Evernote is Testing Drastic Changes to its Free Plan

The note-taking app Evernote is testing some drastic changes to its free plan, TechCrunch reported yesterday. The small test, which is currently being carried out with less than 1% of the free userbase, restricts users to just one notebook and 50 notes.

As of today, Evernote’s free plan doesn’t come with a maximum number of notes and notebooks. However, the maximum note size is capped at 25MB, and there’s also a 60MB limit on monthly uploads. Upgrading to the Evernote Personal plan (currently down to $77.99/year, a 40% discount) bumps these limits to 200MB and 10GB, respectively.

The Evernote team told TechCrunch that these changes to the app’s free plan are not finalized yet. However, Users who are part of the experiment will see a pop-up message informing them of the changes when they launch the app. An Evernote representative said the company will make updates to “the relevant customer touchpoints” if it decides to go forward with this new plan.

Evernote originally launched in 2008 and became really popular in the early 2010s. However, the app started to lose its momentum when alternatives like Microsoft OneNote or Notion became better.

Back in November 2022, the app was acquired by Italian company Bending Spoons for an undisclosed amount. At the time, a company’s spokesperson told TechCrunch that “the company has been unprofitable for years and the situation was unsustainable in the long term.” Back in July, Bending Spoons went to lay off most of Evernote’s employees, and it doesn’t look like the company is really doing better now.