How did Evernote do in 2025? My thoughts.
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Newsletter housekeeping: The latest version for PC & Mac is 10.167.1 (not 11 yet!). You can grab it from the download page . Latest mobile version is 10.166.2.
Programming note: I’m taking next week off, so no Taming the Trunk but I’ll be back the following week with my end of year recap.
As we’re approaching the end of the year I thought I’d push an opinion piece about how well I think Evernote performed as a whole over the year. I’m not going to mention too many features as I’ll do my full recap in a couple of weeks, but here’s what I think overall.
As always, leave me your opinions and thoughts in the comments.
The Good
OMG! The apps are so much better.
If we compare the visual look and feel and performance of all the apps, there’s been huge improvements over the last year.
On the visual side, I love that the consistency of the user interface is much better.
Button colours and sizes, fonts, tool tips, messages are all pretty consistent, which is very nice to see. The app is looking a lot smater.
On the performance side, I hardly ever see loading bars or loading animations, everything is super snappy.
I’m currently using the Windows, Mac and iPhone app and all the slowness of the last few years seems to have gone away.
I’m also using the app much more on mobile. Going back a year, I used to try and avoid the phone app as it was slow, difficult to navigate and a bit flaky loading notes. I see none of this now on my iPhone. When I load the app it’s there in a split second and I find it much easier to navigate.
I’ve been travelling a lot for work this last week and have been using the phone app to get to hotel reservations and train connection times. Its worked a treat and not let me down at all.
I think the move to define Evernote as a second brain app is a good idea.
To be fair, Evernote has always been a second brain app but didn’t really say it was.
You’d always here folks calling it a file cabinet or note taking app, but it’s always been much more than this.
Saying this is your second brain is a good move and for the following reason.
I can imagine mentioning a filing cabinet to a 25 year old and they’ll look at you blankly and call you grandad. Second brain will resonate much more with younger folk who are the future of the app.
I also think the slow(!) introduction of AI is something positive and plays into the second brain strategy for the app.
We’ll be doing less organising and more finding, analysing and researching in the future. I’ve already started now.
The AI Assistant will take some getting used to and it has limitations, but its a huge positive for Evernote going forward.
Staying on my AI thoughts, one feature that I’ve had more questions about than anything else is AI Meeting Notes and the transcription functionality. This is probably more important than we think for a second brain app as eventually all our important conversations will be recorded, transcribed and summarised.
Evernote is becoming a premium app.
I think the move to being seen as more of a premium app is a good move, more later though in the ‘not so good’ section!
Back in 2010 Evernote was an everything for everyone app and this was because the competition was basically Dropbox and OneNote which had been pretty much abandoned by Microsoft for years.
Because there was not a lot of competition at the time, you could be everything to everyone as everyone didn’t have much choice.
In 2025 there’s eleventy thousand note and productivity apps out there and you need to differentiate yourself from everyone else.
Evernote needs to pick its channel and swim in it and they seem to have chosen the premium/professional/power user route.
This means If you’re just storing bills and paperwork in Evernote then it may not be for you. Evernote does a lot more than this and costs a premium price as well.
I personally think it’s a good idea to pick the premium route and stick with it. You end up having a much better idea on who your customer is and can deliver something meaningful for them rather than trying to please everyone.
The not so good
Support needs to get better.
If you want to be a premium app you need to offer decent support and build a better AI bot for the initial response.
The biggest issue I hear about is that someone sends in a ticket saying they have a problem and have tried a reinstall and then the AI replies saying try a reinstall.
I understand the reason for using AIs trained on successful support tickets, it can speed things up and save some work for humans but the attention to detail needs to be better for a premium app.
Right now, this is displayed on the support site.
I totally understand that a lot of folk will be away for Christmas but the poor roll out of the pricing plan and version 11 won’t be helping at all.
If I was in support, I’d be a bit pissed of at the rest of the team for generating me an impossible amount of work.
More of a joined-up strategy between product folk, monetisation folk and support would help a lot.
The new price plan and roll out didn’t seem to go smoothly.
I don’t mind about the increase. Any company can charge what they want and some folks will leave and others will join. You pick you’re strategy and go for it.
The issue I have is the way it was rolled out. It seemed like a big sudden surprise.
Version 11 of Evernote had already been mentioned and there was already talk about AI and the price went up but there was no version 11 or AI.
Then, once the price increase had happened, there seemed to be a mad dash to get the AI rolled out to a few folk already on version 10 just to show that something was happening.
What I’d like to have seen is the price increased at the time version 11 was launched.
This would make much more sense to the customer and save support a huge amount of work.
Again, I think more communication and planning between teams would be beneficial.
As we’re more than halfway through December, I would imagine the launch of version 11 isn’t going to happen until the new year.
It should’ve been managed in a much smoother way.
If I was managing a launch like this, I would tease it, release it and then put the price up.
The optics would be much better. You could tell folk the price was going up because we think all these new features are worth it.
Having the price increase coming months before the new version is launched means you’ve lost all the momentum.
Releasing a few features in beta to version 10 right now isn’t helping either as I hear from folk telling me that there’s not point in having a version 11 as it’s going to be the same as version 10, just with new features. Again, momentum and surprise is lost.
I’m not sure if there was miscommunication between teams that meant price changes happened months before the launch, from an external view, it seems like this.
That said, I am looking forward to version 11 and everyone getting hold of the AI Assistant as its very useful and in my mind worth the increase.
Maybe they have some secret features no one knows about and they’ll be a huge surprise when its finally launched.
As a general note I would also like to see improvements in some of the apps functionality. Exporting to PDF and printing notes is still not good enough for a premium app.
Not having an integration with Apple Calendar needs looking at as I hear this question all the time.
Completion of recurring tasks being removed from the task list needs to be fixed. I have this issue in all the apps almost every day.
I’m sure there’s other little things. Lets just have more attention to detail as Evernote is now a premium app.
So that’s my opinion on Evernote’s 2025. Good stuff and not so good stuff.
Don’t forget to leave me your thoughts on Evernote’s 2025.
Have a great Christmas.
I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with the end of year recap.
All the best
Jon