And there are apps that do venture funding but have found success selling their products to Enterprise customers.
And there are other apps whose service sets a hard cap on total storage quotas, instead of providing monthly quotas but unlimited total storage caps.
So it is incorrect to say that 2024 will be the year when note-taking apps will begin to escalate their subscription costs.
==
Regarding price changes - I wouldn't say it's accurate either. Hardware costs have fallen. A lot of software capabilities have now been developed by cloud providers and app providers as well, such as version conflict, large file storage, rich text editors, attachment previews, cross-platform UI toolkits, etc. This is the reason why a single dev from Vietnam (UpNote) or a 3-man team from Pakistan (NotesNook) have been able to develop a near Evernote alternative in reasonable costs.
The price increase is in manpower costs and the "plus factor". As customers, we would see that in the form of the customer support and engagement, the software release & bugfix schedule, and unique features that no one else can offer. Has it all been there? Partially.
I understand where you're coming from but I think the VC and SAAS world is changing rapidly. I don't think anyone would create a VC subsidised notetaking app just to sell it to enterprise. I can't remember any time this actually happened over the last 15 years. Notetaking apps are not really wanted by enterprise. This means the idea of subsidised growth and then decide how to monetise failed. Need to bootstrap the company.
Most VC money is heading into Ai startups and other types of SAAS are struggling to get the kind of money they used to. Every SAAS outfit I've worked with in the last few years has not had a free plan or they've had a very restricted free plan and delete data after a while.
One thing we tend to forget is that Evernote is a different beast to all the other notetaking apps. We're talking tens of millions of users and over 200 million accounts. Small apps with 2 or 3 man teams couldn't manage this scale. Even Evernotes security and compliance team is bigger than that. Evernote is a pretty advanced tool with a lot going on at a very high scale. Totally different world to Notesnook and Upnote.
Thanks for this summary of 2023, Jon. Putting it down like that reminds us of what has been achieved,
releases for desktop starting with v10.62.1, not to mention mobil releases. Thanks for your continued commentary throughout the year, let's hope there'll be plenty of positive things to post about in 2024.
This is a great reference for the past twelve months. Thank you for that. I only wish some of the doomsayers over at the Evernote subreddit would read this, especially the part about the economics.
Yeah. There's a whole world away from Reddit that just boots up Evernote every morning and gets on with things. It doesn't represent the wider users at all.
I particularly liked your point about the price not changing in something like eight years. There's a whole lot of clutching of pearls going on over there. I didn't post it, and now that I think about it, no one there besides users like me will believe it, and I'll just get roasted in the process.
There are apps that don't do venture funding.
And there are apps that do venture funding but have found success selling their products to Enterprise customers.
And there are other apps whose service sets a hard cap on total storage quotas, instead of providing monthly quotas but unlimited total storage caps.
So it is incorrect to say that 2024 will be the year when note-taking apps will begin to escalate their subscription costs.
==
Regarding price changes - I wouldn't say it's accurate either. Hardware costs have fallen. A lot of software capabilities have now been developed by cloud providers and app providers as well, such as version conflict, large file storage, rich text editors, attachment previews, cross-platform UI toolkits, etc. This is the reason why a single dev from Vietnam (UpNote) or a 3-man team from Pakistan (NotesNook) have been able to develop a near Evernote alternative in reasonable costs.
The price increase is in manpower costs and the "plus factor". As customers, we would see that in the form of the customer support and engagement, the software release & bugfix schedule, and unique features that no one else can offer. Has it all been there? Partially.
I understand where you're coming from but I think the VC and SAAS world is changing rapidly. I don't think anyone would create a VC subsidised notetaking app just to sell it to enterprise. I can't remember any time this actually happened over the last 15 years. Notetaking apps are not really wanted by enterprise. This means the idea of subsidised growth and then decide how to monetise failed. Need to bootstrap the company.
Most VC money is heading into Ai startups and other types of SAAS are struggling to get the kind of money they used to. Every SAAS outfit I've worked with in the last few years has not had a free plan or they've had a very restricted free plan and delete data after a while.
One thing we tend to forget is that Evernote is a different beast to all the other notetaking apps. We're talking tens of millions of users and over 200 million accounts. Small apps with 2 or 3 man teams couldn't manage this scale. Even Evernotes security and compliance team is bigger than that. Evernote is a pretty advanced tool with a lot going on at a very high scale. Totally different world to Notesnook and Upnote.
Thanks for this summary of 2023, Jon. Putting it down like that reminds us of what has been achieved,
releases for desktop starting with v10.62.1, not to mention mobil releases. Thanks for your continued commentary throughout the year, let's hope there'll be plenty of positive things to post about in 2024.
This is a great reference for the past twelve months. Thank you for that. I only wish some of the doomsayers over at the Evernote subreddit would read this, especially the part about the economics.
Great job. Keep up the fine work.
Yeah. There's a whole world away from Reddit that just boots up Evernote every morning and gets on with things. It doesn't represent the wider users at all.
I particularly liked your point about the price not changing in something like eight years. There's a whole lot of clutching of pearls going on over there. I didn't post it, and now that I think about it, no one there besides users like me will believe it, and I'll just get roasted in the process.
Thank you for this very interesting article
Thanks :)
Thanks, Jon. Merry Christmas. I'm off to find a bottle of Ardbeg, myself.