Bending Spoons Price Increases Begin

[Boot17 1,490]

1 hour ago, Alxa said:

Just looked into UpNote. They obviously invest in native app development.

Huh - I'm an UpNote fan and I always thought the whole thing ran on Electron, but looks like the Android and iOS apps do run native code and only the Desktop apps (Windows, Mac, Linux) run on Electron.

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/androidapps/comments/ms2cxx/dev_upnote_a_clean_and_beautiful_app_for_writing/

From: https://www.reddit.com/r/UpNote_App/comments/whqfj7/comment/ij91ky4/

(thomas dao is one of the developers and is pretty active in the UpNote_App subreddit)

[Paul A. 652]

4 hours 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.

Have you seen any progress at all on the long-promised real-time synchronization changes? I hope BS didn't lay off too many of the key architects of that fairly massive change.

3 hours ago, 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.

I've heard good things about Tick Tick as a product, but I am leery of trusting and installing Chinese software. I don't have national secrets to protect and the CCP has no reason to be interested in me or my data, but it still makes me squeamish to know that they can force any Chinese company to disclose user data, install backdoors, monitor my local network traffic, etc.

Certainly the US is not perfect by any means, but the privacy risks for a US-based company are lower and better understood. And of course Bending Spoons is an Italian company, and the EU has generally stricter data privacy rules than the US.

[janndk 578]

11 minutes ago, Paul A. said:

I've heard good things about Tick Tick as a product, but I am leery of trusting and installing Chinese software.

I think TickTick (Appest Inc) is based in Santa Clara, California?

[Paul A. 652]

3 hours ago, janndk said:

I think TickTick (Appest Inc) is based in Santa Clara, California?

They may have a couple of employees in Santa Clara or even a small office, but it's basically a Chinese company. Some tells are how vague they are about the company and team on their website, the poor English language translation of their marketing copy, no US-based venture funding, and so on. The below Reddit thread goes into more detail. Also, there's this corporate directory I found which lists Appest as a Hong Kong company:

https://www.ltddir.com/companies/appest-limited/

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ticktick/comments/qqzb3a/is_ticktick_really_a_chinese_company_i_see_that/

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

7 hours ago, Constantine001 said:

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.

A lifetime sub for $25 means out of business before long, IMHO, at least if very many people subscribe and put up very many notes. Collapsible sections and custom sorts sound useful, but I don't see how they make up for lack of OCR, which would mean that attachments are not searchable. My Evernote Professional sub renews next month for the same as last year (US$100), so I'm staying put. Of course, they could change that price in the next 6 weeks!

[BeEfficient 44]

14 hours ago, Constantine001 said:

So my workflow so far is using Google Drive for storage, UpNote as Evernote replacement, Todoist as task manager, and Notion as project manager.

sounds very organized, i like.

upnote has toggle lists... This is the number 1 feature i miss in EN

[agsteele 2,985]

We all have different requirements and should use whichever service best meets our needs. 

Like @Dave-in-Decatur, I wonder how a lifetime subscription of USD25 is in anyway sustainable.

[janndk 578]

56 minutes ago, agsteele said:

We all have different requirements and should use whichever service best meets our needs. 

Like @Dave-in-Decatur, I wonder how a lifetime subscription of USD25 is in anyway sustainable.

I agree. That's probably not sustainable or trustworthy in the long run 🤔

However, Evernote is at the opposite problematic end with its infinite price increasing 😕 It's not the price itself, but that the price is unknown and unstable. I have this unpleasant feeling that the company is only interested in squeezing the price up as much as they can, without any genuine intentions for Evernotes future development.

Another thing is that Evernote is too slow: Even very simple information like a grocery list takes too much time to sync. TickTick, UpNote, etc. syncs in seconds when the same content takes minutes in Evernote (and OneNote is taking sometimes hours 🙄).

Actually I hope somebody proves me wrong, as Evernote is very difficult to replace with any other single app 😕😉

[eric99 1,022]

4 hours ago, agsteele said:

We all have different requirements and should use whichever service best meets our needs. 

Like @Dave-in-Decatur, I wonder how a lifetime subscription of USD25 is in anyway sustainable.

25 USD x 100 million switched evernote users = 2.5 billion USD, not bad for a team of a few developers 🙂

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Nobody who is today on Free has an incentive to switch (not yet …), and probably not for a subscription, lifetime or renewing.

The subscribers are a much smaller group. If it leads to a stampede, it will trickle down to many solutions.

Sorry guys, skip that order for a Ferrari …

[Alxa 483]

Better a one time bet of 25 USD on a promising product focusing on pure usability and speed. Than 100 USD per year on a company that cancelled their native apps two years ago and never catched up performance.
Well this is not meant literally but wow, look a the pureness and fine details of UpNote. Super fast native app on mobile which is essential for quick note taking. Even the desktop app is much more responsive than EN. You feel there is a real dedication for the core note taking product - no comparison to EN development.

To the actual topic in this thread: I will not buy new hardware (in my case Android devices) because of one and only app, the developers failed on, AND spent 100 USD per year on top for this failed product. My subscription is due to renew in 2023-09. Let's see, if Bending Spoons get their hands on anything EN failed the last years to this date. Meanwhile the (native) EN 8.13.3 Android app keeps running on my Android devices as EN 10.X is not usable because of the ongoing slowness.

[Constantine001 27]

If you read on Reddit, the no1 concern everyone has about UpNote is the longevity of the product since it's so cheap. I googled "Upnote longevity" and "Upnote future-proof" and I came up with at least 6 different threads where ppl worry about the future of the product because of the low price tag. However, I also came across this post, where the developer addresses these concerns:

 

What surprised me was that there are only 2 people behind it but then I thought, well there were 2 people behind Obsidian (now I think there are 3). So, I am still skeptical but I jumped the gun and paid for the lifetime subscription, worrying that they might increase the pricing since quite a few Evernote users have moved there recently.

