I recently received an email notification of pending changes to my Evernote account. They tell me that my existing “Pro” account (most recently billed at $138.57/yr) will soon transition to their new “Advanced” account type with an annual cost of $249 a year. That simply won’t do. Evernote does not deliver me that much value, so I am considering my options.
Looking into the account history, I see that I have been using Evernote since 2010! Back then, I wanted a place to store notes, mostly text, that would be available no matter where I was, or what device I was using. I’d use it to store configuration data for customer equipment when I was working on site. I had Dropbox for storing and sharing files. Evernote was for writing, configurations and that sort of thing.
Over the years I’ve accumulated a lot of notes. Over 1,000 in about 36 notebooks. Sometimes I use the web clipping function to capture a web page, or a JPEG image. But mostly it’s just text notes and lists.
Of course, in 2026 Evernote is trying to be a lot more. Like so many services, it’s trying to be the center of your working life. But I don’t want that. I don’t want transcription or AI features. I don’t need it to integrate with GMail, Outlook or Slack. And I won’t have capabilities that I don’t want or need shoved down my throat.
Historically, I’ve used the installed Evernote application on my computers and my phone. The company issues updates at a furious pace. And after each update it insists on trying to impress me with all manner of description about the supposed improvements. When all I want it to do is keep my notes and stay out of my way. It should not be so demanding of my attention.
I just want someplace to store my notes. Securely. Simply. Easily. Accessibly.
I must admit that I have occasionally used Evernote to write drafts of blog posts or articles tor the WHCA newsletter. As an editor, it’s decidedly…adequate. Not great. But the fact that it automatically syncs with my other devices is handy. It effectively eliminates the concept of the local file system which can be tedious.
Even so, I still prefer to write in Open Live Writer. At least for blog posts. OLW’s ability to insert link and images, then post drafts to WordPress is extremely efficient.
I think the most advanced thing I do with Evernote is when Stella creates a grocery shopping list and shares it with me. That gives me a tick list I can use on my phone.
I can downgrade my plan to their “Starter” service for $99/yr. That comes with a number of constraints:
- Up to 1000 notes
- Up to 20 notebooks
- Up to 1000 attachments
- Up to 3 devices
- Only 5 GB of storage
I can probably live with that. But since I’ve been using it a long time, I have a lot of legacy notes and notebooks. If I have to comb through it all to fit within those constrains, I may well prefer to put that effort into migrating to an entirely different solution.
We pay for Office 365 for our email, which means I get Microsoft OneNote effectively for free. That was not available back when I started using Evernote. Or maybe there’s an open source solution that I could deploy.
Bending Spoons is the company that acquired Evernote back in 2023. Since then I’ve become more and more agitated with the path of the software. I think I’m done with them.