Evernote to break even in 2011. Can free win?

The New York Times offers up the interesting tale of Evernote, the company that offers users an electronic shoebox of sorts to store data in. The story looks into the company and how its “freemium” concept is about to turn the corner.

Evernote offers users, for free, a way to collect data, smart searching so you can find it fast and several different ways to access it. It is quite a handy tool as many users can attest to. Its business plan is pretty straight forward: offer something so awesome for free that a significant portion of users will want to upgrade to Premium account ($5/month or $45/year) for more uploading of data (to 500MB). The company earned $79,000 in July and while they are not covering costs yet, they are on track to break even in January 20210.

“Free is not a loss leader,” he says. “If we can get a small percentage of users to pay we start to make money.” says Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote. Get this: 4,500 people try the site every day. That’s added up to 1.8 million users trying the service in the past 18 months. That’s an amazing feat for a company with no advertising budget.

The company is also committed to remaining free, an impressive feat in today’s tough economic climate.

Read [NYT]