Evernote Slashes Premium Subscription Rate Amid Reports of Company 'Death Spiral'

[yaxomoxay]

They should switch to the Agenda app subscription model.
The user OWNS all the updates and features that are implemented during the subscription, even after the subscription expires. That way the user will never see a degradation of service but at most he won’t get new features (unless he pays for them).

 

[PhoenixDown]

I always like Evernote, in particular it has a lot of third party tool integration which is nice. I however don't subscribe. I pay for an Office 365 license and One Note is good for 95% of my needs. I also use Apple Notes for quick note jotting which I occasionally try to move to One Note.

 

[AronDraws]

I have been using Evernote premium for man years. Someone please explain to me how Apple notes is considered an alternative. Can I make stacks and store all my PDFs and have them searchable?

If EVERNOTE fails, how do I transfer my years and years of content?
[doublepost=1536142389][/doublepost]
Is OneNote only partnof Microsoft Office or can it be purchased separately? How would one transfer from Evernote to OneNote?

I have allllll of my stuff on Evernote, but this Bear thing is looking good. It gives you directions on how to transfer from Evernote to Bear. https://bear.app/faq/?q=migrate

Worth a shot!

 

[ChrisA]

I dropped it when they limited the number of devices I could use to one less than the number of devices I owned. Microsoft's OneNote is actually pretty good.

It is hard to see how a standalone notes company can make money. All the others offer it as part of a larger ecosystem. All EverNote can do is give away their baseline version and charge for the premium. That could work but then they went and made their baseline unusable.

If they were smarter they would see each free version user as a potential paying customer and do everything in their power too increase the number of free users. Instead they told them to "go away"

 

[Tinmania]

When they started charging I as a low scale user moved to OneNote, finally taking the time to learn how to use it properly. Since then it worked so brilliantly that it has now become my resource bible, both personal and business (easily grouped) and working brilliantly with my MS Surface. Having demo'd it to others I am seeing more people use OneNote as well. Across devices and so easily arranged / searched through, it is a fantastic app.

I am grateful to Evernote as without the push I'd never have made the jump.

I'm also not a hard-core user of Evernote, only using it for recipes. But, I have been using it like this for nearly seven years now and have quite a few recipes on it--many used regularly. When they started charging I just adapted, never seeing the need to pay what they were asking. But I did try Keep as I had an Android phone at that time, but that didn't work for me (for recipes: I did use Keep for other lists, till Google neutered it to promote their shopping service). So I still use Evernote for just recipes. By recipes I mean: I see a recipe or cooking idea on the web, in an app, etc., and just want to save it, and then be available in Evernote. That is easy with Evernote (not so easy with the recipe apps I have tried).

But if Evernote should just "disappear" it would be tough to recreate what I have now. Maybe I will give OneNote a try and slowly migrate over.

 

[barnyard]

I'm also not a hard-core user of Evernote, only using it for recipes. But, I have been using it like this for nearly seven years now and have quite a few recipes on it--many used regularly. When they started charging I just adapted, never seeing the need to pay what they were asking. But I did try Keep as I had an Android phone at that time, but that didn't work for me (for recipes: I did use Keep for other lists, till Google neutered it to promote their shopping service). So I still use Evernote for just recipes. By recipes I mean: I see a recipe or cooking idea on the web, in an app, etc., and just want to save it, and then be available in Evernote. That is easy with Evernote (not so easy with the recipe apps I have tried).

But if Evernote should just "disappear" it would be tough to recreate what I have now. Maybe I will give OneNote a try and slowly migrate over.

OneNote has a migration tool for Evernote that converts it to their format. It's not perfect, but it works fairly well, and with a few tweaks... Evernote is replaced.

 

[johannnn]

I was a premium user until a few years ago. Some years ago, Evernote was clearly the best solution.

But the competition has improved a lot since then. iOS Notes, Bear, Dropbox Paper, Google Docs, OneNote, etc.

So what has Evernote been doing all these years? Not to be negative, but I feel like their product is identical to what they had 5-10 years ago.

And for this they wanted 10 bucks a month.......

 

[AronDraws]

And I just found out that One Note has an importer tool that does all the hard work for me. Win!

