2024 was an incredible year for Freenotes. We saw a virtually unknown app shaking the digital note-taking market to become the third most popular handwriting note-taking app in the US App Store. That is truly amazing, and there are several reasons for that.
Genius name
We all love free products, and services. Whether or not they are sustainable is a topic for a different video. The point, though, is that the Freenotes developers knew that. So, they came up with a name that most of us would love: Freenotes. It was, whether they knew it at the time, quite a genius idea.
Great app
Not only did they give us a free app with a genius name, it was also a great app. It was ridiculous to think that such a brilliant app would remain free forever. It was simply too good to be true, and that is probably why most of us scrambled to download it while the opportunity lasted. Freenotes is one of the best handwriting note-taking apps to launch in the last five years. We can’t say that about a lot of apps. Noteful was the last perfect cheap launch for a handwriting note-taking app, but Freenotes was better than that. There is nothing cheap or substandard about Freenotes.
Brilliant strategy
Naturally, the great app meant news about it would spread like veld fire. It did, as a result, we saw the app climb ranks on App Store, surpassing all the other handwriting apps in less than one and half years. That of course meant the app was easier to find and get even more downloads.
Ads
Towards the end of 2024, the developers introduced some ads in the app. We knew then that our free days with Freenotes were over. That it was a matter of time before they introduced an in-app purchase to remove the ads. We’ve been working on the Freenotes course for a couple of months now. The ads have been nothing but a massive pain. They make screen recording difficult and are simply annoying; if you spend any amount of time in the app.
$7 to remove the ads permanently isn’t a bad deal. We’re happy that it is not a subscription, but at the same time we feel the setup might not be enough to sustain the development of the app in the future. This is the first time I have paid to remove ads from an app, but most games use that model. Like with subscriptions, ads are also not suitable for every app. Most users won’t mind one or two ads when they first launch the app. It will only annoy them for a free seconds.
The promise
For the sake of old users who were promised the app will be free forever if they shared their contact details with the developers, we strongly recommend the developers to remove the ads for them. Instead of the ads, perhaps a freemium version with some limitations (like we have for pretty much every other handwriting note-taking app). If someone really likes what they get out of the app, they can then pay the $7 to unlock the rest of the app. No ads. Only new users would pay for the app, and the old ones get to keep the app for free, forever (as initially promised). It’s a much better and more sustainable setup. What do you guys think?
Final thoughts
Again we find ourselves with fewer free handwriting note-taking apps in 2025. It’s difficult to evaluate if Freenotes is still free or not. What do you guys think about ads in your handwriting note-taking app? Let us know. Until next time, fantastic human, stay fantastic!