Evernote restricting free capabilities
The news that Evernote is restricting the capabilities of its free product comes as no real surprise. While there is some sense in generating interest and traction in a product in the early years by allowing free use, there comes a time where the “feet dragging in the mud” aspect becomes too expensive to service.
All of that, of course, depends on what you’re offering for free, and what it actually costs you to service. If it’s a few pence per user, per year, then there are few issues maintaining that. The problem, of course, is that it’s then difficult to justify charging a premium rate for full functionality when your core cost base is so low – it’s easy for a competitor to invade your marketplace.
Ultimately, a vendor has to decide how to spread the cost among the free users and those who pay, and this can be a difficult judgement call to make, especially when you’re established. You can almost find yourself locked into a scenario that you can’t then back out of.
In many ways, I applaud Evernote for having the guts to make the change. It shows that the company is prepared to grasp the nettle. The problem is what it will do to the user base in terms of people’s desire or willingness to move to a paid-for model, even if the amounts are relatively trivial.
For myself, I maintain a paid-for Evernote account, but I confess it’s one of those tools that I’ve never really managed to get into. I’m not sure why, and I fully understand the reason it has such strong devotees out there. I’ve never managed to quite get into the swing of its way of working, and maybe I should give it another try.
The underlying concepts are strong, but there’s the worry about “putting all your eggs in one basket” that nags at me. That really shouldn’t be an issue, and it’s possible to export notes to either Evernote XML format (.enex) or to HTML. If I can convince myself that this isn’t going to turn into yet another Hotel California for my data, then I’ll make the effort to use it as part of my daily routine.