEfficient 44]

1 hour ago, sandrog said:

Hello everybody, I've just being notified my subscription fee will almost double in 2 weeks... 

what confuses me most is the fact that EN promised that the old price will stay forever as long as you don't cancel the current subscription.

[agsteele 2,985]

New owners/ new rules.

If there was such a promise, which I may have forgotten due to my aging memory, then it was a daft promise. 

My own view is that Evernote should have had small annual/biannual increases to avoid large surprises.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

3 hours ago, BeEfficient said:

what confuses me most is the fact that EN promised that the old price will stay forever as long as you don't cancel the current subscription.

No, they never promised anything like that. They said they keep up the old plans, that’s all.

If you look at the price increases, they keep the distance in total $/€ between the grandfathered and the actual plans. This in turn means the raise in percentage is higher, the cheaper the old plan was.

[BeEfficient 44]

here

"You may see a higher price on our website than you’re currently paying, but rest assured you will continue to renew at the same price you’ve been paying as long as your subscription remains active. Only new subscribers to Personal will be charged the new price."

[hildebrandopsj 1]

Guys,

Evernote became a joke, i receveid an e-mail telling me my personal account will have a five times price increase!

Good luck to you all!

If you guys like to see a good alternative i suggest https://getupnote.com/. It's have Markdown, latex, bi-directional link, sync, focus mode and so on.

[DTLow 5,738]

1 hour ago, hildebrandopsj said:

five times price increase

Are you really paying 80BRL annually    
This is like 1/5 of what I was paying

These are the prices I see currently;  Canadian $, paid annually

 

[PinkElephant 8,305]

I think in local currency there are discrepancies. It seems they move it up to the same level in hard currency now. You can look at it two ways: "Oooops, that's expensive", or "I was lucky all this years how much I saved".

Either way, what's important is the future, and if value and price are still somewhat balanced. If not good to have a plan B.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

2 hours ago, BeEfficient said:

here

"You may see a higher price on our website than you’re currently paying, but rest assured you will continue to renew at the same price you’ve been paying as long as your subscription remains active. Only new subscribers to Personal will be charged the new price."

It is very clear this was only related to the switch from Premium to Personal, back when it happened in 2021. And then it was true - the switch was made without changing prices. It was a one time action, and a one time commitment.

It was never said, and never meant to be an eternal price guarantee.

[BeEfficient 44]

13 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

"I was lucky all this years how much I saved".

you never ever can see it this way.

In my country, people earn around 200 euros per month. This is a lot of money here. The rent for a 80qm flat is around 50 euro per month.

price is "fair" in "relation to something". So if your average salary is 24.000 euro per year and EN charges 100 euro = 0,4% of yearly salary.

let us make a round 0,5% of yearly average salary - that is "ok".

or if your average rent for a normal flat is 800 euro per month, so around 10.000 euro per year... A yearly 100 euro EN fee is 1% - this is "ok".

so everything needs a relation. it is confusing when EN increases the price in a way that it becomes 1-2 full rents for a family per year.

so coming back to your "being lucky i saved"... no absolutely not. It was just "fair" and "in relation to other daily costs" just "reasonable".

[RJLUK 308]

On 3/20/2023 at 5:29 AM, BeEfficient said:

In my country, people earn around 200 euros per month.

This could be construed as controversial but, if that is the case then find a team of coders and write a BETTER all singing all dancing LOCAL hosted EN alternative....then sell it world wide for 25% of cost of EN.

Great business model. 

BUT- you would be competing against a product with longevity AND a degree of reliability.

I do not agree with adjusting prices geographically. Why should I pay MORE for the same product? It is a really bad business model.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

EN is based in a high wage country (although they have a second office in Chile, giving them some leverage), running on servers located in industrial countries. That’s the cost level they need to cover.

I doubt that making prices based on the cost of living of the users would be a sustainable business model.

[BeEfficient 44]

21 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

I doubt that making prices based on the cost of living of the users would be a sustainable business model.

but it is logically the only way.

if you want to develop a worldwide leading note-taking software and you are based in switzerland and you say: it will cost 1000 franks per year - this is fine for local people based upon their average salary.

however, at this very moment, you exclude 199 other countries or 99% of other potential customers. so you simply can't become worldwide leading if you charge relatively other countries so high that they have to decide "food for my family or a buggy EN abo?"

basically almost all other giant companies like microsoft, adobe, netflix and tons of others do it this way.

Imagine you life in switzerland and work with someone in Malaysia. The full MS office package per year in switzerland costs more than their yearly salary in Malaysia. They simply can't pay the swiss standard for MS office. Microsoft and all the other leading tech companies understood that.

knowing that the costs are already given for a company like EN, is it better to have 100 customers from the US only or having the same 100 in the US but additional 100.000 other customers from much poorer countries? This is the moment where the company starts adjusting the local prices. Because the incremental cost are minimal and almost zero anyway.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

Cloud storage is not for free (just look up the prices), as is support. EN has a quite generous Free model - if one can’t sustain the cost of a subscription, this is the internal alternative.

