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"Unlimited Upload" isn't unlimited


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Hello guys.

 

I've used several Evernote accounts in past (mostly due to limitations in number of notebooks) and shared notes between them. Second thing was upload limit - even 4GB wasn't enough for me - I used Evernote for backup of photos, PDFs, communication and many more. I was paying Premium for two accounts and I had no problem with it. I was glad that I can support my favourite service.

 

Now, they introduced new Premium, with "unlimited uploads". I've figured how to use tags much more effectively, and I wanted to start from scratch. My plan was to take all my stuff from other accounts into this one and finally have everything in order.

 

Export was without issues. But I've really soon hit some kind of upload limit "Evernote Resource Creation Error 1.", they've sent me mail about using excessive amount of data, and I cannot upload any more things since yesterday.

 

I've contacted support about this issue, but I have no answer yet (but it's just about two days now). So, what I want to know:

 

What are real limits of this "unlimited upload"?

 

Seriously. I don't want to mess with Evernote systems. I will delete my data from other accounts when they will be on my new account so they didn't take space on servers twice. I fully understand that they have some kind of protection against people abusing their services.

 

All I want to know is: What amount of data can I upload per day/week/month/whatever. If it has to take several months, I will do it several months. I just want to know real limits.

 

Thank You,

 

Dave

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Hiya - So you're the reason my sync's been running slow lately...   ;)

 

I've said in respect of the previous (much) lower numbers "it's a limit not a target" - meaning that it's like the maximum revs on a car engine.  Bad idea to test it out on a long term basis,  and usually catastrophically unpleasant if you exceed it.  

 

You've clearly pushed the envelope,  and alarm bells rang somewhere.  I understand you're not being totally unreasonable about this - it's just a consolidation exercise not a DOS attack - but Evernote,  for obvious reasons,  probably want to double check exactly what's going on.  You're a ground-breaker here - no-one else has pushed that particular button that I'm aware of,  so no-one at this user forum is going to have any useful answers.  As a premium user you can access the chat channel if you wish - log in to https://www.evernote.com/SupportLogin.action and click 'continue' on the support page.  The chat option is available 7am-7pm PST weekdays.

 

If you raised tickets already,  you could also post the number(s) here - we can ask a forum Admin to have a look and see what's going on...

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Thank you :)

 

Ticket number is 1050640 , I've also responded on extra-usage warning mail and it has created another ticket 1050812 .

 

As I said - I absolutely understand why there are limits, I just want to know them :)

 

If someone from Evernote support could tell me for example just "David, please do not upload more than 200 MB/day", it would be great.

 

After one month of premium expires, I want to know if I should buy one-year premium account on this account, or go back to several different previous account that I've used. But I would really, really appreciate first option. All in one place.

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Great, issue was solved during yesterday.

 

Guy from Evernote Support wrote me that "I can now go back to using Evernote without any distractions". But without any info about specific limits.

 

Well... I just assume that I will not try to upload all exports with tens of GB at once. I'll split it into several smaller uploads which will be uploaded during several months and hopefully it will be without issues.

Anyway - Really thank you for your help :)

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Seems like an Evernote failure to me.

When Evernote officially announced/released the new limits, they should have been prepared for some users to jump on this.

 

After all, "unlimited" is a very tempting offer.

 

One or more seems to be at play here:

  1. Evernote was not technically ready to receive large amounts of upload.
  2. They have/had a bug in their software (client and/or service)
  3. They misrepresented the offer
  4. Marketing got ahead of actually available features
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Looks like other users are experiencing the same limits on "unlimited" uploads:

 

 

So here I am once again trying to get my files in order and without even uploading a single new file Im getting the same damn message again:

 

Seriously??? I cant even move files from one notebook to another without having it sync????

 

post-256956-0-72259800-1430955507.png

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...or just possibly the security Evernote have in place to protect users' precious confidentiality got reassuringly twitchy when incoming data hit unforseen maximums.  

 

A lot of folks said,  after the 4GB limit came in,  that they'd never use all that monthly bandwidth - I only ever got to over 1GB a few times,  and I was digitising a small library.  When 'unlimited' was announced,  my general view was that it would make no difference.  If the 4GB limit didn't lead to a melt-down,  then just losing the bar completely wouldn't make any difference.  Clearly,  for some users it did.  I don't know what the issues have been,  and it seems pointless and counter-productive to speculate.  

