Can someone plz tell me what Evernote is doing???

[OMNIZEN 86]

It has been a long time that we've been waiting for new features, look (UI) and some good news out of Evernote team. But, each month I keep hearing a new story on how Evernote team is pissing off the loyal user base and alienating people that are using Evernote for free.

It just doesn't make sense to me. With all these other note taking companies making improvements and features, and even new note taking apps coming on the market (zoho), Evernote team keeps making one bad decision after another. 

I do a lot of reading and following Evernote online. People are FRUSTRATED at lack of features, WRITING horrible reviews over the price increases and LEAVING Evernote all together!

I personally will not leave, because I find myself to be a loyalist but at what point will Evernote team take massive action to turn things around? How bad does it have to get before something changes?

Im venting my frustrations because I read so many peoples requests, feedback and reviews only to see them go deaf to the Evernote team. I'll even send feedback only to receive a generic answer. Meanwhile, each couple of months a new negative narrative or backlash comes out of Evernote HQ.

Can someone help give me insight as to what Evernote is doing ? Why they are doing what they are doing and how do they fix up such a catastrophe? 

[gazumped 11,652]

Hi.  As you can see in the 150+ pages of Changes to Evernote's Pricing Plans a lot of people are very unhappy that Evernote have slightly restricted access to their free Basic plan*,  and put up the price of Plus and Premium products to new users. 

Existing paid users have up to a year at the old prices anyway since they may have only just paid their annual subscription,  and there was a suggestion that Evernote might be 'easing in' increases after that.  Since they have (or had,  until a couple of weeks ago) 200 MILLION USERS,  it's taking a while for all the changes to filter through.  If you are a paid user they do specifically say that increases do not apply to your account unless and until you receive an email confirming your subscription.

So for most folks,  life continues pretty much as before.  If you use the free service you may have an extra process to go through before you connect a third device to your account;  if you're an existing user and pay for the service you may face a subscription increase in some weeks or months.  You could consider downgrading from Premium to Plus at that time,  or if the cost is just too great,  you could look at some of the other free services out there like OneNote.

Evernote has tried for a long time to make the 'Freemium' model pay for itself - they give away a big chunk of their paid-for package as a free service,  partly to allow new users to try them out at no cost,  and partly in the hope that some will try out the service and find that it is so useful they need the higher limits of the paid-for packages and so trade up their membership.

Evernote is such a useful package for a large number of users that a sizeable chunk of the 200 million seemed to remain on the free package for very long periods of time.  Their attitude seems to be "the free service is fine for me,  why should I pay?" - but each free account with several devices connected to it 'phones home' (syncs) back to Evernote's servers every few minutes for as long as Evernote is active on one or more devices.  A lot of money has to be plowed into ensuring that these 'free' accounts can connect with Evernote's servers 24/7 to sync their notes.  So Evernote made it a bit harder to use the free account in hopes that would persuade folks to pay for the service they've been enjoying,  and for the very real cost of operating their server farm(s).

To make sure the company is profitable in the longer term,  they've also increased subscription charges - though the additional revenue is going to take a while to mount up;  like I said existing users won't pay new charges for up to a year.  On average Evernote will only see about 50% of the new subscription levels in the next 12 months.

A lot of former users - particularly 'free' users - will leave Evernote,  and the user base might drop substantially.  If that were only free users,  that might actually be good news - there's more free bandwidth out there to sync your and my notes with the server.  Some paying subscribers are also leaving,  which will reduce Evernote's income - but hopefully they got their sums right and they'll still see a net increase in their income.  If they don't,  no doubt they'll come up with a Plan B in the next several months.

Evernote users are an amazingly involved bunch and there continues to be a very active exchange of views in the other thread.  Because of the public feedback the media have also been quick to jump on the bandwagon and predict that Evernote have lost the plot with suitably clickbait headlines. 

Personally I take the view that as long as Evernote is worth the subscription,  I'll continue to use it.  If there ever were any problem with the company it's easy enough to extract my notes and move on.  Unless and until that happens I'm just going to get on with my life and let the arguments (hopefully) fade into the background...

Hope that helps

 

* Evernote say that you can only have one or two devices connected to your account at any one time

[Analyst444 182]

@OMNIZEN -  It is extraordinary to me how much complaining the Evernote price increase has produced. The price for the Premium version went up only $2-3 a month (assuming an annual payment). - - - I'm thinking that a large portion of the Evernote users are relatively young, 2-worker couples/families who have a $1,500 a month mortgage and $500-$750 a month in car payments. 

To me, Evernote Premium is worth twice what the new price is. (No one from Evernote monitors this forum, do they?!?!)

Gazumped is exactly right. This is purely a business decision by the company. How much longer could they continue to support a growing population of "freebies"? How much longer are the investors going to wait for their big payoff? You, I, and other devoted Evernote users want the company to make money and continue development of the product.

Also, you are not likely anywhere near as old as I am. As you age, you will learn that:

• Most people will complain when the service you provide them slips a little, but don't expect to hear from them when you expand your service. (For more than 20 years, people moaned and groaned about Microsoft's Windows OS, even though it was the best one out there for a couple decades. (Mac Users. Please cut me some slack on that last statement!))
• Some portion (who knows how much, 10%-25%??) of the people who complain have a vested interest in products that compete with Evernote. Their goal is to get you and others to switch for any reason they can come up with.
• Some portion (who knows, 5%??) of the people who complain are people who write technical articles (many on the Internet) and they need to stir the pot to generate readership.

In short, hang in there. Ignore the "nay-sayers" and watch the back-lash I get for this post.