NotePlan 3 beta

I’ll clean my glasses next time :slight_smile:

Thanks for the shout-out! These days I’ve been using NotePlan with sucess - through my Setapp subscription, while Agenda lost me as its editing (and most other parts) were too fiddly.

As good as v3 of NotePlan looks, I can’t bring myself to pay AU$100 each year to use it. That’s simply too much when I have a bunch of other already paid-for options sitting on my computer.

If it is on Setapp, then a no-brainer.

I’m not the market, but if I’m a representative of the market, I think Eduard has got his pricing wrong.

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Yes, that’s planned. But need to work on the launch first. After that new features.

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If the downloads are high on the AppStore, it’s easier to get the attention of the AppStore editors. That’s one reason. Another is that I want to limit the amount of work, otherwise the launch needs to be delayed infinitely if I don’t draw the line somewhere.

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I bought and used NotePlan 2. I used it for a few sample projects and sometimes as a daily tally or scratchpad, but I never had the confidence to jump all in. If an app ambitiously aims to take over notes, tasks, reminders and my calendar trusting the reliability plays a huge role in my decision-making process. However, I had high hopes for improvements in v3.

But $60/year is the entirely wrong price point. At that price level, I would expect a UX that is on par with high quality apps like Things 3. Due to its countless rough edges Noteplan sadly doesn’t even come close.

The guys from iA Writer recently published a good blog post about the dreadful subscription pricing situation. If a subscription model is really unavoidable:

Subscriptions over a year should be substantially cheaper than your previous full version or your paid competitor’s app.

An analogy:
Let’s say you run a restaurant and have profitability issues. If your food is just decent, your waiters are a little bit unreliable and the overall interior feels a bit thrown together, quadrupling your prices for beverages and food would be the worst approach to attack the problem in hope to attract more customers whilst becoming profitable.

Thanks, Eduard! (For what it’s worth, I am not trying to be an instigator here—I realize I’ve mentioned .md compatibility in multiple places. Apologies for being redundant! :sweat_smile:)

Have you been using the NotePlan 3 beta? It’s quite sleek. There are a few issues, sure, but I imagine that’s why it’s still in beta.

I’m also not sure the comparison to Things is apt. Agenda is closer in feature space, and the price point is about the same for both apps. That said, I do love Agenda’s pricing model.

I was specifically not comparing features. I was talking about the UX and how frictionless the day to day usage of the app is.
Sure, Things has been around for quite some time. Yet the life-time cost and value for such a polished app is kept reasonable. I do not get this feeling about the price-value relation for the proposed Noteplan subscription price point.

Yes, Agenda is probably the closest direct competitor. But I have to disagree. The price is not “about the same”. It is actually just about half (or up to 60% depending on the currency) and the model is entirely different, since the features at the point of purchase remain unlocked perpetually at no additional cost for the lifetime of the app. A year to year decision can be made, whether the new features are worth the recurring price.

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I agree, and will also add that Agenda is 25% of the annual cost for users that are only needing the iOS/iPadOS apps. NotePlan is all or nothing, macOS, iOS, iPadOS.

And Agenda isn’t an “annual” cost if the user doesn’t want it to be. It’s $35 each renewal, but one can spread the renewals out over a whatever 12+ month period they want. Agenda has now caught up with all the features I’ve been wanting, so I’m planning on sitting out the premium level for a couple of years. Unless something fascinating gets added in the meanwhile.

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That looks interesting, although designing a true Zettelkasten app needs more than just easy wiki linking :slightly_smiling_face: but it’s nice to see more and more apps refine the note taking axioms.

Did NotePlan market itself as a “zettelkasten” app?

What is a “note taking axiom”?

Yes, it does, it says that it can be used for Zettelkasten purposes, if you look as the website.
With this axiom thing I just meant more apps try to push the envelope when it comes to note taking (Roam, Obsidian, all we’ve been talking about). The way NotePlan markets itself shows that it’s aware of those competitors. Something Evernote is not, just to beat that dead horse a little deader.

Fiddled a bit with the beta.

What is really cool:

  • Beautiful design
  • Very fast app with well-thought UI
  • Smart filtering and review of tasks across all notes and projects

What I really dislike

  • The linking to Reminders forbids from differentiating between defer / due dates, which is a major dealbreaker for me (and why I have come to hate Todoist after using it for a long time)
  • Zettelkasten app? Really? Just because you can use wiki linking? This is borderline dishonest, feels like the dev just used that as a buzzword, but that’s a bad gamble, as Zettelkasten enthusiasts are incredibly picky about their tools.

All in all: I think it’s a great tool for someone with a lot of minute tasks and meetings, living mostly in the corporate world. I think it is definitely not a good tool for creatives and people doing any kind of long, deep work across several different roles.

Staying with Obsidian, DEVONthink, Tinderdbox and OmniFocus. :slight_smile: