AlanH

So a question for you. How do you thank a company should act to retain its existing customers?

I apologise if it seems I am complaining about pricing. This is not my intention. My "complaint" is that the decision that EN has taken about moving Premium users to Personal is an unreasonable step for long term users of the product. I have been moved from the second top tier to the third tier, missed out on new functionality I value now, and will miss out on more functionality in the future by being at that third tier. EN could have put full-rate Premium onto Professional, Plus on Personal and avoided all of this. Instead they have treated Plus and Premium as the same type of user. We're not! I want EN to be my primary tool as I have used it for a long time and have believed in its vision - and I like the new one even more. But I don't like working with a company that treats its customers in this undifferentiated way. One other thought for you - if we don't provide feedback to EN on things we think they can do better, how do they get better? If we don't suggest features that we think would improve the product (like bi-directional linking) how do they get better?

In the previous tiers, premium was followed by business, and the only features that Professional did not get were the multi-user capabilities that Business offered. So "...freelancers, project managers, consultants and the like ..." used Premium as we (yes, I fit into that group) did not need the multiuser features from Business. There was nothing useful for me in Business. So to now be positioned two tiers below the multiuser offer is unexpected, and I believe it is unreasonable. I no longer use Evernote as my primary tool because it did not make it easy to manage my work and, in the last year, because it did not support bidirectional linking (so powerful!). And I want to do a quick summary for those who are calling the new functions of Personal as a significant addition. The image below is from this link if you want to see the full thing. The rightmost two columns are for the Premium (old) and Personal (new) tiers. So the additions for Personal are: tasks in a single view: a much needed addition, but really a first step. To support a full task management methodology more functionality is required. Features such as recurring tasks (still can't figure out if that is actually there yet!), better priority options, and the ability to tag tasks (can't believe that is not there). Add dates, reminders and notifications to tasks. We've been able to do all of that for years to Notes. I had a tag called "Tasks" so was able to get almost all the functionality that Tasks now provide. I even had a single views of "Tasks" as a saved search in my favourites. So limited additional benefit. The new functionality provides some usability benefits (marking a task complete is a single click) and simplified my searching as I had to figure out how to find notes with "Task" due today but not "Done" - oh, if we only had a boolean search feature! Customize home with Tasks widget: to me Home is is the Shortcuts list with a better UX. Suggested notes is a nice addition. All the other "widgets" have been available in the left bar. Connect my primary Google calendar: useful but very limited. In my role I need to connect multiple calendars for the different clients for whom I work. Supporting one calendar source is not sufficient (yes I understand Professional offers this). And it seems to be one way - I make changes in the Evernote, but the changes don't then appear in Google Calendar. Other tools that can integrate multiple calendars have two-way APIs. BTW, there are add-ins for Outlook and Gmail that let me create Notes from emails. Again, EN has delivered UX improvements, but limited new functionality. In summary, limited additional functionality but finally moving in the right direction. But again, frustrated that I previously was at one tier below the multi-user version with access to all single user features and now I am not.

I agree with @PinkElephant, Spaces only makes sense where the notebook or books are used by multiple users. As I am not in that situation, that functionality is of no use to me. Whereas the functionality in Professional would be. I manage three different diaries - each from an organisation for which I do work and Professional will let me integrate those (or will in the near future when it Outlook/365 gets added!). I do want to do searches that include both OR and AND conditions and have asked about boolean support for literally years. So I perceive I can use the new Professional features. There are none in Teams that I need in the same way. And I'm interested, @DTLow, why you have combined Professional/Teams together. Aren't they targeted at different customers? You also had me worried, as you comment that Spaces are a replacement for Stacks - so I was worried that EN had deprecated Stacks. I was very relieved to find this wasn't the case. I can still use Stacks! Now if they would just bring back the Apple Watch app that I have been missing. Although I wonder if this will only be available to "Professional" users.

Yes, you are quite correct. What were those updates? Weren't they related to the administration of the multi-user environment and sharing of notes within an organisation? What other functionality did I, a relatively sophisticated user working on my own, miss out on?

I love the examples you use - the industries that consistently have extremely poor customer satisfaction ratings. I can only hope that Evernote is not wanting to emulate those companies approach to their customers! You have clearly worked with and supported EN (Congrats on the Level 5, that takes a lot of effort), so is this something you think they should aspire to? My second point? I have been a Premium customer and received all updates from Evernote prior to this point. I am no longer going to receive these, as has already been demonstrated by Evernote only releasing the majority of the increased functionality as the new Professional service. I am not looking for anything special. Just what I had before - access to all the new features that Evernote releases within my existing subscription. Is that really that unreasonable?

The points you make are valid to a point. A couple of questions for you. Why do so many businesses offer rewards for loyalty to long term customers? Is that a waste of money that would be better returned to the owners? Analysts use future Annual Recurring Revenue to asses the value of a business, so why is Evernote alienating a significant group of long-term customers by removing their rights to future up-grades?

