(Archived) Why did Evernote kill Sponsored Groups?

[stativarius 1]

I just tried to set up Evernote for my family of four and was told that sponsored groups have been replaced by Evernote Business. I don't know about anyone else, but my family does not need $40/month worth of business accounts.

•Premium plan is for individuals

•Business plan is for businesses

•NO PLAN for groups/families?

Why did you let an advancement (like EnB), turn into a regression?

I don't need to administer four separate accounts... for my 2 children, my wife and myself. Nor do I want any of us to have to deal with the restrictions of the free plan. My children are homeschooled and will need offline notes. Their iPod Touches and iPads aren't always connected to wifi, I cant rely on a persistent connection for them to complete school work I should have been able to assign through an Evernote group account.

Even if I did set up four separate premium accounts with four separate billing plans, I still can't receive the discount that was available for groups of 3 or more. So now I have to pay $20/month for four people, or $180/year. There is no way my kids are going to use $90 to $120 worth of note organizing every year.

I wish I had opened a sponsored group account in November of 2012, when I first learned about them (before the creation of their carnivorous EnB plans).

Bring back sponsored groups, Evernote! Please!!!

[C6REW 416]

Hi Stativarius,

 

Not good to keep repeating yourself!

 

Regards

 

Chris

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I just tried to set up Evernote for my family of four and was told that sponsored groups have been replaced by Evernote Business. I don't know about anyone else, but my family does not need $40/month worth of business accounts.

•Premium plan is for individuals

•Business plan is for businesses

•NO PLAN for groups/families?

Why did you let an advancement (like EnB), turn into a regression?

I don't need to administer four separate accounts... for my 2 children, my wife and myself. Nor do I want any of us to have to deal with the restrictions of the free plan. My children are homeschooled and will need offline notes. Their iPod Touches and iPads aren't always connected to wifi, I cant rely on a persistent connection for them to complete school work I should have been able to assign through an Evernote group account.

Even if I did set up four separate premium accounts with four separate billing plans, I still can't receive the discount that was available for groups of 3 or more. So now I have to pay $20/month for four people, or $180/year. There is no way my kids are going to use $90 to $120 worth of note organizing every year.

I wish I had opened a sponsored group account in November of 2012, when I first learned about them (before the creation of their carnivorous EnB plans).

Bring back sponsored groups, Evernote! Please!!!

Sponsored groups were $5/month per account for 1-4 accounts (your situation). 5-99 accounts were 3.75/month per account. Premium accounts are $5/month per account or $45/year which is $3.75 per month.

http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2010/12/08/sponsored-accounts-a-way-to-get-evernote-premium-for-groups-of-any-size/

http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2011/03/28/sponsored-accounts-update-volume-pricing-and-non-profit-discounts/

[stativarius 1]

Hi Stativarius,

 

Not good to keep repeating yourself!

 

Regards

 

Chris

 

Sorry!  Won't happen again!!

[stativarius 1]

Sponsored groups were $5/month per account for 1-4 accounts (your situation). 5-99 accounts were 3.75/month per account. Premium accounts are $5/month per account or $45/year which is $3.75 per month.

 

When I researched this in November of 2012, I found the discounts for sponsored groups posted by Evernote as $3.75 pp for 3-99 users, $2.50 pp for 100+ users.  Since starting the business accounts, they have forwarded most Sponsored Group pages to the main EnB page.  However, the post linked below by peterfmartin confirms that discounts for 3-99 users must have existed at some point.

 

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/25462-group-account-for-collaboration-on-commemorative-book/

 

This does reach the same price as the $45/year you can get on all premium accounts.  Still, I could have paid for my family monthly without breaking a sweat with the previous setup.

 

The creation of EnB wasn't just a positive gain because it also removed account choices.  Centralized billing for families and non-commercial groups is a big feature to kill.  Removing EnSG created no positives for anyone, just negative effects to the users.  Though I may only have 4 people in my house now, I have had up to 8, all of whom I would want to keep under my central billing account (if Evernote and iPhone Apps had existed in 2007).  One day, I will have more then 4 again.

 

I still assert that Sponsored Groups need to be returned.

 

In the meantime, Evernote Customer Service has responded admirably to my complaint.  While their first reply was typical Customer Service jargon (explaining EnSG was replaced by EnB without offering a solution for my situation), their second reply was very thoughtful.  They went above and beyond to make me comfortable (at least for a time) since EnSG had been cancelled.  I didn't expect or want any freebees, I wanted them to override their system to allow me to start the Sponsored Group account I had been eyeing for months (as I know many users were grandfathered in and are still using them).  I would trade any amount of free months to have a Sponsored Group account, but it was a good and unexpected gesture.

 

I just hope they really "...pass on the information provided to the product development team for discussion."

[jkleske 1]

I have to second stativarius notion here. I don't care too much about the discounts (we're using a sponsored group with a rather small team). I care about the central payment and the easy administration. And I don't want to pay double for Evernote Business just to get that. My problem is that this really smells of a decision being driven by business interest and not by user interests. But even without that, you guys just made life a little bit more stressful for me and my coworkers as we all have to get invidual premium accounts now and all have to do our individual accounting. Not cool!

[cwb 225]

Agreed.  There seems to be a hole for very small teams, families, and small non-profits.

Evernote should be getting users hooked for life.  There's no stickiness for families starting kids with free accounts if they can't bidirectionally collaborate, yet there's no central admin/password control, with multiple single premium accounts.

Feature-set wise, Evernote is still a far better fit for the above groups than business in any case (sorry but true).