Had it been more expensive, I wouldn't have considered the subscription since it's a very small development team but I thought I might as well pay the $25 and even if it closes down in the future, I can export all my notes to markdown. I tried the export function and it exports everything perfectly, without any mess, and also files such as PDFs and images remain intact in a separate folder. The notes, as I said, are all in markdown.

What won me over was the ability to have inline tags which is a must for me. And then the small RAM footprint and super fast UI.

I mean, I can worry about the future of the product or I can use it now and export everything later in markdown if something goes wrong.

I already rejected the following apps, for the following reasons:

- Onenote (I can export in PDF, Word, html - I really need something more accessible like markdown)

-Amplenote (no system tray icon, therefore no ability to have a quick capture shortcult like Evernote, i.e. Ctr+N on Windows. Having to open the app and wait for it to load everytime is a no from me).

-Craft (same reason as above)

-Obsidian/Logseq (they are more second brain apps, rather than note-taking cabinets. Plus none has a quick capture as described above)

-Notion (no quick capture, alas, why is it so hard for apps to have a global shortcut key for quick capture)

-Joplin (no way to open notes separately on a new window)

- Notejoy (no table support yet, but it's coming)

So, for the time being, I am sticking with UpNote. And I will keep reading this Evernote thread in case someone discovers another alternative. 

 

[janndk 578]

22 hours ago, agsteele said:

22 hours 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.

I don’t use Evernote activily any more – but did some testing:

A note (very simple with couple of lines): Sync from desktop to mobile goes kind of ok, if I don’t use offline notebooks.

Scratch pad: Sync from desktop to mobile take 1-2 minutes.

Tasks: sync from desktop to mobile (android) widget doesn’t work at all, unless Evernote app is opened first.

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Offline on mobile got way faster with one of the last updates. Plus they added a nice animation showing the offline sync status per note, on the main note list.

No idea why it is seemingly so hard to transfer this nice little UI detail to desktop ..

[eric99 1,022]

On 4/3/2023 at 1:44 PM, Alxa said:

Better a one time bet of 25 USD on a promising product focusing on pure usability and speed. Than 100 USD per year on a company that cancelled their native apps two years ago and never catched up performance.
Well this is not meant literally but wow, look a the pureness and fine details of UpNote. Super fast native app on mobile which is essential for quick note taking. Even the desktop app is much more responsive than EN. You feel there is a real dedication for the core note taking product - no comparison to EN development.

I started doing some tests on Upnote. The first and most important feature is export to prevent vendor lock-in:

Upnote's html export is far more superior than V10 in all aspects:

• different from V10, upnote html has working links to all note attachments and these links are relative links into the html folder structure. This means that the html export is self contained and can be moved to other locations in your file system.
• for a small note, the html size is 1 KB only, with very clean html code underneath. The same note in V10 html takes 354 KB with very bloated unreadable html code underneath and still no working links whatsoever!

And the whole upnote product has been developed by two developers only. Bending Spoons made a big mistake not buying this company. Make these guys the EN chief architects. Maybe they can still save evernote...

[Reuven 31]

Reading in this thread and elsewhere about UpNote, I signed up for the $ 25 lifetime account.

So far it has a clear resemblance to Evernote, but one issue was burdensome: many of my imported Notebooks did not import some notes as they were "too big". How do others deal with that issue? Any possible solutions?

[Boot17 1,490]

6 hours ago, Reuven said:

Reading in this thread and elsewhere about UpNote, I signed up for the $ 25 lifetime account.

So far it has a clear resemblance to Evernote, but one issue was burdensome: many of my imported

Notebooks did not import some notes as they were "too big". How do others deal with that issue? Any possible solutions?

Attachment maximum size is 20 MB. (Compared to Evernote's 200 MB for Personal and above.) If you have files bigger than that you'd have to put them somewhere else like Dropbox or Google Drive and then link to them from your note. (But note that you can have multiple attachments under 20 MB whose sum exceeds 20 MB -- it's 20 MB per attachment not per note.)

Maximum number of characters allowed in a note is 300K -- but that's for the underlying HTML that gets generated, so it will be less than that in your actual note, but will vary based on content. https://www.reddit.com/r/UpNote_App/comments/zxpx7d/what_is_the_character_limit_per_note/

[Boot17 1,490]

7 hours ago, eric99 said:

And the whole upnote product has been developed by two developers only. Bending Spoons made a big mistake not buying this company.

Yeah - can you imagine? If UpNote sold for even half of what Evernote sold for those guys are in for one big payout.

I wonder how many more users Evernote has than UpNote -- probably 100X as many I would guess. I'd also guess that Bending Spoons bought Evernote just as much for its large number of existing user base as it did for its product -- more people to charge more money.

Also, somewhat along those lines of getting more people to pay more money... I wonder what is in store for the Freemium plan -- wonder what they are thinking to try and convert more free users to paying users.

[BonskY 80]

The last time I paid a cheap lifetime subscription on a service maintain by only one person is G2Reader (RSS service)

Vanished one year after my payment...

Okay , it was only 19,99 USD , no big deal...but I won't do that again...

 

[Reuven 31]

1 hour ago, BonskY said:

The last time I paid a cheap lifetime subscription on a service maintain by only one person is G2Reader (RSS service)

Vanished one year after my payment...

Okay , it was only 19,99 USD , no big deal...but I won't do that again...

 

Well, UpNote is only $24.99, I took the plunge...

[Alxa 483]

Importing EN into UpNote also works quite well. Wow, the performance of the native Android app is outstanding even on low end devices. No way the react framework EN uses can ever catch up to this (as they have already proven in 2 painful years). They chose a one way street. Fortunately we have a choice. Signed up for testing in UpNote. If Bending Spoons does not switch back to a professional native app approach on mobile I likely will not feed the chubby elephant with a subscription renewal in 2023-09 anymore, too.

[BeEfficient 44]

1 hour ago, Alxa said:

I likely will not feed the chubby elephant with a subscription renewal in 2023-09 anymore, too.

come on... until September 2023, the yearly subscription will just increase to 699 dollars - so really a top bargain. You have to be fast, otherwise you pay 999 dollars for a yearly subscription in 2024.

