Jump to content

Total Account Limit


Recommended Posts

I read the following on the Evernote website:

"Each Evernote account is subject to the following limitations:

  • 100,000 Notes; each note can be a maximum of 25 megabytes (mb) for free users and 100 megabytes (mb) for Premium users.
  • 250 Synchronized Notebooks (including Notebook Stacks). All 250 notebooks can be shared. There is no limit to the number of Local Notebooks (which aren't synced) you can have.
  • 10,000 Tags.
  • 100 Saved Searches."

Are these limits monthly, or is there an overall limit of 10,000 TOTAL tags and 100,000 TOTAL notes? Is it 100,000 total notes per each of the 250 notebooks? I was always under the impression that there was no overall limit to anything. Can someone clarify this for me?

Link to comment

I read the following on the Evernote website:

"Each Evernote account is subject to the following limitations:

  • 100,000 Notes; each note can be a maximum of 25 megabytes (mb) for free users and 100 megabytes (mb) for Premium users.
  • 250 Synchronized Notebooks (including Notebook Stacks). All 250 notebooks can be shared. There is no limit to the number of Local Notebooks (which aren't synced) you can have.
  • 10,000 Tags.
  • 100 Saved Searches."

Are these limits monthly, or is there an overall limit of 10,000 TOTAL tags and 100,000 TOTAL notes? Is it 100,000 total notes per each of the 250 notebooks? I was always under the impression that there was no overall limit to anything. Can someone clarify this for me?

These are overall limits.

Link to comment

So when Evernote claims that there are no overall limits... this is not true?

Also does this mean we can get 100,000 notes in each of 250 notebooks? That would total 25,000,000 total notes?

We are doing a large archiving project at a small company. Most files are digitized into PDF's so the ability to upload these files as notes and make the digitally searchable is appealing, however, there are thousands of documents and more being added everyday. We can't start the project using Evernote if we can't be sure that it will be able to fit all our files. 100,000 would not work. But 25,000,000 note spread out into 250 notebooks, would be doable.

Link to comment

So when Evernote claims that there are no overall limits... this is not true?

Also does this mean we can get 100,000 notes in each of 250 notebooks? That would total 25,000,000 total notes?

We are doing a large archiving project at a small company. Most files are digitized into PDF's so the ability to upload these files as notes and make the digitally searchable is appealing, however, there are thousands of documents and more being added everyday. We can't start the project using Evernote if we can't be sure that it will be able to fit all our files. 100,000 would not work. But 25,000,000 note spread out into 250 notebooks, would be doable.

I don't know if/where Evernote has stated there are no overall limits.

It's a total of 100,000 notes period. Not per notebook.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

So when Evernote claims that there are no overall limits... this is not true?

Also does this mean we can get 100,000 notes in each of 250 notebooks? That would total 25,000,000 total notes?

We are doing a large archiving project at a small company. Most files are digitized into PDF's so the ability to upload these files as notes and make the digitally searchable is appealing, however, there are thousands of documents and more being added everyday. We can't start the project using Evernote if we can't be sure that it will be able to fit all our files. 100,000 would not work. But 25,000,000 note spread out into 250 notebooks, would be doable.

This might be something worth contacting customer support about (see the link in my signature below). You'll run into at least three issues: upload limits per month (1GB - 2GB per month), note sizes (100MB per note for premium members), and the total number of notes (100,000 for anyone).

One easy solution would be to purchase a Business account and invite 25 other accounts. Each one of these accounts could create one notebook (I would recommend organizing with tags, not notebooks) and share that with the business library. You would also have 2GB per user of upload allowance each month (I think), so that would greatly increase your storage amount. In addition, all of these notebooks (25) and their notes (250,000) would remain in the business library (even if you stopped paying for their business accounts), which could be controlled and shared as you'd like.

This is just an idea, and I cannot even guarantee that it will all work exactly like this, but it is something that I would look into doing. It is possible that in just one month, if you uploaded everything then, you could end the business accounts for all but the owner, and have everything completely archived forever. Again, I would check with customer support (and continue asking until you are satisfied with the answer), because this would involve an investment of time and money on your part, so you want to make sure.

