Price increase

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

Plan increased from $129 to $209.

->>>> I cancelled <<<<-

after 12 years as enthusiastic Evernote user. Good Bye

[gazumped 11,664]

It's understandable that any increase is unwelcome,  and I totally sympathise - but look around you:  is it out of proportion with other web services?  In the UK that's the cost of one cup of coffee per week (other beverages are available) and I do have online subscriptions that are higher and (to me) of less practical value.  But you have to do what you gotta do..  good luck out there.

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

Yes I feel it is totally unreasonable! Please feel free to compare to a MS Office Family licence which costs me AUD97.30, which includes Onenote and 1TB of storage and more for 5 Users

[gazumped 11,664]

7 minutes ago, Uwe Moeschel said:

MS Office Family licence which costs me AUD97.30

Hmmn.  I have an Office 365 Family subscription which sound like the same thing,  but in the UK that's around £80 which Google says is AUD150 - different deals for different countries I guess,  based on tax and exchange rates...  and whilst OneNote is included,  and probably has AI by now,  it's very different from Evernote.  Your choice..

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

For my purpose it has enough to make me change... as mentioned after 12 years...

[Dave Andrade 113]

I've used OneNote. It is horrible - free form pages mean things get overlapped and missed, you can't view PDFs in the note, and like most things MS, it has features that are a waste and is too complicated. Other note apps are too simple.

Evernote is the perfect blend of features and function - not too many, easy to use, and have all the features you need.

Evernote was struggling because they weren't charging enough.

MS also makes millions on other products so they can give things away/charge lower. 

Each person has to decide what is important to them. To me, Evernote is worth even more than they are charging now. 

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

Well for my purpose and use case on the Mac - Onenote feels far more superior than Evernote. To charge AUD209 feels ridiculous ... Sorry.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Sorry for what follows now, and maybe I got burned by 30+ years in corporate IT slavery, being forced to use the products out of Redmond:

Who is using OneNote voluntarily deserves it !

[WilliamL 654]

The iPhone app rules OneNote out for me, that it can have text that is obscured and out of format for the phone screen, pastes in text in different format to the text in the note - with no way to correct it, that frustrates me too much, I couldn’t work in a note where the text is in different fonts and colours, that’s just unfathomable to ke. 

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

Sorry if I diverted the topic to become a OneNote discussion. 

For me the price increase is ridiculous and as mentioned there are many other good products out there with a company not increasing >> 61% of the subscription price in one year.

-> What will next year follow?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Sorry if I haven’t looked it up myself: How many posts did you do in the years 2016-2022, when you could renew for the same old price, it had been the year before ? How often did you warn that on that price level, you start doubting that the pricing policy is sustainable ? 

Oh, you didn’t ?!

Could it be that this was a little short sighted, not only in hindsight ?

But the past is the past: We users must not like price increases. But it is not a relevant question if I pay more next year than past year. The relevant question is if the service creates enough value for me to continue using it. This question is not driven by the price alone, it is driven by the value I get, and maybe if the vendor has managed to increase value for me. 

This is the relevant question - not if the price 2023 is higher than the same plan in 2022.

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

Well for me it is pretty easy AUD 80 more >> 61 % price increase, I'm out and hoping that many more follow. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

The first part may be a rationale reaction from your side, the second is completely irrational and driven by cheap emotion. You may know what’s good for you, but you can’t know what’s good for others.

Your whole thinking seems to revolve around that magical „61%“, and from experience that’s usually not a good sign of a cool, analytical approach to reach the best solution among the set of possibilities.

Just to ask: What are your use cases, what are the key success factors a software must deliver to support them, and what is the solution you will move to ? The answer to that question is maybe „42“ (only the mice will know), but for sure it is not „61“.

[Uwe Moeschel 19]

I feel it is not a cheap emotion, I feel it is more a case of a greedy, money hungry new business owner who provides a vision to which obviously the previous owners have failed to deliver ... Wouldn't it be better to first deliver and then increase the prices and absolutely new features worthwhile to buy in... 

[janndk 495]

8 hours ago, Uwe Moeschel said:

Sorry if I diverted the topic to become a OneNote discussion. 

For me the price increase is ridiculous and as mentioned there are many other good products out there with a company not increasing >> 61% of the subscription price in one year.

-> What will next year follow?

If you see the price level in Bending Spoons other apps, I would expect Evernotes price to double or triple soon.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Bending+Spoons

[WilliamL 654]

1 hour ago, janndk said:

If you see the price level in Bending Spoons other apps, I would expect Evernotes price to double or triple soon.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Bending+Spoons

You can’t possibly know what BS plan to do with pricing unless you have insider information? A stray email you got? 

To compare the pricing of video editors with a notes app is not a parallel, video editors, for the good ones (I don’t know if theirs are as iMovie does enough for me!) do cost a lot. 

All we know is the info we have today,, using conjecture to condemn the company isn’t helpful or in my view fair. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

4 hours ago, Uwe Moeschel said:

I feel it is not a cheap emotion, I feel it is more a case of a greedy, money hungry new business owner who ….

Not on cheap emotions, eh ?

To me it sounds like. Bad capitalists vs. drained users, that is a plot based on only emotions. The wording tells it all. 

Lets say the former management delivered a vision to the former owners, but not the necessary results ? This is probably closer to reality, and I don’t expect new owners to follow this „strategy“.

[janndk 495]

2 hours ago, WilliamL said:

You can’t possibly know what BS plan to do with pricing unless you have insider information? A stray email you got? 

To compare the pricing of video editors with a notes app is not a parallel, video editors, for the good ones (I don’t know if theirs are as iMovie does enough for me!) do cost a lot. 

All we know is the info we have today,, using conjecture to condemn the company isn’t helpful or in my view fair. 

What do you mean by "condemn the company"?

I don't know about iMovie, but Splice is a video editing app for mobile. Earlier by GopPro and free. Now by Bending Spoons and the subscription is about $4/week.

Why would Evernote (multi platform, note sync, AI features, online storage etc...) be offered significantly cheaper than company's other and more simple apps?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

iMovie is from Apple, and it is provided with each device running iOS or MacOS. It’s for free, if you have paid for the device (LOL). Apple sells another tool for video editing, FinalCut Pro, for a Pro price of 350€, paid software.

Splice was free when GoPro handed it out to promote their action cams. Same story, paid out of the marketing budget.

The 4/€ per week is misleading - this is a short term subscription for those of us who edit one vacation video each year, and don’t want to pay a full subscription. A yearly is 75€, which is pretty much on the same level as similar mobile apps.

[janndk 495]

18 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

iMovie is from Apple, and it is provided with each device running iOS or MacOS. It’s for free, if you have paid for the device (LOL). Apple sells another tool for video editing, FinalCut Pro, for a Pro price of 350€, paid software.

Splice was free when GoPro handed it out to promote their action cams. Same story, paid out of the marketing budget.

The 4/€ per week is misleading - this is a short term subscription for those of us who edit one vacation video each year, and don’t want to pay a full subscription. A yearly is 75€, which is pretty much on the same level as similar mobile apps.