 

[BigMcGuire]

I used Evernote back in the day when it first started, used it for years. Loved how it sold itself as a collection point for everything - an elephant never forgets!

It did a good job of it at first. Then when it got fat, complacent, and instead of innovating, they started changing the application... again and again and ... changing it just for the sake of change till there started being data loss. Being a dumb dumb back then, I lost data. I also got versions of Evernote that caused note corruption and complete disruption of my usability. I left it for Google Keep back when I was a Google fan. Yeah, Keep didn't have half the features but it was free and worked for me.

Now, I use a combination of UltraEdit, Apple Notes, Notability, and OneNote.

As someone who likes to make endless lists and work with what's in my head on paper ... I'm sad to see Evernote die off (but we've known this was the case for years). I wish there were more ways for me to deal with what was in my head better digitally... I've tried everything, literally.

Would love some application like UltraEdit that would let me put pictures/sound/pdf/etc in the text (drag/drop) and then have a Grid Thumbnail view for all my most recently edited files/notes --- and all this accessible on my phone as well. Add in Notability handwriting and you have an app I'd use every day, all day.

 

[lec0rsaire]

Very sad that an iconic app that so many people used throughout their college years is in trouble but they just aren’t the only game in town. Even Apple’s stock app has been improved a great deal from what it used to be back in the early App Store days. OneNote, Notability are both good alternatives.

 

[subjonas]

It’s this insufferable subscription model that’s killing this and many other apps for me. Evernote is an extremely robust note taking/saving app. Used to be the most fully-featured, maybe still is. I would love to purchase it except that it’s subscription only, and I don’t rent unless it’s too expensive to purchase, or unless I’m provided with an ongoing service of value to me. 90% of these updates are unnecessary for me. I want to pay for the ones I do need as I see fit. As for storage, I probably have a mere couple dozen megabytes of notes, and it would be much more efficient to allow users to keep their notes in their own cloud storage, or even just local device storage with selective sync would be absolutely fine. I realize that would disable some features, but leave that up to the customer. As it is, I’ve remained a free and frustrated user.

 

[xraydoc]

I was a big Evernote user a few years ago. But it seemed to me that they quit adding features or making advances in their UI, so I've since moved on to OneNote. With the iPad Pro & Surface line and the ability to write notes on-screen, Evernote never seemed to embrace this. They eventually bought someone else's product and attempted to make a half-assed integration of some inking into their traditional app, but never really seemed to work well for me.

Meanwhile, OneNote offered virtually everything Evernote did, plus free-form pen use anywhere on the page. Haven't returned to Evernote since.

 

[sfwalter]

I hope Evernote doesn't die. I'm not that keen on their pricing. However I haven't found a better solution. Their web clipper and pdf storage is the best I found.

Bear doesn't support storing of PDFs. OneNote doesn't support print to pdf nor tagging nor AppleScript. Well they have tagging but you can't create your own tags.

 

[bpcookson]

I’ve tried so many times to make Evernote work but it never sticks.

I’ve been using Todoist for awhile now and pay annually for the premium service. I was pretty skeptical at first but wow, it’s really won me over. They do a great job of maintaining simplicity despite continually adding complexity. I have yet to hit a wall; there’s always a way to make it do what I need.

Too bad about Evernote though. I always wanted it to be something great...

 

[AronDraws]

I used the transfer tool to move from Evernote to One Note and it was a little wonky, but it did most the work. I have to re-organize some stuff and clean it up but it's looking okay for now.

I cancelled my subscription to Evernote so I can still access it on 2 devices and I should be able to move over any stuff that was missed in the big transfer. Fingers crossed! It was a pain in the butt to cancel Evernote. I had 2 subscriptions running (Whaaa?) one was through iTunes, and the other through Evernote.

 

[riverfreak]

A couple of years ago I switched from Evernote to Noteability for both my note taking and document storage. Using an Apple Pencil on an iPad works so much better with Noteability. Like Evernote, it automatically syncs across all of my devices.

The ability to record audio with Notability will taking notes is great. And when reviewing, tapping on your notes and being able to jump right to that point in the audio is awesome!

 

[sog1927]

if they pull the plug, there better be "a pathway to capture" historical data for all of their loyal customers.

