Puh-LEEZE un-baffle me re: Business vs. Premium

[murrelld 1]

Hi folks,

 

My four-person company has fairly simple Evernote needs.  For instance, we have zero need for Administrative functions -- each of us will have full access to everything.

 

I'm trying to figure out whether we can get by on having four personal Premium accounts, or if we should get an Enterprise account with four users. 

 

I'll hug you from afar if you can offer any thoughts.

 

David

[gazumped 11,652]

One of Evernote's guiding principles (of which you just reminded me),  I've been told,  is that they never want you to pay for more features than you actually need,  so if you're happy with 4 premium accounts,  why buy into the inevitable learning curve of a different app?  Is there a feature of which you're desperately in need that isn't covered by a prem account?  If so - find out whether Business will do that;  but if you like what you got,  don't change for the sake of it.

 

The major feature you need to bear in mind is that Business is different from premium - it's very similar in everything it allows you to do,  but it has an extra layer of admin,  which one of you is going to have to take on.  It does have (much) higher upload limits,  but again;  what do you desperately need from Evernote that you don't already get?  If you don't have a wish list ,  you don't need to change.  (And whatever your business,  you have more serious problems to sort out!)

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Hi. Business solves some problems with account limits and collaboration.

http://www.christopher-mayo.com/?p=169

I'd say that having a central repository of documentation in the Business Library is a pretty big benefit, especially if your office has gone paperless and generates a lot of data. As Gaz said, though, if it isn't broke, don't fix it

[murrelld 1]

Thanks, guys, I appreciate it very much!  It also strikes me that it's not too terrible if we start out with four Premium accounts and see how it goes -- we can always upgrade to Business if the limitationg of P. and benefits of B. become apparent.

 

GrumpyMonkey, I'd happened to have already read that post of yours, by reading another thread someplace.  So useful, thank you for writing it.

 

-D

[conejo23 6]

great thread, and I'm currently asking the same question. My wife and I own a small business in which we both work. We have two other employees, so we're also a 4 person team. Like many folks, I had Evernote for years but didn't make much use of it until recently. A few months ago I decided to really invest into the app, move a bunch of stuff into it and explore its functionality. Bought and read Evernote Essentials and Evernote @Work, for example. Both are great resources. 

 

I decided Evernote can help us share information and act as a central data repository. We don't really do a lot of collaboration. We have a clinic that practices The Egoscue Method, in Austin, TX. We do exercise-based posture therapy for people in pain. So we have 3 therapists, including me and my wife, and an office manager. My wife and I additionally take on business management/ownership roles on top of our therapy roles.  I'm sure my view of how we'll use Evernote will evolve over time, but right now I've created a notebook stack for our clinic and under it I have these notebooks:

 

- Clinic Documents. Here will reside things like spreadsheets that get regularly updated, payroll time logs, misc forms, etc...

- Benefits Info. This will have information about our various benefits like medical, vision, dental, etc...

- Therapy Resources. If I find a cool website with great information about spine anatomy, for example, here it goes.

- Client Clarify Documents. About 25% of our therapy appointments are now done via Skype with clients at a distance. For example, just yesterday we saw clients from Japan, Europe, Massachusetts and Minnesota. We will use Clarify to take screenshots of what we're seeing with them and then use the skype/share desktop functionality to show them what we're seeing. Previously, those documents would then reside on their therapist's machine locally. That presented a bit of a challenge if another therapist needed to take them for an appointment, they had no access to those screenshots for reference. Now I can put them all in a shared Evernote notebook and anyone can access them.

- Corporate training materials. We're akin to a franchise, headquartered in San Diego, with about 20 clinics worldwide. When our corporate office puts a document up on the internal website, we can download it and store it here for easy, shared access.

- E-Myth materials. We're beginning to systematically work through the E-Myth Business Development Process and we can store all the forms, reference materials and homework items here.

