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Wanderling Reborn

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Posts posted by Wanderling Reborn

  1. On 3/7/2024 at 2:15 PM, phillynomics said:

    Free user here who will be switching to another service.  No sour grapes on my end, as yes, Evernote is a private enterprise and can do what it wants in the market.

    I don't have the data, but I find it hard to imagine that Evernote wouldn't put itself in a better revenue situation by offering a lower-priced entry-level plan, more in the range of $4 to $5 / month, vs. ponying up over $10 / month.  You could still restrict notes to a level lower than is used by most businesses for this personal plan, but not as low as 50.

    Again, maybe they have the market data to show a low-priced entry level plan is a losing strategy, but with everyone economizing under the force of horrible inflation and cost increases, my hunch is that if they are monetizing, that would be a better strategy.

    This only works in a growth market, which it isn't anymore. Evernote is making the bulk of its money from their long time users who are deeply invested into its services, not from new converts. They, basically, switched to the rent-seeking model.

    Let's take 10 existing users paying over $10 a month. Let's assume that if EN offers a $5 plan, 3 of them switch to the lower tier. Evernote would need to bring 3 additional users just to maintain the existing revenue stream, 4 to make more money - so they would need to grow the number of paid users by 40% to bring in 5% more revenue, if you do the math.

    I think increasing their paid user numbers by 40% by going with a $60 per year plan is simply not realistic - it hasn't happened historically when they charged that much, and now there's a whole lot more competition. I also think that the number of existing paid users switching to a cheaper plan, if it becomes available, is going to be a whole lot more than 30%. And the higher percentage of existing paid users switch to a cheaper plan, the more new paid users they need to bring in just to keep the same revenue. Not very likely to happen. 

  2. 22 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:


    That's not quite true...

    There's OCR (via plugin, and AFAIK they are working on making it part of the base package).

    There's pdf export (via desktop app).

    There's basic task functionality with alerts. And a few decent enough plugins.

    There's actually fairly decent functionality overall if you use desktop app and plugins.

    Which is where my problems come.

    I use mobile clients 3/4 of my time. Joplin's mobile client on iOS is very limited. Most of the niceties that I actually like are only available on the desktop.

    More importantly, I don't trust community developed software with any sensitive data, be it financial or health records or anything else. It's just too valuable and too easy of a target. This is the prime reason I no longer use Linux as my primary OS. I don't want to start a holy war, and fully respect other people's views, but imho a software project with millions lines of code submitted by thousands of anonymous contributors from all over the world is a disaster waiting to happen, and I have neither the skills nor the time to properly secure it on my end. And I absolutely don't buy the "millions eyes on the code" line. Most of these eyes have no idea what to look for, and those who do are very busy working on paid projects. 

    But if you don't have issues with FOSS, and mostly use desktop apps, and don't mind Markdown, Joplin i's really not that bad.

    So, now I got curious myself, and downloaded the pre-release version of Joplin which has the OCR built-in.

    Basically, it will OCR attached PDFs in the background, and when searching for text, it will show the list of PDFs that have that text in them. Then you need to individually open and search inside of each file to find that text in that specific file.  I don't believe it works on pasted images, at least not yet. But then, it's just a pre-release. So, they seem to be moving in the right direction. 

  3. On 1/11/2024 at 6:12 PM, WilliamL said:

    Joplin? Markdown restricted formatting, no ocr, no mail in notes (unless you pay), no great export options for pdf etc, no tasks….

    Joplin is a great idea in theory but it isn’t an Evernote replacement, it’s the next step up from pen and paper. 


    That's not quite true...

    There's OCR (via plugin, and AFAIK they are working on making it part of the base package).

    There's pdf export (via desktop app).

    There's basic task functionality with alerts. And a few decent enough plugins.

    There's actually fairly decent functionality overall if you use desktop app and plugins.

    Which is where my problems come.

    I use mobile clients 3/4 of my time. Joplin's mobile client on iOS is very limited. Most of the niceties that I actually like are only available on the desktop.

    More importantly, I don't trust community developed software with any sensitive data, be it financial or health records or anything else. It's just too valuable and too easy of a target. This is the prime reason I no longer use Linux as my primary OS. I don't want to start a holy war, and fully respect other people's views, but imho a software project with millions lines of code submitted by thousands of anonymous contributors from all over the world is a disaster waiting to happen, and I have neither the skills nor the time to properly secure it on my end. And I absolutely don't buy the "millions eyes on the code" line. Most of these eyes have no idea what to look for, and those who do are very busy working on paid projects. 

    But if you don't have issues with FOSS, and mostly use desktop apps, and don't mind Markdown, Joplin i's really not that bad.

  4. On 1/11/2024 at 1:17 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

    Do be sure to let us know when Joplin discovers that cooking and serving free lunches has a cost component, and either goes belly up or starts charging.

    I don't like Joplin all that much, for a variety of reasons. 

    But it's a free open source software. While one person (Laurent) seems to be doing most of the core work (or, at least, most of coordination) there's a whole community of code contributors. It's very unlikely that Joplin would ever become a paid software, as it is being developed as a hobby project by a community of people and the source code is always freely available for anyone to compile or fork. It's also unlikely that the development will fully cease even if Laurent quits working on it, as there's too many active users and contributors, and someone will step in and pick up the code.

    In a way, Joplin is like a Linux distro. As long as enough people with coding skills have interest in it, someone will maintain it. And by its very nature, it seems to attract people who like coding. (One of the biggest issues I have with Markdown is that you're not as much writing your note as coding it).

    • Thanks 1
  5. On 1/4/2024 at 5:18 PM, sl1200mk2 said:

    I'd really like to know what the management team of this company is smoking. 

    "Hey Guys! We bought Evernote which has been losing subscribers for years! We have a GREAT idea!! Let's more than double the base price only offering a handful of features absolutely nobody was asking for!!! IT'S GONNA BE AMAZING!"

    Doubling the price in a single year is insanity without offering a tier in-between. It's like Bending Spoons wants to see how quickly they can drive this thing into the ground. 

    I don't want AI gimmicks and features nobody is asking for. Give me a rock solid product and team that actually listens to their everyday user base and implements simple features that would greatly improve quality of life. I'll pay another $20/yr for that happily and gladly! 

    As a PAYING Evernote user since 2008 with 321 notebooks and ~5K notes, I'm out. The only thing preventing me from doing so is time and complexity. I've watched Evernote devolve into a continually worse product over the years with management teams who ignore the vast majority of their daily users. It's time to go.

    Double the price, lose third of subscribers, you still come ahead in revenue. And I don't think an entire third of already paying subscribers is going to leave over this.

    They are combining this price increase with making the free version far les usable, clearly in the hope that at least some of the free users will pay up. Again, if 90% of free users leave, and 10% start paying, it's a net positive for revenue.

    So, yes, it's a revenue grab, and I believe that in the short to intermediate term it's going to work out just fine for them. In the long term, they will have hard time keeping up with the "natural" attrition of paid users, but that's a problem for the future Evernote. It's not like they had a stellar record acquiring new paid subscribers even with the old prices. 

    • Like 5
  6. On 12/27/2023 at 10:33 AM, PinkElephant said:

    We had some posts about ON in the last weeks. Not many share your enthusiasm. Most mentioned issues are the UI, and syncing issues. So good luck. 

    I can agree on UI. The lack of proper tags (can be worked around). The ugly, ugly, UGLY hot magenta everywhere. 

    However, as someone who's been continuously using Onenote since 2010 (for work) and syncing since sync became available, I would say it's a very stable / mature sync platform now. Perhaps Android version is still problematic, but Windows and iOS / Mac worked fine for me for years with multiple accounts and devices. I'd say they seem to have fixed their sync engine around 2017 or so.

  7. So, help me understand it. 

    Unless I am mistaken, the single-license product version did not have cloud connection, it was for storing the information locally on the hard drive. 

    Are you saying that the old 2007 version that you purchased has been disabled by Evernote (assuming it can still be installed and ran on the modern OS) and can no longer work with locally stored data ?  If so, you have a point. 

    Or are you saying that your purchase of a standalone version in 2007 should entitle you to some special plan for the cloud-enabled version of today ?

    I am not being sarcastic, I am genuinely trying to understand what is going on. 

    I have some software that is about that old (I am a hoarder...) Some of it no longer works or can be installed due to the changes in Windows. Some of it still works. I do not expect the companies who published these titles to keep supporting them indefinitely, but I would be absolutely mad if they issued a patch to disable the features that worked locally and did not depend on server-side processing or cloud sync. 

