price increase

[tombran44 5]

Thomas Brandau 

Kandis Krell 

 

We are outraged at the price increase you are demanding. My wife and I have both been paying you $49.99 per year and now we get an increase to $129.96 each??? A 160% increase per account. We use your app everyday and I have literally hundreds of hours setting up our databases. Our address books, financials, and trading data is all on Evernote.  Migrating away means I have to cut and paste over 1000 records to another service. We are now both retired now and this increase is unreasonable. We need a little help and understanding from you. Please call me to address my concerns: 213-446-1315

Edited January 3 by tombran44
removing email addresses

[agsteele 2,951]

These forums are user to user so you will be unlikely to get account help here.

You were evidently on one of the old grand-fathered plans which were discontinued late summer last year. You were transferred to the Personal plan 

All prices were later increased which takes you to the rate you describe.

For some slow support you can open a ticket. It is unlikely anyone will phone you.

https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action

Or

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Also you might like to edit your post and remove your Email addresses. It is known that including Emails in these forums can lead to unwanted spam.

[tombran44 5]

Thank you for your response. It is appreciated

[tombran44 5]

I did send a message of complaint to the support site

[Komrade 0]

I been a user of Evernote for about 15 years.. although maybe less.

I don't remember when I converted to pay, but in 22 I paid $35, in 23 I paid $70, in 24 they want $130. That's some price inflation.

The product was increasingly useless and frustrating for me over the past year+.. the notes would take forever (10-15 secs) to load, and the syncing often resulted in conflicts.

Yes, I did provide this feedback to evernote (on speed) and got canned responses.

I reverted to older clients to have some speed on the laptops..

Anyway, about a month ago I converted all my 1000+ notes to Synology Notes... Took me couple of hours to imp/exp, but mostly re-organize/cleanup (easier to dump to file than using API)

The good news the Federal Reserve can use my case as an example of "product substitution" in their CPI calculations.

Just "closed" my evernote account for good.

Thumbs up to Evernote team to make that easy. Thumbs down to Product team for whatever they've been doing for past two years while product was getting away from core use.

[Gary Keenan 12]

5 hours ago, tombran44 said:

I did send a message of complaint to the support site

I wouldn't hold your breath. I've had a ticket open with them since 2022. I'm in the same position, having sunk over a decade of subscription fees into an app that has considerably less features than it used to... whilst demanding more cash for a buggy piece of garbageware. I'm in the process of exporting my notes to local storage until I find a viable alternative to EN. Open to suggestions if you've tried any.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

I doubt they will be impressed by "protest notes".

Subscriptions are renewing during all of the year. I am quite sure that they monitor closely what happens when it does. The math is pretty simple on that: The raise in prices makes up for a certain rate of attrition of the user base.

Unless they reverse the course, it seems the outcome is within calculated margins.

So farewell and good luck.

[tombran44 5]

It’s a shame that the company that owns them is now in Milan, because had they been an American company I would’ve been making a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the CFTC. I have hundreds of hours setting up my database, not to mention the work in managing it over the years. No excuse for 160% increase x 2 accounts. I feel hijacked. 

[s2sailor 2,207]

12 minutes ago, tombran44 said:

had they been an American company

They would possibly be out of business by now.  Financially they have been circling the drain for years.  The new price is high, shockingly high if you have been receiving discounts.  You will have to do what we all have done, decide whether the app provides you enough value to justify the price. Fortunately, there are lower price competing apps to consider if you decide Evernote is not worth it to you at the new price.

[tombran44 5]

I’m with you Gary. I spent all day looking at other options, and with multiple notebooks and over 1400 notes, my time to migrate means probably 2 weeks of work, tedious work. I guess they just don’t care or understand that now, everytime Evernote comes up in the film and television production community where I’ve worked for thirty years, I’ll be completely negative, and warn everybody off. If you find an alternative situation, please let me know. 

[s2sailor 2,207]

1 minute ago, tombran44 said:

If you find an alternative situation, please let me know.

There is no perfect replacement, but some come close depending on your wants and needs.  There is plenty of discussion on alternatives in the forum.

[tombran44 5]

Thank you for your reply s2. Might be helpful to list the alternatives you mention. I haven’t found a better situation yet.

