Jott out of beta—goodbye free email
August 20, 2008 at 11:20 PM by Dr. Drang
If you haven’t heard already, Jott is now out of beta and will begin charging for some of its services. Most important for me, the emailing of Jotts will be part of the fee-based services, which means I either have to pay $4/month or give up my Jott to OmniFocus system.
The new Jott will have 3 tiers of service:
- free with ads: online notes readable at jott.com; posting to Twitter and blogs; 15 second message limit
- $3.95 per month: online notes; posting to Twitter, blogs, Google Calendar, Remember The Milk, Sandy, and other productivity web sites; email; text messaging; Jott for Outlook; 15 second message limit
- $12.95 per month: online notes; posting to Twitter, blogs, Google Calendar, Remember The Milk, Ask Sandy, and other productivity web sites; email; text messaging; Jott for Outlook; Jott for Blackberry; 30 second message limit
The Jott application for the iPhone will still be free. When it first came out, I was puzzled why it created only online notes, not emails. Now I understand that it was only meant to integrate with the free service.
I’m not mad—Jott provides a real service and there’s nothing wrong with them getting paid for it. If you don’t have an iPhone—or other smartphone—it could be well worth the money1. I am a bit annoyed that I started Jotting my tasks to OmniFocus so late in the game. As a beta user, I can still take advantage of the full service for free until September 8, but I don’t see myself using it after that.
For me, the great thing about Jott was the email delivery. I never used the online notes—and never would have used Jott if it had only offered online notes—because they created one more inbox I’d have to check and process. Since I already have to check my email, Jott’s emails fit in nicely with an already-established pattern.
Is Jott’s email service worth $4/month? When I’m off on a business trip, as I am now, I may do 2-3 Jotts a day, but when I’m home, it’s 2-3 per week at most, not all of which are directed to OmniFocus. Given that Jotting is only incrementally more efficient than
- writing tasks directly in OmniFocus for the iPhone
- emailing myself a note from my iPhone
- leaving myself a voice mail message
- recording a note on the iPhone with QuickVoice (which I reviewed here)
there’s no compelling reason to add Jott to my monthly expenses. Adieu, Jott.
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The $13/month plan strikes me as way overpriced no matter how much you use Jott. It seems designed to suck money from companies whose executives demand every little perk they can get their hands on. ↩
