Evernote will restrict free users to 50 notes starting December 4 | Hacker News Reader

Evernote will restrict free users to 50 notes starting December 4

techcrunch.com

88 pointsbookofjoe75 comments

Back in June, I think, Evernote tripled their price, from $41.99 for an annual subscription to $129.99 for an annual subscription today.

The previous subscription cost was already too high, when you consider something like Google One with 100GB of storage is $19.99/year. Rather than raising prices, Evernote needed to be cutting them.

There probably exists some subset of users that find $129.99/year of value in it, but I'll tell you, it's never going to be very large, and it's just absurdly, comically over-priced now. Cutting features in the free tier is not going to move anyone to the premium, it's just going to erode their user base.

They probably have a huge cashflow problem, for some reason. No idea why that would be, their app is simple, and they're not exactly putting out any groundbreaking features.

They also have a metric ton of data to sell to LLM inc. et al, which, you'd think that'd make it cheaper, but, they might really be in a hole and that alone can't dig them out.

They at least used to have mountains of tech debt from the days when the cloud was far less standardized.

It would be easy to point to their recent acquisition by Bending Spoons and say that they're squeezing the stone for blood.

Evernote peaked around 2013 and was loosing users ever since. There’s no way to salvage the product at this point, they squeeze the last drops of revenue from their piece of the market before it’s completely gone.

Look at the trend: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

Some people will pay $129.99/yr to not lose their established setup/notes. Extractive pricing.

Timing it at the end of the year is also an immoral strategy - people are busier both at work and at home and are more likely to just pay and deal with it than to do the research and migrate to a new system now.

I'd evaluated Evernote alternatives for years, but that ludicrous price hike was the kick in the pants I needed to finally choose one (UpNote, for its similarity to early Evernote and one-time $29.99 price for Premium) and migrate to it. Evernote does make exporting notes easy, at least. I moved and validated a decade-plus of them in an afternoon without any formatting or content issues.

There are plenty of notes apps out there now, and at least one company that actually wants business should handle anyone's particular use case. The only reason I can think of to stay on Evernote at this point is sheer inertia.

Please, nobody use Evernote.

The software is the definition of bloated, and it has accrued multiple bugs that would be in show-stoppers at any other software house (silently failing to save data; selecting and deleting text actually deletes exactly twice as much text as was selected, consistently reproducible; and many more).

They also use dark patterns in trying to get people to pay (confusing options, multiple prompts, hidden close buttons).

Particularly insane is that you can't export all your notes - you have to do it one notebook at a time (and each one takes a strangely long time if you have a lot of notes).

It is obvious just from using it that it's being run by a team with neither the experience nor dedication necessary for a cloud-based synchronizing store of user data.

I wonder what's the current "funding" status of Evernote. It is one of those services that has existed for quite some time. I remember when it had just started 20+ years ago. It was supposedly revolutionary, part of the new "web 2" wave. I am surprised it is still going as a company.

They were sold to Bending Spoons, and they've been trying to squeeze as much as they can from it before it dies

Does anyone know the origin of this company’s name?

‘Spoon bending’ of course is the fraudulent claim by people like Uri Geller that they have supernatural powers that enable them to bend spoons. Whereas they’re just performing a magic trick.

So I could see ‘Bending Spoons’ as a company name a bunch of ways. Either they admire Uri, or they’re mocking the nonsense. Or it’s unrelated.

In the Matrix (film) spoons are bent, signifying a super power to manipulate reality.

Sounds like they failed to realize the origin of the concept as it relates to charlatanism:

> The meaning of the name came [ … ] from the movie The Matrix. We loved it immediately because it captured some big ideas we believed in—and still believe in. These are the power of the mind to do what seems impossible, like bending spoons with your thoughts, and the value of persevering to achieve those goals.

It isn't still going as a company. It was bought a little while ago by a company called Bending Spoons.

I am very worried about Evernote, and this is another clear sign that Evernote just doesn't "get" it.

50-notes is insufficient for any serious trial of Evernote, and clearly insufficient if you're considering switching any non-trivial note pile to Evernote.

Yes, this reminds me that I need to find a way to export my old Evernote docs so I don't lose them completely.

the iOS app can export them one by one to files -- I just went through what I had in there from 8 years back when it was the tool I used to keep things together through a move, and there were like 2 things that I actually cared about.

You can export them in bulk from the website. It is quite painless.

How long until they make that a non-free feature I wonder.

How? All Im seeing is notebook by notebook export.

I don't exactly remember because it was awhile ago when I exported all my notes and I no longer have an account to check. I remember I had to google how to do it, but once I found out how to do it, it was very easy. There was just a button or link somewhere (maybe under account settings?) that allowed me to download everything as a zip file. Oh, and I remember I had to do it on the desktop website and not on a mobile device.

> I am very worried about Evernote, and this is another clear sign that Evernote just doesn't "get" it.

My interpretation is that they believe the product can't compete for new customers. They're trying to suck as much money out of (a very large number of) paying legacy customers as they can before they shut the service down. They don't care about free users, since they don't expect new customers anyway. They implemented big price hikes a while ago.