[s2sailor 2,207]

9 hours ago, tombran44 said:

Might be helpful to list the alternatives you mention. I haven’t found a better situation yet.

Honestly, Google Evernote alternatives and you could be reading all night. Many are upset but what is best for you will depend on how you use it, what’s important to you, and which devices you want to use it on. Try several and see what works best for you.  I’m a Mac user and Bear and Devonthink are contenders for me and Obsidian which is also available for the PC. I use a lot of the function in Evernote and after testing some of these others, I decided that staying with Evernote, for now at least, was the best decision for me.  Good luck with your search.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,967]

13 hours ago, tombran44 said:

It’s a shame that the company that owns them is now in Milan, because had they been an American company I would’ve been making a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the CFTC. I have hundreds of hours setting up my database, not to mention the work in managing it over the years. No excuse for 160% increase x 2 accounts. I feel hijacked. 

I don't think it's been mentioned in this thread yet that there was no price increase for several years. The abrupt and large increase reflects both the unreality of the previous pricing (EDIT: the $49.99 Plus or whatever account has not been offered for several years, but was grandfathered in until now; I suspect it has not met Evernote's cost in providing it for a very long time), and the new owners' need to recoup their expense in purchasing Evernote. But it would certainly be massive for a retired couple to pay for 2 separate accounts. Divvied up by the week, a Personal subscription is about $2.50, and it is commonly pointed out here that most people spend more than that on a cup of coffee somewhere. But when budgets get limited, people start drinking their coffee at home. Best of luck to you all in finding a replacement.

[s2sailor 2,207]

22 hours ago, tombran44 said:

My wife and I have both been paying you $49.99 per year and now we get an increase to $129.96 each???

I missed that you were paying for two accounts earlier.  Another option is for both of you to share only one account. You could put your notebooks in one stack and her notebooks in another.  Saved searches could be set up for each of you to only search your specific stack.

[tombran44 5]

s2 thanks again for your response. We did exactly that yesterday, cutting the increase in half. I'm still feeling hijacked and of course worried about what happens next, but I can't spend any more time on this. Just have to eat it. 

[Bill Myers 458]

@tombran44, you may want to edit your original post again to remove your phone number. 

[sl1200mk2 31]

On 1/3/2024 at 11:16 PM, tombran44 said:

I guess they just don’t care or understand that now, everytime Evernote comes up in the film and television production community where I’ve worked for thirty years, I’ll be completely negative, and warn everybody off. If you find an alternative situation, please let me know. 

This is just one of things so many people don't seem to understand or appreciate. They think it's a simple math problem where X people leave, Y people stay and that's it which is (IMO) entirely short sighted. 

For every person complaining here and likely leaving, they'll essentially torpedo Evernote in every discussion they can from here on out. I've introduced Evernote to countless people (likely hundreds) over the past 16 years and actively have 4 direct colleagues using it. All of us have been discussing, are equally frustrated, leaving and will actively go out of our way dissuade anyone from using the product in the future. Being in the IT industry we're seen as thought leaders who average users come to for advice and guidance. Every time I go into a new business we're consulting with (which is near weekly) the "what do you use" conversation for apps is one of the first things that comes up. They'll get recommendations along with the "absolutely stay away from..." list which Evernote is now a part of.

No app is 'perfect' -- I think we can all accept that. For me, I'm going to Notion because it's the best overall package for my needs. Whatever you go with, make sure it supports robust export system with more standards-based options like 'markdown' and not a proprietary format like Evernote.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

Your post is a contradiction in itself, in more than one aspect.

You claim it would be a communication mess when the product is put on to a new course. Fine, maybe the old management should be blamed, because they did not achieve the necessary profitability, but avoided measures to get there. Just working on a better product (and we today have the best Evernote which ever existed) is not enough if you don’t monetarize it. Or allow the money moving in your direction to just flow through the system, and out again, feeding a non performing jungle of Free and Grandfathered accounts.

Those who do the necessary job often don’t get the merits. I wouldn’t be surprised if EN would already be profitable this year. For a sustained operation, that’s what counts.

