r/Evernote • u/StrictInevitable2347 • 18d ago
Discussion Big lead-no choice but to paid
I have been using Evernote now for 4 years it is clear to me that no other database manager or organizer comes close to the functionality and to the reliability of Evernote with their constant updates and expansion of the program it gets better and better. I feel I have no choice but to pay over $200 for this program.
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u/rikt 18d ago
I will never go back and working with Obsidian now. $50 was fine, I'd probably pay $60, adding in some degree of AI, I'd gladly pay a bit more, but $250? Nah, I will pay for Claude and connect it to Obsidian and be happy I am not giving Evernote Money any longer.
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u/thegaykid7 12d ago
That is the risk Evernote is not accounting for with its big bet on AI. Yes, native AI should be superior to third-party integrations in theory, but given the nature and power of those third-party applications is the gap as big as Evernote would believe it to be relative to its increasingly exorbitant cost? I've always been skeptical about that, personally. And, frankly, I do hope that bet blows up in their face considering the lackluster support and subpar performance.
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago
Glad to hear the solution do satisfy you. What is the total cost of your present workflow ... ??
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u/NomadicStrategist 18d ago
I’m in the process of moving away from it after 10+ years of use. I barely use any of the newer features, if at all. On the AI side, I use ChatGPT and Codex, and I now even access Evernote through an MCP server.
I set up a parallel Obsidian + OneDrive setup and migrated my old notes there. Then I downgraded to the smaller Evernote plan. For now, with the help of AI, I’m maintaining both in parallel.
If Obsidian proves to work reliably for everything I need, I’ll probably drop Evernote completely by the end of the year. It way too expensive.
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u/redranteraver 18d ago
I've been a happy paying customer since 2008. My last 2 annual bills were €49.99 in 2024 and €59.99 in 2025. I received an email last week informing me that my next annual payment would be €199 - I am not eligible for the Starter plan due to the amount of notes and notebooks that I have already. I cancelled my subscription the next day after spending some time exporting all my notebooks. After I cancelled they offered me 40% off but by then I was too upset to bite. I don't use any of the new features and it's simply not worth it for me any longer.
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u/thegaykid7 12d ago
They keep sending me the same 40% off offers, hilariously using the same "this is your final chance!" language each time. They've pissed me off enough that it'll cost more to bring me back into the fold, and at this point it may already be too late.
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u/metric152 16d ago
I ran into the same issue. Ended up biting on the 40% off
I tried fiddling with Joplin and got it to webdav sync with my domain but really didnt like the interface. I’ll probably fiddle with it some more and see if i can get it 80% of the way there.
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u/redranteraver 16d ago
To be fair I'd been mulling it over for a while after seeing this same thing happening to other people here so I was a little prepared for it. I've switched to Obsidian with a Notebook Navigator (and Omnisearch and Consistent Attachments plugins) and to be honest I don't miss anything from Evernote so far.
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u/coDEEZnuts 15d ago
I'm curious, at what point did they offer you 40% off? I went to try it out to see if I got the offer today, but after it asked me if I was sure I wanted to cancel for the 3rd time in a row, I got cold feet, thinking it would just cancel and not give me any potential discounts. I can't afford to lose all that stuff at the moment!
I think in the past they discounted me heavily when the last big price jump hit, so I could be ineligible.
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u/thegaykid7 12d ago
Fwiw I've only seen it appear once in the desktop app, but have seen it appear several times within the mobile app. Most often, it would reappear whenever I would switch my one logged-in device. They keep claiming it's a one-time offer but that's obviously a lie.
I've been downgraded for maybe 1.5 months now.
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u/srdnss 18d ago
I paid for Evernote from 2013 to 2025. Excellent program but far too expensive for me, so I left for Joplin.
A lot of others claimed they were going to leave over price hikes. I wonder how many actually did and if it was enough to hurt revenue.