Link to comment

So... If I alone have 100,000 notes already and someone else shares a notebook with me, then I could technically have access to 200,000 notes. The 100,000 limit is just for how many I can personally create?

Then, technically, couldn't I open a premium account, have the rest of the staff (10 people) on free accounts and just share all notes with everyone? Then when we reach the 100,000 limit, open a second premium account and continue adding and sharing with everyone. This would surpass the original 100,000 limit and still give everyone access to the same information, just on separate shared notebooks on multiple premium accounts.

I like the idea of the business account as you mentioned. Are you suggesting we could pay for 10 business accounts, pack in 100,000 notes per account and share them all in the business library. Then close the other business accounts, keeping the admin account active and having 1,000,000 notes archived in our "library?" Would the admin retain the ability to edit all of these notes/notebooks? Also, it is important that all the staff have access to all these notes indefinitely. We are trying to create a "searchable database" for the whole staff to be able to view. If the business account admin shared the business library notebooks with free users, would they be able to access all 1,000,000 notes in the business library?

Hope those questions make sense. Thanks for your help.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

So... If I alone have 100,000 notes already and someone else shares a notebook with me, then I could technically have access to 200,000 notes. The 100,000 limit is just for how many I can personally create?

Yes, as I understand it.

Then, technically, couldn't I open a premium account, have the rest of the staff (10 people) on free accounts and just share all notes with everyone? Then when we reach the 100,000 limit, open a second premium account and continue adding and sharing with everyone. This would surpass the original 100,000 limit and still give everyone access to the same information, just on separate shared notebooks on multiple premium accounts.

Yes. Basically, how this would work is you would open one Premium account, fill it up, then revert to free (your notes stay and remain shared), open another account as Premium, and repeat the process.

I like the idea of the business account as you mentioned. Are you suggesting we could pay for 10 business accounts, pack in 100,000 notes per account and share them all in the business library. Then close the other business accounts, keeping the admin account active and having 1,000,000 notes archived in our "library?" Would the admin retain the ability to edit all of these notes/notebooks? Also, it is important that all the staff have access to all these notes indefinitely. We are trying to create a "searchable database" for the whole staff to be able to view. If the business account admin shared the business library notebooks with free users, would they be able to access all 1,000,000 notes in the business library?

Yes to all but the last question. I am not sure about that, because I have not tried to share business notebooks with outsiders. My guess is that it would work, but this is just a feature I have not familiarized myself with yet.

Hope those questions make sense. Thanks for your help.

Glad to help. Hopefully, you find a nice solution.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

One caveat, I don't think anyone has tested Evernote under the kind of load you are suggesting and I am sure that you will run into a bunch of issues.

Goodness, just imagine the initial sync times :)

I am not saying it cannot be done, but it would certainly be something worth testing out ahead of time. How large are the PDFs, and do you intend to do anything with them besides stick them into notes as attachments.

Link to comment

PDFs are usually just a couple page articles, emails, correspondence, short publications, flyers, ads. We would occasionally have a few small videos, photographs. The people using these files won't be editing them, just searching and reading basically. So I don't anticipate a syncing issue.

Right now we are hoping to digitize all the papers and documents from the past 30 years. There might be about 30,000 notes. We only add about 10-15 notes a day. So it will still take a while to reach the 100,000 limit. We just need to be sure now, that whatever system we set up can support the collection in the long-run. Another 20-30 years and so on. That is the only reason the "note limit" is something we have to think about before we even begin.

We have been testing Evernote for our purposes with 100 or so basic notes, searching, sharing... so far it seems to do everything we need it to do. The 100,000 limit is what made us worry about long-term sustainability.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

PDFs are usually just a couple page articles, emails, correspondence, short publications, flyers, ads. We would occasionally have a few small videos, photographs. The people using these files won't be editing them, just searching and reading basically. So I don't anticipate a syncing issue.