Second you mention Notion as your go to, and in the same paragraph urge everybody to choose an app that makes exporting and moving content easy. What a laugh - don’t you realize you are doing one thing, and pointing everybody into another ? Like a boozer urging everybody to join tea toddler sessions as a precaution. Notion is a database builder - exporting is a complex operation, because you won’t find a matching receiving app to host your exported content.

Better get your stuff moved, maybe you can clear your logic while doing so.

[sl1200mk2 31]

This is such a waste of time speaking to a brick wall and likely my last.  I know this is complicated for you, but I said, "For me, I'm going to Notion because it's the best overall package for my needs."   Get it?  I didn't say, "Notion is the best alternative solution for all current Evernote users".  Notion is in fact much more complicated than Evernote and I'll use it for much more than just 'notes'.  It integrates with other business apps like Click-Up and Sunsama that I also use on a daily basis bringing more value overall, for me, than just Evernote.  It's up to each user to determine what's right for them.

That said, getting data out of Notion (in the context of notes) while not perfect, isn't as fraught and challenging in comparison to Evernote.

Specifically for notes (e.g. 'Pages' in Notion speak):  

Markdown and CSV are near universal that can be imported into many other 'note' apps worth looking at. 

Here's 15 of them:  Unique 15 Best Markdown Note-Taking App (2022) - The Desk of A Lawyer (deskoflawyer.com)

Let's contrast that to Evernote where to get any reasonable level of export it's... ENEX. Their own proprietary and insufferable format. Fortunately, enough people have been burned by Evernote that several have written somewhat sufficient conversion tools that are freely available.

Going to/from any of these apps at best difficult, but some make it easier than others. 

Is the process easy? NOPE.  Is it a perfect conversion? NOPE.  Is the entire process lengthy and frustrating each having challenges? YEP.

Frankly, most people won't be able to figure it out. Therein lies an Evernote strategy, get users established and make the process of leaving painful enough using a proprietary data format that they won't do it.  

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,967]

1 hour ago, sl1200mk2 said:

For every person complaining here and likely leaving, they'll essentially torpedo Evernote in every discussion they can from here on out. I've introduced Evernote to countless people (likely hundreds) over the past 16 years and actively have 4 direct colleagues using it. All of us have been discussing, are equally frustrated, leaving and will actively go out of our way dissuade anyone from using the product in the future. Being in the IT industry we're seen as thought leaders who average users come to for advice and guidance. Every time I go into a new business we're consulting with (which is near weekly) the "what do you use" conversation for apps is one of the first things that comes up. They'll get recommendations along with the "absolutely stay away from..." list which Evernote is now a part of.

Lots of people seem to think Evernote owes them something for having talked it up for years. With free users, that's just a laugh. Even with paying subscribers such as yourself, there's no real way of knowing (unless you take a survey) whether your recommendations one way or another have an effect.

This thread started with a complaint from a retired couple who each had a grandfathered Plus or similar account (which I suspect has not met Evernote's cost to provide it for years), and found the abrupt and large price increase beyond their means. Not entirely unreasonable (though IMHO the increase partly reflects the unreality of the previous pricing, which hadn't risen for a long time). But when someone using Evernote for professional purposes apparently takes offense at paying the equivalent of less than $3.30/week for a professional subscription, I'm left unimpressed.

A minute later....

2 minutes ago, sl1200mk2 said:

I said, "For me, I'm going to Notion because it's the best overall package for my needs."   Get it?  I didn't say, "Notion is the best alternative solution for all current Evernote users".  Notion is in fact much more complicated than Evernote and I'll use it for much more than just 'notes'.  It integrates with other business apps like Click-Up and Sunsama that I also use on a daily basis bringing more value overall, for me, than just Evernote.  It's up to each user to determine what's right for them.

This at last makes sense. Elsewhere (and later in the same post) you've attributed devious and delusional behavior to Evernote's management, and spoken as if no one with any brains would use it. I appreciate your spelling out why Notion works better for you, and I wish you success. I have no desire to learn how to type Markdown, and for my purposes Evernote works well and is very much worth the the expense. I hope we can leave it at that.

