5 ms·

I'm an Evernote user, but I feel like I'm just plain missing something about Evernote. Why is it worth $1 billion? Am I using it wrong? I've never even came

by ry0ohki 14y ago

I'm an Evernote user, but I feel like I'm just plain missing something about Evernote. Why is it worth $1 billion? Am I using it wrong? I've never even came close to needing to upgrade. On another note the app seems to get heavier and heavier each update, it takes as long to launch as MS Word on my Mac.

lukefreiler 14y ago
I've tried to use it so many times, but I just can't work it into my own productivity cycle consistently. I end up using it for a few days, and then slowly forget about it. I know a few people with a similar story, but nobody who has actually settled on it successfully. That said, I did pay for it for the year hoping that it would encourage me to use it (better organizing my work-life seems like a problem worth solving) - it just didn't...
- mishmax 14y ago
  I use evernote everyday. I put everything in there -- status reports I update every week, my own git cheatsheet, business ideas, documents I use repeatedly (e.g. instructions to ramp up new developers on my project), etc.. But what really got me using evernote is the combination of Fuji Scansnap + Evernote. Now any important mail or receipts I need archived I just scan them and they're in evernote forever. And their iPhone app is a life saver, anything I need on the go, I retrieve from evernote. Forgot my health card? No worries it's scanned and available on my phone via evernote. I love the product, but yeah it still boggles me why they need so much money and how you can build a big company from such an inexpensive product.
- evilduck 14y ago
  Evernote's killer feature for me is they do OCR of pictures you upload. I love it for snapping pictures of business cards, whiteboard drawings, notepads and sticky notes. You can go search for a word or phrase later and get a picture of your hand written meeting notes with the search term highlighted. Their 60mb/mo free offering is much more capacity than I actually use though, so I've never needed to upgrade. But I totally would if my needs increased or if they had to lower their free tier allowance to stay viable.
joonix 14y ago
Agreed. I don't see the value if it's clunky. If it gets any clunkier, I'll just switch back to jotting stuff in Notepad.
- gtd 14y ago
  I switched to Notational Velocity years ago after trying to type things into Evernote, yet I am a premium user. Why? Because Evernote's killer feature is pasting in any kind of content and syncing that across devices. It is an extremely useful dumping ground for miscellaneous pasted content.
achompas 14y ago
There's probably a robust enterprise client base for it. I can imagine teams using Evernote over Google Docs, for example, and Evernote Premium gives you collaboration. I can see tons of arguments for going premium, too. Going paperless would push you over 60MB in a heartbeat. People who travel might want offline access. You can also get note versioning. This one's actually cool: they provide PDF search, which is sweet because most PDF searching and organization apps suck (please don't mention Papers). [Note: I am not an Evernote employee. Just someone who's used it since 2009 for everything.]
- Osmium 14y ago
  > please don't mention Papers Mind if I ask why not? I'm a big fan, though I admit it's a bit niche. It only works well for academic papers, really. For more general PDF organisation, have you tried Yep? It's been a few years since I've used it, but seemed to work well. Links: http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/ http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/ http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/ http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/
  - achompas 14y ago
    Heh I tried using it and felt like it was the PDF equivalent of dumping files into /home/user/. I just use Dropbox + GoodReader to read/annotate/organize them.
schwabacher 14y ago
Imagine the position Evernote will be in if (when?) wearable computing becomes ubiquitous - it could be a private, searchable, and seamlessly created record of everyone that you meet, everything that you eat, everything that you see and find interesting, etc.. Evernote already has a large number of paying users who trust them enough to keep this type of notes with them using things like evernote hello, evernote food, etc.
- chris_mahan 14y ago
  My wife works from home. She turns in her work to her boss via Evernote (paid account). They used to FedEx weekly. She likes it.
larsberg 14y ago
If you travel and are someplace where your phone does not have internet access, you will not have access to your notes. This happened to me in Japan and I was not happy. They got my $10 for that month...
- mishmax 14y ago
  Enable offline notebooks and your problem is solved.
  - scrumper 14y ago
    That doesn't work with non-premium accounts. You can't guarantee that any given note will be there next time you fire up your offline client.
rhizome 14y ago
Here's about 44 pages worth of reasons: http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/search.mefi?q=evernote&tab=comments&site=ask&sort=date http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/search.mefi?q=evernote&...