Maybe it's different on the iPhone. In android you get the price $4 (DKK 28) per week as the only choice. It's a subscription, not a one-time week purchase!

Splice Android also seems to be missing that hyped "background removal" tool (chroma key).

[JREwing 20]

To have a great experience, I always say "you have to pay to play". I have tried numerous apps: OneNote, Obsidian, Craft, Notion, Apple Notes, and even Samsung Notes on my Android. Nothing compares to my experience on Evernote. Been with them since 2014. If Evernote is to provide value, then the price is justified. I've never found free apps worth the bother. You have to make that decision. I'll stick with Evernote because it's the perfect fit for me. 

[janndk 495]

9 minutes ago, JREwing said:

To have a great experience, I always say "you have to pay to play". I have tried numerous apps: OneNote, Obsidian, Craft, Notion, Apple Notes, and even Samsung Notes on my Android. Nothing compares to my experience on Evernote. Been with them since 2014. If Evernote is to provide value, then the price is justified. I've never found free apps worth the bother. You have to make that decision. I'll stick with Evernote because it's the perfect fit for me. 

To be able to determine whether the price is justified or not, you need to know the price.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

1 hour ago, janndk said:

Maybe it's different on the iPhone. In android you get the price $4 (DKK 28) per week as the only choice. It's a subscription, not a one-time week purchase!

Splice Android also seems to be missing that hyped "background removal" tool (chroma key).

It may be a bit OT, but since it tells us something about BS, let’s take a view:

3 periods of subscription, weekly (4€), monthly (10€), yearly (75€)

Frequently updated, the last update only 2 days old 

Asking for feature requests

iOS includes the ChromaKey background removal. Maybe easier to code, since all devices share the same interface to the neural engine.

I would say these guys know their pricing position (a little bit upmarket), and are serious to stay in business,

 Not a company that takes over to milk the cow until it drops dead from starvation.

[bmcl26 488]

8 hours ago, Uwe Moeschel said:

Wouldn't it be better to first deliver and then increase the prices and absolutely new features worthwhile to buy in... 

The new features in the last two and a half years, Home Screen, Calendar Integration, Tasks, Widgets and now the real game changer, the New Sync,  more than justify the increase as far as I am concerned.

[WilliamL 654]

2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

iMovie is from Apple, and it is provided with each device running iOS or MacOS. It’s for free, if you have paid for the device (LOL). Apple sells another tool for video editing, FinalCut Pro, for a Pro price of 350€, paid software.

Splice was free when GoPro handed it out to promote their action cams. Same story, paid out of the marketing budget.

The 4/€ per week is misleading - this is a short term subscription for those of us who edit one vacation video each year, and don’t want to pay a full subscription. A yearly is 75€, which is pretty much on the same level as similar mobile apps.

Hold on lol, that’s got me. The comments here of concern due to hypothetical price increases - and the apps in question actually cost less per year to subscribe than Evernote does? That should surely be a reassurance!

[janndk 495]

42 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

Hold on lol, that’s got me. The comments here of concern due to hypothetical price increases - and the apps in question actually cost less per year to subscribe than Evernote does? That should surely be a reassurance!

The actual prices are pretty much hidden, until you install the app. In the play store, there is a price up to $272, but without any further explanation. I tried to ask Bending Spoon's "chatbot" - it couldn't/wouldn't answer (so much for AI?), so I sent a message to the company. No response yet.

I have tested that app! So based on my own experiences the subscription is about $215 / year. (DKK 1456)

[WilliamL 654]

2 minutes ago, janndk said:

The actual prices are pretty much hidden, until you install the app. In the play store, there is a price up to $272, but without any further explanation. I tried to ask Bending Spoon's "chatbot" - it couldn't/wouldn't answer (so much for AI?), so I sent a message to the company. No response yet.

I have tested that app! So based on my own experiences the subscription is about $215 / year. (DKK 1456)

I downloaded Splice (iOS), sub is £89 per year or for both it and Renmie (probably spelt wrong!) it’s £119. So the yearly costs are quite close to where EN already is cost wise. 

[janndk 495]

10 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

I downloaded Splice (iOS), sub is £89 per year or for both it and Renmie (probably spelt wrong!) it’s £119. So the yearly costs are quite close to where EN already is cost wise. 

Remini is
$6.99/week or $179.99/year (personal = no commercial use allowed)
$9.99/week or $249.99/year (business)

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Sorry guys, but when looking up the prices I found out I still have Splice from the old GoPro days. Frozen in features, but still on my devices, for free.

And be assured, I will not switch this over to a subscription right now, just to find out.

But if the price difference to iOS is 200$ per year, I have a simple solution: Get an iPhone and an iPad instead of the Android gadgets - the Splice subscription will make it pay within (say) 9 years ?! 😇

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

13 hours ago, Uwe Moeschel said:

Wouldn't it be better to first deliver and then increase the prices and absolutely new features worthwhile to buy in... 

This argument keeps coming up. But in fact new features have been delivered for the last couple of years, without a price increase (for those remaining in the same subscription level). Why didn't any of us complain about that? 😄

[Mark B. 16]

5 hours ago, bmcl26 said:

The new features in the last two and a half years, Home Screen, Calendar Integration, Tasks, Widgets and now the real game changer, the New Sync,  more than justify the increase as far as I am concerned.

I would agree.  I think Evernote will continue to trend towards a premium application and you will have to pay to use it.  I have no problem doing that and I'm willing to pay for the best.  Right now Evernote is running my world both at work and home.  Other than MS Teams, I use Evernote far more than any other application.

Not everyone will want to pay for the best and that's ok.  

I will only question the pricing when Evernote/BendingSpoons stop innovating and a better product for the money comes around.

[Mohamed Naim 2]

On 5/4/2023 at 5:24 PM, PinkElephant said:

Sorry for what follows now, and maybe I got burned by 30+ years in corporate IT slavery, being forced to use the products out of Redmond:

Who is using OneNote voluntarily deserves it !

This is not supposed to be about OneNote, it's about the steep raising of the price.  I also have been using Evernote for many years, and to be quite honest, for most of those years anything more than $20 barely made sense my use case.  But I didn't cancel simply because I didn't make time to export my old notes somewhere else and I alway thought I would go back and figure out how to better use it.  I guess I'm the type that prefers paper notebooks for daily notes etc. no matter how much I try to go digital.  Anyway, the point is OneNote is fine for some people.  There's nothing wrong with Redmond.  I'm an old Linux user and I've heard all the jokes.  But the fact of the matter is Redmond of today is not Redmond of the nineties.  They own Github for God sake's.  Speaking of Github.  That worked great for me for many years as well, and still does.  Anyway, the price hike sucks.  That's all I can say.  I'm sure it wasn't random.  I'm just glad I can live without it.

[Scottcp36 2]

Yeah i'm gonna be cancelling... Insane price increase! And i didnt even really need the paid account, just did it to support a tool i found useful mostly. But not if theyre gonna price gouge me!