Or any other service, nobody is forced to use EN.

[BeEfficient 44]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

Or any other service, nobody is forced to use EN.

absolutely. But i am just telling you that it is not a sustainable business model to say: we are swiss, we are rich, we want to become the world's best note-taking app ever, we charge you just 10.000 per year, and everyone in the world must pay the same for having an abo.

microsoft and many others understood that. otherwise someone from africa, asia or south america simply can't work with someone from the usa or europe.

to make it more simple: EN costs about lets say 10 euro per month, right? So around 1x lunch food or 3-4x cafe. so whenever EN decides to enter a country, this should be the orientation for the locals. This so much more sustainable. And if this is not enough for EN than simply delete the country from providing a service. Many other streaming services do it this way. They enter a country once they figured out internally how to assure to be profitable with the local pricing.

however, i like EN since day 1 a lot and wish that this product becomes competitive and leading again.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

There is nothing more competitive than the Free plan: Established company, stable clients for (nearly) all platforms, solid offer, no price tag. This should cover every user who can’t or won’t afford a subscription.

Rebating a product to meet the cost of living level is no sound idea. It only works if you can leverage your cost level by sourcing locally. This is not the case for EN.

[RJLUK 308]

17 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Rebating a product to meet the cost of living level is no sound idea.

Agree 100% . If they can provide service to someone on xxx for 10 usd a year....they can provide service to me for 10 usd a year. Anything else smacks suspiciously like discrimination based on Nationality

The free service should last a month then a very low PAID BASIC service- basically an extension of free service. Again odd how many claim they cant afford xxxx but have internet access, sat tv, latest smart phone, latest fashion and often latest car.

Lets get real if something costs xxx pay it or write your own alternative.

[BeEfficient 44]

18 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

There is nothing more competitive than the Free plan: Established company, stable clients for (nearly) all platforms, solid offer, no price tag. This should cover every user who can’t or won’t afford a subscription.

i agree with you. But again: imagine a person lives in such a country, studied, academia background, works for a great company or even the government. this person needs evernote a lot to collaborate with teams across countries. So the basic free plan is not enough. but this person earns just 200 euros per month and simply can't pay 10 euros for EN.

55 minutes ago, RobertJLee said:

Lets get real if something costs xxx pay it or write your own alternative.

this is your view. But again, giant tech companies like microsoft etc. realized that it is actually discriminating when having 1 price all over the world and therefore adjust prices locally.

nothing in this world is more fair than saying as a company "ok, if we want to provide our service in country X and we charge here 3 cafe per month, we can only charge them 3 cafe per month based on their local conditions" - if this calculation is negative, don't enter into this country.

anyway, i don't want to argue anymore and wish that BS will make EN the best EN ever.

[RJLUK 308]

3 minutes ago, BeEfficient said:

don't enter into this country.

Easy solution cant pay what everyone else pays you dont get  it.

[BeEfficient 44]

12 minutes ago, RobertJLee said:

Easy solution cant pay what everyone else pays you dont get  it.

all the other "giant" "tech companies" adjust locally. So if EN wants to become a "giant" "tech company"...

look at my example above from ms office. the us / european full package office costs more than a full professional consultant (working 24 / 7 with office package) earn in very poor counties 🙂 - how should this person ever afford ms office?

again, i don't want to discuss this issue anymore but wish that BS will rock EN. that would be great.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

The person you describe can use the Free plan. It offers 60MB per month, without charging a nickel.

We are used to think „60 MB is not really much“. This is because we are using wasteful formats. Pictures and videos are taking bandwidth.

If you look at plain text, 60MB is the equivalent of 15.000 PAGES of text, with 80 characters per line and 50 lines per page. This is more than any human will write in a month.

Add to this tagging and the ability to link attachments instead of plain inserting them. Add reducing file sizes to an acceptable level without loosing the ability to actually use the file for studying purposes. Go to 80%, and the size of a jpeg is cut by more than half. And so on, there are a lot of options when upload is a concern.

But always easier to cry for a rebate …

[BeEfficient 44]

4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

The person you describe can use the Free plan. It offers 60MB per month, without charging a nickel.

as i said above... The full professional academic employee who needs more than the free plan.