[sl1200mk2 31]

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Lots of people seem to think Evernote owes them something for having talked it up for years. With free users, that's just a laugh. Even with paying subscribers such as yourself, there's no real way of knowing (unless you take a survey) whether your recommendations one way or another have an effect.

....

But when someone using Evernote for professional purposes apparently takes offense at paying the equivalent of less than $3.30/week for a professional subscription, I'm left unimpressed.

Dave, thank you (I think) for the reasonable response. I'm attempting to reply to you respectfully, so if you misinterpret something, that's not the intent. I'm rarely, if ever, the 'it costs too much' guy. Quite frankly, I'm more known for paying for anything and everything in regard to professional tools which in my case aren't always covered by the company I work for with Evernote being one of them. I personally pay approx. $125/m in various productivity related services that I both find and derive value from. I find the year over year increase of Evernote egregious when looked at in the broader context of the products development and issues over the years. I can't recall if it was you or someone else who said so, but it's a money grab and shake down of customers after an acquisition, plain and simple. Bending Spoons can't get $340M in venture capital and not show investors returns for very long, so this is part of the plan, I get it, but I chose not to be a part of it either. It's clear you don't feel the same way and we can agree to disagree, everyone gets to have their own opinion.
 

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

A minute later....

This at last makes sense. Elsewhere (and later in the same post) you've attributed devious and delusional behavior to Evernote's management, and spoken as if no one with any brains would use it. I appreciate your spelling out why Notion works better for you, and I wish you success. I have no desire to learn how to type Markdown, and for my purposes Evernote works well and is very much worth the the expense. I hope we can leave it at that.

 

I never said, 'no one with any brains would use it' or anything remotely close to that; that's how you chose to interpret the statement. For many years, I thought Evernote was an absolutely brilliant, best in class application. While I didn't do so on this forum, I sang its praises loudly and couldn't imagine it not being an integral part of my professional life. If there's 'drama' surrounding my departure, it's knowing that along with the draining and frustrating process of leaving (which doesn't have to be). I'll wind up spending (likely) a dozen hours or more on it over the next few weeks which has a very real cost to it both in dollars and lost personal opportunities. 

I think its predatory behavior for Evernote or anyone else to use proprietary data formats that make it more difficult for unsuspecting customers to leave who generally don't find that out until it's too late. That's specifically why I said, "Whatever you go with, make sure it supports robust export system with more standards-based options..." because the average user isn't thinking about this and should be educated on it as a potentially deciding factor on the product/service they might want to use. I'm willing to admit I see this from a different perspective, because I run into it constantly with IT services and SaaS companies who make it difficult for their customers to leave. It's a common and known industry strategy whether people chose to acknowledge it or not.

For the record, you don't have to 'learn markdown'. While you can (if you wanted to) it's not necessary in most apps and handled for you. For the context in which I'm referring to markdown, it's simply a data format that's standards based, meaning anyone who wants to use it can, so many modern applications support it. For an application like Obsidian (which stores all notes in markdown format), the data is right there, you can quite literally just copy the files to another directory, open them in another markdown-based note app and they'll open exactly as they were. There's no "import" and "export".  It's portable, transparent and therefore end user friendly -- not trying to lock you into an ecosystem or platform. I've tried Obsidian previously, but it's not right for me and the data sync (an absolute requirement of mine) at the time wasn't reliable, but maybe that's been addressed.  

And before someone tries to call me out, yes, I realize that Notion isn't storing data in purely markdown language. I don't know what they're using in the backend, nor do I care, as long as I can get the data that's important to me out in a known and widely accepted format. Their 'export' will have some amount of translation likely involved. I'm going into it fully knowing that but looking at the larger picture of what Notion is offering for my current needs. Everything is a trade-off and I'm not calling Notion some perfect unicorn solution. They all have problems, and I very well might go running from Notion in a year or two as well, but I've already done some amount of due diligence in what's involved and what tools are available.

3 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

...for my purposes Evernote works well and is very much worth the the expense. I hope we can leave it at that.

