How many subscribers will refuse to renew due to the exorbitant annual subscription increase?

[philrodo 60]

I wonder how may subscribers will decide to cancel their subscriptions given that the annual cost are being increased by more than $100 over and above what we were paying previously. My Pro subscription cost me $70 last year but will jump to $170 next year. 

A more important concern is if too many subscriber call it quits will Evernote survive? I dread to think what they'll have to increase the annual subscription cost in following years if they lose a major portion of their subscription base. 

It's one thing to introduce price increases gradually, but to tack on $100 to the current subscription cost sounds excessive to me. And I venture to say that most of us can probably do without the promised improvements. 

I've been a paid subscriber for more than 15 years, but this latest announcment doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings about the new ownership. Perhaps it's time to start exploring alternatives... 

[JREwing 21]

I got my email today telling me that my professional is going up to $169.99. I have no problem paying that. I'm renewing. I can't find anything else that give me the value that Evernote gives me. 

[philrodo 60]

2 minutes ago, JREwing said:

I'm renewing. I can't find anything else that give me the value that Evernote gives me. 

I'm in the same boat. I use Evernote for just about everything and couldn't survive otherwise. At $70 a year for the Pro subscription it was a good value--I'm not sure I'd say the same about the jump to $170 a year... 

But like I said, my biggest concern is what will happen if a large percentage of their subscriber base decides to jump ship... 

[DTLow 5,738]

34 minutes ago, philrodo said:

what will happen if a large percentage of their subscriber base decides to jump ship...

The company might reduce their internal expenses for the product; possibly by laying off staff assigned to the product

[Bolitronchi 2]

I've been using Evernote Personal for two years and now the price will be 100€. I barely use the "huge" amount of ressources of that plan, so I'm not interested in renewing it.

When I try to manage the subscription I only get the option to move to Evernote Professional, just the opposite of what I need. That's not fair on the company's side.

For that reason, my doubt is what will happen. Will I be able to move to the free Plan keeping all the information? I found a link with information about how to downgrade the plan, but it doesn't work: Manage your Evernote subscription – Evernote Help & Learning

I've sent a request to the custormer service. Waiting for a proper answer.

[agsteele 2,977]

If you wish to downgrade then choose cancel your subscription. That will drop to the Free plan and you will retain access to your content subject to the limitations of the Free subscription.

[Richard H. 5]

I think its unfortunate the the reasoning behind this is given as to keep it profitable.  With they layoffs that have happened, the buyout, and the 62% price increase some of you need to think about one thing.  WHAT if they dont make it at evernote and close up shop?  Better to have exit strategy and secondary solution in your mind cause it could happen with as short of a notice as we got for the 62% price increase.

I would also challenge the executive leadership to consider what they are asking of their paid user base.   Not a pillow to swallow without some analysis for that big of a price increase.

[gazumped 11,775]

Don't know about everyone else,  but I'm not going to worry about whether things 'might' happen - I'm too busy dealing with the real world right now to have that much spare time.  I use Evernote a lot,  warts and all - and I already paid my increased sub,  so I'm here for the next 10 months at least.  Chicken Little has left the building.

Bending Spoons are a respected European company that built up their own business to the point of being able to buy out Evernote lock,  stock and socks.  They seem professional,  businesslike and -not surprisingly- a bit busy at present.  They've had the reigns at Evernote for 6 whole months and seem to have inherited a bit more technical debt than they expected.  The CEO is an Evernote user,  and a fan;  and the company didn't blow all that hard-earned cash to do a Musk and run the company into the ground.  This is like Disney buying Lucasfilm - there will be short term changes,  but the force is still with us...

We got real-time collaboration and AI already,  and although there are some issues around the latest release,  the team kicked out a fix (we hope) in pretty record time.  It's expected in days,  not weeks.  (Note that the latest update and all previous ones were the work of a team who have been left behind in the US - there's a new European team working now...)

'Spoons have some hundreds of millions of users in their own right,  and just inherited whatever is left of the 250 million claimed by Ian Small at one point.  They certainly can't come hold the hand of every Evernote user and explain in detail why they should stay on.