[WilliamL 658]

UpNote is great it has one limitation folks should be aware of - it struggles after around 7000 notes if I recall correctly. That’s not likely an issue for some but for others it could be a real problem. 

[Constantine001 27]

4 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

UpNote is great it has one limitation folks should be aware of - it struggles after around 7000 notes if I recall correctly. That’s not likely an issue for some but for others it could be a real problem. 

Thanks for letting us know. I only have a few notes but it's good to know. Also, if you have more than 7k notes it is a good idea to let the developers know about this. As I've said before, I emailed them in the past with suggestions only to see them implemented in the next version! 

[WilliamL 658]

4 hours ago, Constantine001 said:

Thanks for letting us know. I only have a few notes but it's good to know. Also, if you have more than 7k notes it is a good idea to let the developers know about this. As I've said before, I emailed them in the past with suggestions only to see them implemented in the next version! 

I got the number from the developer. It was a while ago so it may have changed but Thomas stated 7k max at the moment. They are aware and ok with the limit, or were. 

[Frki2 77]

On 4/1/2023 at 10:43 PM, PinkElephant said:

Pick the lowest, be happy 😉

Yeah, it is like Stockholm syndrom, i did just that

[why? 37]

For those of you using Apple, are these price increases reflected in the app store? 

I've switched to Craft and can't recommend it enough. I'm not missing Evernote at all.

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Personal is currently on 69.99€ for the annual subscription in the AppStore.

It notes the grandfathered subscriptions as well, but you can't subscribe fresh to them: Premium 57.99€, Plus 43.99€. These are prolongation prices.

[eric99 1,022]

3 hours ago, why? said:

For those of you using Apple, are these price increases reflected in the app store? 

I've switched to Craft and can't recommend it enough. I'm not missing Evernote at all.

Where can I find the Android client?

[why? 37]

31 minutes ago, eric99 said:

Where can I find the Android client?

There is currently no android app.

[eric99 1,022]

3 minutes ago, why? said:

There is currently no android app.

So, not so much different from Evernote then, they don't have a working android app either 😏

[why? 37]

18 minutes ago, eric99 said:

So, not so much different from Evernote then

Except they charge half the amount for their subscription and are more feature rich.

[Boot17 1,490]

Craft may be nice for some, but for me it didn't work out. No offline for Windows (yet anyway), no tags, images would get stretched and blurry (last time I tried it anyway) -- ok for photos, but not so good for screenshots. And despite the joke, Android Evernote does work well for many. There were things I did like about Craft more than Evernote, but Evernote still checked way more boxes for me personally. Most of all though I prefer the free form editing of Evernote whereas Craft felt a little like Notion (which doesn't suit me).

A lower price is nice though. I'm glad there is great competition from others out there like Craft, Notion, Bear, OneNote, Nimbus, AmpleNote, Obsidian, etc, etc, etc. Hopefully that will help prevent Bending Spoons from going too crazy with price increases and gives us a nice exit if we deem Evernote subscription prices too high for the value we are receiving from it.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

7 hours ago, eric99 said:

So, not so much different from Evernote then, they don't have a working android app either 😏

Funny, and it's a real shame that Evernote's Android app has causes so many problems for so many people. But for me, the fact is it just works. There are a couple of limitations (no Note History, and occasional flips into landscape mode), but I rarely have sync or duplication problems, and for my note-taking needs it's a great tool. Maybe the reason why I never win the lottery is because I use up all my good luck with Evernote Android. (That, and I never buy a ticket.)

[janndk 578]

31 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Funny, and it's a real shame that Evernote's Android app has causes so many problems for so many people. But for me, the fact is it just works. There are a couple of limitations (no Note History, and occasional flips into landscape mode), but I rarely have sync or duplication problems, and for my note-taking needs it's a great tool. Maybe the reason why I never win the lottery is because I use up all my good luck with Evernote Android. (That, and I never buy a ticket.)

The main problem is - for me anyway - that it's extremely slow to update. Even something as simple as a shopping list can take ages to update.

Another thing is the task widget (android home screen) that doesn't update unless you open the EN app first. And you can only enter task name via widget (no date, no flag, no nothing else...)

And EN camera is sooooo outdated!

[bmcl26 527]

29 minutes ago, janndk said:

The main problem is - for me anyway - that it's extremely slow to update. Even something as simple as a shopping list can take ages to update.

Another thing is the task widget (android home screen) that doesn't update unless you open the EN app first. And you can only enter task name via widget (no date, no flag, no nothing else...)

And EN camera is sooooo outdated!

I own a Samsung A70 that runs on Android. While it doesn't update immediately, it eventually updates after a brief period. Furthermore, I haven't experienced any issues with widget updates.

[Constantine001 27]

New pricing announced:

https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-pricing-upcoming-features-update/

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

Many thanks, @Constantine001. WRT to pricing, I note this:

Quote

The new prices are effective starting May 1 for new subscribers and starting end of May for existing subscribers. We’re notifying all customers who are impacted 28 days before their renewal date.

This explains why different users are seeing different information, and in particular why, in the Billing section of my own Professional account, I still see "Next billing date on May 11, 2023 for $99.99." I feel very fortunate to be in this sweet spot, which is purely by luck. It will give me a year to try out the new features outlined in the article to which you linked and see if they will be worth an additional US$70 annually to me.

I'm sure others will agree that if they had released this information earlier this year, it would have saved a great deal of howling and head-scratching by customers. So one thing that is not changing under Bending Spoons: Evernote's communication with its customers about upcoming changes still stinks.

[Reuven 31]

Dave-In Decatur, you are naively optimistic. The announcement states that renewing customers will see an increase at the end of May... I hope I am wrong, but am afraid that instead of paying $70 we will see a $130 bill

[johansan 48]

41 minutes ago, Constantine001 said:

New pricing announced:

https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-pricing-upcoming-features-update/

Evernote Personal: $130
Evernote Professional: $170

This pricing is completely bonkers.