    • Like 3
  8. 35 minutes ago, Bill Myers said:

     ...

    And believe it or not, I really wish you all the best.

     

    Why would I not believe it ? This is a discussion, not a personal argument. Constructive disagreement is healthy. 

    Sorry if I somehow came across as argumentative. In my job, one of the many "hats" I have to wear requires me to make assessments of known data, make logical assumptions, provide analysis and recommendations, and be able to explain the reasoning behind them. I am used to saying "that why I think it's X and not Y, why do you think it's Y and not X ?" Sorry if it came out as too combative, this was nevcer my intent. 

    • Like 1
  9. 34 minutes ago, Bill Myers said:

    It's not an analysis. It's something you choose to believe. You don't have enough information to make an informed analysis.

    Most companies prioritize user growth in the short term, the long term, and everything in between. It's considered a truism that even under the best of circumstances, you lose about 20 percent of your customers every year.

    Could Bending Spoons be an exception to the growth mindset? Sure. But you don't know that they are, and I don't know that they aren't. But I think I'm on solid ground saying we're not going to answer the question here, in a forum that is really supposed to be about users helping other users with Evernote questions.

    First, let's clarify the definitions. By "growth" I meant growth in the number of users / market share. I think I've made this pretty clear on several occasions.  All indicators, to me, are showing that they are pursuing revenue growth at the expense of user base growth.

    • The lack of an attractive free plan to encourage as many people as possible to try the service and stick with it for a while. The current free plan is designed to force people to move on sooner rather than later. They are clearly not concerned if most free users leave, as long as at least some upgrade to the new plan.
    • The lack of an attractive entry level tier to encourage the new users to upgrade to a paid service. The current price is high compared to the competition, most of whom are providing a generous free plan or pretty cheap paid plans. 

    So, the current pricing strategy and free plan limitations are designed to minimize the number of free users, and don't provide enough enticement for the potential new users to sign up for paid service. What it does do is to maximize the revenue from the deeply invested legacy users who have too much data committed in Evernote, and are too used to the specific EN-centric workflow they've developed over the years, to move to an alternative over $70 or so in yearly savings. 

    This is not something "I chose to believe", it's an analysis of their pricing structure and free plan limitations as compared to the competition.

    Now, if you see any indicators that BS are indeed pursuing a growth strategy for Evernote, I'd like to know what they are. They may have some plans that they want to implement in the future, but as of now, their entire pricing strategy strongly emphasizes maximizing the revenue from existing users over growth by adding more new users.

  10. Just now, Dave-in-Decatur said:

    Begging your pardon, but we don't know this. Argue your point as you wish, but you can't prove it without inside knowledge.

    I don't need the inside knowledge to see very clear signs. 

    Everything in Evernote's marketing and pricing structure indicates that the revenue growth, not user base growth, is their main strategy at this time. Which makes sense given the overall stagnation / maturity of the market, greatly increased competition, their historic failure to convert new users to paid plans, and the fact that their biggest asset is the relatively large number of deeply invested existing users.

    However, I will gladly acknowledge that this is just my analysis and not something they told me. By the same token, I do not know for sure that it's going to snow this winter.  

    • Like 2
  11. 23 hours ago, sophia L said:

    I am sorry for your answer. I have been using EVERNOTE for years as a FREE user and have more than 2000 notes, that I use on a very basic way, I never felt the need to take a paid option because I don't need fancy stuff, just an app that would keep my ideas for future post and kept history of my post... Obviously the change in direction is surely due to MONEY, thus the push to make people pay... it was free for years

    You sound like you feel that you are entitled to be provided a free service for ever just because you used it for free for years... this doesn't make any sense.

    Evernote is not a FOSS, it wasn't developed via free contributions from the wider community.

    It costs money to develop the software and to run the service. Evernote is a business, they are selling a product (service) to make money. At some point they decided that the free plans failed to bring in the value that they expected from them. It's perfectly within their rights to modify or outright cancel them.  As long as they maintain the users' data integrity and provide them with means to export their data out and move it elsewhere, I don't see any ethical issues with the way they handled this change. 