It's a hard decision,  but the facts aren't going to change.  If you're willing and able to pay the increased cost,  AND you think Evernote's services are worth it to you,  then you should stay.  The extra cost will be like a cup of coffee a day - and we could all do to cut back a bit...

If you're not able to pay,  OR you think you can easily manage  your activity with another app,  you should leave.  No need for any impassioned monologue about how many years you've been a devoted follower,  or how many others you induced to join and pay - we get that you're annoyed,  but get over it.  You have bigger problems now - finding another reliable app.  Quit flouncing and go.

Find your "my account" web page and leave no payment details behind.  When the next payment due fails you'll revert to 'free' status with lots of limitations - but you'll still have access to all your notes.

My suggestion would be to avoid any mass transfer of notes to a new provider - just start a new account somewhere and create your new notes there.  If and when you need your history,  find the details in Evernote and copy/ paste them across.  It shouldn't be a huge deal.

Good luck with your new providers,  whomever they may be - and stay safe out there! 

[philrodo 60]

33 minutes ago, gazumped said:

'Spoons have some hundreds of millions of users in their own right,  and just inherited whatever is left of the 250 million claimed by Ian Small at one point.  They certainly can't come hold the hand of every Evernote user and explain in detail why they should stay on.

I don't think that anyone asked for a personal explanation, but a general announcement would have been nice, before they started sending out notifications about the price of subscriptions going up. 

[PinkElephant 8,283]

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

[Mogulhopper 2]

My immediate decision today once I got notice of the 85% price increase was simple. After a couple of hours of furiously researching comparable products, reading lots of "side by side" articles and many user comments, I just downloaded Notejoy, which is $48/year for the Solo plan. My user case is I'm a smaller-time user who uses Evernote as my data repository for lists of everything in my life plus images of all receipts, personal info, passports, blah blah blah. No team collaborating, no Tasks, it's just a data dump. I have hundreds of notes, not thousands, so my decision was so easy. And I pushed one button to import all data from Evernote and it came over flawlessly, every PDF, every image, every list, nested in the same stacks of notebooks. I always thought Evernote was one app I'd have for life, but haven't yet found that app

I'm assuming this won't be posted because the moderator won't allow it, but there was no means to express my reaction to the price increase email anyway.

[philrodo 60]

15 hours ago, Mogulhopper said:

I just downloaded Notejoy, which is $48/year for the Solo plan

I’d be interested in hearing your feedback after you’ve used NoteJoy for a while. 

Like you seem to use Evernote, I basically use it to organize my life. I have accumulated thousands of notes over the 15 years I’ve been using it. Until now, Evernote has met all my needs and I’m concerned about switching to another similar application, learning a new UI, and perhaps finding out later that the new app has some shortcomings and won’t work out for my needs. Decisions, decisions, decisions…

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

15 hours ago, Mogulhopper said:

My immediate decision today once I got notice of the 85% price increase was simple. After a couple of hours of furiously researching comparable products, reading lots of "side by side" articles and many user comments, I just downloaded Notejoy, which is $48/year for the Solo plan. My user case is I'm a smaller-time user who uses Evernote as my data repository for lists of everything in my life plus images of all receipts, personal info, passports, blah blah blah. No team collaborating, no Tasks, it's just a data dump. I have hundreds of notes, not thousands, so my decision was so easy. And I pushed one button to import all data from Evernote and it came over flawlessly, every PDF, every image, every list, nested in the same stacks of notebooks. I always thought Evernote was one app I'd have for life, but haven't yet found that app

I'm assuming this won't be posted because the moderator won't allow it, but there was no means to express my reaction to the price increase email anyway.

WRT "won't be posted" ... well, oops. 🙂 A post really has to be pretty abusive to get kicked off here.

For a data depository, I can see how Evernote might be too expensive under the current pricing, and something much simpler and cheaper would do. I use it for actual notes, mostly for writing projects, and for personal activities like travel. For me, that's currently worth the money. But my $100/year Professional subscription fortunately renewed just before the big price change, so I'll see how I feel when it renews next year, presumably with some upward price mobility. Especially if they don't get their act together with unbelievably buggy update releases.

