So basically, they are following enshitification same as many companies have been doing.
Soon to be purchased by:
A) Meta
B) Microsoft
C) Alphabet
D) Some venture capital firm nobody who uses a computer daily has ever heard of
Place your bets now people!
How many people had heard of Bending Spoons before they bought Evernote? They're a software company but I'd never heard of any of their apps before, either.
I heard of Bending Spoons because I read an article about an unknown company buying mobile apps, raising prices to insane values, and milking existing customers. Then using that profit to buy another app and repeat.
Than I forgot about them until they bought Evernote.
I only heard of them because I wanted to move to Italy and they were hiring and relocating DevOps engineers.
I didn't apply but that was first time I heard of them like 2 years ago.
It was already acquired recently (less than a year ago) by a shady Italian company.
All that lovely text based data on there, I'm sure some companies are salivating at the idea.
Jokes on them, even when I had an account I encrypted all my notes before putting them there. I do the same on Google Keep.
I feel like they were some of the leaders - they’ve been making their product worse while charging more to use it for years
Higher interest rates mean every company has to be profitable ASAP or they’re deader than bed bath and beyond. Gonna keep getting uglier
In case anyone is looking for a recommendation, I started using Obsidian for taking notes recently. It creates markdown files which keeps things nice and clean and then I use Syncthing to sync my files rather than their paid sync option. If Obsidian ever enshitifies I can either use an old version of the application or switch to any other markdown editor.
I'm considering having some sort of nightly sync to a git repo as well for version control but that might be more complexity than I need.
I recently moved to logseq and I've been pleasantly surprised.
+1 for logseq. It lowered my barrier to writing new notes.
Just add a hashtag of the topic and start writing to your daily journal.
I use Obsidian in the work laptop because they don't allow any cloud tool for confidentiality and I like it a lot.
For personal stuff I've been using OneNote just because its free and has clients for almost every system I use.
Those looking for an alternative, I suggest Joplin. I exported/imported from Evernote a few years back and am really happy with it.
👍 for Joplin. It's nice to configure it with WebDAV directly with Nextcloud for replication and sync.
I use nextcloud notes, you get all the above mentioned benefits + Nextcloud
The Joplin client supports Netxcloud installs too.
I forgot Evernote existed. Time to back up my notes from 2014.
I'll leave these here for those fleeing Evernote:
https://github.com/akosbalasko/yarle
https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/migrate-from-evernote-to-apple-notes/
I haven't used either, I never really used Evernote, but a couple people have been posting them as a good way to get your notes migrated out of the app.
Better alternative: Joplin
Works much the same way as Evernote with a similar layout including a wysiwyg editor and a web clipper. However, you can host your own server or sync it to a cloud platform of your choice (or both). Doesn't cost you a thing and is open source. Has an Evernote importer too.
Oh yeah, Evernote used to exist, forgot about that.
A former employer bought a lifetime subscription to Evernote for me, I forget why they did that some perky new manager wanting us all to collaborate or something. I used it for notes when learning Spanish if I recall. A few years after that they canceled it and said I had to pay so I deleted my account. I entirely forgot it existed until reading this post. That's the end of my Evernote story.
Wow. I ditched Evernote after their last price ~~gouge~~ increase, and that's after being with them from the very beginning. Thank God I bailed when I did.
More enshitification
"We're definitely going to use the extra money to help you, not as a cash grab and run for the hills.. LOL, suckers! Shit, the microphone was still on."
I forgot this app still exists.. Who's using it anyways? Its interface feels like it's desperately trying to catch up with other note taking apps.
I had an abusive internship over a decade ago that used it and I'm still able to see all of the corporate logins from that job listed in plain text, so that's one fun use case.
Damn it. I've got a lot of stuff on there, organised and tagged.
I've thought about migrating for the last couple of years, but just left it as I couldn't be bothered.
If it's getting more expensive though, this might be the time to move.
What would be the service with the easiest migration path? Ideally one that:
has good automatic OCR of all documents uploaded to make them searchable
has good apps on Android, Windows and IOS
has a good import function that can retain tags from Evernote
That may be asking too much?
Sounds like Obsidian is a great alternative
One other important thought to add to my own comment.
If I'm moving to a web based service, longevity is important. Nothing lasts forever, but if I move to another solution and migrate everything and they go out of business in 6 mths, that would suck. So it matters that where I move to is fairly solid and sustainable.
That's why I hoped that Evernote would keep going, they charged a reasonable amount for the service.
But I guess in the commercial world it's all about constant growth rather than sustainability...
I could never figure out Evernote. Wound up settling on OneNote
Obsidian is love. Obsidian is life
That's why I use Joplin.
Fuck I’m a relatively heavy user of Evernote
My yearly subscription renewed in January
Enshitification strikes again, or is it something more complex?
Another alternative is Trilium
I've tried using Evernote from time to time throughout the years and each time only last about a week into it, it just doesn't naturally fit into my personal "workflow". I definitelly need something for capturing ideas, but for whatever reason, Evernote wasn't it for me. I've been bouncing between Notion and Obsidian currently, with Obsidian at least being my work note-taking app and Notion being more for personal notes (since I have more flexibility in where I can access it).
Had an account since about 2010, looks like I stopped using it around 2016. Just logged in to see what if anything was left. A few notes, nothing important.
Tried closing my account instead of just leaving it hanging out there and it fails. Guess I'll try later
Loved the idea of the product but after a year or two mod using it, I ditched it for a simple diy setup with syncthing.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
