Evernote

Evernote Corporation

Founded by Stepan Pachikov, the Evernote web service launched into open beta on June 24, 2008 and reached 11 million users in July 2011. In October 2010, under former CEO Phil Libin, the company raised a US$20 million funding round led by DoCoMo Capital with participation from Morgenthaler Ventures and Sequoia Capital. Since then, the company raised an additional $50 million in funding led by Sequoia Capital and Morgenthaler Ventures, and another $70 million in funding led by Meritech Capital and CBC Capital. On November 30, 2012, Evernote raised another $85 million in funding led by AGC Equity Partners/m8 Capital and Valiant Capital Partners. On November 9, 2014, Evernote raised an additional $20 million in funding from Nikkei.

Linda Kozlowski was named the Chief Operating Officer of Evernote in June 2015. Kozlowski has been with Evernote for more than two years and held the title of Vice President of worldwide operations within the company.

Libin stepped down as CEO in July 2015 and was replaced by former Google Glass executive Chris O'Neill. In October 2015, the Evernote Corp. announced that the company is laying off 18% of its workforce and will be closing 3 out of 10 global offices.

Yinxiang Biji Business

On May 7, 2013, TechCrunch reported that Evernote launched Yinxiang Biji Business into the Chinese market at the Global Mobile Internet Conference.

Coding and versions

In 2010, the coding language for the suite was changed from C# for version 3.5 to C++ in version 4.0 to improve performance.

Data entry

As well as the keyboard entry of typed notes, Evernote supports image capture from cameras on supported devices, and the recording of voice notes. In some situations, text that appears in captured images can be recognized using OCR and annotated. Evernote also supports touch and tablet screens with handwriting recognition. Evernote web-clipping plugins are available for the most popular Internet browsers that allow marked sections of webpages to be captured and clipped to Evernote. If no section of a webpage has been highlighted, Evernote can clip the full page. Evernote also supports the ability to e-mail notes to the service, allowing for automated note entry via e-mail rules or filters.

Where suitable hardware is available, Evernote can automatically add geolocation tags to notes.

The online service also allows selected files to be shared for viewing and editing by other users, and allows integration with Twitter for storing or forwarding tweets. Users can also use Twitter to add notes to Evernote remotely, by sending tweets from any Twitter-capable device.

Data storage and access

On supported operating systems, Evernote allows users to store and edit notes on their local machine., using a SQLite database in Windows.

Users with Internet access and an Evernote account can also have their notes automatically synchronized with a master copy held on Evernote's servers. This approach lets a user access and edit their data across multiple machines and operating system platforms, but still view, input and edit data when an Internet connection is not available. However, notes stored on Evernote servers are not encrypted.

Where Evernote client software is not available, online account-holders can access their note archive via a web interface or through a media device.

The Evernote software can be downloaded and used as "stand-alone" software without using the online portion of an Evernote account (online registration is required for initial setup, however), but it will not be able to upload files to the Evernote server, or use the server to synchronize or share files between different Evernote installations. Also, no image or Image-PDF (Premium only) recognition and indexing will take place if the software is used entirely offline.

Accounts

Evernote is a free online service that allows users to upgrade to Plus, Premium, or a Business account. Formerly (from 2015 to mid-2016) Plus cost $2.99 per month or $24.99 a year, and Premium cost US$5.99 per month or $49.99 per year. Prices increased in 2016, now Plus cost $3.99 per month or $34.99 a year, and Premium cost US$7.99 per month or $69.99 per year. Free, Plus and Premium Evernote accounts have a maximum limit of 100,000 notes and 250 notebooks.

Basic customers can upload 60MB of data each month. Plus customers get a 1GB upload limit, offline notes on mobile devices, as well as passcode lock for mobile devices. Emails can also be sent to their Evernote account.

Premium subscribers are granted 10GB of new uploaded data every month, faster word recognition in images, heightened security, PDF annotation, Context, where notes and news articles can be seen, which are related to the open note and the ability to search text within PDF documents. They also receive additional options for notebook sharing. Both free, Plus and Premium account types allow notebook sharing with other Evernote users; however, the accounts are distinguished by editing capabilities. In regards to shared notebooks, editing permissions to non-paid account holders may only be granted to premium Evernote subscribers. The free service does not make files available offline on iOS and Android devices; while sometimes they are available from cache, editing these files can cause conflicts when synchronizing.

