Evernote raises prices and adds real-time note editing and AI

Evernote is increasing the prices of all its paid subscriptions. The price increases by almost thirty percent. The new owner of the note-taking tool, Bending Spoons, also adds several new features. For example, the company tackles the plagued synchronization with real-time editing.

Evernote writes in a blog post that it increases prices for private and business subscribers. The price for European users increases from 9.99 to 12.99 euros per month. Companies pay 14.99 euros per user for a Professional subscription. The price increase became active for new customers on May 1, but applies to all existing subscribers from the end of the month.

Evernote says it wants to add a number of important new features to the app that will justify the price. For this purpose, the synchronization of the app will be completely rewritten. Evernote has received a lot of criticism in recent years, because the app could not handle editing notes in real time. Instead, users on different devices had to sync their notes each time, while alternative online note-taking apps, such as Google’s, are editable in near real time. Evernote says that as of May 4, all users will “see a major reduction in the frequency of clashing notes.” This also makes it possible to edit text in a note on different devices at the same time, for example on a desktop and a smartphone, without having to synchronize the note first.

The company also wants to add artificial intelligence to the app. This happens in different ways. For example, there will be an option to automatically ‘clean up’ notes with notes, for example, although the company is vague about what exactly that means. It will also be possible to search for certain notes in natural language in the search function.

Those features will initially be available for free for a month for non-paying users, but later the AI ​​component will only be integrated into paid subscriptions. The search function will only be available in the second half of the year, because Evernote first wants to resolve ‘privacy concerns’.

Evernote was acquired by developer Bending Spoons in November last year. That happened a few years after Evernote became one of the first Silicon Valley companies to reach a billion-dollar valuation, becoming a unicorn. However, the company has always struggled with what core features it wanted to offer and with competition from major alternative services such as Google Drive and Dropbox.