So long Evernote, thanks for the all fish.

I'm one of those guys that use several note-taking and digital scrapbooking methods and programs to keep myself productive and organized. I've used them for everything from school, projects, work, church, personal life or just keeping a tab of interesting things. Evernote was one of those programs that I have tried and used. Evernote was simplistic yet powerful as a tool especially with its tagging and search features. (As a disclaimer, I have used and still use OneNote since the early paid versions till now and Google Keep on and off depending whether I was using an Android smartphone, as well as abandoned Apple Note and Palm's note)

Evernote for me was the middle ground of the full featured titan that is Microsoft OneNote and the simpler note-taker that is Google Keep and Apple Note. It filled a nice niche. It scratched an itch. Simple enough to make notes but powerful enough to database and search.

All this time I have been a free user since I wasn't ready to commit to one particular platform and as such I had information littered across various systems and apps. However, in the past month I have been working on transitioning and simplifying my usage to only key apps with little to no overlap in function and features. And Evernote made the cut as my default notetaker and key productivity tool. I was in the process of transitioning the rest of my notes in Google Keep over to Evernote or Onenote depending if it was for gathering of thoughts, ideas and lists or for gathering larger project information. It was also with the idea that I may possibly subscribe for the paid mid-tier as needed in the future after consolidation.

This decision to consolidate over to Evernote is now under heavy review as of June 28, 2016. On this fateful day, Evernote announced that they will be reshuffling their price structure and also the benefits for each tier.

The free tier that I have been a part of have now lost the ability to sync with unlimited devices down to only two designated devices which is a kick in the shin for someone like me with multiple devices and often sharing the same account with my wife for our family and home management (on a side note, their web-based interface does not count as a device). The paid tiers also took a substantial price hike, close to 40%, which makes me less willing and wanting to upgrade to a paid tier now until it has proven its true worth.

So in essence, Evernote, you have been a good app and system but your restriction and long term cost is too much for me to possibly want to continue my experiment with you. It's just too hard to experiment and tell whether something works well with my workflow when there are restrictions and costs with the experimentation.

For me, I will most likely be consolidating all my notes over to OneNote and my lists to Wunderlist. But for the time being I may try a month or two using the web-based interface on my laptop and desktop while maintaining the two device quota for my phone and for my wife's. If it works, I may stay, but I'm already halfway out the door.

I'm not sure how all of you are affected by this but I would love to hear your thoughts and feelings. How have you found Evernote to be in your life? Or have you found something better to help optimize, organize and simplify life?