[estevancarlos 30]

Yeah, I also don't see the point of this price increase. Evernote basically _just_ creates a better, streamlined, user experience than Google Docs. There's also no need for the buzzword "AI" as a part of their new features.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Nobody needs to see the deeper reason of a price increase. There is no deeper reason - the price is the one side of the equation, meant to cover the cost of a service (in a very general meaning, including cost of capital).

The other side is where it get’s interesting: What is the value created ? And is the price fairly balanced by the value ?

Because this is sometimes hard to tell, we usually compare offers with a perceived similar value. And then comes the hardest part (it seems): With a lot of head scratching, moaning and cursing we come to a decision.

Or we don’t, and use our procrastination talent to avoid deciding. Could be wrong, in the end …

This is when we start our tour de raison about the deeper meaning of a price increase. We can rant endless how bad it is the new price forces us to take a decision we wanted to avoid.

So, the price is not relevant. What’s relevant is our alternatives, and if their relative cost and value fits our profile.

[Hans Geurtsen 4]

Totally agree that the price increase that Evernote is now implementing (for me 88%!!!) is out of all proportion... $ 14.99 for a note-taking service, I also find absurdly expensive compared to the less than $7 you spend for Office 365 incl. 1 TB of storage. And all the features Evernote is adding lately (task management, AI, etc.), I don't need at all. Unfortunately, I have so many notes and documents in Evernote that I can't easily switch to e.g. OneNote. In addition, I find the simplicity that Evernote offers for note taking and the powerful search functionality, in OneNote a lot less. So unfortunately, I'm afraid I'll just have to pay more. But I do think that Evernote is going to drive away a lot of users with their overpricing....

[gazumped 11,664]

53 minutes ago, Hans Geurtsen said:

Totally agree that the price increase that Evernote is now implementing ... is out of all proportion.

The situation may be different in other countries - even at the new rates Evernote is in the middle of some services I pay for,  and still costs (in the UK) something like one cup of coffee per week.  It is under new management,  and I assume they did the maths on their revised,  slimmed-down operation.

It is possible to move without (necessarily) converting notes to a new format - free users still have access to their data,  and with 61K+ I'd simply use Evernote as an Archive,  using a new provider and converting individual topics if necessary for convenience.  Having said that I'm actually glad to pay the price increase - I have more confidence in a solidly-backed commercial enterprise than any of the newly-developed products out there,  and while I read somewhere that OneNote is being upgraded,  I have - reservations - about trusting the mega-corporations too.

But - everyone has different preferences and needs;  you have to do what you have to do.  Best of luck! 

[janndk 495]

On 5/5/2023 at 3:38 PM, janndk said:

The actual prices are pretty much hidden, until you install the app. In the play store, there is a price up to $272, but without any further explanation. I tried to ask Bending Spoon's "chatbot" - it couldn't/wouldn't answer (so much for AI?), so I sent a message to the company. No response yet.

I have tested that app! So based on my own experiences the subscription is about $215 / year. (DKK 1456)

 

On 5/5/2023 at 3:42 PM, WilliamL said:

I downloaded Splice (iOS), sub is £89 per year or for both it and Renmie (probably spelt wrong!) it’s £119. So the yearly costs are quite close to where EN already is cost wise. 

Got a response from Spending Spoons for my question about the price for Splice:

"The cost of the app may vary depending on the offer available to you when you start using it. As a matter of fact, each user has access to a unique offer that may vary from time to time."

Seems that the pricing is quite random - or maybe something AI will calculate and decide based on who you are? 😲

Wonder if Evernote is also changing to this kind of pricing system in the future? 🤔

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Oh, we dummies !

It‘s not the app that runs AI routines, it’s the apps pricing that’s on steroids AI. Enjoy, it believes you are a top notch target, able and willing to pay a fortune.

[WilliamL 654]

If ai is analysing my finances to fix the price offer - I’m in for a discount lol 😂. Random deals are not unusual - after all who at the moment as actually paying the same price for EN? Factor in discounts, offers, different retired tiers etc. has only up to now paid full price? (I think that may change going forward lol). 

[Price Change 1]

Evernote seemed helpful while I used it this year.  But I can't justify paying double for beta AI upgrades and other additional aspirational AI features mentioned by Evernote.  I'm fortunate that I was in my first year and my notes can be transferred in a short period of time. 

Thank you Evernote for helping me organize my digital notes this year.  But, I'm leaving.  It's not you, it's me.  Have a great digital life.

[estevancarlos 30]

3 hours ago, Price Change said:

Evernote seemed helpful while I used it this year.  But I can't justify paying double for beta AI upgrades and other additional aspirational AI features mentioned by Evernote.  I'm fortunate that I was in my first year and my notes can be transferred in a short period of time. 

Thank you Evernote for helping me organize my digital notes this year.  But, I'm leaving.  It's not you, it's me.  Have a great digital life.

Yeah, I'm trying to find alternatives as well. I wonder what market research they've done that convinced them to make these changes? Most of us probably just want efficiency and not necessarily _more_ features.

[gazumped 11,664]

2 hours ago, estevancarlos said:

I wonder what market research they've done that convinced them to make these changes?

Most of the rest of the world seems to think that AI is The Way Forward.  And most other note-taking apps have already included AI options.  But I agree with you - I can't see what all the fuss is about...  I peaked with pencils and paper...

[estevancarlos 30]

6 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Most of the rest of the world seems to think that AI is The Way Forward.  And most other note-taking apps have already included AI options.  But I agree with you - I can't see what all the fuss is about...  I peaked with pencils and paper...

It's novelty and greed. There's nothing inherently wrong with AI but at this stage most people are so unfamiliar with the concept that it's all buzzword and novelty. I say this as a person who is involved with related technologies.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Anybody who follows the tech segment since a while knows how a hype is looking. The current AI frenzy IS a hype.

But a hype does not mean it’s content is useless. AI in its different variations is already there since quite some time, and it will not go away when the hype stops. I see the application in EN quite relaxed: We will see what will be offered, and will be able to switch it off if we don’t want it.

That BendingSpoon is now behind EN is positive in 2 aspects: First they have already shown they know how to integrate AI functions into an existing product. And second being a European company they are subject to the European GDPR data protection legislation, even when the software is released by an American subsidiary. This for me creates more trust in what will come, than the AI integrated into products from „elsewhere“.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

7 hours ago, Price Change said:

Evernote seemed helpful while I used it this year.  But I can't justify paying double for beta AI upgrades and other additional aspirational AI features mentioned by Evernote.  I'm fortunate that I was in my first year and my notes can be transferred in a short period of time. 

Thank you Evernote for helping me organize my digital notes this year.  But, I'm leaving.  It's not you, it's me.  Have a great digital life.

Actually, it's not us because we're not Evernote. These are user-to-user forums, barring a couple of recent posts regarding current developments. So you may be leaving, but you aren't leaving us. (Is that a country song?)

For the record, Evernote's new owners point out that the price has not increased since 2016, during which time multiple new features have been introduced. If Evernote seemed helpful, it may well have been due to those new features which were (in a sense) cost-free under the previous pricing structure. So the increase is not so much to fund AI (which will be opt-in anyway) but to catch up with the expense that had gone into previous feature upgrades.

