Naive take on Premium VS Free

[Frank.dg 1,385]

Evernote should implement a host of the most commonly requested features they've been holding out on and make them available to Premium users. They'd have people upgrading in their droves for features like:

• Collapsible bullet points (outliner function)
• Dark theme backgrounds (for reading)
• Customizable desktop themes (Especially owing to the new Mac release) 
• Boolean search
• Nested tags on iOS (and Android... but they'd need to pull it first   )
• Etc.

I think they should be more aggressive in more clearly distinguishing between the Free and Premium versions. I am a premium user because I like the Premium features... many of which I have come to rely on... BUT most people can get by without...

• presentation mode
• more than 60 MB of monthly upload 
• PDF searching
• Context
• offline notebooks (As a premium member I don't even use the feature, since I have 4G access)

... as evidenced by the vast majority of people who use Evernote day in and day out being Free members. Most of the Premium features do not significantly boost my workflow, to be honest. They're handy, but they're not all deal-breakers. That's why most Evernote users get by without them.

 

Is this too much of a simplistic viewpoint? Am I naive in thinking that a handful of great new Premium features would alone boost Evernote's revenue? Give everyone a trial period with select features that significantly boost their workflow and get them addicted to these... If I'm not mistaken, there's one premium feature which Evernote already offers for a trial period... just can't remember what it is right now. Maybe I'm thinking of another app 

[Wordsgood 526]

I could be wrong, but I don't recall any of the options Free users get as being offered for trial periods of time. You might be thinking of the fact that free users have limited - but not for any period of time - use compared to Premium or Business members of certain function. One Premium feature I am personally looking forward to after upgrading, is the use of Local Notebooks on my phone so I don't have to worry about the cache drive clearing itself or finding wi-fi coverage when I'm out. I can do that to a certain degree now, but don't want to be left in lurch if I need to access or create notes when out and offline.

[gazumped 11,664]

Can't remember what percentage of free users convert to premium - I'm sure it was mentioned somewhere,  and I'm sure it was pretty low.  Given that EN now has a lot of customers,  you'd think one easy source of revenue would be to persuade people who already use the product to use it more,  and even pay extra for the priviledge..

 

Edit:  and the 'free' offer you might be thinking of could be free users getting business card scanning for 12 months if they link with their LinkedIn account..?

[Metrodon 2,184]

From memory, they actually have (or used to have) a pretty high conversion rate - somewhere between 4 and 5% which is really good for this kind of model.

 

Those commonly requested features might be really really really expensive to implement, not much point adding $1m in revenue by adding $1.5m in cost.

[Frank.dg 1,385]

 

Edit:  and the 'free' offer you might be thinking of could be free users getting business card scanning for 12 months if they link with their LinkedIn account..?

 

Yes, you're right Gaz... it's the business card scanning thing:

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/36737-no-business-card-scanning-for-free-members/#entry198936

 

... for 1 month. 

[Frank.dg 1,385]

From memory, they actually have (or used to have) a pretty high conversion rate - somewhere between 4 and 5% which is really good for this kind of model.

 

Those commonly requested features might be really really really expensive to implement, not much point adding $1m in revenue by adding $1.5m in cost.

 

Hopefully for Evernote the Work Chat will not have been in vain. I'm sure it's required significant resources, especially since they seem to be going against the flow of what most people want - at least initially. Even though I don't use Work Chat nor find too much use for some of the more recent features - I hope others do, because if Evernote loses, we all lose. I'd like to see Evernote around for at least half of their 100-year vision. 

[CalS 5,280]

 

From memory, they actually have (or used to have) a pretty high conversion rate - somewhere between 4 and 5% which is really good for this kind of model.

 

Those commonly requested features might be really really really expensive to implement, not much point adding $1m in revenue by adding $1.5m in cost.

 

Hopefully for Evernote the Work Chat will not have been in vain. I'm sure it's required significant resources, especially since they seem to be going against the flow of what most people want - at least initially. Even though I don't use Work Chat nor find too much use for some of the more recent features - I hope others do, because if Evernote loses, we all lose. I'd like to see Evernote around for at least half of their 100-year vision. 

 

Frank,

 

What a wonderful conundrum you raise.  We want more, but what we have isn't working as well as it is it should.  I don't know that the forums are representative of the universe of users, but if they are, yuck.  We want more, but the more we are getting is not the more we want, as individual users in any case.  We all know companies set their own course with varying degrees of focus on vision, customers, employees and competition.  EN seems to be vision focused, there is a seer there somewhere.  We want to keep using the product because it helps but are fearful it is going to go paws up based upon recent history, it's just not that big a company to survive too much of a rough patch.

 

So what to do?  Some are leaving for OneNote and the like, some are staying to see how it goes.  I am staying, I like the product too much.  Will make sure I maintain a history of recent updates so worst case I can go all local on a single device should that dire time ever come.  I'll figure out how to deal with the IOS devices then (maybe PDFs to drop box?).  Anyway I won't have any sync issues at that point.

 

To be clear, my tongue is somewhere in my cheek at this point, not fully though.  

[Wordsgood 526]

Despite my reservations...

Some outright grumbling (to put it nicely), seriously searching for an EN alternative (like OneNote and others), and the outrage I very publicly expressed about what I see as a total disrespect and disregard for the very power users that put their hearts and souls into helping Evernote become the international success they are todat, with over 100 million users in less than a decade... Like Gazumped, Jefito, BurgerNFries, Grump Monkey and several other I could name, and I'm sure, countless others I can't name, not having had the pleasure of meeting them here on this forum.

I came to Evernote late last year (2013) when it was still in what we know know was the tail end of a glorious run as THE app for personal users to use and incorporate into their daily life - greatly assisted in organizing all aspects of their personal and professional lives.

It was, and in many ways, still is the best of it's kind. However...

I don't care that they are trying to break into the corporate market where the big bucks are. More power to them IF they can make it work.

But as has been stated six ways of Sunday, they are not off to a great start and have yet to live-up to the promises they are still making on their website ad claims:

* Remember Everything

* Evernote as your 2nd brain

* The best way to collect and store ALL kinds of digital information

* Create, collect and store upto 100,000 Notes

Well, let's see. Accounts reaching 30,000 notes become excruatingly slow, and in some cases completely unusable, as in the case of BNF, who has said the bulk of her notes consist only of plain text material. Evernote does not, and I understand reading and hearing from long-time users who have been with them from the start or very near to, never has been good at handling and kind of multi-media content, not even digital pictures.

Customer service, if one is to go just by the complaints in this Forum, has gone from outstanding to slow and meh. Seldom, it seems, are matters resolved within the promised one business days.

Despite all this, I HAVE seen a concerted effort by the staff handling this forum to

* Address user concerns - free, Premium and Business users

* Help in whatever way they can that's within their personal power, and haved noted that they have shared as much as they are allowed to about what's happening at the coporate level.

* Acknowledge some shortcomings (even if it does take users to loudly gripe about them first).

* And even the KB some serious updates (though it's still not all that easy - especially for new users - to find the information they need, but is progress.

Given all that, I won't say my faith in the company is 100% restored, but I do see the above changes as a step forward in the right direction. And since I've adapted so well to the Evernote model of creating and storing content that helps me in my life, I am going to take the plunge by mid next week (barring any more unforseen crisis like more vet bills) and purchase a one year subscription.

I hope before the year is up a lot of the ongoing issues like scalability, sync problem, slow Tech Support response and others, will be addressed and show much improvement. Not just for my sake, but in the hope that long-timer power users who have left, will return and that those still hanging on, find a reason to stay!