Obsidian Importer allows you to easily convert your Evernote notebooks to Markdown files that you can use with any Markdown-compatible app:

https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote

> After Bending Spoons acquired Evernote in November 2022, the company laid off 129 people in February 2023. At that time, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that the notetaking app has “been unprofitable for years and the situation was unsustainable in the long term.”

"Hey, have you seen this Evernote company?"

"Yeah, they've been unprofitable for years and are unsustainable in the long term."

"So... buy?"

Unfortunately, there are profitable ways to do this such as leveraged buyouts where you take out debt in the purchased company’s name to cover the purchase, extract as much revenue as possible, and then leave someone else holding the debt.

This is the private equity model.

There are companies who went big, that in hindsight should have stayed as small cash generating machines. I have a vague idea Evernote is one of those - is that right? Hindsight of course being 20/20.

Good insight. Its been interesting watching Evernote make missteps over the years but survive nonetheless. It feels to me like they've missed every SAAS trend except the initial one they got right, and ceded marketshare to competition like Dropbox, Notion, Google Keep, Apple Notes, Obsidian, etc, etc.

> Hindsight of course being 20/20.

I mean, I don't feel like it's much hindsight, there's a ton of companies that fall into this "if you aren't a billion dollar company you're a failure" mindset, and as an outsider it constantly feels like it's obviously not in the cards.

I do often wonder what Evernote would be today if they hadn't taken all that VC money.

Evernote is a note taking application, that was pretty popular. As a company supporting a basic app as a <10 person shop pulling in a couple $M a year, itd be very successful. I never understood how it was a VC funded app in the first place, it never needed to hyperscale.

After trying out dozens of things like this, the only one that has stuck for over a year for me has been logseq.

https://logseq.com/

I used logseq and liked its block based approach. Then I was some day missing the ability to create a full Markdown page.

I moved to Obsidian which is IMO a more finished product, and more flexible.

Evernote was a tool that I loved, and has slowly gotten worse and worse. Especially the apps. They seem set on destroying themselves with this one.

Unfortunately, the story of too many companies who seek to be everything and lose sight of their core product and customers.

I had been a paying Evernote customer since 2011 or so. But the drastic price increases were too much for me. I just didn't use it that much anymore. In hindsight, I should have cancelled earlier.

I ended up exporting everything and used Obsidian to convert my notes into Markdown files. I mostly use Apple Notes and Google Drive as a substitute. Works well enough for my use case.

Was a big fan of evernote since its inception. It was wonderful product and used it everyday for more than a decade. It had so much of my info that I even purchased their $41 plan. I see no value in spending $$ on this as there are newer and better alternatives available (notion). I switched all of my data to notion. Sad to see this restriction.

I read this article last year and found it to be a pretty good in-depth analysis of how Evernote had a lot of potential but lost in so many ways:

- [Why Evernote Failed to Realize Its Potential |The Full History](https://nira.com/evernote-history)

Oh, finally I will have the strenght to move to Obsidian. I will dearly miss old Evernote Classic features that don't exist in a new version, but.. anyway.

New version is limited, significantly slower, don't support critical for me features, expensive, and now even more limited. So.. good luck Evernote. You were good 3 years ago.

To add another voice to the chorus; I highly recommend Obsidian for your notes. It's essentially a really nice Markdown editor with some extra features, all your notes are regular old .md's that you can port anywhere, and by default its all offline/private. The documentation for Obsidian is also written in Obsidian, if you want to see what a "finished" notebook actually looks like - https://help.obsidian.md/Home

My personal setup is just Syncthing running on a few devices, shuffling my notes directory around as I update it. There is a fairly large library of Plugins available, but personally I haven't found a need for them given my use case.

Converted out to Apple Notes and couldn't be happier. Evernote has been garbage for a while. I take screenshots and paste them into Evernote fairly frequently and it's also fun getting back in there later seeing that all the screenshots I pasted didn't actually paste and is now just a broken image.

Not to mention the stuff they pulled where free accounts (had one for years and years) had a small device limit and of course the never ending sales modals you get when you log in which always say "are you sure, you won't see this sale again" which of course pops up again when you log in next time.

Screw Evernote. I'm glad I converted out.

Apple Notes is the silent killer of this space.

They've just been quietly adding features and I imagine Evernote struggling to compete against it.

For anyone who hasn't given Apple Notes a fair shake recently, I suggest checking it out again. It’s recently introduced power features that make surfacing and interacting with notes so much better. Gone are the days when Notes was an afterthought that was tied to your Mail/IMAP.

Some features I like: tagging, smart folders, PDF previews, note linking, and the fact that I can drag-drop nearly anything into a note and store it there. You can also access Notes in a browser at iCloud.com.

All for free, built-in!

Also hard to compete with gestures only available in Apple apps like “quick note” where you drag your finger from the bottom right of your screen anywhere (even in lock screen) and a new note pops up

I've been using Standard Notes'[0] free tier for a while now without issues. Far superior to Evernote. And apparently EN uses your data for machine learning so they can monetize their free users. Standard operating procedure, when your data is en clair. Can't monetize E2EE data like with Standard Notes.