Best wishes on your digital journey.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

3 hours ago, estevancarlos said:

Yeah, I'm trying to find alternatives as well. I wonder what market research they've done that convinced them to make these changes? Most of us probably just want efficiency and not necessarily _more_ features.

To be fair, unless we've done that market research, we don't know what "most of us probably want" either. There is a broad tendency in these forums to assume that one's own preferences are the most common ones, which would be hard to demonstrate, I would think.

[xleon 2]

There does seem to be a common theme with recent reviews to various Bending Spoons apps that prices have got high and I totally agree with Evernote. 

 

In recent months, it has got slower, with more bloat and more things behind another upgrade pay wall. 

 

I've lost count of the number of times a pop up has appeared saying I should upgrade plans or something that used to work, now has an upgrade box on it permanently. 

I don't want AI in my notes, I just want a good note app, which Evernote used to be. The price increase for me is nearly 50% which is completely out of touch with users in a cost of living crisis when everyone is having to look and justify how much they spend and on what. 

If I pay the near double increase, I'm still going to get bombarded by upgrade boxes and I'm certain more will be done to attempt to push me up to the next plan. I'm also certain another huge price jump will hit this time next year. 

The yearly cost for the oldest legacy Plus plan is almost an entire Office 365 subscription with a full suite of office apps (including One Note) and a large amount of storage, it makes price increases of this size with no improvement in features (I see in the latest update, the ability to send feedback has been removed - proof they are not interested in the end users anymore). 

There are plenty of new note apps hitting the market - Evernote may end up pricing itself out of existence. 

[gazumped 11,664]

On 5/13/2023 at 10:27 AM, xleon said:

In recent months, it has got slower, with more bloat and more things behind another upgrade pay wall. 

I don't agree with that at all.  It may be happening if you're not yet a subscriber,  but most folks seem to find that things are getting faster and better...

On 5/13/2023 at 10:27 AM, xleon said:

I don't want AI in my notes

That's not a major factor in the price - and it's something that many users seem already to be screaming for

On 5/13/2023 at 10:27 AM, xleon said:

There are plenty of new note apps hitting the market - Evernote may end up pricing itself out of existence. 

Good luck with the 'other' apps.  Startups and one-developer apps can seem very attractive.. right up until they fail.  Even if they lose a lot of users Evernote will be around for the long term.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

On 5/13/2023 at 5:27 AM, xleon said:

makes price increases of this size with no improvement in features

This is apparently the first price increase since 2016, and there have been plenty of improvements in features since then. The question is whether these features are of any use to you, and if they're not then indeed the price will be unreasonable.

[Maineguide2 0]

just received word of increase this am. Unlike other comments, I have seen prices increase multiple times over the years. This time, at a 70%+ increase, I will be moving on... sad, cause I like evernote, just feel company is being usury

[gazumped 11,664]

8 hours ago, Maineguide2 said:

I will be moving on.

I'm aware of three price increases in 15 years of using Evernote.  Local tax changes might have affected others  - but this is more the company being businesslike and planning for the future than being usurious.  Sorry if it's too much,  but don't forget you can always drop back to Basic and become a free user within the limited features of that contract while you look for alternaives.  Best of luck...

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

On 5/4/2023 at 5:24 PM, PinkElephant said:

Sorry for what follows now, and maybe I got burned by 30+ years in corporate IT slavery, being forced to use the products out of Redmond:

Who is using OneNote voluntarily deserves it !

Onenote is perfectly fine. It's not Evernote, nor is it supposed to be. It has its own strong points and its own weaknesses, just like Evernote. It has its uses, just like Evernote. Onenote is perfect for work projects because of its organized structure, its tags (nothing like Evernote tags, a very different concept) and its integration with Outlook / Teams / Office. As a project manager, I find Onenote indispensable. I can quickly pull all meeting info into a Onenote page, already complete with participant names, mark attendance, take notes while assigning action tags on the fly (tagging lines of text as  "Todo", "Scope change", "Deadline", "Info to remember", "Followup", "Assigned to XYZ" etc. with just a quick keystroke), insert screenshots and mark them up, attach files and voice recordings, create Outlook tasks, and send the meeting notes out to participants without leaving Onenote. 

On the other hand, it's a bit too structured for personal information.

This is not a Onenote vs Evernote argument. Both services have pros and cons and dedicated users and the very premise of this argument is silly.

The question is, can Evernote survive at these subscription prices.

I have maintained long ago - about six years back - that their new business model seems to be squeezing as much money out of existing, dedicated, entrenched users as possible, instead of growing the service. 

The new owners seem to be taking this approach to a whole new level.

[gazumped 11,664]

40 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

The new owners seem to be taking this approach to a whole new level.

Yep.  It could be called "businesslike" or "professional" or "responsible".  You try costing an app that services almost as many users as there are adults in the US on a 365/24/7 basis.

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

4 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Yep.  It could be called "businesslike" or "professional" or "responsible".  You try costing an app that services almost as many users as there are adults in the US on a 365/24/7 basis.

How many of them are willing to pay the new prices ?

The number of customers is a pointless statistic unless they are paying (or otherwise monetized) customers. 

“This service failed to convert free users into paying ones so we are jacking up the prices because we have a large enough captive entrenched customer base to last us another decade” is business like, just not a good recipe for a sustained operation.

[gazumped 11,664]

The new prices for Evernote Professional (I may have mentioned before) equate to a cup of coffee per week in the UK.  If you don't feel that's a reasonable charge,  then you're quite right to leave.  Evernote's new owners (I understand) have a user base that's possibly larger than Evernote ever was,  and I also believe they alrady pay similar subscriptions for different services.  I think the company will survive.

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

18 minutes ago, gazumped said:

The new prices for Evernote Professional (I may have mentioned before) equate to a cup of coffee per week in the UK.  If you don't feel that's a reasonable charge,  then you're quite right to leave.  Evernote's new owners (I understand) have a user base that's possibly larger than Evernote ever was,  and I also believe they alrady pay similar subscriptions for different services.  I think the company will survive.

It doesn't matter how the new prices convert into coffee, or cheese, or gas.

What matters is how competitive the pricing is, and how many users it's likely to attract vs turning away.

At this price point, I fail to see how they are going to attract many new users who are not already deeply entrenched into Evernote-specific workflow. Coffee or not, Evernote is too expensive compared to most other options in the same field.

And their business expansion strategy announced about 6 years ago (iirc) hasn't produced any known major results.

So, how do they get to grow their revenue if they don't attract a large number of new customers, don't expand into business enterprise space, and don't make a major strategy change (e.g. get into datamining) ?

Well, they do have a large number of captive users who have years of their lives in Evernote, and for whom the effort and the stress of switching to another service would be prohibitively high. And they have been jacking up the prices for a few years now, especially since the new owners took over. This is consistent with what could be termed "rent-seeking". 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Anybody who is with EN since several years joined when it was running a bunch of diverting clients with disturbing inconsistencies between platforms.