Right now we are hoping to digitize all the papers and documents from the past 30 years. There might be about 30,000 notes. We only add about 10-15 notes a day. So it will still take a while to reach the 100,000 limit. We just need to be sure now, that whatever system we set up can support the collection in the long-run. Another 20-30 years and so on. That is the only reason the "note limit" is something we have to think about before we even begin.

We have been testing Evernote for our purposes with 100 or so basic notes, searching, sharing... so far it seems to do everything we need it to do. The 100,000 limit is what made us worry about long-term sustainability.

Oh. If that is the case, then not to worry (in my opinion). I don't see how Evernote can keep the 100,000 note limit in perpetuity when a lot of us generate several thousand (some tens of thousands) of notes each year. Even if they do keep it, then you can just create a new account and share the notebooks over from the old one, so you ought to be fine. In a worst-case scenario, if you have to leave Evernote, everything is quite portable, and it would only take a few minutes to turn it all into HTML files (with PDF attachments, of course) by exporting and put it into another application.

Link to comment
  • 1 year later...

The 250 notebook limit is ridicules for someone with more than 250 cases/files/issues.   A massive limiting factor which is quickly reached in a busy legal practice and makes evernote, for all its wonderful features not fit for purpose if you are really busy and have a lot of cases/cleints

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

You should look into the Evernote for Business product. The standard Evernote product is geared to personal use. 250 notebooks is overkill for most people, particularly those who know how to take advantage of tagging.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

If you insist on using notebooks for every case, sure, it's probably not going to work for you. I'm not really sure that it's wholly necessary, unless you plan on sharing share cases with other users and need to restrict things to a case-by-case basis. But if you can't make it work for you, and don't want to pay for the Business product, then good luck with OneNote.

Link to comment
  • 6 months later...

 

So... If I alone have 100,000 notes already and someone else shares a notebook with me, then I could technically have access to 200,000 notes. The 100,000 limit is just for how many I can personally create?

Yes, as I understand it.

 

 

@GrumpyMonkey - can you tell me on what evidence you reached that understanding? 

 

I reached a contrary opinion based on 'gut feeling' and peeking into the database.

 

My question is this: on Free/Plus/Premium if 10 people each a share notebook with me that has 10.000 notes, have I reached my 100,000 note limit.

 

It irritates me that I have to ask such questions here.  Why can't I find it in a FAQ?  Probably because there are too many wretched FAQs that are often superseded.

 

Thanks RP.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

 

 

So... If I alone have 100,000 notes already and someone else shares a notebook with me, then I could technically have access to 200,000 notes. The 100,000 limit is just for how many I can personally create?

Yes, as I understand it.

 

 

@GrumpyMonkey - can you tell me on what evidence you reached that understanding? 

 

I reached a contrary opinion based on 'gut feeling' and peeking into the database.

 

My question is this: on Free/Plus/Premium if 10 people each a share notebook with me that has 10.000 notes, have I reached my 100,000 note limit.

 

It irritates me that I have to ask such questions here.  Why can't I find it in a FAQ?  Probably because there are too many wretched FAQs that are often superseded.

 

Thanks RP.

 

 

Sorry. No evidence. That's simply how I understand it -- 100,000 notes "in" your account. I agree. I have been asking for considerably more clarity about limits, and Evernote has improved somewhat, but it could still be so much better.

Link to comment

 

 

 

So... If I alone have 100,000 notes already and someone else shares a notebook with me, then I could technically have access to 200,000 notes. The 100,000 limit is just for how many I can personally create?

Yes, as I understand it.

 

 

@GrumpyMonkey - can you tell me on what evidence you reached that understanding? 

 

I reached a contrary opinion based on 'gut feeling' and peeking into the database.

 

My question is this: on Free/Plus/Premium if 10 people each a share notebook with me that has 10.000 notes, have I reached my 100,000 note limit.

 

It irritates me that I have to ask such questions here.  Why can't I find it in a FAQ?  Probably because there are too many wretched FAQs that are often superseded.

 

Thanks RP.