I have been with Evernote since 2009, but this is it for me. I just want a note-taking app that is fast and easy to use and syncs seamlessly with all my devices. If they would have kept a "Basic" tier for those of us who just want to take notes with markdown at a much lower price I would have been happy. With this pricing I cannot see the product surviving at all. 

[BonskY 80]

Just see the new subscription plan , it's 159.99 CAD from my side (Canada) (Personal , yearly)

It's still a better deal than by exemple Roam research...

That's fine for me...will cancel a new's media subscription...and move foward...

[Boot17 1,490]

15 minutes ago, Reuven said:

Dave-In Decatur, you are naively optimistic. The announcement states that renewing customers will see an increase at the end of May... I hope I am wrong, but am afraid that instead of paying $70 we will see a $130 bill

So Dave explained that he renews before the end of May at the pre-increase prices if the information in the blog can be trusted. And I say "can be trusted" because a lot of people were seeing pricing increases well before this blog post even came out (and well before the end of May). I wonder what that was all about.

[PinkElephant 8,291]

I am wondering what is naive about it ?

We now have a clear communication about what prices will be, and from when on. Anybody who had his subscription renew before, pays for the new period what he was charged, getting everything that is to come for the old price. Then it will be up.

Anybody renewing later will be charged the new price.

If one is willing to pay or not is up to everybody himself.

I have noticed the new sync on my own account a few days ago, and gave it some initial testing. THAT's what I have awaited for long years !

If I open the one and same note on (say) 4 devices, I see I have it open on 3 other devices. When I type something on one device, it appears IMMEDIATEDLY on all others, with a little flag moving forward with the text, carrying my name. 

If the note would be shared, it would be the name of the editing person, and if several edits take place at the same time, they are all booked.

With the old sync, this would have created conflict notes - many of them. Here: Nothing, just one note, updating without any delay.

So OK, I don't like prices go up, but I see more value as well. Everybody's choice now. There is a 28day notification, so ample time to switch if somebody believes there are greener pastures.

[Boot17 1,490]

My initial take on the 4/28/23 pricing blog post is conflicted.

On the one hand, the pricing for me goes from $75 $70 USD to $130 USD per year. That's almost a doubling of the cost.

On the other hand, I do get a lot of value from Evernote and I want to see the product succeed and paying a subscription is how I can directly contribute to that effort.

I also wonder if they have plans to try and convert more Freemium to paying plans because unless they introduce some kind of middle-tier between Free and Personal -- the jump from free to paying just got a whole lot bigger.

 

[Reuven 31]

Just now, Boot17 said:

My initial take on the 4/28/23 pricing blog post is conflicted.

On the one hand, the pricing for me goes from $75 USD to $130 USD per year. That's almost a doubling of the cost.

 

 

It's going up from $70 + tax to $130 + tax - an 85% increase...

[ghon 80]

For EUR it is 66.6% increase (from 60 to 100).

 

I wonder if it is possible to upgrade now from personal to professional locking in the 99 EUR? 

I guess not...

[blablubber 0]

The planned price increase is not acceptable.

Can anyone recommend an alternative that offers an Evernote import and where the tags are preserved?

[WilliamL 658]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

 

I have noticed the new sync on my own account a few days ago, and gave it some initial testing. THAT's what I have awaited for long years !

If I open the one and same note on (say) 4 devices, I see I have it open on 3 other devices. When I type something on one device, it appears IMMEDIATEDLY on all others, with a little flag moving forward with the text, carrying my name. 

If the note would be shared, it would be the name of the editing person, and if several edits take place at the same time, they are all booked.

It’s that good? I still have the old sync, slow, needs hand holding through the whole process etc, looking forward to trying out the new sync whenever I get it. 

[PinkElephant 8,291]

I have it since a few days, unannounced. I usually avoided to open the same note on several devices, so it was sort of accidental I saw the new icon. I could just play around a bit since.

Yes, it looks very good, practically real time.

When you have it, try yourself: Open a note on several devices at once, type into one, see the changes show on the others. Since they only transport tiny snippets (not the full note as before), it really accelerates things.

[agsteele 2,985]

It is supposed to have reached everyone by 1 May except, as I understand, for those using the Legacy software which remains on the old sync.

[eric99 1,022]

This is the technology underneath: https://yjs.dev/#features

The offline support is fascinating as well:" No waiting for slow connections. The shared data can be stored in a local database (e.g. indexeddb) and will be available right away. Render the information you have and sync later. "

Has anyone with the new sync tested that already?

edit: this is what I hoped for, they use a mature library instead of trying to program it themselves...

[Reuven 31]

1 hour ago, blablubber said:

The planned price increase is not acceptable.

Can anyone recommend an alternative that offers an Evernote import and where the tags are preserved?

Check UpNote. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

3 hours ago, Reuven said:

Dave-In Decatur, you are naively optimistic. The announcement states that renewing customers will see an increase at the end of May... I hope I am wrong, but am afraid that instead of paying $70 we will see a $130 bill

@Reuven, I will try to remember to report back here in June. My billing date is my billing date; there is no indication that they will reach in for more after it has passed--at least that's how I read it. If my price doesn't go up, will you call me a realistic sage instead? 

[Reuven 31]

6 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

@Reuven, I will try to remember to report back here in June. My billing date is my billing date; there is no indication that they will reach in for more after it has passed--at least that's how I read it. If my price doesn't go up, will you call me a realistic sage instead? 

I will call myself an alarmist... On a serious note, I think Federico and his team are following closely this and other Evernote forums. I also wrote a personal email to him with my thoughts. Perhaps they will adopt a "smarter" way to implement this stiff price increase.

[lost_gweedo 73]

Man, I can understand price increases over time but this is pretty big in a single event.  Obviously, if it's worth the price to the user---than that's what it is but it sure makes me think harder about ending my flirtation with Notion and jumping in 100%.  

