Scrivener at $49 (or $41.65 for student)? Which is 15% discount, less than the 20% you use as an example of overpricing.
Your assumption that sticking with Scrivener as the best avenue is correct.
As people say here DEVONthink 3 is underpriced for what it is and as a percentage of what education costs are for most folk now.
I see now that Amazon is charging for a book by a current Philosophy professor about 60$: that is a book that a lot of students would ‘need’, I don’t anymore understand Academic Library strategies and maybe prices are somewhat geared to them. In neurology I see some standard textbooks now at 500$, a lot at about 200+$. And yes it is price gouging a captive audience, many of whom though will go on to be high earners in a now profit driven medical system: enough of my hobby horse!
You will also be aware that many scholars now turn a blind eye to a lot of ‘work round’ access methods to academic literature. I will say before I get too complicated and ‘political’ that Scrivener is also a very value for money ‘good guy’ piece of software and cheap at the price. As is most of the Apple stuff one comes across and what makes Apple gear worth it’s own markup price, DEVONthink 3 is a stand out even among them and really I think the outlay here should be bearable for you for stuff you might use for years and years.
I appreciate how tight some budgets are now. However really the only issue I see for you is having the three computers: do you really need 3? I am sure there is some workaround and some workaround that if you were specific you could be helped with here.
3 Likes
Useful reply, interesting reply. Maybe it is ‘get off my lawn’ syndrome but I find pricing now insane with no relation to anything sensible that I can find. With software developers being pretty much the cheapest stuff around. As you say, for some professionals DEVONthink 3 is about what they charge per hour or less. I appreciate too how underpaid most workers and the cheap labor system now endemic in Academia is a disgrace. My direct reply to this included the price of a standard neurology textbook on Amazon for 500$: captive audience…
My last ‘must have my own copy’ book in my field was $190 and I ‘need’ it but haven’t used it once to date. I am sure I will at some point.
And as we’ve said for many years: DEVONthink is an investment, not an expense.
Actually when the price is amortized, even the Server edition is more than reasonable. Currently DEVONthink 3 has been out for ~2.75 years. $500/2.75 = $181 and change per year. I pay almost that per month for my networking. 
7 Likes
I know, I was there (maybe not before they were invented, but certainly before their widespread use) 
but actually, no I couldn’t: I have automated document handling to a good extent, and custom metadata is one of the components in many of my scripts.
I think I was trying to say that you’ve got a lot of expensive gear and that in relation DT is not so dear. The point is of limited value, of course: I use DT daily and it saves me time and space. Over its lifetime it will cost me next to nothing per day, making it a great return on invest. If I used it only occasionally and only as a glorified Finder replacement, it would be of poor value.
8 Likes
I’m doing something which initially appears weird; I’m saying I’d pay more. I do that aware that I’m well off. I do it because I want to provide DT positive feedback; but I want them to survive too - not just personally, but as a company - catering to my needs. When times get hard, I want DT to say they’d rather up the price than drop the staff. I’ll change that if Eric ever gets that Lambo.
So I wasn’t trying to invalidate your opinion - just provide an alternative one. Again, yours is no less valid than mine 
5 Likes
That must be darn good networking. As DT is darn good software.
1 Like
In the US, internet connections, like cell phones, are often more expensive than in Europe.
Mine’s a bit of an unusual case and has failover redundancy built in. That comes at a premium. But @eboehnisch is also correct: US internet is usually more expensive and usually at slower speeds than are available across the pond.
PS: How’s this for an advert…
DEVONthink Server - now only 50 cents per day and dropping daily!!!
- $500 for a new purchase
- 2.75 years * 365 days per year = ~1004 days
- 500 / 1004 = 0.498
5 Likes
DEVONthink is not for everyone. I think it’s worth the price, but I can understand if someone else disagrees.
On another note, discussing the value of software to professionals who spend their time in front of a computer is an interesting one. If you are a mechanic, a full set of Snap-On tools can go for $20k, but its worth the investment because the tools you use are essential for your job. I like @BLUEFROG’s philosophy of DEVONthink being an investment and not an expense. It’s an investment in your future self’s ability to recall and consolidate information when needed, freeing your mind to focus on the creative tasks that it’s good at.
There are lots of tools and lots of ways to go about things in a computer, but if you make your living on one there’s no reason not to pay for the best tools you can get. DEVONthink is industrial strength, and it costs a premium. It’s not for everyone, but if you’re on this forum, it might be for you.