 

Evernote seem to be handling it - along with the fall-out from several different client updates - in a reasonably quick manner.  Since the extra headroom was an unexpected gift,  I don't see that its temporary absence while things get sorted can unduly handicap any current workflows.  

 

A delay might be a good thing,  because those users who launch into major projects with new and untried systems usually wind up needing major help when things don't work quite as they expected.  I'm sure I've read posts in the forums from experienced users who never update immediately when a new version comes out...  you'd think that dumping gigs of data into a newly released feature would come under the same heading.

 

A minor hitch now might persuade folks to think a little more deeply about what they're doing before they unfurl the hang glider.  Seems to me the OP here is happy now - at least for the moment

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...or just possibly the security Evernote have in place to protect users' precious confidentiality got reassuringly twitchy when incoming data hit unforseen maximums.  

 

That doesn't make any sense to me.  I don't see any relationship between volume and security.

And there shouldn't be any "unforseen [sic] maximums" if Evernote did the proper preparation.

 

If there are some, in effect, limitations per sync or per day, then Evernote should announce them, not just let their users stumble into them, with possible loss of data.

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Hmmn.  I realised,  after I posted earlier,  that the second quote you cherry-picked was from an unrelated user who had a major account problem which seemed to be related to not having synced his notes for some time.  'Unusual activity' on that account is probably anything more than zero.  Thus: so far we seem to have a massive total of one person who has had an issue with 'unlimited' uploads,  and with all credit to the OP,  that was a long-time account holder pouring one database into another which is hardly a common activity. There's nothing more to say on this.  I'm out.

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I've got three tickets.

fre 1 maj 2015 12:58

Subject: Ticket# 1045696 - Update on your Evernote account activity

tis 5 maj 2015 14:26

Subject: Ticket# 1052940 - Uppdatering om aktiviteten på ditt Evernote-konto

tis 5 maj 2015 14:26

Subject: Ticket# 1052941 - Uppdatering om aktiviteten på ditt Evernote-konto

Explain or excuse :P

I was going to import a folder to a notebook. And forgot to check the amount of data.

I copy the folder to my desktop (windows) and import the nestled folders to some notebook.

Fine.

But soon I realize that something was wrong...

Nothing sync

After a while I've got the first pop-up

like the one in https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/83923-unlimited-upload-isnt-unlimited/?p=358513

Approximated 4000 files, 7 GB, so I really understand that it caused trouble :blush:

Now is all files up and I'm never ever going to do it again.

Next time I check the folders before

2015-06-15 04:05

It was 9 GB not 7. It took me one week to clean my Evernote account and computer (the reason why it was happened was a huge backup in wrong folder.

I lost 3 important notes totally. All was recovered 6/6 from an ENEX archive. I do backups very often since 1996

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Well said, Gaz.  I am trying to keep all the changes and forum posts in perspective. I have played with OneNote for the past few weeks and have decided it simply isn't worth the learning curve.  OneNote is probably Microsoft's best application since Word and PowerPoint.  But, I am not a "power user". There was a time when I would have been but this is now.  Evernote meets my needs.  I would miss the people I have followed on this forum. Thanks for your thoughtful observations.

 


A lot of folks said,  after the 4GB limit came in,  that they'd never use all that monthly bandwidth - I only ever got to over 1GB a few times,  and I was digitising a small library.  When 'unlimited' was announced,  my general view was that it would make no difference.  If the 4GB limit didn't lead to a melt-down,  then just losing the bar completely wouldn't make any difference.  Clearly,  for some users it did.  I don't know what the issues have been,  and it seems pointless and counter-productive to speculate.
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The 4GB upload limit was a recent change that was not well publicized, and in fact there was a lot of confusion about it when it first came out.

 

The just released "unlimited" upload limit was done with great fanfare as part of the restructuring of EN plans.

Unlimited upload and unlimited storage are flags that get a lot of people's attention.

It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.

 

I have no doubt that some people, perhaps those who did not have an Evernote account, might very well see this as an opportunity to make massive uploads.