[0] https://standardnotes.com/

What are the suggested alternatives for:

- Desktop and mobile (not a web app), with global hotkeys on desktop

- Not self-hosted

- Fast and functional create/edit/search UX

- Basic organization (tags and/or groups)

- Basic formatting (headers and lists)

- Not drowning in features

Doesn't need to be FOSS, and I'm OK with paying depending on how well it works.

Edit: I could also let go of "not self-hosted" if it opens up a stand-out option.

I moved to Microsoft OneNote. Features are ok, but now I'm a bit worried about the scalability. Putting all notes in single file does not feel the best option and on the other hand I dislike the idea of managing multiple notebooks (and wasting brain cycles thinking how to do the split).

I don't have much special requirements, but I really want to have tool where I can easily copy-paste images (mostly screenshots), scale them and write stuff around them.

OneNote would fit that bill. 5 GB cloud storage is free, or $20/year for 100 GB, or $70/year for 1 TB (Microsoft 365, which would also include Office).

I love Drafts, only for mac and iOS however: https://getdrafts.com/

Pro version is reasonably priced although I haven't found a need to upgrade.

After testing many products and writing my own taking note app I settled down with Obsidian.

It covers all your requirements and more. Plenty of useful plugins.

I even wrote a command line app to quickly add a single line note to the daily note of the day (https://github.com/wsw70/dly) with ideas how to connect it to fantastic apps such as AutoHotKey

https://obsidian.md/

I suggest https://joplinapp.org/

I used Evernote as a free user for awhile, I even considered paying for the service, but then they started implementing all of these dark patterns with the obvious goal of making it so painful to use that I would pay just to stop the pain. Well, they made it so painful that I exported all my notes and went elsewhere.

Can you share any advice on exporting? I used Evernote for years as my digital brain but also got fed up with the dark patterns. I stopped my renewal lately but thought I would still retain access to all of my old notes when I needed them. Seems like I should properly export now...

I remember I had to do it from a laptop browser and not from the mobile app. I think there was a link on the left side near the bottom (maybe I had to click into another place like Account first). All my notes were exported as a zip file in human readable format. I don't remember the exact way to do it, but if you google it you should find instructions.

Can anyone suggest steps to extract notes and get them into a good open source alternative (and what that would be?)

I migrated from Evernote to Obsidian a while back. There's a variety of tools available to extract your notes and convert them. I am pretty sure the one I was used was Yarle: https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle

+1 on Obsidian. Markdown is super nice to use and as for syncing it's open to BYO solution (it's all just markdown/text files!) or you can pay Obsidian to sync for you.

Joplin has instructions on how to import Evernote notes to it: https://joplinapp.org/help/apps/import_export

The Obsidian Importer is free and converts your data to Markdown that you can use with any Markdown-compatible app:

https://help.obsidian.md/import/evernote

I moved to Joplin a few months ago. The editor is not as good as Evernote but does the job. I can use it on as many machines as I want but I always remember to manually sync to avoid loss. Overall, Joplin is decent and functional without the polished interface.

Problem with exporting is I can't see the metadata like date created. Don't know if this is a Mac only issue. Any ideas?

This clarifies it a bit more:

"In keeping with Evernote’s 3 Laws of Data Protection, and to ensure that you retain full ownership of your data, any Free user who currently has more than fifty notes and one notebook will still be able to view, edit, export, share, and delete existing notes and notebooks. " [https://evernote.com/blog/evernote-free-note-limits]

Evernote was a standout app in the beginning. Sadly, they've done nothing good since about 2014 or so. One misstep after another and now they're pissing off their remaining users. These are the death throes of a dying business.

I was an early paid user of Evernote. They lost their way like a decade ago. It's so sad. Looks like they are not going to recover.

What I want most in a note application is wiki like functionality where I can drop in wiki like links to other notes. A personal wiki that is cross-platform, the notes are encrypted, and has automatic syncing. I used to use one called Trunk Notes, but it folded years ago.

Recently I noticed some references to Evernote in some default iOS Apps (Shortcuts, I think?). And I was like, "huh that's weird - didn't I cancel that like eight years ago?" And sure enough I did. The app isn't installed on my device. I guess maybe the Shorcut is targeting the remote API, which makes it a fairer default (like posting to Twitter). But it was strange to see.

Does Evernote pay Apple for some kind of inclusion as a default in apps like this?

I moved to Zettlr and a git repo a long time ago. It has everything I need to organize and sync my notes without needing to pay any subscription fees

Why not simply ditch the private user tier completely? I don't get this product. It doesn't make any sense.

I ended switching to Inkdrop for my personal use from Evernote. So far pretty happy.

Sorry, people still use Evernote??

Yes, I do, and it works well.

Huh, turns out I still have 80 random notes from 2010-2015 with Evernote. Guess it's time to export them and delete the account.

Who uses Evernote? I have apple notes and Google docs and they do the same things

Is anyone still using it? It already went through the enshittification years ago!

Can't even connect, now. Hugged?

Who?

Oh.. I vaguely remember.

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