 

That's what we've got so far. I've been asking myself if 4 premium accounts will suffice, or if there are sufficient advantages to the Business option to justify that expense. My thinking at this point is that many of the benefits of the Business plan don't help us. I doubt we'd ever reach Premium upload limits, so the added Business limit has no tangible benefit. The enhanced support sounds nice but ideally we never need such support. The admin functionality is more burden than help, probably, and while I can share business notebooks, I can also share notebooks in premium, so I don't really see what the value added here is. Is sharing in Business substantively different than sharing in Premium? If so, I'm not seeing it. So that leaves "related notes" functionality, and while that definitely sounds cool, that alone is nowhere near sufficient reason to justify such an upgrade.

 

Perhaps I'm missing the true advantages to sharing in the Business plan versus Premium. Evernote in my opinion does a poor job of explaining how Premium sharing differs from Business sharing. Seems like sharing is sharing. If there is more to it, I'd love it if someone could clarify this.

 

So that's where we're at. I'd appreciate any thoughts on this. At this point, my plan is we get everyone a premium account (i already have one) and just go from there. But I'm absolutely open to considering Business if I can understand how it benefits me in a tangible way.

[gazumped 11,652]

The previous post (#4) said that the OP is aiming to start out with Premium accounts and work up from there - and I'd think that plan would suit you too.  Mainly for two reasons - everyone does their own admin on their own account and you won't get phone calls at odd hours when someone can't get into a notebook*;  and also I use stacks to group notebooks together and make them easier to navigate, but (I believe) stacks don't exist in the Business product yet.  If you find features in EB later that you feel you need,  you can always upgrade.  But keeping it simple to start with sounds the best option!

 

* OK - you're slightly less likely to get calls...

[conejo23 6]

yep, agreed.

 

But now that I've posed the question, I'm curious. Is sharing in EB materially different (in a better way) than sharing in EP?

[gazumped 11,652]

I think the way information is shared is different,  but the end result is pretty much the same.  In Premium you choose the note or notebook to share,  invite your colleagues,  and leave it to them to join the party on their own time.  In EB the Administrator 'assigns' the right and the level of access to notebooks to all individuals in advance,  and they'll be able to see and select the notebooks when they next log in.  The principle advantage (AFAIK) are the much higher number of notebooks you can open and view,  the higher upload limits - which are aimed at enterprise level loads of documents being added to some notebooks used as 'libraries' for internal regulations,  references and processes - and the scalability:  add extra sharees in one easy step.  

 

The main point being that one person 'administers' access for everyone else,  and in a small group that might become an imposition.  (Not sure whether or how you might be able to share that duty in a small team.)

 

Basically its a learning curve,  and in business I'm allergic to learning curves that aren't absolutely essential!

[conejo23 6]

thanks, good stuff.

 

At this point I'm taking on the role of Evernote administrator. I think we'll have a pretty basic structure once all is said and done. 

 

If we had a 30 person company, then I think the workflow of Evernote Business would be far superior than doing it in Premium. With a 4 person shop, I think I get pretty much the same result for 2-3 times the money with EB vs EP.

 

And like you said, I already know how to use EP. Don't need to spend time learning something I don't need to learn.

[Candid 167]

I think the one thing I'd think about in terms of Business versus Premium is who has control of an account if there is a parting of the ways.  This can be managed with Premium with small numbers of users, but you'll need to stay on top of it. Suppose they set up two-step verification on their personally owned cell phone? 

 

While you may not expect anyone to leave, eventually it will happen and planning in advance means less fuss when it does. 

[murrelld 1]

Thank you Candid, that's a great point.

[conejo23 6]

Candid, that is a solid point.

 

At this point, it's not a big deal for us. I'm the business owner and administrator, so I create notebooks and invite others on the team to share them. 

 

That said, one of our goals is to get the business to the point where I'm not here all the time, and much of the time I'm not here at all. To do that, the business needs to be able to run independently of me, and this factors into that.

 

My sense is that we'll stay with the Premium side of things for 6-12 months and verify that Evernote is even the right tool for the way we're envisioning using it. If it is, at some point we'll likely migrate to the Business platform. Will make sharing content easier, administration easier, etc...