[Reuven 31]

1 hour ago, lost_gweedo said:

Man, I can understand price increases over time but this is pretty big in a single event.  Obviously, if it's worth the price to the user---than that's what it is but it sure makes me think harder about ending my flirtation with Notion and jumping in 100%.  

Whether it's worth the money or not, is not the issue. It's how we assess the judgment of the new owners of Evernote to deal with the people they need to pay the bills...

[Paul A. 652]

Well, we finally have some clarity on the situation, though the pricing changes are probably not what most of us wanted to hear. I do like that they are being transparent and direct about the upcoming changes, and I'm quite excited about the sync improvements, and I truly hope it is rock-solid and bug-free.

The AI feature coming later this year to query one's own notes for answers could be a killer feature, if (IF!!!) it works well. But were my subscription renewing soon, I would be hesitant to incur a significant price hike months before even being able to test that new feature.

Although "big" features like the sync improvements and upcoming AI features are flashy and potentially add significant value, I find my own opinion towards Evernote is reduced quite significantly by a large number of what I call "quality of life" issues. These are all minor individually, but they are irritants and in combination they add up to significantly reducing the value of Evernote.

Here's a sample of some of the QOL issues that irritate me to various degrees:

First: I spend a lot of time searching my Evernote database. I use a keyboard shortcut, Opt-Cmd-F (on Mac) to jump right to the search box. The problem comes when I perform a second search, when I use Opt-Cmd-F to jump back to the search box, the previous search term isn't highlighted. So I have to delete the terms manually and then type the new ones.

The convention in just about all software that I've ever used is that the previous search term is highlighted, so that if one wants to enter new search terms one can just begin typing. (Try this in Safari, Chrome, Gmail, Spotlight, Signal, it's a remarkably consistent software design convention.) A small issue but it's an irritant and fixing it would (presumably) be SO easy.

Here are some other QOL issues:

 

[Reuven 31]

I have a hypothetical question: based on today's rate of exchange 99.99 Euros is $111.26

Can we simply pay in Euros instead of US dollars?

[eric99 1,022]

11 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

I have it since a few days, unannounced. I usually avoided to open the same note on several devices, so it was sort of accidental I saw the new icon. I could just play around a bit since.

Yes, it looks very good, practically real time.

When you have it, try yourself: Open a note on several devices at once, type into one, see the changes show on the others. Since they only transport tiny snippets (not the full note as before), it really accelerates things.

Does editing also stay fast with large text notes?

[bmcl26 527]

I've noticed a significant enhancement in Sync's speed, and Android phones now sync almost instantly since the update to version 10.50.3 yesterday. Additionally, the Lock Screen Widget updates within seconds of any changes, which is a massive improvement.

[Alxa 483]

Noticed this as well, even on older Androids it is quite reasonable fast in sync now, whilst the clients are running. Hopefully they eventually add background sync finally to mobile to always have my offline notebooks and widgets fresh and up to date on all devices 🙏🏻

[eric99 1,022]

While I still don't have a collaborative editor, I'm already noticing performance improvements with the new 10.50.3 release.

And more importantly, the hangup I reported last week seems to be resolved so far. I have the impression that they are regaining control of their software 👍

[mfocuz 0]

I'm currently paying 70EUR for personal annual subcscription, and it will become 100. Honestly, I don't see sugnificant chages in app before. Perofrmance improvements is kind of "feature" which should go from the box for free. All new functinality is so simple usability things. Comparing to notion evernote was overpriced even before. But now spoons guys want to sell new bulls**t with AI new features, while its the last thing I need in notetaking/todo appilcation type.

Thats really sad to see evernote dying. There was a moment of hope in 2021 with significant improvement with tasks. But looks like it was just last breath before death.

[janndk 578]

3 hours ago, bmcl26 said:

I've noticed a significant enhancement in Sync's speed, and Android phones now sync almost instantly since the update to version 10.50.3 yesterday. Additionally, the Lock Screen Widget updates within seconds of any changes, which is a massive improvement.

I made some testing, and have unfortunately a quite different experiences with EN android 10.50.3

After 3 hours the android widget was still not synced (desktop to android). Widget sync works only if you open the EN app first.

[Alxa 483]

Exactly widgets do not update in background yet.

[janndk 578]

26 minutes ago, Alxa said:

Exactly widgets do not update in background yet.

Bending Spoons - "one of the world's leading mobile developers" - talking about AI and other fancy futuristic functions, but can't make a simple android widget that can sync? 😒🤥

[PinkElephant 8,291]

1 hour ago, janndk said:

Bending Spoons - "one of the world's leading mobile developers" - talking about AI and other fancy futuristic functions, but can't make a simple android widget that can sync? 😒🤥

They took control at the beginning of the year.

What do you expect - code falling from the sky ?

[janndk 578]

13 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

They took control at the beginning of the year.

What do you expect - code falling from the sky ?

Yes.

 

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Maybe they need a hand ...

https://evernote.com/intl/en/careers

[janndk 578]

8 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Maybe they need a hand ...

It sure looks like that.

[WilliamL 658]

57 minutes ago, janndk said:

Yes.

 

You must realise you are being a bit unreasonable and unfair here? Four months and you expect all bugs effectively eradicated? I’ve been harsh on BS due to their lack of communication until recently, I stand by that, but this isn’t fair. Give them some time. Do you even know if you are on the new sync method to see if that makes a difference? 

[bmcl26 527]

3 hours ago, janndk said:

I made some testing, and have unfortunately a quite different experiences with EN android 10.50.3

After 3 hours the android widget was still not synced (desktop to android). Widget sync works only if you open the EN app first.

If I hadn't opened Evernote and relied on it to sync in the background, my experience would likely have been the same.

[janndk 578]

12 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

You must realise you are being a bit unreasonable and unfair here? Four months and you expect all bugs effectively eradicated? I’ve been harsh on BS due to their lack of communication until recently, I stand by that, but this isn’t fair. Give them some time. Do you even know if you are on the new sync method to see if that makes a difference? 