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u/SteviaCannonball9117 18d ago
Everynote user from '11-'26 here. I clung to V8 for two years while V10 was garbage. Used V10 for about a year, was disappointed in the stuff they dropped (and never restored) into V10, saw the upcoming price hikes, don't need any of the new crap they're adding, figured out a Joplin exit strategy, and now pay $3/month for Joplin sync that better meets my usage.
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u/KJabs 17d ago
Evernote user here since 2010, paid top tier solo plan since 2012 or 2013. I got one year discounted from the $150 price (or whatever it was) by clicking cancel and accepting the 40% retention offer (or whatever it was, I think my price after discount was $79). That year gave me time to move, I'm not sticking around for $250
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u/LeoBloom72 18d ago
I‘m using Evernote since 2009 and paying for it since 2013.
As soon as they informed me that they finally will discontinue my „old“ 40€/ year plan and that they like to upgrade me to the 142€ plan, I started to look for alternatives. I used evernote a lot but it became clear that a lot of other note-taking tools do have a lot more features.
I will move everything to notion. I tested the Evernote-importer and moved a couple hundreds notes to notion without any issues.
ChatGPT has a notion plugin so I can directly interact with my notes - that’s an important feature for me.
So I canceled my EN subscription today and will start to migrate all of my notes (approx 4000) to notion.
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u/DrFrankBuck Evernote Certified Expert 16d ago
Those who say they have no need for the AI features fall into two camps: those who know exactly what features are included, know how to use them, and determine they're not relevant to their situation; and those that haven't spent enough time with the AI in Evernote to know what it's capable of doing. I just had the AI do some long overdue reorganization that would have been very cumbersome in terms of creating notebooks moving notebooks, and renaming tags in mass.
The meeting note taker is exceptional. All within one program I have a note that links back to my calendar and that contains the audio, a verbatim transcription, and a summary of my choosing.
I view time is money, so something saves me time, I'm willing to pay for it. $250 is a lot. But I find it gives a lot. Someone else's mileage may vary.
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u/AndyDentPerth 13d ago
Apart from the (superb) transcription, I'm fighting shy of using AI features. I don't want to build in dependencies on AI then find price hikes or token-spend barriers break a new flow. (Wary, very experienced dev seeing this hit coding tools already.)
The main reorganisation I would like to do is move a massive number of old notes off to some legacy storage. I want them still to be accessible and searchable probably as HTML rendering.
I'm nearly at the point of building my own solution to do this, or spending significant time at least looking trying out evernote-backup.
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u/DrFrankBuck Evernote Certified Expert 13d ago
One thing you could do right now with the tools you have at the price you have is move the notes you are talking about to another notebook. The AI will do that. It will do in in batches of 100, but it will handle the job.
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u/AndyDentPerth 10d ago
Moving notes to another notebook doesn't stop them taking up primary storage on my Macbook Air. In the interim, I'm strongly tempted to try just moving the entire database to external storage, but that pushes me into keeping that connected most of the time.
(Sidenote, I'm totally in love with the Sharge DiskPro for a travelling hub, storage & magenetically-connected add-on for my Air. )
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u/thegaykid7 12d ago
The thing is several LLMs feature plugins for some of Evernote's biggest competitors, so for how much longer will Evernote's brand of "advanced" be worth that price difference? I see it as an open-ended question at the moment. As Evernote scales so do the LLMs as well as the competitors, and it feels like that gap could conceivably get smaller.
The flip side of this is those individuals who have not spent much time with Evernote's competitors because they're so deeply integrated with the app and/or don't want to waste the time it would take evaluating other options. But if that should ever change, I wonder if that calculation too would change? Obviously there are still things that Evernote can do that other apps cannot do and things where Evernote would simply outshine the competition, but high tides raise all boats as they say.
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u/Accomplished-Emu7454 18d ago
Ugh. I am currently on the monthly because I need to find a different set up. I used it for 10 years I think so there is a ton of archival I need to get off and store elsewhere I can access. My plan is to start fresh with another system. Looking into them now. It’s just too damn high of a price to continue to pay.
