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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

> Evernote is a prime example of the pains of trying to convert free users to paying users for the same features

I don't think so. They had plenty of paying customers. They claimed to be profitable for a long time (eg https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/evernote-rai...). They had trouble with (i) implementing big price hikes, and (ii) a poor, bug-filled user experience. While that was going on, they were facing increasing competition, yet they acting like a monopolist. OneNote, Google Docs, Dropbox Paper, Notion, and so on were providing a quality product at a better price. The lesson is one that many HN commenters would never accept. It's possible to set your price too high.

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If you're on Windows, OneNote is almost impossible to compete with. Even though it's part of the Office suite, it's a free, stand-alone download. The phone apps are free, and you get 5GB of free storage. Then, for less than the cost of Evernote, you can get a O365 subscription and get the Office suite and 1TB of storage.

Even though OneNote is basically a loss-leader, it's extremely powerful and flexible. It's been around longer than any other note-app, and it's still here as Evernote fades into oblivion.

I have tried to use oneNote a few times and it just doesn’t not compute to me. Some union of Notability + Paperpile would be perfect. I review proposals, peer review manuscripts, and read papers for my own research, all done with notes take with the handwritten scribble function over a PDF (which Evernote never got right).

I have friends with OneNote and no matter what they explain, it does not make sense to me.

I was on your shoes around 2014 to 2018.

The client I was assigned to, used for everything on project management related documentation.

I couldn't understand how to approach it.

Then around 2019, in another project it suddenly made sense, after several approaches trying to make sense out of it.

I still can't figure out how to use note,I have tried different approach but having to jump different application and rewrite everything 2 or 3 times, just don't compute in my brain.

Basically how I came around using it, was instead of having txt files, office files and a bunch of screenshots scattered around on the filesystem under the respective project directory, I started organizing such content inside Notes itself.

So you store all your documents within OneNote?

No, only those related to project delivery, that are kind of note taking stuff.

Documentation to be shared across the team is in Confluence or similar wiki platform.

Documents to be shared with the customer are in Office formats.

In systems like that, I often find myself in the frustrating situation of “I know I saw a sentence with <phrase> in it; which of the three systems should I search in? If I don’t find it, is it because the phrase was slightly different, or is there a fourth or fifth system I need to search?”

It’s maddening and is my several times per week experience.

I don't use OneNote for long standing documentation (maybe one tab is a cheat sheet). I just make a tab for each ongoing work project/client/etc, and paste stuff in there. Text from emails as a todo list which I think write comments to, notes from a zoom call, screenshots of things I need to fix, that sort of thing. I go through and edit or add comments on what needs to be done then just delete it when it's finalised and I can stop thinking about it.

It's basically a cross between a messy desk and todo list. It works well enough for me. I've tried using stuff like Trello and that is a little too much friction for me, the way you can paste text and images together in OneNote and rearrange them visually just works for me. Sometimes it just feels right to have this item "off to the side" or that sort of thing.

Taking notes is a feature, not a product

And given how the "process cyclists" of Notion will move to anything that has more bells and whistles, while the rest of the 99% will use what's available for free and syncs online, it's a hard place to compete

("process cyclists": will pay a lot for every small but hyperoptimized accessory)

You're contradicting yourself. Taking notes is a feature for many, but a product for people whose working style involves taking lots and lots of notes.

Call them "process cyclists" if you want, there is a bimodal distribution for how much people use notes apps, and the people near the high mode are prepared to pay monthly for something good, and tend to be extremely loyal.

> Call them "process cyclists" if you want, there is a bimodal distribution for how much people use notes apps, and the people near the high mode are prepared to pay monthly for something good, and tend to be extremely loyal.

Yes, but Evernote does not fit that category, it fits the 'feature' category

You obviously don't know much about Evernote.

Exactly. I'm OneNote user for last 15 years or so. I got roped it in because it was free and good enough for my text notes (with image and PDF attachments).

I transitioned to MacOS 10 years back.. and lo behold, free OneNote application available there too with free cloud storage (OneDrive) and cross device sync story (mobile, Windows). Works great.

No way of avoiding cloud storage though, which is a problem for confidential information. That's why I dropped it when I moved to Mac, and the Windows version later moved to the same restriction. It's a pity: I happily paid for OneNote in the early days, and in some respects I have not found anything as good.

Oh, and one peculiar restriction: I found that there was no way to import the .one files I had brought over from Windows, even though there was at least one third party system which could do it.

Maybe I have simple needs, but iOS notes does everything I want.

1. Instantly synced between all computers and devices (yes I know I need to be in the Mac/iPhone ecosystem, but I happen to be in that anyway)

2. Create folders

3. Paste images

4. Fonts/bullets etc.

Apparently that's all I need. Anything else is a hindrance.

The main reason I love apple notes is it's speed and sync. Just works.

I treed google keep and evernote. Syncing was always overwriting eachother. Starting slow.

Never had that same problem with keep, its almost instantaneous updating for me.

I always have one big note where I add a lot. When using that in both desktop and phone kept overwriting my entries

If they would just improve search it would be really great. There is no way to restrict search to a folder, for example.

I love the design of Notes, and I used it a lot for the past few years to store work and personal notes, but I found the sync to be very unreliable. Notes on my iPhone keeps getting out of sync with Notes on my laptop. It happens every few weeks, and I have to log out and login again to fix it. Maddening.

I switched recently to Obsidian and am really enjoying the speed, simplicity, extensibility, and being back in control of my files.

> Then, for less than the cost of Evernote, you can get a O365 subscription and get the Office suite and 1TB of storage.

Take the slightly more expensive family pack, and 5 people can use it on 5 devices each. It's one of the too-good-to-be-true deals out there.

Even better, it's 6 people. You plus 5 family members.

Few years ago I tried to switch to OneNote but it was very sluggish compared to Evernote. I'll give it another go.

true. you even get access and publisher.

It is a shame Microsoft had basically abandoned OneNote The android app still can't change fonts after 5 years of development. It is pure insanity how little MS cares about their best product They made it brilliant at the start and since then stated they won't update it anymore.

I seriously wish you couldn't change fonts in it. OneNote itself defaults to 11pt Calibri, but the web clipper outputs 12pt Verdana because fuck you. And if you change the font to Verdana, page title font changes from 20pt Calibri Light (IIRC) to like Verdana 20pt which is comically heavy.

Plaintext based notes apps are a blessing in that regard: Since they only store the text, your pages actually look nice and consistent. I have a ton of web clippings in OneNote which are ugly as hell because of font inconsistencies.

I understand that viewpoint and I can see the value in it.

The point I was making is that they done no meaningful improvements on Android since five years. If onenote supports rich text the mobile app should do the same.

I enjoy the rich text since I'm not very organised with my notes, I don't have the patience or discipline to neatly write my thoughts down, I mostly copy paste things and write it in one big OneNote document. I have like 90 different random notes in my 2020 forward dumping note.

I those cases highlighting important info is nice, so I don't have to visually remember where the important things are.

I noticed if I don't allow the chaos I just don't write notes so I prefer this way. I started using todo tasks for things I need to do soon, so babysteps to becoming a compete human ;)

I only wish Microsoft showed it some actual love. The app's been languishing for years, and most any new feature is in the vein of "you can embed TikToks now" or something only applicable to a classroom setting.

That, and while I love that their apps are native, there are serious consistency issues with eg. how search behaves, and the resurrected Windows app still not using the modern sync backend mobile, web and macOS do.

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