Evernote in Trouble?

Software
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I think it was a combination of things such as;

  • The process of importing a file to the DT inbox and then going into the app to sort it into the right database. It was just a few too many steps vs. saving a file to a finder folder. I know I could index but I couldn’t bring myself to trust indexing.
  • Quickly accessing a file just felt like it took too many steps to search for what I needed.
  • I’m not a reasercher or academic so a lot of the power user features are just lost on me. I can see the huge potential for other kinds of users however.

What this led to was me quickly saving files in other folders on my Mac so that I could get to them with less friction later, which grew into a full blown PARA system outside of DT - so in the end I could never trust where the file would be and so I could not trust the system.

With DTTG it was two things;

  • The process of syncing the databases - I would always forget and then not be on Wifi etc…

  • The note taking experience - it’s just not for me. I find it too clunky and ugly. I’m not a markdown guy so maybe it’s better for people who are but it’s a world away from an Apple note. Also the split screen and slide over experience wasn’t great for note taking. It may have improved as I honstly stopped trying about a year ago.

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64

Last time i checked, still no AppleScript so not linkable per

I stayed away from the application-from day one except for evaluating it (as i do research in cognitive productivity)

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65

Interesting blog post from Evernote about improvements and future plans.

And video analysing the blog post

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66

That’s good news. The initial/catch-up load of CRDTs are a significant tradeoff (but worth it and a bet on where the puck is going as far as processing and network speeds.)

The Muse podcast had a good crunchy discussion on those tradeoffs recently.

Hopefully they’ve learned from this and will test future sync updates on more gnarly test databases and files.

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67

I wrote about how Evernote was optimizing its back end six years ago. That this project is still underway should not be viewed as encouraging by Evernote users.

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68

It seems your original post was about a cloud infrastructure migration, this last announcement from Evernote is about deploying real-time collaborative sync (aka CDRT). I think it’s a different initiative.

But one thing is clear, there is no way this is Bending Spoons’ hand exclusively. This had to be already advanced during Ian Small’s tenure as CEO and the new owners have seen to it being finished. Which is not bad execution per se, what with the takeover and layoffs.

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69

I left Evernote in the early days of version 10. But it looks to me that its major obstacle may be that it is now just one of several companies offering software that allows you to “Remember everything and tackle any project with your notes, tasks, and schedule all in one place”.

For about the same money Microsoft and Google offer their version of the same thing plus email, cloud storage, and many more options.

Given the bad press it has received the last few years I wonder how much of Evernote’s former glory it will be able to regain?

70

It still has by far the best web clipper - if that matters to you, there is no competition.

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71

I totally agree. :+1:t3:

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The problem is that with Microsoft (which I grudgingly also pay for) and Google that they offer a suite of apps where things can be done individually and it is not a “capture everything in one spot and search it later” style service. No other app has managed the “email to” as well as Evernote, though I wish hey would as that’s a huge part of most peoples workflow and it lives in an email client island. Also - Agree with rkaplan, Web Clipper is solid.

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73

Granted the MS and Google approaches are different than Evernote’s. I haven’t used O365 in at least five years but I’ve read about Loop and some of the other additions MS has made in the past few years.

I use Google Workspace and adding an email or document to a task or a calendar event is just one click away. Documents can contain spreadsheets, other documents, and map directions, etc. I can even assign tasks to other people from within a document. And a single Cloud Search query will search Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, Contacts, PDFs, and all my other files on Google Drive.

Much of what was unique to Evernote is now table stakes and it has more competition than ever before. I’ve read some good things about Bending Spoons and it will be interesting to see how EN does in today’s market.

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74

As an Evernote user, I follow a couple of active Evernote forums on Reddit and Facebook. It is a daily occurrence for someone to post “Why I’m leaving Evernote …”

Having read many of these breaking-up posts the common thread is fear of either missing out on the latest greatest app or fearing for the future of Evernote. The last one is legit.

Evernote is in a time of great transition. The new owners are unknown and unproven and have venture capital underlying their motivations.

At the same time, Evernote works, and, some could argue, works better than it has in years. The days of sluggish performance are behind us. Most of the cross-platform apps are now equal in terms of features. Evernote still offers some of the best in class features compared to any available notes app on the market (web clipper, mail to, ocr search, search in general, cross-platform support).

In many ways, I look at Evernote in the same category as Microsoft Word. Is Word the sexiest text editor on the market? No, but it works. It is stable. It isn’t going anywhere. It has outlasted its competitors. (Anybody remember WordStar?)

The worst case scenario is that Evernote’s owners start squeezing the users for unreasonable annual fees or it simply goes away. Either way, there are export options out of Evernote and many notes applications can import Evernote directly. Even Obsidian has an Evernote importer now.

If there is a lesson to be learned from the Evernote story, it is the difficulty one faces when offering a product or service for little to no money. When it comes time to pay the bills and maintain the app, the developer is faced with either increasing prices astronomically to reflect current costs or shut down.

We’ve seen many developers in the last 15 years who started selling their apps for $.99 on the App Store and now charge significantly more in annual subscriptions. Many of the users who complain about Evernote used the free plan or paid a small annual fee. Now it is double and sometimes three times the amount, but Evernote is still priced competitively in comparison to other apps.

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75

Very well said. I’ve been using Evernote for around 13 years and have watched it go through multiple stages, and although the last 2-3 years have been the most fraught, I’m encouraged by all the recent updates and communication from the new owners.

Evernote is so much a part of my personal workflows that I just flat out don’t want to try to replicate the experience in another app, and will thus go down with the ship if and when that time comes. Until then, it’s still my place to store notes, flesh out my projects and future plans, and act as a cross-platform catchall when needed.

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76

EN’s very generous free plan was only sustainable under high paying customer growth. Once EN fell out of the bleeding edge, I guess most new EN users came for the free plan and stayed there while people who would be paying for it switched to Notion and whatever. That, combined with aggressive VC on its day made EN pivot to “enterprisey” features erratically, with a platform based on native apps for each and every OS that made it extra hard to evolve… that’s what Ian Small successfully identified but was only able to half finish before running out of financial fuel.

We’ll see what the new Bending Spoons overlords can do, but my main concern is the viability of the business itself, not the product.

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77

From what I could find that appears to be what happened. I could find no mention of paying users vs free by 2017.

August 8, 2009

“In 18 months, 1.4 million people have tried the service. An additional 4,500 try it each day.”

“About 75 percent of the customers walk away within the first four months. That’s not worrisome, because the revenue from Evernote’s 500,000 active users is growing faster than the growth in the customer base. . . . Evernote charges them US$5 a month or US$45 a year for these and other benefits.”

“About 0.5 percent convert to paying customers in the first month. But after about a year, 4 percent have converted. (He says he thinks the figure will top out at about 22 percent.)”

Evernote, a Free Storage App, Seeks More Paying Users - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

June 19, 2012

Evernote By The Numbers: 34M Users, 1.4M Paying, And The Relative Merits Of Different Platforms | TechCrunch

December 26, 2013

“The percentage of people who pay in the first month is like one half of one percent. But if they use it for a year, that goes up to seven percent. In the second year, it goes up to 11 percent. Our oldest cohort, the people who have been with us five years or so, it goes up to 25 percent”

Evernote CEO Phil Libin on Turning Loyal Users Into Paying Customers - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

October 11, 2017

Evernote now has 220 million users even after raising prices - CNET

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