What happened to Evernote after Bending Spoons bought it

By Gerald · 12 June 2026

Cluttered desk with scattered notebooks and sticky notes, representing a note app that grew heavy and disorganized

I used to love Evernote.

Back when it was still good, opening the app felt like doing something useful with your day. Clean interface. Notes that worked. A web clipper that did its job. Search that found what you saved. It was simple and fast, and for years it was the one productivity app I did not think about replacing.

That version of Evernote is gone.

What exists now is a heavier, more expensive app with upgrade prompts that show up even for paying customers, AI features stacked on top of a product that used to win on basics, and a free plan so tight that it stops being useful the moment you have a real week of work. Bending Spoons, the Italian company that bought Evernote in late 2022, ran the same playbook it has used on other acquisitions: buy, cut staff, centralize operations, then push harder on pricing.

Evernote did not lose because a better note app appeared overnight. It lost because the company stopped respecting the one job that made people stay.

The free plan got gutted first

Evernote did not just trim the free tier. It made it nearly unusable for normal work.

On the current plan comparison page, the free plan allows 50 notes, one notebook, and sync on one device, with 1GB of storage. Evernote tested tighter limits in late 2023 and rolled them out to all free users by December that year. Those limits are still live in June 2026.

If you take notes for more than a hobby, fifty notes is not a productivity system. It is a trial that ends the first time you keep two projects alive at once.

Then the pricing changed shape

The old Personal and Professional plans were retired. Evernote replaced them with Starter and Advanced, added storage caps on lower paid tiers for the first time, and moved a lot of former free functionality behind subscriptions.

Many longtime users watched annual costs climb from roughly the $70-$130 range into $249.99 per year for Advanced, which is what Evernote was showing for the annual Advanced plan in June 2026. Two hundred and fifty dollars for notes is a hard sell when your actual job is capture, search, and move on.

The pricing page also makes the product direction clear. Tasks, calendar hooks, and a full block of AI tools (Assistant, Semantic Search, Transcribe, Edit, Cleanup) now sit beside core note features on paid plans. Evernote is selling a workspace bundle, not the focused note tool that built its reputation.

Bending Spoons cut most of the team

The acquisition closed in late 2022. In February 2023, Evernote laid off 129 employees. In July 2023, reports from TechCrunch and The Verge described layoffs of most remaining US and Chile staff, with product work shifting toward Europe.

That pattern matters because it explains the product feel many users describe now: fewer people maintaining the app users already paid for, more pressure to grow revenue from the base that stayed.

Feature bloat replaced focus

Evernote's original promise was simple: write things down and find them later.

Version 11 pushed hard into AI: assistant chat, semantic search, meeting transcription, cleanup, editing, and more. Tasks and calendar integration were already in the mix. The app is now trying to be Notion, a task manager, and an AI layer at the same time.

Some people want that. Many former fans do not. Complaints about Windows performance, slower launches, and a busier interface keep showing up in forums and reviews. The product got wider. For a large share of old users, it did not get better at the core job.

The pop-ups that will not dismiss

The detail that pushed me from annoyed to done was the upgrade modals.

Even paying customers report feature-push and upgrade dialogs appearing mid-workflow. Forum threads about aggressive upsell prompts go back years. One recurring complaint: pressing Escape does not close the modal you are trying to get rid of.

I am not claiming every dialog in every client behaves the same way. Enough of them do that it feels intentional. When a writing app interrupts flow and will not accept the standard keyboard exit, it sends a clear message about priorities.

What Evernote still does well

Fairness requires saying this plainly.

Evernote still has a mature clipping workflow, strong cross-platform reach, image and document search, and a large library of existing notes for people who have been inside the ecosystem for a decade. If you depend on those specific strengths and the subscription price still makes sense, switching is not free and not instant.

The case against staying is not "Evernote has zero value." The case is that the value left per dollar dropped hard while the bill went up.

So what do you do instead

You stop waiting for the old Evernote to come back.

If you want a direct comparison of tradeoffs, read Flow vs Evernote. If you want the ownership and pricing angle spelled out, no-subscription note apps covers why a monthly bill for storage you do not control wears people down.

That is why I built Flow. Not another bloated all-in-one workspace. Not another app pretending to be your second brain, therapist, and project manager at once. A clean place to capture thoughts, keep notes and tasks in one system, and move on without upgrade ransom or a fifty-note ceiling.

No $250 annual elephant tax. No AI summary for your grocery list unless you actually want one. Notes, tasks, capture, and an MCP connector if you want your own AI tools to read your work, not a bundled model you did not choose.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns Evernote now? Bending Spoons, an Italian app company known for acquiring and consolidating software products, bought Evernote in late 2022.

What are Evernote's free plan limits in 2026? Fifty notes, one notebook, one synced device, and 1GB storage, according to Evernote's official plan comparison page.

How much does Evernote Advanced cost? Evernote was showing Advanced at $249.99 per year on its pricing flow in June 2026. Check the live page before you buy because prices change.

Why did Evernote lay off so many employees? After the Bending Spoons acquisition, Evernote cut 129 staff in February 2023 and later laid off most remaining US and Chile employees while shifting product development to Europe.

Is Evernote still worth paying for? It can be if you rely on its clipping workflow, search inside images, and a decade of existing notes, and the new subscription price still fits your budget. Many former power users left because the cost rose while the product felt heavier and more interruptive.

What is the best alternative if you loved old Evernote? It depends what you miss. For a simpler owned setup with notes, tasks, and capture, compare Flow vs Evernote. For pay-once options more broadly, start with no-subscription note apps.

My verdict

Evernote did not die. It got repriced, refactored, and loaded with features its core users never requested, while the team that maintained the product was cut down to a fraction of its former size.

If you are still inside that ecosystem, export your notes, write down what you actually use day to day, and compare the annual bill against tools that charge once and let you own the data. The old Evernote is not coming back. The question is how much longer you want to pay premium prices for what replaced it.