 

 

Sorry. No evidence. That's simply how I understand it -- 100,000 notes "in" your account. I agree. I have been asking for considerably more clarity about limits, and Evernote has improved somewhat, but it could still be so much better.

 

Thanks mate.

 

If thee with 11,000+ posts here can't get s straight answer, what chance me with a mere 40 odd ;).

 

I guess I could write a command file to flood a note book with 100K v. small notes and see what happens when I share it with another account with its own 100K note notebook.  Would have thought one of the bright sparks an EN HQ could do that and publish the results in their blog.

 

EN should change the pricing model - differentiate products by features with annual fee for non free.  Everyone pays for extra storage and traffic at the same rates.  Get rid of the counting limits  (i.e. notes, stacks, notebooks, tags etc) or make them all a ridiculously large number - 264 should be big enough for us mere mortals, we don't need negative numbers :lol:

 

s

Link to comment

If thee with 11,000+ posts here can't get s straight answer, what chance me with a mere 40 odd ;).

I guess I could write a command file to flood a note book with 100K v. small notes and see what happens when I share it with another account with its own 100K note notebook. Would have thought one of the bright sparks an EN HQ could do that and publish the results in their blog.

EN should change the pricing model - differentiate products by features with annual fee for non free. Everyone pays for extra storage and traffic at the same rates. Get rid of the counting limits (i.e. notes, stacks, notebooks, tags etc) or make them all a ridiculously large number - 264 should be big enough for us mere mortals, we don't need negative numbers :lol:

s

Based upon my own personal experience (documented more than a few times on this board), when you get closer to 100,000 notes, you will regret it. Evernote does not scale well at all. It becomes totally unusable (no exaggeration) at least on the Windows and iOS clients.

Link to comment

If you desperately need an answer then open a support ticket.

 

 

@Metrodon - thanks but I don't think i can do that - unless I have Premium :(  I don't need the upload quota, my notes are plain text,small and stable.  I sent an email no answer yet, not holding my breath.

 

 

Based upon my own personal experience (documented more than a few times on this board), when you get closer to 100,000 notes, you will regret it. Evernote does not scale well at all. It becomes totally unusable (no exaggeration) at least on the Windows and iOS clients.

 

@BurgersNFries - Thanks, that probably explains why EN is not very forthcoming on the issue.  I wonder what they did in Business to make it usable at 500,000.

 

As a matter of interest when you did run into the wall did you have any shared notebooks, or did you own them all.    And of course what did you do about it?

 

Thought - maybe you could summarise your experience in this regard and put it a sticky

 

RP

Link to comment

This post covers a lot of the scalability issues and other difficulties.

I'd recommend you proceed with caution.

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/66103-power-user-discontent-best-alternatives-to-en/

Thanks - I saw that thread sometime back, at the time much of it went over my head. 

 

But now I can see there's a lot of good info in there that I can now better comprehend. 

 

It'll take me a while to digest it all. I also tracked down BNF's 'other' forum.

 

RP

Link to comment

Would it matter what the mb-size was of the notes?

I don't know what you are referring to. Perhaps you could reply with clarification so we can offer you a better response. In the meantime, here are some guesses:

Yes: There is a limit on note size. 25mb for free, 50mb for plus, 200mb for premium and business.

Yes: The size of a note determines how much of your upload allowance is used up when you add that note. 

Maybe: Scalability problems encountered by users may be influenced by a number of factors, including both the size of notes (or perhaps, the average size of notes) in that database, as well as the number of notes, among many others. I think the scalability issue is a tricky one, which is one reason why it hasn't been definitively resolved (and may will never be completely resolved). 

Link to comment

Based upon my own personal experience (documented more than a few times on this board), when you get closer to 100,000 notes, you will regret it. Evernote does not scale well at all. It becomes totally unusable (no exaggeration) at least on the Windows and iOS clients.

 

Would it make a difference if the notes were small in mb-size? under a mb even?

Link to comment

 

Based upon my own personal experience (documented more than a few times on this board), when you get closer to 100,000 notes, you will regret it. Evernote does not scale well at all. It becomes totally unusable (no exaggeration) at least on the Windows and iOS clients.