That's (genuinely) great! I'm sure it works fantastically for many others as well who'll have no issue in paying $129/yr or whatever it goes to in the future. It worked amazingly for me until it didn't. The product has had (in my opinion) a clear and steady decline for the past several years. Even with that, if there was a modest price increase, which is completely justifiable and understandable (if for no other reason infrastructure costs which can't just be absorbed), I'd have stayed on bandwagon. It's the fact that there is no other offering, no other tier in-between, or no optional add-ons for the AI features, rather just 'take it or leave it'. That was final blow for me on top of the slew of product issues, particularly over the last 1-2 years. 

Go back and read my original rant in another thread. I never specifically called out you or anyone else saying you should or shouldn't use Evernote. I said (and was called narcissistic for it) what I felt about the current situation, what I wanted out of the product and "it's time to go" which was and entirely a reference to myself. I was clearly venting and letting my displeasure be known, because while they might not post or reply, I would be shocked if no EN or BS employees read this forum. If they don't, that's an even bigger red flag about the company and their ignorance towards their users. Yes, emails were sent to ' feedback@evernote.com' and 'federico@evernote.com' but not for a millisecond do I think they'll get a response or have any impact whatsoever. The only language understood here will be dollars and/or euros.

Users such as yourself chose to respond which is fine. It's a user forum and generally expected, but it wasn't directed at you personally or anyone else. Many love to point out, "we can't do anything about it" as if I don't understand the concept of forum (hello, been using these since 1984) -- so, quite simply, don't reply. Some people (not necessarily you) very obviously take great offense to any negativity or criticism levelled at the product or company as a personal affront. That's not my problem. If anyone wants to "leave it at that" -- awesome. Don't reply or continue to reply to my posts. My remaining time here is limited, and I'll go away soon enough. 😃

[PinkElephant 8,121]

There is HTML export. There is pdf export. Both are standard formats.

There is ENEX export, a format defined by EN a long time ago and a sort-of-standard format acknowledged by many note taking apps.

If somebody claims a lock in, it can be discussed because no other app supports all features (which can’t be blamed on EN). Nobody can claim missing export options to standard formats.

[rvsf.go 0]

It's a shmmmm..., those prices are for professional users, they forget about home users, I don't need 10gb of transfer per month, I just need to be able to make unlimited notes. 3, 4 or 5€ I could pay monthly, not more money.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

When you cancel your subscription, you sometimes get offered a discount. It could take your monthly payment into that region, for 1 year.

But in general EN is not targeting the „only some notes“ users any more.

[Razmataz 218]

On 1/6/2024 at 10:03 PM, PinkElephant said:

There is HTML export. There is pdf export. Both are standard formats.

There is ENEX export, a format defined by EN a long time ago and a sort-of-standard format acknowledged by many note taking apps.

If somebody claims a lock in, it can be discussed because no other app supports all features (which can’t be blamed on EN). Nobody can claim missing export options to standard formats.

Well, truth be told:

HTML export is broken in V10 and unusable, since it calls all attachments "untitled attachment", even if they have a proper file names. Further, the attachments are not accessible (even though present in a subfolder), because all links to them are broken (point to NIL).

PDF-s suffer from the same "untitled attachment" syndrome.

I think it is more honest to say: ENEX is the only option to export in V10.

BTW: The PDF bug is just a few months old (2-3). The broken HTML export is some 3 years old! And you have acknowledged that in one of your posts.

So let's be honest about it.

[PinkElephant 8,121]

So let's be honest about it is a good advise. So I just went and exported a few notes, to HTML.

First the links are still broken, which is quite a fuckup, given a) this was claimed several times already, over years and b) they can be fixed manually, which shows they are not completely broken. There is (inexplicably) a sloppy error unfixed since long in creating these links.

Second the attachments export fine for me. So if you want the attachments from some notes exported, that's still the way to go. "Untitled attachments" as attachments point to a problem with the local database. I had plenty of attachments, of different file types, and as you can see in the screenshot, not a single one showed as "Untitled ...".

About other export options: PDF export exports the notes, and attached pictures. It will not export other file types, since the pdf format does not allow for embedded files, except pictures. That's a basic of the pdf format. The most complete export is still ENEX - what it does not export is the notebook information, and Tasks are not included.

Maybe you send them more tickets about it, I did my share on this already.

