Users upset by Evernote price hikes & two-device limit for free Basic customers
Changes to Evernote's note-taking service raised a storm of controversy on Twitter on Wednesday, as the company is trying to shift users away from the free Basic tier while generating more revenue from paid subscribers.
In "coming weeks," Evernote will start limiting Basic accounts to two devices, the company said in an email notification to customers. People already over this limit will have a 30-day window to adjust, but will otherwise have to upgrade to a Plus or Premium account to continue with unlimited device support.
The price of a Plus subscription is being hiked from $2.99 per month to $3.99 per month, although annually the cost is cheaper at $34.99. Premium is seeing a stepper increase, from $4.99 to $7.99 per month -- a 12-month version of the plan is $69.99.
In a blog post, Evernote CEO Chris O'Neil linked the changes to a "significant investment of energy, time, and money" needed to continue developing and expanding Evernote's features.
Public response has so far been highly negative, with some people threatening to switch to other apps, like Apple's Notes built into iOS and macOS. Evernote works on Windows and Android devices as well however, and exporting large collections of notes can be cumbersome.
In "coming weeks," Evernote will start limiting Basic accounts to two devices, the company said in an email notification to customers. People already over this limit will have a 30-day window to adjust, but will otherwise have to upgrade to a Plus or Premium account to continue with unlimited device support.
The price of a Plus subscription is being hiked from $2.99 per month to $3.99 per month, although annually the cost is cheaper at $34.99. Premium is seeing a stepper increase, from $4.99 to $7.99 per month -- a 12-month version of the plan is $69.99.
In a blog post, Evernote CEO Chris O'Neil linked the changes to a "significant investment of energy, time, and money" needed to continue developing and expanding Evernote's features.
Public response has so far been highly negative, with some people threatening to switch to other apps, like Apple's Notes built into iOS and macOS. Evernote works on Windows and Android devices as well however, and exporting large collections of notes can be cumbersome.
Comments
What do they have to lose, except potential referrals? And what are the odds that a free user is referring lots of PAID new customers?
The 40% increase to the Premium plan is a bigger potential mistake. There are, at least from the Evernote forums, lots of Pro users like myself who are seriously considering that a 40% increase is waaaay too much, given how slow the service has been to evolve and fix things that matter to us.
Ultimately, the potential loss of a bunch of Pro level subscribers is far more a danger to their business than the loss of a horde of free users that were only costing them money anyway.
My Pro ends in December. If there isn't some sign by then of a renewed vigor from Evernote to fix the things we've been complaining about for years, in exchange for the price hike...I'm out.
With the current price of premium I would expect a lot from EN 7 before returning. The fact that EN doesn't handle Markdown is a travesty ( I know Alternote handles it because I own it). It was only recently that you could add code samples without the formatting screwing it up.
Their no longer the big boys on the block. Writing apps like Ulysses, Byword, AI Writer and more all have sync features via iCloud or something else and all are capable of managing notes effectively.
I await the next major version of EN with baited breath. I think they have to knock it out of the park or as current member subs expire they'll move off the platform
Some people seem naturally inclined to install whatever redundant 3rd party crap they can. I prefer to keep it clean and simple, make better use of default apps, and less time worrying when this kind of garbage inevitably happens.
Sounds like Evernote needs more cash, maybe developing a better type of app would have been a better investment.
NoteSuite had was an Mac and iOS app that had great promise but they were acquired. Too bad, but there
are other apps existing and to come that will best Evernote.
It should be noted Phil Libin left the company in 2015, I believe Chris O'Neil is the new CEO and has promised GREAT THINGS. Though all I've seen him do is cut staff and products and now charge more w/o actually improving the core product.
I'm really quite bummed about this I've been an EN user since early 2008, free member for a couple years, then went premium in 2010 and really liked the app(s), but the lack of new features that are useful to me and the app getting more and more sluggish (though the last few updates have brought it back from unusable state), and now this, really need to find a replacement (or set of apps that replace this). I use it to store & search PDFs (journal articles, manuals, so on), keep scans of sketches and hand written notes, and typed notes. I feel I can switch typed notes to Apple Notes w/o any issue (already been slowly doing this), but the first two I still don't have a good solution that works on iOS and OS X seamlessly.
On the other hand, for just about everyone else, who doesnt make their money of (their commodity) hardware, they have to charge for the (sometimes) annual (more frequently, regular) updates of software that some people (myself) are getting used to, but were so fine without for the longest time.
e.g. To your point, I know lots of people on Office 2007, 2010 still. I have an Office 365 subscription, primarily for Small Business E-Mail (exchange), but do also use the MS Office Suite of Desktop Applications.
I had been meaning to delete my EN account for the past several weeks and I laughed when greeted by their announcement upon logging in to do so. Funny coincidence.
i mean really how did people ever think this would be cost effective without giving up something. It is pretty clear you give up security and reliability. Perhaps more importantly you end up being tracked endlessly.
Now I realize that Evernote wants to avoid the world of advertising and customer tracking, the problem is how do you develop such a business and keep costs within what people are willing to pay. I don't think you can especially with all the other avenues people have. The whole cloud thing never seemed well thought out to me. Even Apple after what seems like dozens of attempts doesn't have a good general purpose solution.
Oh oh as for the software subscription folks, for the most part they can rot in hell! There are very very few programs that I use that can justify a subscription. You would almost need Magazine like content to justify the expense to me. The big maybe are apps targeted at professionals but that is a whole different ball game.
The buy once model worked great for a single app that does something on your device. Sadly, people drove down acceptable app prices so low that it's hard to make a living by trying to make a great, focused app and keep it updated.
Subscriptions should be acceptable to for services that rely on the cloud and syncing. Seems to me that advertising as a suitable revenue stream is dying? Advertisements turn people off anyway.
This is why I as a developer, starting development of a new product/service, don't even want to bother offering a free tier. It's really hard to switch people from free to paid. And all the time trying you're draining down your bank accounts and then eventually the paying customers get the price hike and if they can't swallow the change you're screwed. Developing software isn't cheap and it isn't easy.