Nearly all of Evernote’s remaining staff has been laid off
Its acquirer (Bending Spoons) has taken over operations. They’ve also hiked subscriptions prices and told customers they intend to use new revenues to pay for new features. How they intend to do that without any staff is something I would like to know about.
If you’re still using Evernote, probably a good time to stop.
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.
Using Obsidian + Google Drive.
There is a git plugin for obsidian that works really well, and is pretty simple to setup. I use it to backup the notes and it can be configured to commit every x minutes.
Been using Obsidian for a bit less than a year. It’s been great for what I need it to do - take notes because I suck at keeping facts and data straight throughout my day.
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.
Nextcloud is nice, but it's kinda slow. To be fair, I gave it two vCPUs (not gonna call 'em cores, because they're not full cores) and 2GB RAM, so part of it might just be weak hardware, but tbh it's not like I, the literal only user, stressed it much. Also a huge annoyance is that switching from one module to another does a full page reload.
I switched from Evernote to Joplin several years ago and haven't looked back. I had over 8,000 notes in Evernote and now have over 11,000 notes in Joplin. I'm using free Dropbox storage for syncing (3GB out of 6GB free) and run Windows, iPad and Android clients. I haven't missed Evernote at any point.
I second Joplin. I love it, and I use it all the time.
This 100%! I switched over years ago and have been very happy using it on my desktop computer, laptop as well as my phones.
I forgot Evernote existed. Time to back up my notes from 2014.
Looks interesting. Would love to know more about the people behind it. A lot of trust to put in some anonymous devs with a new app
Had a quick look. Although the ui is "pretty" usability wise it's not intuitive at all and needs a lot of work imo.
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.
Apple notes can lock you in. Bear or Obsidian maybe a viable alternative but I’m not sure with migration if a seamless import is available.
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.
Lol, similarly. Is been using it since just after our came out. Once they started removing features behind a pay wall, especially emailing notes, I quit and forgot it existed.
More enshitification
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.
"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.
Same. I used it a TON in college over a decade ago and had completely forgotten it existed until this post.
Obsidian is not FOSS.
I'm surprised to not here more support for Standard Notes around here (which to @noodlejetski@geddit.social's point is a FOSS app).
Logseq also looks interesting though I haven't tried it.
I tried Joplin for a little while, after having tried others. Found myself going back to VSC with Markdown preview.
But once I tried Obsidian? Aww yiss.
The first I'd heard of Obsidian was at the same time I heard about the Zettelkasten method. Which was thanks to having stumbled across this video: The FUN and EFFICIENT note-taking system I use in my PhD
It's been a while since I watched it, so my apologies for not being able to give a TLDW summary.
Since adopting it for myself, I've found out that an old semi-retired dev friend, as well as a younger dev that actively contributes to at least 2 projects on GitHub (both popular) are keen users of Obsidian.
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:
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...
Obsidian is love. Obsidian is life
Fuck I’m a relatively heavy user of Evernote
My yearly subscription renewed in January
Truly
Consider Standard Notes, it's a similar product that can import from Evernote, and it also protects your note contents with end to end encryption.
https://standardnotes.com/help/10/how-can-i-import-my-notes-from-evernote
That's why I use Joplin.
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).
Same thing for me. I feel like Obsidian fares better for my work notes which are mainly text, and Notion fares better for my personal (and D&D) notes, which include more media.
I've been using Google Docs for my tabletop game notes but felt like I was constantly fussing with formatting and struggling to have text and photos alongside each other without being a jumbled mess.
I've been trying out Obsidian instead which I really like for technical notes, but I definitely have to be more careful and deliberate about embedding images.
If I had to choose only one, I'd probably go with Obsidian, but I haven't found a free mobile/desktop syncing option that I've been happy with. Both Syncthing and iCloud have given me file versioning conflicts for some reason, so I'm always hesitant to use it in case I were to lose something. Notion just works without me having to think about it, and I do actually like the way it handles some things, but I like how flexible Obsidian can be with plug-ins. Until either app does something to push me away, I'm fine just floating between the two for now.
Enshitification strikes again, or is it something more complex?
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.
I see a lot of alternatives being discussed here so I’ll just throw one more on the pile for Mac users: Devonthink.
It organizes and centralizes a bunch of stuff for me. Has tagging, folders, a bunch of handy metadata and even tries to automatically sort/file things. It allows separate databases for work, personal or projects. Syncs/backs up via popular cloud providers - even multiple if you want redundancy. Just about the only thing I wish it did a better job of is scanning to PDF with a phone camera.
Damn. That was a good app...
Again it show subscription based services should be avoided like plague. Once you become an intensive user the subscription price increases and it’s painful to change.
Whew. I used Evernote heavily for about two years back at the beginning of the app craze, but I quickly switched over to just the Apple Notes app as Apple made it more usable. Thank god I didn’t stick with that app
I love Upnote ❤️
I will need to find a new personal document manager, I’ve experimented with self hosted paperless ngx but I don’t recant to spend time setting up my containers, I’m happy to pay for something that works
I’m in the Apple universe and use KeepIt; does most everything I need. Evernote’s best feature was the web clipper, but there are good workarounds.
I used evernote's web clipper a lot back then. These days I use Pocket to save articles / web pages I found interesting. I also have the wayback machine extension installed, which can be used to snapshot a page and submit them to the internet archive to preserve them (if you browse an interesting site and the number next to the wayback machine icon is low, hit that snapshot button). I also have SingleFile extension installed, which can snapshot any page into a single html file with images and styling inlined.
Ah, that’s a pity. Time to backup my notes, then…
I didn't know Evernote was acquired. Rip Evernote ig.
Oh bruh, I have 209 notes in their cloud, I fuckin used their app daily for school what the fuc, why they gotta be bad now
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.
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.
It was already acquired recently (less than a year ago) by a shady Italian company.
Why would MS be intereted in Evernote? I guess they could incorporate something into OneNote, but what would that be? Are there any technologies worth buying in Evernote?
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
Evernote has been profitable for many years.