Example of HTML export (several notes with different attachments):

[Razmataz 218]

Very good, @PinkElephant, I think we are a saying (lo and behold!) the same.

And yes, I did report the issues both through the feedback@evernote.com and through the  channel.

 

[pkmailbox1 7]

10 hours ago, rvsf.go said:

It's a shmmmm..., those prices are for professional users, they forget about home users, I don't need 10gb of transfer per month, I just need to be able to make unlimited notes. 3, 4 or 5€ I could pay monthly, not more money.

It is really upto the software developer to set their business / pricing strategy.   We cannot force them.   Having said that, I think Evernote pricing strategy is wrong and they forget to consider the "cost to serve" element.   many users take up hardly any resource of the company and to charge a "one size fits all" could backfire.  For example, assuming after this, all "simple" users exit the platform.   How much reduction might there be on the company resources e.g. cloud storage - I can't say for sure but my guess maybe 20-30%.     The "heavy" users will still consume bulk of resource, and maybe $130 per year may still not be sufficient for the company as the heavy users start adding multi gigagbytes or terrabytes of cloud storage.   a more sensible pricing strategy may be to charge on per gigabyte use basis, like many cloud providers, of course the price per gb should be more than pure cloud storage provider, due to the software etc.

Also, as a philosophy, I suggest to keep notes as simple as possible. The more complex you make them, the harder to migrate.  The more tagging you do, the more nesting you do, the more attachments you add, the more complex formatting you do, the harder it will be to migrate. temporary notes (eg going into a meeting) are fine to make complex - they are situational and not needed after a few months, and don't need to migrate.  but for more permanent notes, it would be ideal to keep them simple.  instead of attaching documents, your note could point to where they reside on your computer for e.g.    

And when you DO need to migrate and IF there are no other options,  do not discount, what I call, the "incremental migration" strategy.  This works as follows:

- leave all existing notes in your old note app

- new notes, you create in new note app

- old notes, whenever you need to amend them, copy over to new note app manually and edit over there

The plus of this is you are also in a way doing housekeeping, eg after 1 year, you will have active notes in your new note app, while outdated notes only in your old note app.   This helps in keeping database small, thus faster speed. Also, when you do search, you don't get so many outdated notes also appearing in search.     

 In my case, I had 5000+ notes in my  old notes app, but after 1 year, I had transferred only 1500 active notes into my new notes app, and left the 3500 outdated notes in old app.   YMMV of course. 1500 notes coped over 1 year works out to be about manually copying 4 notes a day, which is not too painful (though of course in reality, in initial days, may need to copy up to 10 notes notes a day, and then it starts tapering off).    There are some drawbacks like having to search 2 notes app for some time. A POSSIBLE option to consider

 

[PinkElephant 8,121]

The main issue IMHO was the conversion rate between Free and Paid. I think there were too little users subscribing to make Free a valid entry offer - and probably too many resorted to leaving the subscription, but staying with a Free account forever. These "Free" accounts likely take up a lot of space - some probably holding tens of thousands of notes.

So they designed the new Free to make it hard to use longer term. It really is only a trial now.

[lukaszw 23]

Leaving aside all the discussions about whether it's worth paying really huge money for the most basic plan (I think it isn't), let me tell you a really scandalous situation. 

I've been charged today for another year for my Personal plan. The price hopped from 69 to 129$ - in my opinion a completely unjustified increase. In Polish zloty it is over 540 PLN. 

But I took a look at EN plan comparison site, which in my country presents prices automatically in PLN - and what have I seen? My plan should cost me 179,99 PLN annualy instead od 540 PLN (it would be around 40-50$). I don't know if they have just forgotten to change the prices on their website but I don't care. It says what it says, and I immediately complained with the help service. 

I do think, having been EN subscriber for more than 10 years, that the service is becoming less and less user and customer friendly, and additionally it now becomes prohibitively expensive. 

[PinkElephant 8,121]

We can’t answer your question, being other users.

You can contact EN here - which is a mixed blessing these days, given the incredibly weak support they offer since some time.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

[lukaszw 23]

It's not a question, and I've already written to support (by the way, its weak quality is just yet another reason to change app). It's just a story for others to take into consideration.