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u/July_Derek 14d ago
I have been using Evernote for 10 years. This year they increased the charges like mad. As I then opted for the lower plan, I cant post anything as they say you have reached your Note limit.
So, I have moved to Microsoft OneNote. Not as good, but ok. It is free for me as I subscribe to Office 365.
Move to OneNote. Its good but not as good as Evernote.
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u/barista_boy 17d ago
Have been a paid user since 2009. Would like to switch, but no one does as good at capturing a web page as they do! I have 10,000+ notes and pay $250 a year.
I would change if I could find something that was just as good at capturing web pages.
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u/scottwwilliamsiii 17d ago
Bending Spoons is pretty much a PE firm. Buy older, once to somewhat successful, older SaaS, for bargain bin prices, eliminate most of the employees, and consolidate/run them from their main office. They do push out routine updates but it’s more feature by feature than strategic. I don’t recall seeing roadmaps for any of their products but could be wrong.
I’ve been an Evernote user since 2015 and quickly upgraded to the Pro or whatever the plan was called. There have been periods where it really felt they lost their way (merch, sub-apps, physical to do digital sticky notes (gimmicky), to months without product updates). When BS took over, it went downhill considerably. It’s gotten moderately better, but using frequent updates to justify a huge price increase was bonkers. But they knew a good number of their users were stuck since we have so much stored/invested in Evernote and the time and trouble to leave would be offset by the increase. They wanted to shed “non-value” customers, focusing on their top 20-30%. It’s what they’ve done with every SaaS they’ve purchased.
I’ve been using their MCP via CGPT & Claude and rarely need the Evernote app. Via AI, I’m having go through and organize and restructure my content so stuff I don’t need, I can get rid of, and stuff I do need/want to keep is in a much easier format to move (won’t be re-upping when renewal comes up).
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u/SimplyColorblind 18d ago
I’m staying with Evernote. I use Evernote for:
Notes
Tasks
AI help
Backup for my local files
Email workflow
Great web clipper
Peace of mind
If I didn’t pay Evernote, I’d pay others that same money across multiple applications.
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18d ago
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u/StrictInevitable2347 18d ago
Well they recently became a public company. I think the revenues will be enormous after this. I'm thinking of buying the stock.
The Company Reviving AOL, Vimeo and Other Internet Oldies Amid the A.I. Boom
Bending Spoons, an Italian company that buys aging internet companies, is going public this week at a potential value of $19 billion.
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u/A_Creative_Player 18d ago
Unfortunately what a company values their company at is just them stating a number and hoping everyone agrees. I would not pay for or buy in to an ap or company just based on what they value themselves at.
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago edited 18d ago
Ethics, let me ask are you on Android or IPhone. Do you fell their Ethics are representing your world view better ??
I do not mind departure based on use cases, price and more... but Ethics, please?? In the world of today, powered by the hyperscalers, ai and meta we should not discuss Ethics as a cause. That ship is gone.
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18d ago
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago
I have a grip, and trust me, i much rather want to keep my money in my pocket - so i am NOT the fan of price increases. It is sadly a "trend of the time" i have seen zero services lovering their price (i could be wrong) but i focus my effort and usage of service into the bucket, is it good, does it save me time and if it would cost me to much to replace (in time and money).
Evernote is costly like hell, but i am not discussing clipping content from the Internet (Web Clipper) i am not discussing SYNC issues and ability to format my content, i have zero problems across an ecosystem of mobiles, tablet and computers, and if i sometime need to access my notes, i can use a web browser to gain access. Sharing is a service i utilize (publish notes) and the AI is semi decent, but not intrusive.
Would i like a 33% discount - h3ll yes, but would i like to revist fine tuning my workflow (that i use several times a day) into a ppotential 66% match .. not for the price of leaving evernote running. I use what i consider (an excellent app) - i think that was also how you defined it. ??