I agree with you on this. An upgrade to another level needs to be a permanent step - it is not something that a company should or could easily withdraw. Where we do differ, is in our perception of the value that has been added to the product at the Personal level, and the functionality that we are not getting through Evernote's decision to create the Professional level. This is the issue as I see it. In addition, it sets the precedent that the additional functionality will only fully be available at the Professional and Teams level. Previously, the Premium got all the new functionality, such as it was. So, comparing the new 4 tier (free, personal, professional, teams) licensing with the old 4 tier (free, plus, premium, teams), as Premium users we have: - had some token new functionality, - missed out on new functionality now, and - will miss out on the future functionality that will be added to professional and teams. Every time functionality gets added to Professional, it will remind those long-term Premium users that Evernote sees us as less important customers. So, no. I don't think I should get everything in life. But Evernote needs to recognise who kept the company alive so that it has the opportunity to do what it is now doing. Instead, as @orion_mitchell put it, it has chosen to take an action that feels like a kick in the teeth, now and every time it delivers future functionality.

And to make it clearer, I thought it would be worth embedding this image here (https://evernote.com/compare-plans) as this is where I am getting my information from. The new features are personal are pretty much as I commented above. Link one external calendar, basic tasks functionality, Home. So some new functionality, but the one I have always wanted, boolean searching, is only available in Professional. In Personal, we only have the limited Search functionality. I have to regularly use a multi-step process to tag various notes to simulate boolean logic before I find what I am looking for. Beyond this search, the "Professional" features are not particularly relevant for me. I don't hit the limits of uploads, Home is of limited value, and I rarely export Notes from Evernote. I can't see the other integrations to assess if they are of any value. So I will live with my existing subscription until March next year when my current subscription expires. I will be interested to see what EN does - I expect that all the new features will go into the Professional and Teams versions, and the "Personal" accounts to "Keep home and family on track" will not get access to substantial new functionality. There is no incentive here for me to look for ways to integrate Evernote into my workflow more to justify the additional cost.

Yes, we have additional features in Tasks and integration with one external calendar. These are good improvements, and it is good to see the development team are listening to their customers. Are there other features that I haven't come across yet? After 10 year of waiting, I've found other alternatives. Too little, too late? And I agree that Notion has a different approach. They have aggressively developed and launched a product with a wide range of capabilities while EN has only recently discovered that this continuous development is now an essential part of the game. A pity the people deciding on the pricing, are not listening as carefully as the development team.

@Randy Zeitman LOL, I have questioned that thinking (and my sanity at times) myself for quite a while! The reality was that the feature set from Evernote was just good enough, and the pain of changing just hard enough, that I didn't change. And, I must comment, I did receive good support from the Evernote team when I had issues, which wasn't often. So enough reasons, beyond just loyalty to remain. But over the past 10-12 months I've been using products other than Evernote for things I previously did in Evernote, and so the first condition no longer exists. The functionality of Evernote has fallen a long way behind other products. They need to provide reasons to stay - and I'll say it again. Retaining a customer remains cheaper than acquiring a customer, even in this everything-as-a-service age. Alan

So, again I hope that Ian gets to see this note. The following is what I am currently seeing in my billing and on the site from New Zealand/. My current Premium is USD70 (well, 69.99 but who's counting?) paid in March this year, but the annual renewal shown to me from the website is now USD90, or an increase of over 28%. This feels like piling insult on top of injury. Or are you so focused on your corporate market, you're prepared to alienate the individual users that have kept the company going? Just as a comparison, switching to Notion will cost me USD48 per year, and Onenote comes at no cost with my Microsoft 365 license. So, again to Ian, how does this apparent increase align with your positioning that we are getting a better product for the same price? I repeat my question. How are you showing your long term customers the value of their loyalty? Alan Hesketh Notion USD4 per month

I think I'm going to go and have a quiet cry in the corner. 😢 I've been paying for Evernote since 2010, and a number of times asked why search did not include boolean operators - such a critical part of search. So to hear (haven't used it yet as I'm only Personal now) that boolean searching is now available but I have to pay more for it feels like a kick in the teeth. To Ian, I am impressed by what you have been doing to make the elephant dance again. After years of no new features we are finally seeing the catch-up happening. But I suspect you are going to lose a number of your long term users with the additional tier of pricing you have introduced. You can already see this in the comments above. To stick with EN for more than 10 years and now not get the features I have been hanging out for is so disappointing. While your organisation was wandering around in the wilderness without direction, the notes ecosystem has exploded. With bidirectional linking still not available in Evernote, and just launching the basics of task management and calendar integration (well done for these they are a good start but not a finished product) you still lag behind other products that have entered the market in the last couple of years. And now you are telling me that to get the payback for the years of loyalty, I have to pay more. I understand your need to be profitable, but you need to retain customers - and retention is cheaper than acquisition. After years of making do with Evernote, I have other viable options. I now do most of my writing in Roam Research. By making, what are for most products, normal search an additional cost item, I will be seriously considering my options with other products. I already use Fantastical and Todoist for calendar and task management (they integrate together really well) and what you offer, even at the Premium level, is basic. Feels like too little, too late. So what are 11 years of loyalty through the bad times worth to you?