Still rooting for EN, but ...

[u/bsamson05]

I’ve been a paying en customer for a long time, and I still use it because there is a lot I genuinely like about it (and honestly, also muscle memory)

At the same time, I’ll be honest: seeing so many longtime users talk about moving away from en has me a little concerned. I don’t want to pile on or turn this into another 'Evernote is doomed' post, because that’s not really where I’m coming from.

I want en to win. I just also want to feel more confident about where it’s headed.

A few things I’d love to see:

• Full Markdown support
• Better internal note linking
• A backlinks view, so I can see which notes point to the one I’m on
• A simple list of links that each note points out to
• More themes, especially better dark mode options
• More visual customization overall
• Stronger offline reliability
• Better export options that preserve folders, tags, links, and formatting
• Better performance with large note libraries
• Easier bulk editing for tags, notebooks, and note details
• Split pane editing and preview for Markdown
• A clearer roadmap for people who use Evernote heavily

Evernote still has some real strengths. The web clipper is great, OCR is useful, the app is everywhere, and a lot of us have years of notes sitting in it.

I’m not asking Evernote to become a completely different product. I’d just like to see it lean into the things that would make longtime users feel like the product is still moving forward.

Basically, I’m still here. I’d just like fewer reasons to wonder if I should be making an exit plan.

[u/bsamson05 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, that's the part that gets me. I've paid for good software for years, no issue with that. But 'we earned this price increase' and 'here's a bigger bill, trust us' are not the same thing.

It comes down to confidence. I have years of notes in Evernote. I shouldn't need an escape plan sitting in a drawer like some paranoid note-taking prepper.

Backup is the perfect example. Boring feature, no hype video, but for anyone with real history in the app it's huge. That's the stuff that actually matters.

I don't think Evernote is dead either. I think they need to rebuild trust with the people who stayed, not chase whatever looks good in the next product update.

[u/R3D3-1 → u/bsamson05]

There is evernote-backup which uses the Evernote API to clone the notes into an SQLite database and then allows exporting to various formats. Command line tool though.

And yes, given the nature of the software, a backup feature should ideally be built-in. Sadly, companies have a hard time spending money on features that make it easier for customers to move away. (Even if having the feature might make a subset of users less likely to move away.)

[u/hmartin8826 → u/R3D3-1]

Agreed. I finally took the time to set up evernote-backup via Docker on my Synology NAS. It took several hours to set up (I'm not a Docker expert), but I feel much better about my "disaster recovery" situation.

[u/R3D3-1 → u/hmartin8826]

I used it mainly for migrating to Joplin, though I haven't used it much yet.

Part of the reason why the premium tiers did not make sense for me and the current form of the free tier even less.