 

I can see that researchers and college students might decide to upload all of their digital library.  This, of course, could be huge.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Thanks for the discussion, y'all. I'm fixing to scan a ton of negatives and slides in and I was investigating this "unlimited" thing.

 

I have used unlimited stuff before (web hosting, in particular) and there's always a catch. In that case, when you got over a certain number of nodes, you didn't get backed-up like you used to.

 

I would certainly like Evernote to give some guidelines on what the unlimited limits are. Even "slow" users of evernote might eventually hit them over time. So it'd be swell to know what those are.

 

It's like Evernote is saying, "Yes, we CAN count to infinity!" I would like Evernote to say, "Yes, we CAN count to infinity, but we'll only be able to get to about 7.3 bazillion while you're still around."

 

#sadattemptatmathjoke #badanalogy

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Hi again - I'm currently nudging 20,000 notes and 14GB in overall database size;  not sure how many negatives that might cover,  but it would keep you going for a little while at least.  Part of the problem in defining 'unlimited' is that while you're scanning your first 1,000 negatives and waiting for them to upload,  Evernote might be upgrading their servers / storage / network connections as part of an ongoing process.  Their capacity is going to be a slowly moving goalpost that you might never reach - and I don't see them breaking their normal silence on development plans and giving you any sort of rash guarantees about their capability to handle anything - or indeed any "don't do that,  we'll never cope" negatives.

 

There are,  as I'm sure you know,  other places that store pictures - including now DropBox / Google / Picasa and Flickr and you might want to run some tests on image storage systems - not least the fidelity of their imaging system.  There was a thread somewhere in these Forums about images being reduced in quality when recalled from the database - they're stored as part of Evernote's standard database structure which wasn't necessarily designed to preserve images at best quality.  What goes in as 2048x1080 pixels might come out as 670x480 given its encoding/ decoding journey.  Not saying that such degredation is standard,  or likely to happen to your account;  but if you're storing a negative library,  then presumably quality is important and there are no published stats on that.

 

You have quite a specialised use case,  and I'm in a vaguely similar situation with a volume of work-related pictures that I need 1) available for reference,  editing and printing;  2) backed up somewhere(s) very safe and 3) indexed and searchable so I can find the correct picture as necessary.  I use Lightroom for processing,  one external 4TB hard drive for local storage,  and another for backups.  These are all RAW pictures - the JPGs are in Google Images,  Picasa and Flickr so others can view and use them.  So far I have zero work picture content in Evernote.  Not because I distrust EN (I use it to set up appointments) but because the other systems all work,  and I don't need the overhead of moving everything into one spot.  Were I considering it however I'd certainly want to know what happens to RAW and JPG images when saved into and restored from a note.

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Thanks for the discussion, y'all. I'm fixing to scan a ton of negatives and slides in and I was investigating this "unlimited" thing.

 

I have used unlimited stuff before (web hosting, in particular) and there's always a catch. In that case, when you got over a certain number of nodes, you didn't get backed-up like you used to.

 

Are you really sure you want to use Evernote as your photo library/manager?

 

While Evernote may be able to do this, IMO, it was not designed for large photo libraries.

 

IMO, there are a number of excellent dedicated apps for photo libraries, that run both on your machine as well as in the Cloud, and even sync the two (if desired).

Evernote cannot begin to give you the photo-specific feature set of these dedicated apps.

 

So, if you have not already, you might want to compare some of these dedicated apps with Evernote.

 

Whatever tool you choose, start out slowly, and test your process, the tool, the results, to make sure you will get what you expect.

For example, I would not scan all of the photos at once, then test the tools.  Scan just a few, a representative example, to test your process.

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I'm fixing to scan a ton of negatives and slides in . . .

 

I wanted to mention one other thing if you really have a large number of photos to scan.

 

You might consider a photo scanning service like SouthTree.com

 

The pricing is quite reasonable (IMO), and you can even get steep discounts sometimes via Groupon.

I just got an offer of 25% off when I viewed this site.

 

You get high-quality scans on DVDs, so you automatically have a great backup/archive.

 

This could save you many, many hours.

 

Good luck.

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Thanks for the discussion, y'all. I'm fixing to scan a ton of negatives and slides in and I was investigating this "unlimited" thing.

 

I have used unlimited stuff before (web hosting, in particular) and there's always a catch. In that case, when you got over a certain number of nodes, you didn't get backed-up like you used to.

 

I would certainly like Evernote to give some guidelines on what the unlimited limits are. Even "slow" users of evernote might eventually hit them over time. So it'd be swell to know what those are.

 

It's like Evernote is saying, "Yes, we CAN count to infinity!" I would like Evernote to say, "Yes, we CAN count to infinity, but we'll only be able to get to about 7.3 bazillion while you're still around."

 

#sadattemptatmathjoke #badanalogy

I would assume (danger Will Robinson!), that if you add the negatives to EN in a controlled fashion you won't have any issues.  To JM's point though, I don't know that EN is best suited for negative storage, unless perhaps you want to use the tagging capabilities of EN to facilitate finding specific negatives.  Maybe a targeted app does the same, don't know. 

 

If you use a desktop app you will be limited by the amount of disk space you can harness on that machine.  That might be the more likely physical boundary of "unlimited".  FWIW.

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To JM's point though, I don't know that EN is best suited for negative storage, unless perhaps you want to use the tagging capabilities of EN to facilitate finding specific negatives.  Maybe a targeted app does the same, don't know. 

 

IME, tags are in very common use.  It is the rare exception that I find a current app that doesn't support some type of tagging (sometimes called by a different name).

 

But dedicated photo apps offer not only tagging, but other cool tools for organizing and finding your photos:

  1. By people (auto face recognition)
  2. By event
  3. By location (automatic if photo geo metadata is retained)
  4. By date of photo (can often be easily grouped into date categories, like today, month, year, etc)
  5. Smart Albums (like EN saved search, only easier, more intuitive)
  6. etc.

Note that when you attach a photo to Evernote Note, you LOSE all of the photo's metadata.  This alone is a showstopper for me.

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All true.  I was reacting to this being for the scanning of negatives.  No metadata to lose anyway.

 

True.  I guess I was just thinking about using EN as a photo lib in general.

Once you get all those hundreds of scans in EN, I would assume one would want to continue adding digital photos that do have metadata.

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Yeah, not always fully sure of the use case for the questions on the forum.  So at least the requester has some food for thought.  ;)

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  • 1 month later...

Just received the "There’s been an extraordinary amount of activity on your Evernote account" email.

 

I have only uploaded 4 notes with ~10 medium resolution (2MB) pictures in each. Why am I getting this? I thought I had unlimited uploads as a pro subscriber. Also, if pro is not actually “unlimited” then you should inform me of what the max allowable upload rate (not that I should have gotten flag for 80MB of pictures).

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Just received the "There’s been an extraordinary amount of activity on your Evernote account" email.

 

I have only uploaded 4 notes with ~10 medium resolution (2MB) pictures in each. Why am I getting this? I thought I had unlimited uploads as a pro subscriber. Also, if pro is not actually “unlimited” then you should inform me of what the max allowable upload rate (not that I should have gotten flag for 80MB of pictures).

 

Since you are a Premium account owner, you can voice your complaint directly to Evernote using the EN Support Chat:

 

See Evernote Chat Support., available business days 7am-7pm US CST. 

(Chat option appears AFTER you click “Continue” on initial “Evernote Support” page.)

 

You can also complain on Twitter:

 

Since Evernote now is providing official support to all users via Twitter, you might post on Twitter @evernotehelps.  It might also be good to include a link back to your post here.

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> If you use a desktop app you will be limited by

> the amount of disk space you can harness on

> that machine. That might be the more likely

> physical boundary of "unlimited". FWIW.

Excellent point. "unlimited by design" :)

Let's hope this feature isn't overlooked should Evernote ever implement downloading selective notebooks ;-)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unlimited term should be forbidden in honest business unless there are hidden limits !

 

I use evernote since 2010 as premium and like it a lot. 

in 2013 i had for some reasons, to add lots of word and pdf docs, about 5Go in one week. I paid 5$ each time to upload limit for 1 ou 2Go more.....

This week i have a new time lots docs to add. And i see unlimited is a fake ??????? 

I added 1.9Go of docs (lots of warning about activity about my account...) and now i get a message "sync blocked"

 

 

Always the same... Evernote like when you pay But don't like you to use it.