This was eliminated, plus several new features added. A share of the income was clearly invested, after keeping the wheels grinding.

With the current price increase EN sets a new pricing point (above for example a full O365 subscription). If the value created is larger than that depends on everybody’s use cases.

If it still works out is everybody’s own evaluation. Who stays for inertia (= estimates the cost of switching as higher than staying & paying) takes a decision as well - there is nothing to blame when doing so.

[Stewart1958 17]

I got the price increase email this morning and my first reaction was "that's a steep increase", but on reflection for me at least it's a no-brainer to continue with EN despite its frustrations. I ran a single project on OneNote for about a year and never really got on with it (everything else continued on EN).

I just hope some of the new revenue stream is used to make the product more stable and provide support when it's needed.

[Off to think about putting our prices up that much  ]

[Jon/t 1,289]

19 minutes ago, Stewart1958 said:

[Off to think about putting our prices up that much  ]

I put mine up last year and by quite a bit. Had to be careful not to price myself out but the result 12 months on has been slightly less work for more money which works for me 😂

[gazumped 11,664]

7 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

So, how do they get to grow their revenue if they don't attract a large number of new customers

I don't dwell on the philosophy of how Evernote will run their business - my only concern is whether the app is working cost effectively for my use case. 

I do vaguely remember from the early takeover publicity that Bending Spoons had some hundreds of thousands of users paying more than Evernote levels for their media-related AI solutions,  and of course they bought into Evernote's 200M+ users,  which gives them a huge potential market place to cross-sell both types of application.

I'm also confident that they'll run the business responsibly - BS is a mature, successful operation whose products do not complete with Evernote.  Why wouild they run the company into the ground?  They'll take due note of user gains and losses,  and take appropriate action when and if necessary.

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

I’ve had enough services and products that I relied on going belly up over the years (or changing their business model in a drastic and disruptive way) to long ago start thinkIng hard about the company’s long term health and business direction before committing. Evernote is fine as long as you have a sound exit strategy, however at the end of the day Bending Spoon wants to make a return on their investment, and I don’t see any indication of them trying to grow that product - so how do you think they will make up all that money and get the cherry on top?

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

16 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

I have maintained long ago - about six years back - that their new business model seems to be squeezing as much money out of existing, dedicated, entrenched users as possible, instead of growing the service. 

That would be about since the last price increase. Every time there is one (even if it would just be to keep up with inflation) people complain, then say EN is going out of business. But how much "squeezing" did they do by not raising prices since 2016?

1 hour ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

however at the end of the day Bending Spoon wants to make a return on their investment, and I don’t see any indication of them trying to grow that product

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

[janndk 495]

19 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

 

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

There should also be a list of features getting removed, so a missing feature doesn't come as a surprise when it's suddenly gone when you need it 🤨

[gazumped 11,664]

1 minute ago, janndk said:

There should also be a list of features getting removed, so a missing feature doesn't come as a surprise when it's suddenly gone when you need it 🤨

Where,  exactly,  in that positive-sounding post did you get the impression that we'd be losing features in the future? 

That happened in the switch from a dozen different OS versions to one consistent solution,  mainly because the solution wasn't able to use IP-limited features from those various providers,  and some coding had tricks that others could not support.  Mac users always had inline spreadsheets forinstance,  while Windows users actually got that as a new feature in V10.  One the downside, lots of font styles disappeared because copyright is a thing.  But hey we got heading levels!

Since that particular event there's been a regular update every couple of weeks and v10.0 is now up to 10.57.x,  including the return of some old favorite features.

(I'll now wait for the usual troll responses of "and more bugs" or "features that don't work for me / I never wanted...")

If you want to help,  please subscribe and suggest the features that you want to see.  If you're unhappy at the new levels,  then I'm sorry but it's really not your ball. 

Pay the ticket price or play somewheres else.

[agsteele 2,946]

When v10 was first released there was a clear statement of which features were not going to be available from what has come to be called Legacy.  These have largely been the ones that have continued to be absent.  One or two that were slated for removal have actually been restored (Import Folders was one that was previously a Windows only function that eventually returned for all platforms) but mostly the original deprecated features list was comprehensive if not exhaustive.

 

[janndk 495]

4 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Where,  exactly,  in that positive-sounding post did you get the impression that we'd be losing features in the future? 

Eg sharing content with checklists has been removed, (not long ago.

[janndk 495]

Features that are getting removed from EN10

[agsteele 2,946]

Ah, understood. I'm not aware of missing any features but then I probably didn't use whichever you have in mind...

[Jon/t 1,289]

4 minutes ago, janndk said:

Eg sharing content with checklists has been removed, (not long ago.

Could use this myself. I'm hoping sharing will get an upgrade in the future. It makes sense as sharing fits in perfectly with the new real time editing feature.

Pre spoons there was talk about better sharing but the new sync and RTE really does play a huge part in sharing. I'm hoping for good things.

[janndk 495]

15 minutes ago, agsteele said:

Ah, understood. I'm not aware of missing any features but then I probably didn't use whichever you have in mind...

note:

 

shared note: 

[CalS 5,280]

I'm not sure the 100's of millions of expressed EN users makes a lot of difference.  More interesting stats would be the actual number of EN users on a monthly basis and the number of those that subscribe.  How many websites do folks go to, sign up, and never return?  I've done it more than once.  For EN I have five Basic accounts.  Four that were always basic for test and backup, and one that was subscription pre V10.  Though these counts may have naught to do with pricing..

I think that there is merit to an argument that the barrier for new entry has been raised with these price increases.  There are some 3 digit subscriptions but not many best I can tell.  So such a thing may cause a pause for new users.  As costly as it may be for an entrenched user to move on it may feel as costly for a new user to sign up.  To some extent I think hard core EN users are a niche market.  How BS adds users in that niche market with three digit pricing will be interesting.  End of the day, their business so they will do as they like.  Feels a bit like a cash cow with these moves.  🤷‍♂️

 

[Wanderling Reborn 185]

19 hours ago, CalS said:

I'm not sure the 100's of millions of expressed EN users makes a lot of difference.  More interesting stats would be the actual number of EN users on a monthly basis and the number of those that subscribe.  How many websites do folks go to, sign up, and never return?  I've done it more than once.  For EN I have five Basic accounts.  Four that were always basic for test and backup, and one that was subscription pre V10.  Though these counts may have naught to do with pricing..

I think that there is merit to an argument that the barrier for new entry has been raised with these price increases.  There are some 3 digit subscriptions but not many best I can tell.  So such a thing may cause a pause for new users.  As costly as it may be for an entrenched user to move on it may feel as costly for a new user to sign up.  To some extent I think hard core EN users are a niche market.  How BS adds users in that niche market with three digit pricing will be interesting.  End of the day, their business so they will do as they like.  Feels a bit like a cash cow with these moves.  🤷‍♂️

 

Actually the price impacts potential new users disproportionately more. The established users already like the service, are already strongly entrenched into it, they just have to decide whether the benefits of continuing to use the service outweigh the new price. The majority of potential users probably won't even consider a service that is so much more expensive than competition unless they are immediately wowed by its features. And they are going to be overwhelmed by all of the choices too much to see the finer points, this takes experience. And experience comes after extended use. And the new price + limitations of free tier make it much harder for the new potential customers to commit to extended use. For most people it's more like "installed, played around, ran into free tier limits, looked at the price, uninstalled, tried another service" cycle.