It might be a good idea to fix old bugs and defects before starting to focus on some new possible future features. And if they couldn't fix a simple android widget during these last couple of months, how long will it take to develop and implement a complex AI system?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

16 hours ago, lost_gweedo said:

Man, I can understand price increases over time but this is pretty big in a single event.  Obviously, if it's worth the price to the user---than that's what it is but it sure makes me think harder about ending my flirtation with Notion and jumping in 100%.  

"Price increases over time" is exactly what Evernote failed to implement. According to Federico's post, the last increase was in 2016. Increments since then, and we'd all have been happily boiled frogs by now. Instead some of us are trying to jump out of the pot.

[janndk 578]

2 hours ago, WilliamL said:

You must realise you are being a bit unreasonable and unfair here? Four months and you expect all bugs effectively eradicated?

And about bugs: No, I don't expect every single bug getting fixed right away. But it feels like there is no genuine intention to fix the problems, as the whole focus is on new super fancy future things that can "justify" a significant price increase. 

I have very simple needs. Need to take some notes and write simple project plans (computer). Need to take some picture notes, and be able to check some tasks (mobile).

And occasionally I need to be able to export some of the notes as PDF-files. And at the moment the exporting functions (or lack of the same!) are the main source of my frustrations.

• all text getting bold when exporting to pdf (OK when printing)
• missing flag/dates/etc in tasks when exporting note as pdf (OK when printing)
• cutting text when printed (OK when exporting pdf)
• note wide tables missing parts when printing (OK when exporting pdf)
• note link previews not working when exporting to pdf (OK when printing)
• when emailing notes with pics, the pics are too big. If picture is resized in note, it's scaled wrong
• and the list goes on and on...

I'm even paying a freaking professional subscription, just because I need some of Evernotes so-called "advanced export functions".

I'm paying - but Evernote/BendingSpoon doesn't deliver! 😡

[PinkElephant 8,291]

This is simply not true, and is shrugging at a teams effort that did deliver a lot of fixes. I remember some more, part of them still unfixed - but we came from a scenario with one (1) or at the most two (2) releases per YEAR. And these were mostly bug fixing only, we didn’t get new features.

We now had one release every 3 weeks on average, and with most of them some bugs were sorted out. Plus quite a number of new features, and most of them delivered on all clients, not as before just for one.

If you are in software development, you should know that a backlog is never empty !

[Paul A. 652]

4 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

"Price increases over time" is exactly what Evernote failed to implement. According to Federico's post, the last increase was in 2016. Increments since then, and we'd all have been happily boiled frogs by now. Instead some of us are trying to jump out of the pot.

Hmmm. Didn't the price go up with the introduction of the Personal and Professional plans a couple of years ago? I certainly remember a lot of discussion and consternation related to the price back then. 

[janndk 578]

2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

This is simply not true, and is shrugging at a teams effort that did deliver a lot of fixes. I remember some more, part of them still unfixed - but we came from a scenario with one (1) or at the most two (2) releases per YEAR. And these were mostly bug fixing only, we didn’t get new features.

We now had one release every 3 weeks on average, and with most of them some bugs were sorted out. Plus quite a number of new features, and most of them delivered on all clients, not as before just for one.

If you are in software development, you should know that a backlog is never empty !

Of course it's true. I'm paying, but the software is buggy and unusable.

As I understand, Bending Spoons threw half of EN staff out. And now babbling about big visions about AI. Does this sound like fixing bugs?

[PinkElephant 8,291]

1 hour ago, Paul A. said:

Hmmm. Didn't the price go up with the introduction of the Personal and Professional plans a couple of years ago? I certainly remember a lot of discussion and consternation related to the price back then. 

Personal was continued at the same prices as the Premium Plan - not rebated. There were Premium users who got a permanent rebate - these were not upgraded to Personal, but kept on the grandfathered Premium. If they wanted to go to Personal, they needed to end the rebated plan.

Professional was a new level, and it was build around additional features that were never part of Premium.

So Professional was more expensive, but it was not a price raise for any existing plan. The other plans wer kept on the same level.

The exception was changes due to local currency fluctuations. But that's an entirely different issue.

[Paul A. 652]

18 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Personal was continued at the same prices as the Premium Plan - not rebated. There were Premium users who got a permanent rebate - these were not upgraded to Personal, but kept on the grandfathered Premium. If they wanted to go to Personal, they needed to end the rebated plan.

Professional was a new level, and it was build around additional features that were never part of Premium.

So Professional was more expensive, but it was not a price raise for any existing plan. The other plans wer kept on the same level.

The exception was changes due to local currency fluctuations. But that's an entirely different issue.

Yes, you're right, but I still arched an eyebrow when I read "no price increase since 2016." The average revenue per user undoubtedly increased materially after Personal/Professional plans were rolled out. Some people might say I'm splitting hairs because the "list price" for Premium/Personal stayed the same in USD (and I imagine in some other major currencies as well).

Given new high list price for its plans, it's quite possible that Evernote implements a strategy of publicly discounting and putting the subscription "on sale" much more often than before. This is a strategy that works in many product segments. Evernote used to offer discount offers for users with lapsed plans to re-subscribe and get a discount for the first year, but I'm talking of the possibility of more extensive discounts.

Back when I subscribed to paper magazines, that was an industry that was notorious for huge discounts. No one ever paid the "list" price for a subscription, it was just a question of how good are the discounts at a particular point in time. Will be interesting to see. I feel fortunate that I have until the end of the year to see how things shake out before having to decide whether to renew.

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Well some people moved upwards from Plus - some for being able to edit Home, some for being able to better use tasks. Maybe some upgraded to Personal from Premium. And probably a bunch moved from any to Professional.

But it seems the by far largest group of users, those who pay nothing, went on mainly unimpressed. EN as a privately held company didn't publish results, but being "cash positive" probably meant they are still running a loss after books closed.