 

4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Add to this tagging and the ability to link attachments instead of plain inserting them. Add reducing file sizes to an acceptable level without loosing the ability to actually use the file for studying purposes. Go to 80%, and the size of a jpeg is cut by more than half. And so on, there are a lot of options when upload is a concern.

i absolutely agree with you. There are some ways to improve the workflow and decrease the MB. However, i was talking about the professional in a team that requires EN professional because the person collaborates with others across the world.

i would like to stop the conversion here. I made my concern clear i think, taking for many people.

let's see how BS will develop EN.

[PinkElephant 8,305]

If the professional person is in a professional team, there is an employer / customer / client. I know nobody interested in the results who would not support the use of the appropriate tools.

It is usually not about making somebody more productive. It is about meeting timelines and quality goals. If that's your issue, talk to the people who benefit from better collaboration.

[Constantine001 27]

Just to remind people that the free plan is only accessible on 2 devices. And what most people don't realise is that the web version counts -funnily enough- as 1 device. So yes, you can use the desktop client and also the phone client, but if you have more than one laptop/computer you're out of luck: you won't even be able to log on the web version on your second laptop, unless you revoke access from another device first. 

[Paul A. 652]

13 hours ago, RobertJLee said:

Agree 100% . If they can provide service to someone on xxx for 10 usd a year....they can provide service to me for 10 usd a year. Anything else smacks suspiciously like discrimination based on Nationality

It's discrimination based on willingness to pay, and it's commonplace. So commonplace, that I don't see how it could be remotely controversial. Airlines do it. Mobile phone companies do it. So do Internet providers, newspapers, retailers, clothing stores, grocery stores, and on and on.

Sticking specifically to the software industry, it's bog standard to adjust prices globally and charge countries with lower income a lower price. It's generally considered a good idea. Evernote as a cloud-based service has higher marginal costs than 'offline" software, but the marginal cost of a single user is still lower than the full cost of offering the software (which includes all the R&D to develop it), so it can still be accretive to profits to charge less than full price for people who cannot afford full price (e.g. students, people who live in lower-income countries, etc.)

[Boot17 1,490]

59 minutes ago, Constantine001 said:

but if you have more than one laptop/computer you're out of luck: you won't even be able to log on the web version on your second laptop

Unless you use Evernote on the web only on both laptops -- then it's just "one" device.

It's my understanding that the "Web" counts as its own (one) device across multiple machines. So I could theoretically use Evernote Free on 9 laptops as long as I only used the web version on all of them. However, if I used the web version and Desktop version on just one laptop -- then that counts as two "devices".

Can anybody confirm?

Of course, that's all subject to change too under new ownership as they figure out the best way to make more people pay (more) money.

[Boot17 1,490]

35 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

It's discrimination based on willingness to pay, and it's commonplace.

Yeah - this is just market demand isn't it? 

Market demand describes the demand for a given product and who wants to purchase it. This is determined by how willing consumers are to spend a certain price on a particular good or service.

The market demand is generally going to fluctuate from region to region.

Back to the post by @hildebrandopsj from Brazil:

On 3/19/2023 at 8:49 AM, hildebrandopsj said:

Evernote became a joke, i receveid an e-mail telling me my personal account will have a five times price increase!

What I think we have seen so far is that Bending Spoons is not universally applying equal increases to everyone in the same region -- it seems to be variable based on a number of not-yet-announced-if-ever factors: number of devices, database size, etc?

Is it possible that there is some metric that @hildebrandopsj is exceeding that makes Bending Spoons think they should be paying more not-withstanding the previous market rates?

[PinkElephant 8,305]

2 hours ago, Constantine001 said:

So yes, you can use the desktop client and also the phone client, but if you have more than one laptop/computer you're out of luck: you won't even be able to log on the web version on your second laptop, unless you revoke access from another device first. 

If you want to use EN on Free, and on more than 1 computer, the web client is the solution. It can be used on several physical devices, but still counts as one „device“ only. Just skip any other desktop client for it. You then have a mobile device (here it really means one physical device) to choose as second client.

[MontyAU 0]

Just for reference, as a bunch of other price information for different countries is in this thread, my cost for Personal in Australia went up 80% from $9.99 to $17.99 per month.

I'm not thrilled about it, but I use it almost every day so I'm still here.

 

[Frki2 77]

It seams i have now 3rd price when i am on mobile phone 😂😂😂 this is ridiculous 

[PinkElephant 8,305]

Pick the lowest, be happy 😉

[BeEfficient 44]

On 3/30/2023 at 12:39 AM, MontyAU said:

my cost for Personal in Australia went up 80% from $9.99 to $17.99 per month.

wow... So the price increase is really world wide.

 

12 hours ago, Frki2 said:

It seems i have now 3rd price when i am on mobile phone 😂😂😂 this is ridiculous

imagine your international company showing you on different devices different prices... I think this is what they basically call a scam 🙂

[janndk 582]

Seems the price will go up about 25% in my case (EN Prof). Evernote as a tool might be worth of that - or even more if al the bugs got fixed – but as the situation is now, I find it too difficult to trust the new owner’s intentions for Evernotes future. Seems that development has stopped, but prices continue to go up extremely fast. 