Speaking as someone who has been through a couple of tech company collapses: if they actually go under your historical data and the devices on which they reside will disposed of by the bankruptcy court to settle their debts, just like any other asset. If any of that stuff is really important to you, I'd copy it somewhere else right now. If any of it is at all sensitive I'd do my best to erase it from Evernote (not an Evernote user, so I have no idea if or how they encrypt stuff), because you have no idea who is going to end up with it. Cloudy-type services being what they are, there may not actually be a way to do that but I'd certainly try.

 

[IG88]

I was a happy paid user for several years....but eventually I just got tired of how bad it was at list formatting (Like no option for I, A, 1, i etc).

Nested lists were all numbers and it kept jumbling them, it was very buggy. OneNote is excellent at that and I finally reluctantly said goodbye to EverNote.

I'd have stayed if their list formatting was on par with OneNote.

 

[OneMike]

Evernote used to be the app I recommended to everyone. Since their crazy business model change I don’t even use them myself anymore.

Soon the will be out of business

 

[switcher3365]

And like the cable companies, it looks like this is only for new subscribers. My account is due to renew at the end of the month for $69.99. I love Evernote, but I wish I could get the deal too.

 

[BigMcGuire]

And like the cable companies, it looks like this is only for new subscribers. My account is due to renew at the end of the month for $69.99. I love Evernote, but I wish I could get the deal too.

lol, wow... That's low imo. Thanks existing customers for barely keeping us alive <finger>. New customers come in at 1/2 rate and once you're hooked, $70/year HA!

 

[lbdesign]

A question for you power users: What service/app can I switch to that will convert EVERYTHING over, including yellow highlights I've added to text, file attachments (images and PDFs), AND that also has a browser plugin that can capture web pages into the app? I'm hoping there is another complete solution...
I never enjoyed using Evernote, but I figured it was "too big to fail" so I doubled down on it. Now I'm sorry.

Bear and Notion are both getting good reviews. But I'm afraid to commit to another young service if MS or Google will crush it in a few years.

 

[Gameboy70]

The article calls Evernote a startup?! It’s been around for years and years.

You get to shed your startup status when you actually turn a profit.

 

[lbdesign]

You get to shed your startup status when you actually turn a profit.

Wait, they aren't even profitable yet? What the heck?
Are any of these apps looking at profitability in the next few years? If not, there's no reason to switch to Bear, or Notion, or anything other than a monopoly offering like OneNote. Sigh.
[doublepost=1536197189][/doublepost]I will say one nice thing about Evernote — sync has gotten a lot better.
Finally.

 

[sgtaylor5]

My App Store review of Bear
[additions added for this forum are in brackets]:

Better than everything else

I’ve used Evernote Plus and Premium for a few years on Windows and NeverNote when on Linux, OneNote, Google Keep, SimpleNote, then fully on Apple Notes for a few months when I switched to MacOS/iOS.

Evernote is looking for a purpose; they say they are a memory aid, so why Team Chat? Folders and tags together are confusing. [Which feature is used where? How do I decide?] And it’s a large program. OneNote has a wonderfully flexible canvas for creatives, but not as quick to use for writers. [it’s also a large program. Syncing isn’t too reliable. And what’s up with that omnipresent purple badge following me everywhere??] Google Keep is simply Post-it Notes. SimpleNote has no formatting, but it’s fast. Apple Notes can’t be exported in an editable format, but only as individual PDFs. Many others are distraction-free, but they have no interface as a result.

Bear is lightweight and focused on simplicity. Tags and nested tags are the only option for organization. The formatting is in PolarBear, but it understands Markdown, too. Many typography options and useful themes for visibility, so your text looks the way you want. Much, much cheaper subscription! It doesn’t force a workflow on the user; you don’t have to use a feature and there are no forced suggestions. Sharing, backup and export are easy and flexible.

Well worth it; I’m home at last!

(End of Review)

For webpage archiving, I use my browser’s reader view to simplify the page, Control + A to select all and Nisus Writer Pro’s right click Service “Send Selection to Nisus Writer Pro” to dump it into a NWP RTF document. Kill the unneeded pictures, format and save in its folder. If there are graphics that help tell the story and need to be kept; Export as PDF. Simple.