I've been saying this since about 2017.... Evernote seems interested in squeezing the existing users not in attracting the new ones. This is not a recipe for growth or even continuing longterm existence.

[gazumped 11,664]

28 minutes ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

This is not a recipe for growth or even continuing longterm existence.

I talked about user numbers in one of the price-related threads around here,  but I got it wrong.  According to the recent blog post Bending Spoons have 500 Million current users,  and in their case I think this means actual fee-payers,  rather than some subscribers and a mass of casual free users.  That's already more than twice Evernote's size in users,  and while a lot may also be Evernote users or subscribers,  they still have enormous scope to cross-sell to their own existing customers as well as attracting new users.

They are known mainly as mobile specialists so I would think that anyone bemoaning Evernote's current performance on mobile devices will get some pleasant surprises down the line.

While armchair quarterbacking what the company should do is great fun,  I'm experienced enough to know that this is a complex situation and I have a totally insignificant amount of necessary data - far too little to forecast which way things will develop.  The company has done well for itself though - even without our help so far - and Glassdoor seems to report very good feelings from those who work there,  both about their own environment and their overall prospects.

As ever I'm happy to go along for the ride,  and I am not going to worry about what 'might' happen in the next 5 years.  I have more pressing problems right now that I need to concentrate on.  I'll worry about the company failing if and when it shows serious signs of doing so.

Like any professional user I have an escape hatch ready should things go south,  but I hope never to have to use it!

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

2 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

I've been saying this since about 2017.... Evernote seems interested in squeezing the existing users not in attracting the new ones. This is not a recipe for growth or even continuing longterm existence.

Said it before, perhaps bears repeating: can you point to a price increase since 2017? What squeezing? When and whom? Keep saying it, but don't expect it to be accepted without evidence.

[Paul A. 620]

6 hours ago, gazumped said:

According to the recent blog post Bending Spoons have 500 Million current users,  and in their case I think this means actual fee-payers,  rather than some subscribers and a mass of casual free users.

Hmmm, I'm not too sure about this. I used one of their video editing apps recently to edit a video and didn't pay a cent for it. I'm sure I'm included as a "user" without actually having paid anything.

[CalS 5,280]

Did some arithmetic and 500M current subs at $10 each is $5B in revenue (I think their average sub is higher than $10).  $5B seemed a might high to me so I did a quick internet search - number of paying customers of bending spoons

12-13M customers (not clear how many subs) seems a consistent number with revenues from $62.5M to $130M+.  It is the internet, so who knows the accuracy of the sites.  IAC, maybe 500M accounts but far fewer subs in all likelihood.  One opinion in the wilderness.  And my grandbaby was here today so my thinking may be a bit off.  😊  

[gazumped 11,664]

13 hours ago, CalS said:

And my grandbaby was here today

Mine's old enough to call me by a nickname - 'Grumpy' - can't think why...  

[zuggle 1]

I've been a member since the very early days of Evernote. I pay $45/year. I absolutely understand that I'm getting a sweet deal. I do. I also totally understand the need for incremental price increases. I cannot, however, support an $85 increase with less than a month's notice. Really frustrating the way this has been handled and I, too, will be looking for an alternative, and that stinks.

[notetakeingguy 90]

As a user since 2010, I'm disappointed that bugs I've complained about (see my previous posts) not only haven't been fixed, but I get a pretty sorry response from customer service. I have no need for most of the new features, but I did have a need for pasting text from Microsoft Word to come in the right order (I've complained that bulleted text shows up before the regular text). I also am still not over that when you share a note by E-mail, the URL doesn't appear anymore like it used to.

 

I use OneNote at work and am not happy with it. Too hard to search, and tags are too hard to use.

 

Luckily, my renewal is May 26, so I have another year at this price. I know everyone is saying price hasn't increased since 2017, but my 2022 price was $5 higher than previously.

 

Maybe the karma will cause them to end up like LastPass -- worse and worse customer service, raising and raising prices, and they get hacked, poor public relations response, and then every pundit is writing about how you need to leave.

[gazumped 11,664]

6 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

and they get hacked, poor public relations response, and then every pundit is writing about how you need to leave.

...not sure how you get there from raised prices.  It hardly seems fair to blame the new owners - who've been in control for nearly 20 whole weeks now - with all the sins of the past. 

Bugs not being fixed prior to 2 years ago is/ was a Legacy issue,  and while the new package brought a slew of brand-new shiny issues,  the team have been cycling through new versions rather quickly every couple of weeks to get from 10.0 to (AFAIK) 10.57 in around 60 updates so far.  I'd think actual bugs are being resolved as fast as possible.  

If you're still finding them,  I'd suggest re-filing (or re-opening) the support request,  and persevering -as patiently as possible- with the support team.  I used to run something similar with around a quarter-million users,  and there are (at least) three tiers of support:

• Frontline - least experienced agents to very quickly weed out the queries from users who just don't know how computers / the internet / this app works.  They probably have lists or scripts for everything they're allowed to deal with.  Escalating to - 
• Second Line - user has been taken through restarting / reinstalling / any other process that might be relevant and the 1st line agent still can't fix the issue. These guys are more experienced and more techy and have more time to look into things. Escalating to - 
• Devs - security issues / OS changes / anything requiring new research or development work

On a much smaller user base we had thousands of queries per day,  and the vast bulk were deal with by 1st line support.  I've found in my dealings with Evernote support that when you're worried about having lost important data,  it's rather easy to miss something that on any normal day you would have caught in seconds.  A neutral third party taking you through a process step-by-step can make you realise that - oh,  maybe I didn't do that in the right order.  Of all the tickets I've raised,  I'd say about 50% were 'proper' issues and the rest were me being dumb (or at least impatient).

At least you'll have a year to see how the new team shape up before deciding whether or not to bail!  I'm (unfortunately) part of the May group and the first to be sucked in at the new rates... 

[bmcl26 488]

8 hours ago, notetakeingguy said:

Luckily, my renewal is May 26, so I have another year at this price. I know everyone is saying price hasn't increased since 2017, but my 2022 price was $5 higher than previously.

 

I am in the same happy position with my renewal on 28th May, so I will enjoy another year at the same price as last and will not be impacted by the increase till next year. However, with the vast improvement over the past two years with Home, Calendar, Tasks, Backlinks, Sync and Shared editing, and further improvements in the pipeline, I am more than happy with the current price and future price as I regard it still to be value for money.

[TheGoof 1]

Quite surprised by the posts in this thread. Just like the person what started this thread, I'm not happy with 66% price increase while there is no extra capabilities I get for the money. For me, getting up to par with Notability would have been a big plus, but EN doesn't spend attention on better handwriting integration besides leaving Penultimate on the app stores.