 

Would it make a difference if the notes were small in mb-size? under a mb even?

 

AH, then this would be the applicable response (in my opinion);

 

 Scalability problems encountered by users may be influenced by a number of factors, including both the size of notes (or perhaps, the average size of notes) in that database, as well as the number of notes, among many others. I think the scalability issue is a tricky one, which is one reason why it hasn't been definitively resolved (and may will never be completely resolved). 

 

The scalability issue is probably not just one thing, it is probably many things. There are likely several scalability issues. They may be related to many different things including 1) The hardware the user is using and its speed; 2) the type of database that Evernote is using to store data locally; 3) the number of items in that database (e.g., the number of notes and attachments); 4) the size of each of those items. 

 

This is reflected in the diverse and divergent experiences of users in the various threads on scalability. 

 

So, some databases can get bogged down simply by having a large number of entries, regardless of size, because of how they are structured or how they index that data, or because of some other attribute to that type of database. I don't know what Evernote is using for a database, and even if I did I'd not be certain what the specific benefits or shortcomings of that database type would be, but there is variability. 

 

However, large notes and large attachments to notes can also be taxing on your computer's resources, which is an issue that is less directly related to Evernote, and this varies by individual user since everyone has different devices with different software running concurrently. 

 

Some people have run into issues in 10's of thousands of notes. Others with mere thousands. Some haven't encountered issues at all. I'd recommend not fretting too much and just using Evernote, since there is little consensus among users about what specifically is causing scalability issues, and when exactly those issues begin to appear. Just do your best to think ahead about what you might do in the event hat you run into severe scalability issues with Evernote. Alternatives and strategies have been discussed at length in numerous places, especially: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/66103-power-user-discontent-best-alternatives-to-en/

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

 

Based upon my own personal experience (documented more than a few times on this board), when you get closer to 100,000 notes, you will regret it. Evernote does not scale well at all. It becomes totally unusable (no exaggeration) at least on the Windows and iOS clients.

 

Would it make a difference if the notes were small in mb-size? under a mb even?

 

 

Yes, IMO, that would make a difference.  Having designed many databases, 100K records is actually a small number of records.  There are many databases that have >> 1M records.

 

From what I have observed from posting by other users, the scalability issue may come from the total number of words from all Notes.  Since Evernote has to index all these words for quick searching, you can image how the index could grow quite large.

 

So, for example, if you put a large number of books into Evernote, with an entire book (either PDF or text) into one Note that has 10s of thousands or millions of words, then, IMO, you are likely to run into scalability problems.

 

IMO, I don't think Evernote was designed to support personal, large libraries.  I don't have any inside knowledge, so I could be wrong.

But I think the primary use case is lots of smaller, snippets of information, which might be from one or two paragraphs to several pages to a small (<< 100MB) PDF per Note.

 

I'm currently at 13K+ Notes (with uses 8.8GB storage on my Mac), with most, if not all, of my Notes that fit in the above use case.  And I have not seen any scalability issues running on any of my Macs (MBA-13 w/4GB, MBP-15R w/16GB) or on my iPhone 6+ (w/64GB).

I have seen other users, like csihilling, who have reported having around 30K notes without any issues.

 

So, as long as you don't try to store the Library of Congress ( :D ) in your Evernote account, and you have at least an average, modern PC or Mac, I think you should be OK.  BTW, I highly recommend using a SSD rather than a spinning hard drive.

 

You may have noticed that I have used "IMO" (meaning In My Opinion) a lot.  That's because those of us outside of Evernote don't have any hard data on scalability.  What we have is anecdotal evidence, which can often be misleading.

 

Having said all that, I am comfortable for the time being to continue to add reasonable amounts of info into my Evernote account.  But I also continue to worry  about scalability, as one of those unknown, scary, issues.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

I'd like to add another consideration for what might contribute to scalability issues.

 

EN Win uses a single database to store everything, not only the Note metadata, but also all Note contents, including the text, attachments, images, etc.

This results in a very large database.

