Dave, thank you (I think) for the reasonable response. I'm attempting to reply to you respectfully, so if you misinterpret something, that's not the intent. I'm rarely, if ever, the 'it costs too much' guy. Quite frankly, I'm more known for paying for anything and everything in regard to professional tools which in my case aren't always covered by the company I work for with Evernote being one of them. I personally pay approx. $125/m in various productivity related services that I both find and derive value from. I find the year over year increase of Evernote egregious when looked at in the broader context of the products development and issues over the years. I can't recall if it was you or someone else who said so, but it's a money grab and shake down of customers after an acquisition, plain and simple. Bending Spoons can't get $340M in venture capital and not show investors returns for very long, so this is part of the plan, I get it, but I chose not to be a part of it either. It's clear you don't feel the same way and we can agree to disagree, everyone gets to have their own opinion.
I never said, 'no one with any brains would use it' or anything remotely close to that; that's how you chose to interpret the statement. For many years, I thought Evernote was an absolutely brilliant, best in class application. While I didn't do so on this forum, I sang its praises loudly and couldn't imagine it not being an integral part of my professional life. If there's 'drama' surrounding my departure, it's knowing that along with the draining and frustrating process of leaving (which doesn't have to be). I'll wind up spending (likely) a dozen hours or more on it over the next few weeks which has a very real cost to it both in dollars and lost personal opportunities.
I think its predatory behavior for Evernote or anyone else to use proprietary data formats that make it more difficult for unsuspecting customers to leave who generally don't find that out until it's too late. That's specifically why I said, "Whatever you go with, make sure it supports robust export system with more standards-based options..." because the average user isn't thinking about this and should be educated on it as a potentially deciding factor on the product/service they might want to use. I'm willing to admit I see this from a different perspective, because I run into it constantly with IT services and SaaS companies who make it difficult for their customers to leave. It's a common and known industry strategy whether people chose to acknowledge it or not.
For the record, you don't have to 'learn markdown'. While you can (if you wanted to) it's not necessary in most apps and handled for you. For the context in which I'm referring to markdown, it's simply a data format that's standards based, meaning anyone who wants to use it can, so many modern applications support it. For an application like Obsidian (which stores all notes in markdown format), the data is right there, you can quite literally just copy the files to another directory, open them in another markdown-based note app and they'll open exactly as they were. There's no "import" and "export". It's portable, transparent and therefore end user friendly -- not trying to lock you into an ecosystem or platform. I've tried Obsidian previously, but it's not right for me and the data sync (an absolute requirement of mine) at the time wasn't reliable, but maybe that's been addressed.
And before someone tries to call me out, yes, I realize that Notion isn't storing data in purely markdown language. I don't know what they're using in the backend, nor do I care, as long as I can get the data that's important to me out in a known and widely accepted format. Their 'export' will have some amount of translation likely involved. I'm going into it fully knowing that but looking at the larger picture of what Notion is offering for my current needs. Everything is a trade-off and I'm not calling Notion some perfect unicorn solution. They all have problems, and I very well might go running from Notion in a year or two as well, but I've already done some amount of due diligence in what's involved and what tools are available.
That's (genuinely) great! I'm sure it works fantastically for many others as well who'll have no issue in paying $129/yr or whatever it goes to in the future. It worked amazingly for me until it didn't. The product has had (in my opinion) a clear and steady decline for the past several years. Even with that, if there was a modest price increase, which is completely justifiable and understandable (if for no other reason infrastructure costs which can't just be absorbed), I'd have stayed on bandwagon. It's the fact that there is no other offering, no other tier in-between, or no optional add-ons for the AI features, rather just 'take it or leave it'. That was final blow for me on top of the slew of product issues, particularly over the last 1-2 years.
Go back and read my original rant in another thread. I never specifically called out you or anyone else saying you should or shouldn't use Evernote. I said (and was called narcissistic for it) what I felt about the current situation, what I wanted out of the product and "it's time to go" which was and entirely a reference to myself. I was clearly venting and letting my displeasure be known, because while they might not post or reply, I would be shocked if no EN or BS employees read this forum. If they don't, that's an even bigger red flag about the company and their ignorance towards their users. Yes, emails were sent to ' feedback@evernote.com' and 'federico@evernote.com' but not for a millisecond do I think they'll get a response or have any impact whatsoever. The only language understood here will be dollars and/or euros.
Users such as yourself chose to respond which is fine. It's a user forum and generally expected, but it wasn't directed at you personally or anyone else. Many love to point out, "we can't do anything about it" as if I don't understand the concept of forum (hello, been using these since 1984) -- so, quite simply, don't reply. Some people (not necessarily you) very obviously take great offense to any negativity or criticism levelled at the product or company as a personal affront. That's not my problem. If anyone wants to "leave it at that" -- awesome. Don't reply or continue to reply to my posts. My remaining time here is limited, and I'll go away soon enough. 😃