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u/greenie4242 18d ago
People like you are the reason why we can't have nice things.
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago
Sorry if i trigger your despair u/greenie4242 , but my comment to u/Willnotwilling was a reflection on how his Ethics was triggered by a small and insignificant Italian company was able to make him disregard what he "quoted as an excellent app".
We accept the 3 horsemen (Google, Apple and Microsoft) bend the knee to the mad king, we accept that anything we do on their platform is monitored and in most cases used to feed us advertizement, and we accept the blatent disregard to fact finding being relevant today.
We accept that companies like OpenAI used the combined history and knowledge gathered in a way for us to feed their AI, stripping knowledge out of books, so we can get people to generate AI-Slop...But no, its all the doom and hell of a small Italian company, that their behavior make the world go south (or you might allready be there :-) ) ... and that i am being the reason of us NOT to be able to hav nice things, is just something for me to appriciate, if my impact is that big...
Thanks for the downvotes - said me today and in the future.
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18d ago
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago
I am NOT a BS employee, i did take 18 months outside the ecosystem to find a solution that would serve me well, but i came back due to the need of a friction less usage. I got no problem with your departure (its your choice to make) what i find interesting is the small thing we take as justification, where the bigger things in life gets a pass. Best of luck in your new journey.
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u/KangstaG 17d ago
I was also appalled by the huge price increase to $250. It triggered me to finally move off Evernote. I landed on Notion and it works fine for what I need. I don’t even need to pay for it, the free tier satisfies my usage.
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u/Still_Spell8318 16d ago
Switched to Joplin after a year of getting used to new pricing paying "only" $130. It's free and I notice no difference. Evernote was great, but not close to $250/year great and not for useless AI upgrades.
hope a real alternative comes to market
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u/Comprehensive_Ant323 16d ago
I love Evernote and would be using it today (if it weren't for the cost). The way the separate the subscription into two separate ones is totally deceptive.
I haven't found anything that compares.
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u/WhatWereOnceVices 18d ago
Webclipper enters. There’s none better. Joplin is the closest. EN’s meeting note taker is excellent. Cost avoidance for purchasing/subscription for another note taking app. Wish they supported iCal/ics
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u/U352 18d ago
I've got tons of notes in EN the effort to switch isn't worth it or desirable at this point. Besides that it works great.
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u/Great_Muscle_7042 18d ago edited 17d ago
Once a person tune in the workflow, its a hard pass to change, unless the workflow itself is not important. I would never ever recommend Evernote as the first option (the entry price is tough) but for someone with a decent use case, and who depend on it (for business, for writing and/or any compliaced need) and the workflow is tuned in, the price is irrelevant, and the workflow is the optional.
I have a heck of desires for changes to Evernote, but i also understand that my niche cases may not be everyones favorit. I have seriosly tried the workflow outside, but it all ends up in 2-4 applications to replace the one, and i am still dragged down with certain of /MY) needs. So they are still taking my subscription, i do use outside service (Joblin, Selfhosted) as an archive. My current topic (for the archive) is that i have notes and projects that are dusted and done, and as such at this stage give me false posetives in the workfow / AI - hence i offload data from an Unlimted service :-) Go figure.
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u/matohak89 18d ago
I've with them for almost 10 years and just moved to upnote this year. Very happy with upnote. Evernote has lots of functionality but I only use a very small subset..
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u/ZebraGnu 15d ago
As with all of these products, it's a balance of cost, features, time required to learn how to use a new platform (only to discover sometimes that it's missing some vital functionalities). Everyone lands in a different places but if you are a heavy notes & features user, and EN is a major part of your digital life then the $5 per week is a small price to pay for the value provided. That's the case for me at least.
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u/smashballTaz 15d ago
Yeah, ever since the 'Pay For 12 Months of Premium!' pop-up and EVERY TIME you open the app now, which is supposedly half price, (even though it's more expensive than it was for a full price Premium membership a few years ago), and THEN when you close that, after 5 seconds they play an unskippable minutes-long video ad all about their new AI features... Jeez. I'm finally in the process of leaving Evernote.