With the full version of Evernote Business, users sync and view work documents through a variety of platforms, such as Mac, iPhone and iPads, Web, Windows and Android Devices. Files that can be uploaded include spreadsheets, presentations, notes and design mock ups. In addition, administrators can monitor company progress and individual employees through the admin console.

In June 2016, Evernote announced the limitation for users of its free Basic account to two devices per year and raise prices for its premium service tiers. Non-paying Evernote user is able to sync notes between two devices. Plus and Premium tiers start at $4 (up from $3) and $8 (up from $6) per month, respectively. Plus lets you store notes offline and upload up to 1GB files, while Premium adds document-parsing features and 9GB of additional storage.

Supported platforms

Evernote clients are available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Android, iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch), Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, WebOS, Maemo, BlackBerry (including BlackBerry Playbook), and Google Wave platforms as well as a beta for Symbian S60 5th Edition. There are portable versions of Evernote available for flash drives and U3 drives. There is currently no officially supported native client for Linux or BSD (see below for unofficial clients).

There is substantial variation in supported features on different platforms: for example it is possible to edit Rich Text Format and sketches on Windows; on Mac it is possible to edit rich text, but only view sketches; and on the iPad only plain text could be edited prior to version 4.1.0 (August 2011).

Web clipping support is installed by default on the Internet Explorer and Safari browsers when the Evernote software is installed under Windows or macOS. Evernote web-clipping plugins are also available for the Yandex Browser, Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome browsers, and need to be downloaded and installed separately from the respective browser.

The Evernote email-clipper is automatically installed in Microsoft Office Outlook if the desktop version is installed on the same computer. There is a Thunderbird email plugin, which must be installed separately from the Thunderbird client.

Unofficial clients

There are some third-party clients for Evernote:

Scannable

Scannable captures paper quickly, transforming it into high-quality scans ready to save or share.

Skitch

Skitch was a free screenshot editing and sharing utility for OS X, iOS, Windows 8, and Android. The app permits the user to add shapes and text to an image, and then share it online. Images can also be exported to various image formats. Originally developed by Plasq, Skitch was acquired by Evernote on August 18, 2011. On December 17, 2015, Evernote announced that it will be ending support for Skitch for Windows, Windows Touch, iOS, and Android on January 22, 2016. Evernote said it will continue to offer Skitch for Mac.

Web Clipper

Evernote Web Clipper is a simple extension for your web browser that lets you capture full-page articles, images, selected text, important emails, and any web page.

Adonit

Evernote has partnered with Adonit to make the Jot Script Evernote Edition and the Jot Script 2 Evernote Edition. Buying the latter stylus gives the customer 6 months of Evernote Premium for free.

Moleskine

In August 2012 Moleskine partnered with Evernote to produce a digital-friendly notebook with specially designed pages and stickers for smartphone syncing.

Post-It Notes

An Evernote-branded Post-It Notes enables the user to take pictures of Post-It Notes via the Evernote mobile application, which are then trimmed and enhanced. It comes with 1 or 3 months of Evernote Premium, depending on the type purchased.

Samsung

All Samsung Galaxy Note 3 phablets included a free one-year subscription to Evernote Premium.

Telefónica Digital

On August 13, 2013, The New York Times reported that Telefónica Digital and Evernote entered into a global partnership agreement, giving Brazilian customers free access to Evernote Premium for one year. Under this global deal Telefónica users in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, the UK and Spain were also offered the promotion.

Data loss

The service has experienced several cases of losing customer data.

Denial-of-service attacks

On June 11, 2014, Evernote suffered a crippling distributed denial-of-service attack that prevented customers from accessing their information. The attackers demanded a ransom, which Evernote refused to pay.

A denial-of-service attack on August 8, 2014 resulted in a brief period of downtime for evernote.com. Service was quickly restored.

Security breach

On March 2, 2013, Evernote revealed that hackers had gained access to their network and been able to access user information, including usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords. All users were asked to reset their passwords. In the wake of this, Evernote accelerated plans to implement an optional two-factor authentication for all users.

Privacy controversy

In December 2016, Evernote announced its privacy policy would be changing in January 2017, leading to claims the policy allowed employees of the firm to access users' content in some situations. In response to the concerns, Evernote apologised and announced the policy would now not be implemented, and that its employees would not have access to users' content unless users opted in.