I wish I could find it, but the CEO Phil Libin gave a talk about how to price goods. He split pricing models into 3 camps, based on how they deliver value over time:
1. Fixed price goods correspond to items where you realize the value upfront, then over time the good decays. Like food, physical goods like clothing, etc
2. Fixed price subscriptions correspond to services which deliver constant value over time, like a newspaper or utilities
3. Freemium subscriptions start free, then charge more money over time, and correspond to services which deliver increased value over time. Lots of free 2 play games work this way, with people paying hundreds of dollars as they get serious. He also argued that Evernote was in this camp, since as you store more of your information in Evernote, it becomes more valuable to you
So charging a one-time fee for evernote is mismatched with the value delivered. They would get payment as a one-time event but the more you use it, the more it costs them to support you, without you paying them more because you like/need it more.
Only looking at lifetime value delivered ignores the competition, much of which is free and easy to switch to.
Also support costs typically go down over time; most support effort is spent in onboarding and getting users up and running. Although now that you mention it, Evernote may have huge technical drag because they have bugs outstanding from over six years ago. Indeed, the only time I reached out to support (I couldn't install PC version because it was incorrectly detecting that I already had it installed) they weren't able to assist. $10 lifetime value may be a bit generous.
1. Fixed price goods correspond to items where you realize the value upfront, then over time the good decays. Like food, physical goods like clothing, etc
2. Fixed price subscriptions correspond to services which deliver constant value over time, like a newspaper or utilities
3. Freemium subscriptions start free, then charge more money over time, and correspond to services which deliver increased value over time. Lots of free 2 play games work this way, with people paying hundreds of dollars as they get serious. He also argued that Evernote was in this camp, since as you store more of your information in Evernote, it becomes more valuable to you
So charging a one-time fee for evernote is mismatched with the value delivered. They would get payment as a one-time event but the more you use it, the more it costs them to support you, without you paying them more because you like/need it more.