I am still wondering what will happen with the Free accounts.

[Paul A. 652]

4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

I am still wondering what will happen with the Free accounts.

Yes, me too. The free plan is pretty generous, and for a company that is focused on reducing expenses and raising revenue I have to imagine they are tempted to try and reduce their costs from free users. Though I suspect that severely curtailing the free accounts will result in a lot of bad press (even more than this price increase will), so perhaps they are waiting to see how the price changes are received first.

[bmcl26 527]

When the new plans were introduced, I upgraded from Premium to Professional for an extra payment of only £25 for the remaining part of my annual subscription. Despite the recent price increase, I am still paying an average price of a cup of coffee per week, which I consider fair given the software's usefulness. Although some users seem to have experienced issues, I personally have never encountered any problems. Perhaps I am fortunate in this regard.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

2 hours ago, bmcl26 said:

When the new plans were introduced, I upgraded from Premium to Professional for an extra payment of only £25 for the remaining part of my annual subscription. Despite the recent price increase, I am still paying an average price of a cup of coffee per week, which I consider fair given the software's usefulness. Although some users seem to have experienced issues, I personally have never encountered any problems. Perhaps I am fortunate in this regard.

I'm in the same circumstances. I paid an extra US$30, bringing the total to $100; $2/week will not get even a very good cup of coffee. When it goes up to $170/year, that's less than $3.30/week, so still in the cup of coffee range, maybe for my daughter in San Francisco instead of me here in Atlanta. $170 does sound like a big number all at once; but I also find the service to work smoothly overall, and if sync gets better on Android, I'll probably be good.

[Kenny285 2]

On 4/28/2023 at 3:17 PM, blablubber said:

The planned price increase is not acceptable.

Can anyone recommend an alternative that offers an Evernote import and where the tags are preserved?

I just imported into my Notion account.  Tags are preserved.

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Good it worked for you. I think it is easier when importing into a fresh account.

[why? 37]

I've been offered a 50% off the annual personal plan £33.99 for a year.

I've never like the comparison to a cup of coffee. That's because Evernote is not going to be the only subscription that people pay for. It's part of a whole load of other subscriptions. Adding all those up would overdose me on coffee.

What concerns me is the sudden large price increase for everybody. You don't ask for a whole wad of cash when you've not done anything. Taking over the business and immediately increasing the pricing without producing any new functionality is just a slap in the face for existing customers. That's a really poor relational move with your existing user base and means the owners will have no qualms doing it again in the future.

I also seriously doubt the the price increase will stay there. What happens next year and the year after?

 I also don't like hiding features in extra pricing tiers. Often, necessary functionality is moved to the highest paying tier.

Finally, the biggest negative of the whole app is the loss of native apps. On macOS the app does not integrate with anything. Sure you can use the share extension, but you can't integrate into the system, which is necessary for an app that collects information. I can't pull stuff out to my task manager. Or effectively link to different apps I use, it's effectively a silo.

For me, this is the end of the road. Consistent poor management has killed the app that used to be the best of its kind. The new owners have not communicated well and gone for the jugular financially, without any evidence of a better app (sync, by the way, is not a new feature and should have been working in the first place).

[bmcl26 527]

12 minutes ago, why? said:

I've never like the comparison to a cup of coffee. That's because Evernote is not going to be the only subscription that people pay for. It's part of a whole load of other subscriptions. Adding all those up would overdose me on coffee

Determining the value of a subscription is subjective. Personally, I have multiple subscriptions, some more expensive than EN, but I assess their worth and discontinue them if they do not meet my standards. EN provides me with exceptional value, but if it does not align with your needs, then it's necessary to explore other options.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

1 hour ago, why? said:

I've been offered a 50% off the annual personal plan £33.99 for a year....

What concerns me is the sudden large price increase for everybody. You don't ask for a whole wad of cash when you've not done anything. Taking over the business and immediately increasing the pricing without producing any new functionality is just a slap in the face for existing customers. That's a really poor relational move with your existing user base and means the owners will have no qualms doing it again in the future....

I also don't like hiding features in extra pricing tiers. Often, necessary functionality is moved to the highest paying tier....

For me, this is the end of the road. Consistent poor management has killed the app that used to be the best of its kind. The new owners have not communicated well and gone for the jugular financially, without any evidence of a better app (sync, by the way, is not a new feature and should have been working in the first place).

Speaking just to the claim of raising prices without having done anything, again, according to Federico's post, the last price increase was in 2016. Surely there have been improvements and features added since then! Evernote should have made incremental increases as features were added--I'm sure no one here would have complained about that.  Instead Bending Spoons did the whole price rise at once, and that was a mistake, but not a gouge, IMHO, given the changes since 2016.

Yes, last year when new subscription types were introduced, the pricing structure changed. If the competition is between putting important features in higher price tiers and handing the good stuff out cheap, which approach is likely to lead to financial stability?

Where I agree is that BenSpoo failed miserably in communicating what they were going to do about prices. Federico's post could have been made as soon as they took effective control. If that had been done, I think far fewer people would have felt that they were being cheated, gouged, imposed upon, and insulted--whether rightly or wrongly.

It does seem that some people just want the 2015 programs at the 2015 price. (I don't mean you, @why?.) That is understandable in terms of human behavior, but not really reasonable as things work today.

[Mitchel Quek 0]

I am new here! Could someone share with me if I signed up for the Annual personal plan in December 2022, does it mean that my plan pricing will not be affected by the increase till my plan ending in December 2023?

[Peter_wb 2]

The emailed informing about the price increase was a surprise. No new features with a nearly doubled annual cost!

I have used Evernote for years. I really like it. I have bored others with how good it is.

I would have been fine with a $5 or $10 annual increase. I can not justify paying nearly double annually. 

I read & watched discussions on Apple Notes improvements to what was a really simple tool.

I just exported all my notes from Evernote to Apple Notes, & canceled my subscription. Apple Notes does not have all the features but it is free. I am sure I can make this work for me going forward.