 

As for my "surprise", the idea is to post what troubles you, and see if you get likeminded people. Reading some of the posts, be respectful, instead of imposing your standpoint on other posts. If you can't accept there is no right or wrong, just people with an opinion, looking for likeminded people, trying to make the supplier clear what they are doing is wrong.

If you like to pay 60% more for say... the same oranges you have been buying since 5 years, be my guest, I'd be happy to start a webshop and take your money.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Don’t we all pay 60% more for oranges as we used to pay last year ?

As mentioned before, I am not happy of paying more, who is ? The key question is wether I find an alternative that has a similar support for my use cases, for a better price.

This anybody needs to find out for himself, and ranting about a price increase doesn’t help. 

Get oranges if you want, or apples if they will do as well.

[stu_ck 25]

For me, the issue is how big the price jump is (almost double) - it's now a big jump from the free level to the Personal subscription.

They could do with a plan that sits around the $9.99 level - so you can get a good base set of features and support the app, but the price isn't quite as crazy as the recent jump. My needs are barely above the free plan, but I want to support Evernote, and I like the old feature of full-text search in images, PDFs, etc.  But I'm not interested in the more advanced features (e.g. tasks or links to Gmail) as these seem more linked to business/enterprise users.

In difficult times (here in the UK, we hit a recession), we need a LOT of value out of the services we regularly pay for, or at least a price that matches different levels of value.

I hope Evernote might consider a level for those who need just above free!

[agsteele 2,946]

I think you'd have to say what you would want from your $10 plan or more likely what you would leave out of the Personal plan to get the price down to $10.

Over the years I have seen several services where users clamour to offer to pay to support the products but in the end too few actually pay to make a success of that approach. It costs more to offer the deal than the return.

[stu_ck 25]

I've always paid for Evernote.  I'm just pushing for better price tiers - the jump from free to £14 a month is a big old jump! There definitely could be a price point in the middle there for sure.

[bmcl26 488]

50 minutes ago, stu_ck said:

I've always paid for Evernote.  I'm just pushing for better price tiers - the jump from free to £14 a month is a big old jump! There definitely could be a price point in the middle there for sure.

And a massive jump in functionality as well.  I am also in UK and even with a Professional Plan even with the increase (paid annually) is less than £2 per week which I consider excellent value for money. 

[gazumped 11,664]

While this is another price increase this year,  I looked at the new prices alongside things like my Amazon Prime and Adobe photography subscriptions;  the cost of a YouTube family membership - and Evernote is at or below the same level as all of these,  and of more value (to me) than a lot of them.

Asking for an intermediate price to 'encourage' people to start subscribing is like asking Amazon to offer a "free delivery only on Mondays" option at 20% of the price of the full package.

And adding a new level of intermediate subscription increases costs for the company which reflect of everyone from full subscribers to shareholders.  I don't know about them,  but as a full subscriber I don't currently feel inclined to contribute towards the cost of giving others a better deal than mine!

[Lax 90210 6]

1 hour ago, gazumped said:

While this is another price increase this year,  I looked at the new prices alongside things like my Amazon Prime and Adobe photography subscriptions;  the cost of a YouTube family membership - and Evernote is at or below the same level as all of these,  and of more value (to me) than a lot of them.

Asking for an intermediate price to 'encourage' people to start subscribing is like asking Amazon to offer a "free delivery only on Mondays" option at 20% of the price of the full package.

And adding a new level of intermediate subscription increases costs for the company which reflect of everyone from full subscribers to shareholders.  I don't know about them,  but as a full subscriber I don't currently feel inclined to contribute towards the cost of giving others a better deal than mine!

Evernote — still little more than a glorified note editor attached to a database — is now more expensive than Amazon Prime, or Microsoft 365, or PlayStation Plus, not to mention Notion. One hundred and thirty bucks a year for the cheapest tier is simply insane pricing. No amount of copium can reasonably argue to the contrary.

Frankly, if at some point they do a switcheroo and force me to migrate from my grandfathered pricing (and even that pricing was jacked up by 30%), I will respectfully migrate elsewhere. It may be that Bending Spoons will be able to squeeze more money out of the users who haven't left, and their bottom line will remain unaffected; but at some point, Evernote as a whole is at risk of fading into irrelevance, as it already has, as it were, acquired by a little-known mobile app studio company churning out insipid products.

It is a shame. I don't think Evernote's value lies in extraneous features stuffed in to justify the jacked-up subscription price (and it seems the new roadmap is all about adding dubious AI functionality). Its value lay in its speed, simplicity and focus, which have been steadily in decline in a never-ending Bataan Death March for years on end. More and more convincing competitors are delivering, without the cruft & bugs we've all had to deal with for years. UpNote is a good example.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Now, since you finally told us this, thank you for elaborating, we got our eyes opened (POP - hear the sound).

As several times posted in this thread, every user has its own requirements. So there is no "one option fits it all". There would be more value in posting here when showing which set of features leads to which alternative. Just telling "price increases are so bad" doesn't help.

[Lax 90210 6]

It may be that you haven't fully read my post, @PinkElephant. Or it may be that any discussion criticizing a piece of software with users so heavily invested in it that they've clocked nearly 20,000 posts on its forum can never be fully productive. My post is more about adding yet another voice to the pile of discontent; the point is not that it will be lost in the noise, the point is that the latest price increase generates a lot of noise and unhappy chatter, including mine.

As far as I'm concerned, as I said in my previous post, UpNote is looking promising, by implementing the note-taking ethos of Evernote. I do recommend it to those who want to migrate from Evernote and yet want to keep most of their habits, which is hard to do when migrating to OneNote or Notion. Most of Evernote's core functionality exists in UpNote. I also find it to be super fast, which is a breath of fresh air after dealing with Evernote 10, which despite numerous updates and multiple promises is still a dog even when running on the most powerful hardware.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Can't complain about EN speed, quite snappy on newer hardware (for everything I use), still OK on much older (for retrieval, less for extended editing).

If the price is OK for himself, anybody needs to find out. I always say it is a bad price if you find an alternative that does similar (maybe cutting a corner somewhere). That's where we should help each other - not by confirming that price increases suck. That's cheap coin.

Upnote has no appeal for me. I could have everything they advertise (+/-, it's never a perfect fit) for free by switching to Apple Notes, since I run operationally 100% on Apple devices. So why should I choose another solution that as well misses critical features for me ? Price is OK, Free model sucks, but the feature set is lacking. No alternative for me - that's as always subjective, it may serve others.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,958]

16 minutes ago, Lax 90210 said:

My post is more about adding yet another voice to the pile of discontent; the point is not that it will be lost in the noise, the point is that the latest price increase generates a lot of noise and unhappy chatter, including mine.

So, no helpful intent. OK. Just took a look at UpNote, and it does look impressive. I have no experience, so I can't tell. Anyone can say "Always in sync"; experience will show whether it's true. I note 2 things about UpNote pricing: free for up to 50 notes, which is not very many; and a lifetime subscription is $25. That's fine when they only need server space for a few thousand users. What will pay for the resources to support a few million? Hard to see a realistic long-term future there. (Yes, it is possible for something to be too cheap.)

