Evernote Raises Prices for Service, Restricts Devices for Free Users

Free Evernote users have two new constraints on the service: non-paying Evernote users can only sync their notes between two different devices and they can only upload 60 MB of notes per month. That means users who may have been accessing their data cache on a phone, a work computer and a home laptop or tablet now must decide which of the two devices are the most useful to them -- or pay up.

And the terms of payment are changing too. Evernote Plus -- the lower of the paid tiers, with 1 GB upload capacity monthly and the ability to forward emails into Evernote -- is now $4 per month, a 33% rise on monthly cost. An annual Evernote Plus subscription now costs $35 per year. Evernote Premium -- which has a 10 GB monthly upload limit plus enhanced search tools enabling users to find specific terms within uploaded files and the ability to link notes together -- now costs $8 per month (up 25%) or $70 per year.

(For what it's worth, when I began paying for Evernote Premium in 2012, it was $45/year. I paid $50/year for the subscription last year.)

Windows users who have an Office 365 account can easily migrate their Evernote accounts over to OneNote. In March, the company rolled out an importer tool for Windows users; it'll be interesting to see how quickly they move on the promised OS X version now. As the OneNote blog post noted, an annual Office 365 Personal subscription is $70 per year -- and it comes with a whole suite of apps in addition to the information-management tool OneNote.

You can see how Evernote compares to OneNote in ten basic tasks. Start reading here.