08-29-2023
I am cross-posting my comments here from a thread on the [Mac Power User's Forum](https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/evernote-in-trouble/7519/74). Just my two cents, but I think [[Evernote]] still has a lot to offer and is moving in the right direction.
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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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 note applications can import Evernote directly. [Even Obsidian has an Evernote importer now](https://youtu.be/3Hm8P9kcOR0?si=ECIhPZynksEN54Ki).
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 shutting 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 complained about Evernote used the free plan or paid a small annual fee. Now it is double and sometimes three times the