by ry0ohki 14y ago

lukefreiler 14y ago

I've tried to use it so many times, but I just can't work it into my own productivity cycle consistently. I end up using it for a few days, and then slowly forget about it. I know a few people with a similar story, but nobody who has actually settled on it successfully. That said, I did pay for it for the year hoping that it would encourage me to use it (better organizing my work-life seems like a problem worth solving) - it just didn't...

mishmax 14y ago
I use evernote everyday. I put everything in there -- status reports I update every week, my own git cheatsheet, business ideas, documents I use repeatedly (e.g. instructions to ramp up new developers on my project), etc.. But what really got me using evernote is the combination of Fuji Scansnap + Evernote. Now any important mail or receipts I need archived I just scan them and they're in evernote forever. And their iPhone app is a life saver, anything I need on the go, I retrieve from evernote. Forgot my health card? No worries it's scanned and available on my phone via evernote. I love the product, but yeah it still boggles me why they need so much money and how you can build a big company from such an inexpensive product.
evilduck 14y ago
Evernote's killer feature for me is they do OCR of pictures you upload. I love it for snapping pictures of business cards, whiteboard drawings, notepads and sticky notes. You can go search for a word or phrase later and get a picture of your hand written meeting notes with the search term highlighted. Their 60mb/mo free offering is much more capacity than I actually use though, so I've never needed to upgrade. But I totally would if my needs increased or if they had to lower their free tier allowance to stay viable.

joonix 14y ago

Agreed. I don't see the value if it's clunky. If it gets any clunkier, I'll just switch back to jotting stuff in Notepad.

gtd 14y ago
I switched to Notational Velocity years ago after trying to type things into Evernote, yet I am a premium user. Why? Because Evernote's killer feature is pasting in any kind of content and syncing that across devices. It is an extremely useful dumping ground for miscellaneous pasted content.

achompas 14y ago

There's probably a robust enterprise client base for it. I can imagine teams using Evernote over Google Docs, for example, and Evernote Premium gives you collaboration. I can see tons of arguments for going premium, too. Going paperless would push you over 60MB in a heartbeat. People who travel might want offline access. You can also get note versioning. This one's actually cool: they provide PDF search, which is sweet because most PDF searching and organization apps suck (please don't mention Papers). [Note: I am not an Evernote employee. Just someone who's used it since 2009 for everything.]

Osmium 14y ago
> please don't mention Papers Mind if I ask why not? I'm a big fan, though I admit it's a bit niche. It only works well for academic papers, really. For more general PDF organisation, have you tried Yep? It's been a few years since I've used it, but seemed to work well. Links: http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/ http://www.mekentosj.com/papers/ http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/ http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/
- achompas 14y ago
  Heh I tried using it and felt like it was the PDF equivalent of dumping files into /home/user/. I just use Dropbox + GoodReader to read/annotate/organize them.

schwabacher 14y ago

Imagine the position Evernote will be in if (when?) wearable computing becomes ubiquitous - it could be a private, searchable, and seamlessly created record of everyone that you meet, everything that you eat, everything that you see and find interesting, etc.. Evernote already has a large number of paying users who trust them enough to keep this type of notes with them using things like evernote hello, evernote food, etc.

chris_mahan 14y ago
My wife works from home. She turns in her work to her boss via Evernote (paid account). They used to FedEx weekly. She likes it.

larsberg 14y ago

If you travel and are someplace where your phone does not have internet access, you will not have access to your notes. This happened to me in Japan and I was not happy. They got my $10 for that month...

mishmax 14y ago
Enable offline notebooks and your problem is solved.
- scrumper 14y ago
  That doesn't work with non-premium accounts. You can't guarantee that any given note will be there next time you fire up your offline client.

rhizome 14y ago

Here's about 44 pages worth of reasons: http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/search.mefi?q=evernote&tab=comments&site=ask&sort=date http://www.metafilter.com/contribute/search.mefi?q=evernote&...