[Boot17 1,449]

21 hours ago, Lax 90210 said:

Evernote — still little more than a glorified note editor attached to a database

21 hours ago, Lax 90210 said:

acquired by a little-known mobile app studio company churning out insipid products

21 hours ago, Lax 90210 said:

which have been steadily in decline in a never-ending Bataan Death March for years on end

20 hours ago, Lax 90210 said:

discussion criticizing a piece of software with users so heavily invested in it that they've clocked nearly 20,000 posts on its forum can never be fully productive

 

21 hours ago, Lax 90210 said:

if at some point they ... I will respectfully migrate elsewhere

it's already too late for that! 😉

[xleon 2]

On 5/15/2023 at 4:41 PM, gazumped said:

I don't agree with that at all.  It may be happening if you're not yet a subscriber,  but most folks seem to find that things are getting faster and better...

That's not a major factor in the price - and it's something that many users seem already to be screaming for

Good luck with the 'other' apps.  Startups and one-developer apps can seem very attractive.. right up until they fail.  Even if they lose a lot of users Evernote will be around for the long term.

It definitely is a hell of a lot slower than is used to be.  I'm also a long-time subscriber (if I wasn't my comment on how out of touch the 45% price increase was would not have made sense).    What if everything went up by 45% - you may be lucky enough to be able afford if that was the case, in which I'm happy for you.

Who has been screaming for AI?  If they want to offer it as a paid-for add-on then that's fine - it's not something I'm after.   Everyone is jumping on the AI train and Bending Spoons will use this as an excuse to hike prices even further, I'm absolutely sure of it.

I'd rather they:

• Improved syncing so it was more responsive (Android app is locked while syncing occurs)
• Stopped upgrading the app in the middle of me using it, despite me having just pressed the "don't upgrade right now" button
• Stopped removing app features that were there before
• Put meaningful updates in the release notes
• Included a status bar so you know when syncing is completed
• Did further improvements to prevent note version clash - I know it happens, but it still happens more than it should
• Stop keep bombarding me with "upgrade" buttons and pop-ups - the price of the current plan has gone up 45%, now they want me to double-again for nothing I actually want/need.
• Focussed more on security, encryption of notes and gave more information on how they intend on keeping everyone's data safe. Look at LastPass having leaked passwords at least 3 times and the amount of data that was not encrypted there.  Security should come before adding AI.
   

I want a solid note-app without the bloat.
I never mentioned jumping to "Startups and one-developer apps" as the only option - there are many well-established ones out there as well.
Bending Spoons are pricing new users away from Evernote as the entry bar of £85 is now far too high.  There should be a lower-tier package available.
Without new subscribers, all you have left is to milk the loyal users with regular price increases.

It's already hit a price point where a full Office 365 app suite is cheaper AND includes OneNote and a huge amount of storage.

[gazumped 11,664]

Well - I agree with you on a couple of points;  I recently posted a support ticket on this - 

51 minutes ago, xleon said:

Put meaningful updates in the release notes

- and got 

Quote

 

I received the following update from my team on what's been updated in the latest version of Evernote for Windows V. 10.56.8:  

    Miscellaneous bug fixes 

    Updated note editor 

 

Which wasn't much more than kicking the tyres and putting out fires,  but slightly more professional.

...and I could care less about AI,  which is marginally useful at best.

On the rest of your comments,  we'll just have to differ:  I find the app to be reliable and quick,  I'm very happy to give what seems to be a highly competent management team some time to get their feet under the Evernote table and boost the company from there.  I think they're being realistic about costs and features,  and I see no reason why they'd want to change the currently announced charging structure this year at least,  while they wait to see how their streamlined new organisation performs.

On your last point about security by the way I used to manage a security team within customer support at a national ISP.  The one thing you never do is to give away free information about how you structure your network;  it's much more effective to allow the black hats to fumble around in the dark trying to find a way in.  If customers have any doubts about the security protections,  they're very welcome to go find someone else in whom they have more confidence.

[xleon 2]

I'd like the special version of Evernote you have - for me on an i9 and and i7, it's pretty sluggish. Maybe I just have more notes/data in that you have. It's not £85 impressive for speed. 

With regards security, I'd never ask a company to list network structure and I was not implying that. What I was getting at is that they could and should do more to reassure users in this day and age. 

Look at 1Password - regular 3rd party audits by specialist security teams, open-source encryption methods that can be checked and verified etc. etc. 

Once you start charging the costs of entry that Evernote are now, this is the big leagues of pricing, there comes additional levels of expectation of what should be provided, not necessarily constant buzz-word features such as AI. 

It would be nice if they polled users on what features they want - they have recently removed the feedback option (in the app which seems a step backwards). 

I really liked Evernote when I started using it and had to ensure the new unifed app re-write which became the slowest thing to use on the planet. They have pulled it back in recent months in terms of speed but it's still some way off and the annoying "upgrade" pop ups are aggressively in-your-face and disruptive and seem to appear every few weeks. 

[Boot17 1,449]

7 hours ago, xleon said:

It definitely is a hell of a lot slower than is used to be.

Slower than 2019 Yes? Yes. Slower than 2020? No. They took a step back performance and stability-wise with the v10 release in 2020, but there have been steady improvements since then.

7 hours ago, xleon said:

I'd rather they:

• Improved syncing so it was more responsive

Well - you are in luck. Have you not seen all the recent announcements and improvements regarding RTE? They have made huge improvements there. Real-time sync. I can work with the same note opened on multiple machines at the same time. They've also stated they are continuing to work on this as far as newly created notes syncing. They've said this stability and performance is their number one priority (in addition to AI which the new company is trying to get some quick wins with. And -- FWIW -- I don't care much about integrating AI either, but I get why they are doing it.)

7 hours ago, xleon said:

Stopped upgrading the app in the middle of me using it, despite me having just pressed the "don't upgrade right now" button

They already stopped doing that almost a year ago. Now you get an "new update is available" in the sidebar which you can dismiss and the next time you close/start you get the update.

7 hours ago, xleon said:

Stopped removing app features that were there before

They already stopped. Which features have they removed since Version 10? That was a regroup/rewrite. They've added some of those missing features back and have added others.

7 hours ago, xleon said:

Did further improvements to prevent note version clash

They are doing that.

7 hours ago, xleon said:

Focussed more on security, encryption of notes

I'd like that too.

[xleon 2]

Quote

12 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

Slower than 2019 Yes? Yes. Slower than 2020? No. They took a step back performance and stability-wise with the v10 release in 202, but there have been steady improvements since then.

That's what I said - the improvements since then have been small on something that should be a core feature.

Quote

12 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

They already stopped doing that almost a year ago. Now you get an "new update is available" in the sidebar which you can dismiss and the next time you close/start you get the update.

Yeah - I also said it doesn't work all the time. I had the box pop up, I clicked "no, do it later, not now" and guess what - it did it anyway!

They may list that they are doing a lot of improvements, but for all the constant new versions, nothing much seems to actually change.
If they are going to more than double everyone's cost, let's start to see the improvements appear.