 

Be clear : unlimited or not... What's "use it in a good way..." ?????? (the good way can be very different for lots of people).

It's much better to say : limits are so. Or pay as you use.

 

I like a lot the concept of evernote, but there are lots of things i don't like :

- No privacy

- Fuzzy limits....- Still no feature search and replace terms across notes

- stupid new features like work chat 

- cannot choose data notes folder

- cannot export several folder in one time

- when annotate pdf, buttons for remove pages or rotation are hidden and more step to do it. (why making things easy ? )

- and so much.... 

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Could you expand on the part about no privacy, please?

 

Evernote data aren't encrypted in local hard drive and no more for evernote team. 

And don't like the fake argument of search feature...

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The "fake argument of search feature" is a privacy issue?

Sorry... I think I'm way off topic now. I should be sticking to the point about "fake" upload limits. Maybe try to upload some more at a later time?

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synchronisation is blocked (and a warning before "too intense activity - now sync is blocked - contact assistance") - each time i have a message "sync failed."

For privacy trouble, there are discussions on the forum.

 

The "fake argument of search feature" is a privacy issue?

Sorry... I think I'm way off topic now. I should be sticking to the point about "fake" upload limits. Maybe try to upload some more at a later time?

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Could you expand on the part about no privacy, please?

 

Evernote data aren't encrypted in local hard drive and no more for evernote team. 

And don't like the fake argument of search feature...

 

I suppose if you can come up with a workaround that enables search of encrypted text such a thing could be implemented.  Highly unlikely though, I would think.

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I suppose if you can come up with a workaround that enables search of encrypted text such a thing could be implemented.  Highly unlikely though, I would think.

 

I agree it's unlikely (impossible?) to search encrypted text.

 

But there is very viable approach that enables Search:  Encrypt ONLY the Note contents, NOT the Note metadata.

This would allow Search to work very well with Note Title, Tags, dates, etc.

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synchronisation is blocked (and a warning before "too intense activity - now sync is blocked - contact assistance") - each time i have a message "sync failed."

For privacy trouble, there are discussions on the forum.

 

The "fake argument of search feature" is a privacy issue?

Sorry... I think I'm way off topic now. I should be sticking to the point about "fake" upload limits. Maybe try to upload some more at a later time?

 

 

Did you try contacting assistance as was recommended?  I'd be interested to know what they said.

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post-84744-0-69216000-1438247568_thumb.j

 

Sorry, i didn't wrote what's happened after.

 

Sync was totally blocked. Each time i was adding a new doc or modifying a note, i got a message "sync error".

Of course, i made a ticket to ask to unblock sync. a few hours laters (a sunday), support send me an email, "we have examined your case, sync should be ok now." (with no more explanation or not sorry for interruption) After a try, sync was working again.

 

So 1.9Go of upload in one week is much, but before "unlimited" the limit was 2Go/Month and can pay 5$ to add 1Go  several times ( i've done that sometimes when needed).

So, how to considerer the "unlimited" premium when using the same volume of data of older premium offer seems to be to much ? (messages "there is so much activity in your account, press YES if you are at the origin of this activity", "to intense activity : Sync Blocked" ).

 

And i don't like explanation on the website of Evernote : something like "have a good use" !!! Before unlimited, you could upload what you want within the monthly limits, and no messages of "good use" or "too much activity" or "using a lot can make sync error or slow it down"). 

Now the premium "unlimited" mean, use it as we (evernote team) like.

 

Also since about a month Evernote on my notebook (Macbook pro i7/2.6Ghz with 50Mb/s fiber internet connexion) never finish to sync. Sync is always active, Little snitch monitor show an 700kb/s download connexion.

 

As i wrote before, in a fair business, offers with "unlimited" amount of data shouldn't exist, because there is always a time when it's too much... Is it so hard to understand ?

Lot's of offers with unlimited get backs. like bitcasa... 

The only unlimited really working i know is crashplan. But i think there are also hidden limit. And it is easy to slow down connexion to server to make limits without blocking. 

 

 

 

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I would add also this :

  As i like to use Evernote, i would like to tell my business customers to use it. But it don't want them to tell me : "your advice was wrong". (and also thinking about no-confidentiality).

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