I really liked Evernote, this is disappointing. 

[why? 37]

9 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Speaking just to the claim of raising prices without having done anything, again, according to Federico's post, the last price increase was in 2016. Surely there have been improvements and features added since then! Evernote

This is not quite true. The legacy version was far more feature rich compared to the new app that was released. This has slowly been rectified, but nothing to justify the huge price increase. And for many users the new app created lots of frustration, which for me was the loss of native OS integration.

BS themselves have done nothing to justify the price increase. The old owners may not have increased the price, but the new owners increased it with producing any new features since they took over.

9 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

handing the good stuff out cheap,

I'm sorry, but nothing in the old pricing was cheap for what the app did. Especially in the last few years when the new app took a while to gain features it had in the old app. The new pricing puts it way above current competition in pricing. 

[why? 37]

13 hours ago, why? said:

I've been offered a 50% off the annual personal plan £33.99 for a year.

This was a one day deal only.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

10 hours ago, why? said:

The legacy version was far more feature rich compared to the new app that was released. This has slowly been rectified, but nothing to justify the huge price increase. And for many users the new app created lots of frustration, which for me was the loss of native OS integration.

BS themselves have done nothing to justify the price increase. The old owners may not have increased the price, but the new owners increased it with producing any new features since they took over.

But it has been rectified, and features have been added that were never available in the old version (Home page, Tasks, calendar integration...), along with a unified interface across platforms (which only matters if you use multiple platforms; for people who are Mac only or Windows only, Evernote may not make sense). BenSpoo has indeed done nothing to justify an increase; but my point was that Evernote had done so, and rather foolishly (if generously) failed to make the increase; and now it's all come at once.

10 hours ago, why? said:

I'm sorry, but nothing in the old pricing was cheap for what the app did.

And there we simply disagree. I do find EN to be worth the price as it was last year; whether it will be so at my next subscription renewal I wait to see.

10 hours ago, why? said:

The new pricing puts it way above current competition in pricing. 

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

13 hours ago, Peter_wb said:

No new features with a nearly doubled annual cost!

No new features since the last price increase in 2016? Please read some of the preceding discussion.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

16 hours ago, Mitchel Quek said:

I am new here! Could someone share with me if I signed up for the Annual personal plan in December 2022, does it mean that my plan pricing will not be affected by the increase till my plan ending in December 2023?

Welcome to the forums. We're other users here, not Evernote staff (though occasionally someone will pop in), so we can't give a definitive answer. But my understanding is that yes, you've paid for your year, and the new price will take effect at your renewal date. You can confirm this with Evernote support to be sure: https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new.

[NightStalker 407]

Long-time Evernoter here - since 2008.  Also long time member here on the forums, but haven't posted for ages.

These price rises worry me, especially that Evernote has been bought by Bending Spoons.

Bending Spoons also bought out Filmic Pro, an iOS app for 3rd party video recording, that is better than the native iOS app, and was widely used among smartphone videographers as the gold standard.  But when Bending Spoons bought the app, they whacked on the most outrageously-priced subscription prices (it had previously been a typical pay-once iOS & Android app), a mass exodus has been underway.  The prices were simply untenable, especially for a phone app - they would be extortionate even for a desktop app.  Think Adobe-like levels...!

Fortunately for those of us into smartphone videography, there are numerous really good alternatives, such as Cinema P3 - the one I switched to - so I haven't lost any functionality at all.  I suspect that Filmic Pro will either revert to pay-once, or cease to exist within a few months.

Evernote has a much bigger user base than a small iOS/Android app, and of course the subscription model has been with Evernote from the beginning.  Easily justified as paying for server space, offline OCR, etc (remember that?).

But now that the greedy Italian mob have bought Evernote, all bets are off, and the price rises are "to support continued development" and all the other usual justification BS.  Interesting that the company's initials are also BS...!

I am quite happy with Evernote the way it is, with the exception that I want to regain the function of sync at will.  Currently, I can't "force" a sync, and there's no way of knowing if or when the app is syncing, so I don't know if a new note has been saved or not.  Bring back the 'Sync' button, and the sync notification/progress alert.  Other than that, I don't have any use for group chats, collaboration, workplace teams, or AI. 

I've tried several alternatives to Evernote - searching my past posting history in here will document some of them - but nothing came up to scratch.  Now, it seems, I'm just going to have to look a bit harder.

I am NOT a fan of Bending Spoons - they just seem to be piranhas of the software world, buying other peoples' work, then jacking up prices to milk them dry.  A parasitic relationship.  Evernote selling out to them was a bad move for users.

End of rant.  For now...

[PinkElephant 8,291]

Time will tell ...

Options for Mac users look brighter than for Windows.

Just to remember:

• With a number of options, tags are not imported at all, or won't work
• With practically all alternatives, links between notes will be useless after changing apps

If flexibility is an important issue, the own way of setting things up is relevant if switching over to an option shall work with little friction.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

3 hours ago, NightStalker said:

I am quite happy with Evernote the way it is, with the exception that I want to regain the function of sync at will.  Currently, I can't "force" a sync, and there's no way of knowing if or when the app is syncing, so I don't know if a new note has been saved or not.  Bring back the 'Sync' button, and the sync notification/progress alert.  Other than that, I don't have any use for group chats, collaboration, workplace teams, or AI. 

Please take a look around at the "give us back our sync button" threads, esp. the most recent posts. The app is always syncing, and has been since v. 10 came out; and in the desktop apps Ctrl/Cmd + R will force a refresh of the app. It has not always synced perfectly, but a brand-new sync model is being rolled out. I just got it this evening. I had a note open in my phone and the same one open in the Web client. Typing on one device I saw the words appear on the other almost simultaneously. Granted, I'm in an area with excellent connectivity. The tale in more remote areas remains to be told. But you will know something's being synced when you see this.

[why? 37]

7 hours ago, NightStalker said:

I've tried several alternatives to Evernote

If you're in a mac only environment, then I can recommend Devonthink