 

Whereas EN Mac stores ONLY the Note metadata, tag list, and Notebook list in a database.  All of the Note contents are stored in files.  

This results in a very small database.

 

So far, the only EN Mac user I have seen report a scalability issue is GrumpyMonkey, who attempted to store many, large books as PDFs, then as text, in his EN account.  IMO, GM's use case is fairly rare.  

 

So, IMO, the platform may be a contributing factor.  It seems to me that Evernote's decision to keep the Note contents outside of the EN database on the Mac was wise one.  FWIW, this is also the approach used by MS Outlook 2011 Mac, and I think other Mac apps.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Scalability / usability of larger accounts has affected different folks in different ways on the Mac. It's not just one user out of 100 million. Some people experience it. Some don't. Your mileage may vary. But, I wouldn't call the Mac database small, by any means. We've talked about database bloat for years now.

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/57304-thank-goodness-for-the-web-app/

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24010-question-does-evernote-slow-down-with-more-notes/?p=125429

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67656-question-about-database-size-on-osx/

 

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/5227-database-size-and-impact-on-ens-speed/

 

Evernote developers are always working to improve the app, and over time it has become much better. I expect that will continue to be the case in the future. It's not clear exactly why some folks have better experiences than others, but as the CTO says in one of the threads, different configurations produce different results. 

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

FWIW, below is a table of the distribution of my note sizes across the 29k notes.  As you can tell, not a lot of large notes in my DB.  16GB DB size.

 

post-58142-0-63111500-1432307299_thumb.p

Link to comment
  • Level 5

I have asked several times if Evernote has run internal quality control scalability tests on large dummy databases (constructed with a few of the scenarios mentioned above). 

 

I haven't seen any response. My opinion is that either

1.) they haven't run scalability tests and, therefore, don't want to admit it,

or

2.) they've run scalability tests with questionable results, and don't want to admit it.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

@Jbenson2,

 

Yeah.  Though I suppose as a software company you might pick some points at the fringe of normal to do your tests, if you do.  Then anything beyond the fringe could show up as a scalability problem.  The further out the fringe the better the design would be my assumption.  Worse case for your users, as I think it has been requested before, would be publishing of the broad brush parameters of the combination of factors that could cause scalability issues and what most likely doesn't.  There is always a path from effect back to cause, if one wishes to follow it.  RCA anyone?

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

But, I wouldn't call the Mac database small, by any means. We've talked about database bloat for years now.

 

@GM:

 

Perhaps you misunderstood me. When I was discussing the database size, I meant the actual SQLite database, not the entire Evernote folder size.

For example, with my account the SQLite database is only 25.3MB, whereas the total Evernote folder is about 8.8GB.

 

My point was that with EN Mac most of the storage is outside of an actual SQLite database.

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

FWIW, below is a table of the distribution of my note sizes across the 29k notes.  As you can tell, not a lot of large notes in my DB.  16GB DB size.

 

attachicon.gifScreenClip.png

 

Cal, thanks for sharing the distribution of your Note sizes.  Very helpful and very interesting.

 

May I ask how you were able to do this?  Do you have some tool that sums by size range, or was it just the old brute force count by hand?

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

@JMichael,

 

Definitely not brute force, I'd still be counting.  ;)

 

I used Excel.  I built a model a few months back when I had some issues with shift-Tag not working.  It seemed random, but after I built the model it turned out to be all tags added after a certain date.  Anyway, maybe that's  TMI,  I used that model and added a quick lookup calc which became the basis for a pivot table that became the histogram for note size.  Took me longer to unpack 999B and 999KB and 999MB than to create the actual histogram.  

 

Basic process is go to all notes in List view, Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy all, and then paste into Excel.  Then play. 

Link to comment
  • Level 5*

Basic process is go to all notes in List view, Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy all, and then paste into Excel.  Then play. 

 

Thanks for sharing your process.

 

Well, that's one for EN Win.  EN Mac 6.0.11 will NOT allow you to COPY the selected Notes.  That would be a great feature, for a variety of reasons.

Link to comment

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...