Martin Pergler

Not directly responding to your question, but if (like me) you want to be sure you keep a legible-even-without-Evernote copy of all your notes, you can write scripts which back up your notebooks into .enex files, which are XML files. While it would require a bit of editing (headers etc) to view them just with a browser, if one morning Evernote ceased to exist and your software would no longer work, all the data would be there. See this discussion thread for how to automate this (needs some editing of the script)

I am sticking with Evernote Premium. It is an integral part of my personal and professional (self-employed, sole proprietor) workflow, roughly equally important as Office 365 and a piece of niche simulation software, both of which charge several times as Evernote Premium per year. And a couple of open-source free tools, which charge nothing. Let's step back and apply an outside-in business strategy view to this. A few years ago, OneNote was clearly being neglected by Microsoft, and Apple and Google weren't in the picture. It made a ton of business sense for EN to grow the category, offer quite a bit for free to everyone in the hopes that some of them would over time mature as users to the point of being willing to pay. At the same time, all the free users would provide free marketing to their friends, and starting from a small base the "maintenance resources" spent on the free users (storage, etc.) were minimal compared to the benefit. Fast forward to now, and looking to the future. In part due to EN's success, a 3 cross-platform giants have entered or re-committed to this product category. Their functionality may be more or less than EN right now, but they ability to invest in their competing product, from cash flows elsewhere or just at a loss, is much more than a small independent company's. I think EN sees the writing on the wall and is conceding that the space of basic-functionality, cloud-synched notetaking is going to end up split between M, A, and G, whatever EN does. Just like Google and Apple have essentially carved up the basic (mass needs) GPS/mapping space. To have a viable business model, EN needs to concentrate on making a niche product, one which is positive cash-flow after R&D and infrastructure expenses. And that apparently means hiking prices for those of us who do value it enough to pay, and over time turning the free product much more into trial/demoware. And somewhat wistfully but resolutely waving bye to the users who might *like* EN, but when push comes to shove would sooner or later migrate to M, A, G's offering anyway, just maybe in a few years if they continue to integrate it into their platforms and offer it as a "loss-leader".