    I am not planning on switching to the new paid plan, just because I don't see the value in it for us (my wife is the primary user, I moved on a while ago, and she can keep her notes anywhere). But, I don't see why anyone owes me a cheap plan. 

    • Like 2
  12. On 12/7/2023 at 2:00 PM, FLoughan said:

    Totally insane. $69.99 with a discount last year ... to $129.99 this year. Who do they think they are doubling the price!??

    Unfortunately, I'll have to start looking at alternatives now and migrate all my notes off this platform.

    Evernote, you can increase the pricing, but you can't be greedy. 

    Of course they can. It's a business, not a charity. (And a lot of charities are really businesses anyway...)

    If they double the price, and a quarter of paying customers leave, they are still making 1.5 times the old revenue with the remaining customers. The trick is to properly estimate the price increase so the number of remaining paying users is high enough. So far, I don't think they've miscalculated.

    There's more than a few alternatives, although none is a direct replacement.

    • Like 2
  13. 15 hours ago, FlyingElmo said:

    They're leaving money on the table by not having any basic tiered option for light users.  I'd pay $30-40 dollars for it per year for basic functionality, but clearly they don't want to cater to users like me.  

    Or, they believe that the "light" plan would be too attractive to the existing users who would switch from the current plans. For any existing user switching from $130 per year to $40 per year plan, they would need to attract more than 2 additional new paid users just to keep the same revenue. And this is very unrealistic, so in reality they would lose money as many existing paying customers switch to the cheaper plan. 

    They are no longer concentrating on growth, so I don't expect any moves designed to attract a larger number of new customers at the expense of revenue stream.

  14. 21 hours ago, dyarb7 said:

    ...

    But now I have a 50 notes limit. No heads-up. No warning. No consideration that I did pay for a couple of years. I get to be one of the "lucky" ones in the test to be put into the 50 notes club. :( 

    ...

    If you had a large number of notes accumulated over that period, you'd still be able to use them, just not add new ones.

    I can't think of any paid service that would let you to continue using paid features after you cancel the subscription. Whatever you paid in these couple of years was for using the service during that time, not some form of advance payment for future years. Welcome to the SAAS world, it's not any different than a car lease or your phone service.

    • Like 2
  15. 4 minutes ago, gazumped said:

    I generally agree with you,  except for one point:

    The majority of paying users (I would guess) are trading off the inconvenience of moving - the conversion / the learning curve / the necessary changes - against a moderate increase in cost.  But certainly in my case,  there's a pain point past which I would not be willing to go.  If we get past that I'll drop Evernote without a second thought.

    We're not there yet,  and I'm willing to stick around and see what happens in the next year or so.  Bending Spoons have a user-base of their own,  and once they are happy that the operation is back on an even keel,  that would be an obvious place to start looking for more new business...

    I think we're saying the same thing. By "paying up" I meant the current price increases, and perhaps a couple more carefully planned ones spread over the future years. My gut feeling is that the "pain point" for many Western users lies around $25-30 per month, and we're not nearly there yet. I mean, anyone having a Starbucks latte every day spends more than that on ***** coffee without complaining... and I bet that's the majority of EN customers.

    • Like 3
  16. On 11/25/2023 at 1:36 PM, cverdul said:

    I am surprised with this shift in strategy. I can't quite believe we're being expelled. I've been a user since 2011 and I'm still on a free account because the performance is disappointing.

    I was surprised when they did it the first time (2016 ? or so). But that's because back then I still believed that Evernote should have pursued a growth-based strategy. If you look at my posts from five or so years ago, I was saying that they were making a mistake by making the service unattractive for new users. 

    I think I have a better understanding of the overall market and EN's place in it today. So I no longer think that acquiring new users is their priority, and I can see why. They switched from growth to monetization, and in the specific case of Evernote, probably chose the least worst option. 

  17. On 12/8/2023 at 3:18 PM, mitchmdrums said:

    As a senior citizen on a very low retirement income, I find it extremely difficult to add one more monthly payment. With Evernote I have helped other senior citizens with health problems at no cost.

    I'm sure there are thousands of us that have the same problem, many of them who have served our country in battle and are disabled.

    Your industry has a reputation for executives having multi-million dollar homes and yachts. That may not be the case in your situation, and I don't know whether you are oblivious, clueless, or uncaring towards senior citizens, but thousands of companies have considerations for low-income users.