I have already copied/moved all my essential content to other places and cancelled the payment. Still following from the sideline how things are going, but have stopped active use of EN (subscription ends in june). Incredibly sad, as there is not really any other app that can fully replace EN 😢  

[Reuven 31]

44 minutes ago, janndk said:

I have already copied/moved all my essential content to other places and cancelled the payment. Still following from the sideline how things are going, but have stopped active use of EN (subscription ends in june). Incredibly sad, as there is not really any other app that can fully replace EN 😢  

What did you replace EN with, and how does it work for you?

[agsteele 2,985]

1 hour ago, janndk said:

Seems that development has stopped, but prices continue to go up extremely fast

I got a new update yesterday so I think that lack of development is not, yet, proven. But, yes, prices are increasing.

[janndk 582]

34 minutes ago, Reuven said:

What did you replace EN with, and how does it work for you?

Still searching. But at the moment I use TickTick for projects and tasks, and OneNote for collecting ideas and information.

I’m quite happy for Tick Tick – both desktop and android app. But OneNote is what it is 😕 and even worse to sync than Evernote.

[janndk 582]

9 minutes ago, agsteele said:

I got a new update yesterday so I think that lack of development is not, yet, proven. But, yes, prices are increasing.

So, what new did it bring?

[Reuven 31]

Just now, janndk said:

Still searching. But at the moment I use TickTick for projects and tasks, and OneNote for collecting ideas and information.

I’m quite happy for Tick Tick – both desktop and android app. But OneNote is what it is 😕 and even worse to sync than Evernote.

Recently I came across a service called UpNote. Supposedly it does everything Evernote does. Did anyone try it? Any opinions?

[janndk 582]

14 minutes ago, agsteele said:

[...] But, yes, prices are increasing.

Just a month ago the price increase was about 10% - now it's about 25% - next month who knows!! 🤥

[agsteele 2,985]

7 minutes ago, janndk said:

So, what new did it bring?

I'll let you know. I haven't used it yet. I think that the release notes said the focus was on stabilising existing features that weren't performing as required plus some bug resolutions.

[agsteele 2,985]

8 minutes ago, Reuven said:

Recently I came across a service called UpNote. Supposedly it does everything Evernote does. Did anyone try it? Any opinions?

It does some of the stuff that Evernote does, some things that EN doesn't do (Markdown for example), and some things are missing that have become a key part of my Evernote workflow (Input folders for example).

And much the same could be said for all the alternative note taking apps. If I switch my workflow will be broken and I'll have to find a means to move my notes.

For now I have no reason to move and every reason to stay put. That could change when my renewal comes around.

[Constantine001 27]

3 minutes ago, Reuven said:

Recently I came across a service called UpNote. Supposedly it does everything Evernote does. Did anyone try it? Any opinions?

Yes, UpNote is what most people suggest in forums and YouTube as an alternative.

Monthly subscription is only $0.99 and lifetime subscription is $24.99!

It does offer all the functionality of Evernote apart from OCR. But it makes up for it by offering tons of other features: you can lock notes with a password, there are collapsible sections, custom sort of notes and folders, a very clean and modern look, you can pin the app to the top of other windows (ideal when using Zoom or another app and you want to have your notes active), proper backlinks by typing [[, and much more.

So I moved all my notes there. I am only skeptical about the privacy thing and longevity of the app. It is maintained by a very small team in Vietnam. They say that the data is safely stored in Firebase servers in the US and they fully comply with GDPR in the EU. The good thing is that even if they shut down the service in the future, you can export all the notes in markdown! Another plus is that there is an Evernote importer and also they update the app with new features once or twice a month (and a couple of times I asked for certain features and saw them implemented in the next update!) It is certainly worth trying, bearing in mind the minimal cost of only a dollar per month. And here's their privacy policy: https://getupnote.com/privacy.html

As a productivity coach, having tried everything, this is the only Evernote alternative I could find. I hope they will implement OCR support soon. Until then I also upload my PDF files that I need to be scanned by OCR on Google Drive.

So my workflow so far is using Google Drive for storage, UpNote as Evernote replacement, Todoist as task manager, and Notion as project manager. TickTick is also a good Todoist alternative (definitely has more features than Todoist but it's sync with Google Calendar takes hours).

[ghon 81]

Upnote does not offer notes access through a web browser, which is a must-have requirement for me.

[Alxa 483]

Just looked into UpNote. They obviously invest in native app development. App is running in 6th gear on my middle class devices. Thumbs up for that. Whished EN had not made the one way decision to cancel native app development with EN10.