[Grant837 120]

I personally could not justify the RoI on migrating... I have tons of value added to my content throught organization, tags, links, folders, etc.. this can never be migrated to another app completely and would require 10s, or 100s of hours to rebuild... so I am 'stuck' right now... but I am carefully watching how things develope for the next year, and then will make a choice... it seems like a perfectly logical business approach (as long as I watch the day to day issues that might force a migration, which I do not expect)

[RicBret 12]

On 8/2/2023 at 5:57 PM, philrodo said:

A more important concern is if too many subscriber call it quits will Evernote survive? I dread to think what they'll have to increase the annual subscription cost in following years if they lose a major portion of their subscription base. 

 

THIS!  I could afford getting gouged for functionality I use, and not having to move all my data somewhere else.  But if the new company is making bad decisions like this, will the product be around much longer? How stupid will I look one day when the app is not working and nobody from the company can be reached.  At this point moving to another app is a way of covering my own data access more than losing money.  I simply have lost faith in Evernote because of Spoons poor business decisions (just go into maintance and performing coding mode boys, stop trying to morph into a "do everything" app - look at how great Elon Musk is doing with that strategy at X!)

[WilliamL 658]

I would have paid, the increase is not ideal but the value is there. I did cancel tonight though due to these sms changes, I can’t get the Authenticators working so EN is effectively unsecure for me now. It’s a pity but I’m not messing around with my data nor am I risking getting locked out. My sub expires in September at which point I’ll need to delete account, no point in keeping free if it is either of the above. Fun times. 

[PinkElephant 8,283]

The authenticators work, I have used several of them until now settling with Authy. All did the job to unlock my EN account.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208314238

You can't switch from SMS to authenticator directly. First disable SMS, then access your account without 2FA, then set up the new method.

 

[WilliamL 658]

11 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

The authenticators work, I have used several of them until now settling with Authy. All did the job to unlock my EN account.

I can only work off my own personal experience, I’ve tried both Microsoft and google, numerous times today, and on every occasion when the app generates a code EN rejects it saying unexpected code. What more can I do, I didn’t ask for this additional layer of complexity that has already taken a needless hour away today in vain. I don’t know what the issue is and as support is utterly swamped Im left with no real choices. It is what it is. 

[PinkElephant 8,283]

It is not a needless layer - 2FA by SMS is regarded as less secure than by authenticator. The problem is called SIM skimming, and it basically means that a new SIM is issued for your account, which allows to intercept all messages without you even noticing that there is a twin device listening on what you receive.

About the authenticator: Are you sure everything is set to the correct time zone ? The codes are based on the internet "world" time, and this needs to be calculated from your local time zone settings. Wrong time, bad code.

Since I don't want to write theoretical stuff here, I have just created 2FA for a Free account I use for testing. I used the Microsoft authenticator (that I don't use except for MS apps) because you mentioned it. Took me 7 minutes to go through the procedure, no issues encountered, the new codes indeed unlock my Free account. So if it doesn't work for you, it sincerely looks like an individual, not a general problem.

[WilliamL 658]

9 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

So if it doesn't work for you, it sincerely looks like an individual, not a general problem.

That’s fine, what it doesn’t change is it is a problem, one introduced due to changes EN have made to a system that was working fine for me. I’ve no idea what the issue is, as I said I have tried so many times, my phone settings are of course fine for time zone. As I said it is what it is, I’m not wasting any further time trying to problem solve problems a service I’m paying for is creating for me. As my data is now at risk I’m forced to make a rapid move, it seems that’s a more constructive place to invest the time. Frustrating but as I said it is what it is, I’ve way more in real life to be stressing about without this kinda thing competing for my time too. 

[gazumped 11,775]

Any of this help?  

 

 

[agsteele 2,977]

@WilliamL I think you have several weeks before you are forced to change to app based 2FA.  Did you first of all disable the SMS authentication? Then attempt the connection to your preferred authenticator application...

[PinkElephant 8,283]

Just went through a full loop on a Free account: Enable 2FA with Microsoft Athenticator, test drive it login / logout, disable it again.

No issues found.

On my subscribers account I have 2FA by code enabled since a long time, with Authy calculating the codes. No issues either.