Evernote limits free users, increases pricing
Evernote announced changes for paying and free members of the service in a blog post on the official website yesterday.
The price of Evernote Plus and Premium goes up by $1 and $2 per month respectively, while free users will be limited to syncing data between two devices.
The new pricing structure is already implemented on the site which means that new subscribers will have to pay more for the service.
Evernote Plus subscribers pay $3.99 instead of $2.99 per month now, an increase of about 25%. The plan limits new uploads to 1GB per month but does not limit the number of devices data can be synced between.
Evernote Premium subscribers pay $7.99 instead of $5.99 per month under the new pricing structure, which is also an increase of about 33%. Premium users are limited to 10GB of new uploads per month, and get exclusive features such as customer support via live chat or the scanning and digitizing of business cards on top of that.
Evernote limits free users, increases pricing
New basic users are limited to syncing data across two devices, a sharp change from syncing across unlimited devices. Evernote is however accessible on the Web from all devices.
Basic users will be able to use Passcode lock on the mobile app which was a paid feature previously though.
On Basic, you can access notes on up to two devices, such as a computer and phone, two computers, or a phone and a tablet, as well as on the web, so you can continue to take your notes with you throughout your day. Passcode lock on the mobile app, formerly a paid feature, is now available on Basic as well.
Evernote notes that existing users won't see the price increase or feature limitation immediately. Subscribers should look for a message from the service in the coming days that provides details about the change.
What's clear is that existing subscribers will be impacted by the change as well in the near future. The FAQ hints that the changes will be rolled out gradually over the next several days.
The FAQ suggests that "not everyone will be affected by a price change". Subscribers affected by the change will be notified by email in the next few weeks according to Evernote.
Evernote Business pricing is not affected by the change.
Evernote states that the change in pricing is needed to stay competitive and improve company products, and that it is not backed by a multi-billion Dollar company that is making revenue elsewhere to support free or lower priced services.
We don’t take any change to our pricing model lightly, and we never take you for granted. Our goal is to continue improving Evernote for the long-term, investing in our core products to make them more powerful and intuitive while also delivering often-requested new features. But that requires a significant investment of energy, time, and money. We’re asking those people who get the most value from Evernote to help us make that investment and, in return, to reap the benefits that result.
Closing Words
While it is too early to tell how the announced changes will affect Evernote's customer base, it seems likely that at least part of it will move to comparable services such as OneNote.
Now You: Do the changes affect you?
I’m only using the Evernote Web Clipper, so I assume that doesn’t affect me.
Note: The add-on is buggy, at least on Firefox. It still works but the right-click descriptions are screwy.
i got the email this morning and started looking for a replacement immediately…
I’ve already started looking for a replacement… I have a qnap nas so I might finally try out the inbuilt “notes station”
I hope they have an export option, or have one in the works. I’ve been using it for years but notice it’s gotten more pushy with suggestions to use their pay services, as well as more bloated. Alternativeto.net beckons….
There’s an import tool at https://www.onenote.com/import-evernote-to-onenote
OneNote 2016 is the best organization tool ever created. I used to be an Evernote guru, until I left about a year ago and never looked back OneNote is vastly superior, except maybe in syncing.
Moved to OneNote when it became free and realized OneNote was far more robust and suitable to my needs. I would continue using OneNote even if both Evernote and OneNote were free. But I am sure there are lots of people with different preferences. I am curious how the new changes go for Evernote.
Evernote thinks $25 a year isn’t enough. I guess they’d prefer getting $0 and me switching to Evernote. OK, I can do that.
I think you mistyped something. Probably you meant that you are switching to another product.
I think the fair price to pay for the now free version is $12 per year!
As I briefly mentioned in the comments under the other GHacks article about Evernote (the one about OneNote migration) you CAN buy a Premium account with a yearly price of $22, if you pay in Mexican Pesos rather than USD or EUR.
Plus is priced at about $11 (in Mexican Pesos).
Check out my comment under that post for a tutorial.
For now I’m using Evernote as “deep storage”, I access it rather rare and via Web or Windows client. This means that change does not affect me. My “medium” storage is Simplenote and my “quick” storage is Google Keep.
My experience says that when companies start to behave like that more problems can arise, so I won’t rely on Evernote to any big degree in future (but I didn’t rely on it much anyway).
Of course, I understand that as I’m a free user, that means “AS IS”. But I’d like to remind that in our times =any= service provider is competing against other services and webhosting plans. I may prefer to pay for web hosting offer and use local sync clients instead of web service.
The price increases ($2.99 > $3.99; $5.99 > $7.99) are 33%, not 25%.
Right, thanks for letting me know.
Do you think
there’s a possibility of Evernote
eliminating the FREE plans altogether?
Then the migration of Users
OUT of Evernote will be even faster…
I once tried Evernote, but the problem with any of these services is that once they have your data, you are a captive audience and they know it. They can take away free plans or increase the cost of paid ones. As such, I decided it wasn’t a good choice.
The same issue is present in Microsoft OneNote. This is compounded by the fact that many of us have learned that we can’t trust Microsoft to act in a reasonable manner.
In my brief experiment with Evernote, I also found the lack of editing a document directly to be very annoying. It has separate “view” and “edit” modes, unlike a word processor. It felt like a big step backwards in usability.
If Evernote implements this new pricing structure, I think they will lose many free users (who are often the biggest advocates). Unless people are willing to endure the clunky web interface, it will no longer be possible for users to sync Evernote between their laptop, phone, and tablet for free. I see that needless limitation resulting in a loss of a significant portion of Evernote’s user base.
@TONY:
Agree 100% with all your points.
In fact, I would have expected *Microsoft* to have this arrogant attitude towards its Users, rather than Evernote…
(I was caught by surprise…).
I use Evernote to long term storage, mainly articles, but i access them in more then two devices, any recommendation?
OneNote