    I hope the decent, sensitive people in your company see this and act accordingly.

    Thank you for your time and consideration,

    Mitch M

    Well there's a lot of free alternatives. We're not talking about some life saving necessity or a basic service that every senior citizen absolutely needs. 

    Look at Joplin. Or the basic free Onenote. It's more than enough for anyone who doesn't have advance requirements. 

     

  18. On 12/4/2023 at 6:46 PM, LiftHeavy said:

    Yes, Evernote will gain some paid users (which is good). They will also lose many free users (which is bad, not good). My position is that the loss of free users outweighs the gains of paid users in the long run.

    I just want to mention that I'm studying microeconomics right now. If the market demand curve is elastic, Evernote is in trouble. I believe it's elastic because we're in a competitive market and there are hundreds of free apps out there. Again, time will tell.

    I think you're fundamentally wrong in your assessment of Evernote's position ("good" vs "bad").

    The large numbers of new users are only needed ("good") if you plan on growth strategy "in the long run". The problem is, their growth-based strategy failed even ten years ago, when the smartphone market was expanding like mad, there was little to no competition against Evernote, and the price of service was relatively cheap. It's absolutely not going to work now, that the market has matured (stagnated) and there's ton of competition offering a lot for free. They won't grow the revenue by offering a generous free plan in the future, if they couldn't do it ten years ago from a far better market position. Their free users just didn't voluntarily convert to paid plans, even when the prices were much lower and there was few alternatives. To put it bluntly, there's no growth for Evernote in the long run, unless they come up with some magic.

    They are now monetizing their existing user base. A large number of EN users are deeply invested into the service and have built entire personal workflows based on it over the years, they will pay up rather than lose it. 

    EN had 250 million accounts, but only about 1.4 million paid accounts in 2020. Even if only 75 of that 250 million accounts were active, and if only 5% of these converts from free to paid, that's still 3.8 million additional paid customers - compared to 1.4 million (give or take) two years ago.  That's triple the revenue. 

    Yes, the natural attrition will eventually take its toll, if they fail to attract enough new customers to offset it. But with 4-5 million paying users who are very invested into their EN data, it would take years for that to become a noticeable problem. And that's years of tripled revenue. The free users are just a ballast at that point. They don't contribute to the revenue, they don't historically convert to paid users unless forced to (which is what EN is doing now), and they are no longer a major factor in the new company's business strategy. 

    • Like 6
  19. On 12/8/2023 at 2:48 PM, PinkElephant said:

    ...

    Will be interesting what will be the unique sales proposition when they switch on the marketing blaster ?!

    Indeed. At the end of the day, as the "natural attrition" of paid users continues, they will need to find a way to attract new customers. Unless, of course, the plan is to milk that cow until it drops dead of natural causes.  They certainly have enough paid users right now to keep a healthy revenue stream for quite some while, and the future of this entire service segment is rather unpredictable right now.

    • Like 1
  20. 59 minutes ago, abdu said:

    The other big issue is that in the dark mode, which is important for me, I can't read the text because the text stays in black. There's hardy any contrast between the text and the background color. I am also skeptical about free software that depends on donations.
    I am making these points for the benefit of others who might want to check Joplin out.

    Hmm, that’s strange. I have used several different dark themes with Joplin and they all worked fine. Perhaps something got screwed up on the import ?

    As far as project longevity, I am not concerned with that at all. They are not dependent on donations, it’s a community driven volunteer effort, and the source code is openly available so anyone can just pick up the development or just use it as is even if the main contributors stop working on it.
    I’d even say that it’s likely safer than a commercial startup project, since it’s under no pressure to monetize. Unlike say Notion, or Evernote, or the long defunct Springpad. A commercial project will inevitably either raise prices, or close down, because the investors won’t support it for ever without getting a return on their investment. A community project will continue as long as there’s enough interest. 

    And they fixed the main data portability problem I had with Joplin - it is now preserving the original attachment file names on export. 

    My biggest issues with it are the lack of functionality in their iPhone mobile app, the lack of OCR, the lack of mobile web clipper, and that Spotlight won’t search in Joplin. This makes it a poor choice for quickly entering and accessing notes on the move. If I mainly worked on the desktop, Joplin would have been a fine option.

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