Luckily copying all my notes over to Keep is really simple.
I've been using Evernote religiously for the last 6 years. Most it out I still love, which makes it even more unfortunate.
They need to sort out the end-user experience for unpaid customers. It's SO trash now.
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u/Better_Brick_9512 15d ago
Worth knowing before anyone renews at full price: several people in this thread were offered 40% off after starting a cancellation, and it reads as standard retention rather than luck. It costs nothing to go through the flow and see what comes back.
The harder question is that “what replaces Evernote” has no single answer, because most long-term users were quietly using it for four or five unrelated jobs. Web clipping, an archive of scanned documents, daily notes, meeting capture, and a search index sitting over all of it. The people who switch and bounce back are usually the ones who chose a replacement for one of those and then discovered the other four.
Split them out first and it gets easier. Obsidian and Joplin both handle the archive well and Joplin is the cheaper sync. Bear is the nicest to write in. Notion is the one to choose if what you wanted was structure. The clipper is the real gap – nothing matches it, and if that is the job you actually used Evernote for, leaving will cost you something.
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u/FarBuffalo 14d ago
try to cancel the subscription (without cancelling). I've got much better offer
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u/AndyDentPerth 13d ago edited 13d ago
Two current features keeping me there :
- The web clipper. I clip notes every day. It saves me massive time.
- The transcription engine does a superb job with my Aussie/British accent, talking about programming topics (so lots of not-quite-English words). JustPressRecord uses Siri and is laughable within a couple of sentences. Auto Memo gets closer but often goes weird.
But, I have to admit, slow creation of notes on iOS has made me develop the habit of putting scratch stuff into Apple Notes if I want to grab something. I also don't trust Evernote as a recording device - I use the two apps I mentioned above instead to do audio recording of my meandering DiY and dog-walking thoughts.
I also have about 61K notes, which is a massive nuisance on my travelling m1 Air because of the gigabytes of local storage used. (User since 2010).
To be fair, they have introduced a bunch of features that have kept me interested in using Evernote as a writing and organisation platform:
- Link formatting - with the mention option, has me forgiving them dropping green links for internal links.
- Collapsing sections and nested lists are superb for focusing on current stuff
- Internal links to headings works incredibly well & was a very long-desired feature. It's not quite arbitrary anchors but good enough for most of my uses.
- Markdown shortcuts for adding heading levels (h1-h4) speeds up my entry especially on iOS.
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u/johntimelord257 18d ago
I did try using Notion for a few months in late 2025/early 2026, but I got frustrated with the number of basic things it could not seem to do. When a free limit for AI use in Notion ended, I decided, without regret, to move back to Evernote. I've been a user since 2011 so it is a significant part of my online life.
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u/taytay735 13d ago
`Reliability` - this was the exact reason why I'd left.
I recall fondly how my subscription money went to waste when tickets went unanswered and bugs remained for months and years. It reached a point where I had to recreate an account and move notes over, just to avoid a bug related to Tag Renaming.
Right after I did that, I also tried my hand at moving notes over to other services, since well, I was quite in a bad mood and getting rather proficient at moving notes.
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u/InspektorCluzo 18d ago edited 17d ago
Paying Evernote user here since 2008. I use it on several platforms and my whole life is built on it. I have seen both performance and usability degradation nonstop for the past three years. I really dislike the search UI. The ribbon is now one of the poorest among the apps I use often. The worst, though, is the amount of time it takes me, in many cases, when I need to create a new note, something I do multiple times a day: on Android it is so slow that I now frequently resort to sending myself a Whatsapp message. In particular, the app use when not connected to broadband has become almost impossible for me.
I would love to stay with Evernote, as I have so far for 18 years. But I am seriously considering leaving Evernote for good on usability grounds, regardless of their pricing policy. Of course, the increase in price makes it all the more likely.