9 Likes
Just wait until you see what academic journals cost when you’re not accessing them through a university library.
If you feel that you can’t justify the cost of a particular feature (or application), then you probably can’t.
But that doesn’t mean the company has made a poor pricing decision. It just means that you and the company have different opinions about the value and/or complexity of the feature.
11 Likes
Objectively speaking, the fact alone that DevonThink pricing is not a subscription but a one-time fee makes it very affordable in the long run. And the value only increases over time as one discovers new use cases and functionalities.
Unlike most Mac applications, there also isn’t a yearly upgrade fee to get the newest features (which keep on coming in each release).
Finally, no other application I’m aware of can remotely replicate the feature set in DevonThink. For people who can put that feature set to use, the value for money is absolutely worth it and for those who can’t there’s things like Evernote or OneNote (albeit with an actually much more expensive subscription and/or a limited free version).
11 Likes
This. I pay more than 5 times the price of DT3 Pro annually to keep up in my field of expertise and current affairs. It would be easy to spend more.
7 Likes
My first introduction to DEVON was when I got DEVON note just as I was starting grad school–it was useful, but at the time, I invested in Evernote instead–but as a professional, Evernote was not serving me as well as I needed it to, and then v.10 broke ALL. MY. WORKFLOWS.
I evaluated a lot of options, including my then ~10-year-old DNote license and a database of receipts and other documents I had stored in a trial of DT2. I remembered that I had really liked DN/DT but that I couldn’t afford it then–Evernote was a better fit. I downloaded DT3, trialed, and didn’t blink to pay for Server. It has changed the way I work in ways that I can’t even begin to describe–but of most import, I can find the documents I need, when I need them–that is essential:
4 Likes
You’re doing well to keep the multiplier at 5x. Mine is more like 50x pa for legal journals, case law and textbooks compared to DT’s one-off cost.
On the other side of the ledger, DT has replaced and therefore reduced the number of subscriptions or purchases for other apps:
Evernote then Bear then Drafts and various other notetaking apps and markdown editors
Multiple PDF apps from PDF Expert to LiquidText and others
Various email clients tried over the years for email filing and archiving
There are probably others.
Like @Blanc, I haven’t been able to wean myself off Acrobat DC at $25 pm ($300 pa), but I now use it only for a small fraction of the time I am DT - there’s not many features left that DT can’t do.
Then there’s the cost of time DT saves. DT has effectively enabled me to build a case management system which doesn’t exist in the market (I’ve tried a few).
And the help and support is outstanding IMHO, as is the constant product development.
FWIW, I don’t think DEVON charges enough. 
7 Likes
I made a similar point: though I have to say I think that pricing of Academic Journals is a racket, whereas softeware like DEVONthink 3 is value for money and I think the developers should be protected and encouraged. I think about this a lot: I have an interest in patents, copyright, intellectual property that kind of thing. I will confess that I have not figured out a way to square this circle.
3 Likes
At least in STEM fields, a lot of funding organizations are making open access to results a condition of their grants. And a lot of important university libraries are pushing back against the exorbitant subscription fees.
3 Likes
Man, believe me, even if you can’t justify it now: get a DEVONthink Pro license. If you can’t afford it right now: save money to get it. It’s really really worth it.
I literally started with “pen and paper”. Because I didn’t know that DEVONthink 2 exists. The very moment I read about it I knew: That’s it! And that was DEVONthink 2. Now it’s DEVONthink 3.
You won’t use “a fraction of the features”. You’ll use what you need - but until you really use DEVONthink you can’t have an idea of what might be useful.
Search the forum, you probably won’t find a single user who did not extend their usage.
Get it! Now!
10 Likes
Devonthink saves me days a year from moving and filing papers
I don’t remember exactly how many years I was with the pro office version, but it certainly came out much cheaper than Evernote.
1 Like
I very strongly concur with @pete31’s view. I was fortunate enough, rather blindly, to go for the Pro licence when I initially bought DEVONthink (just after DEVONthink 3.0 was released, in fact). At that time I really had no idea that I’d use it for more than a simple document store. I didn’t understand Custom Metadata and consequently saw no use for it. I didn’t think I’d want to archive email. I didn’t consider it useful to imprint Paid on invoices—although I did have an inkling it might be useful to use OCR on pdf files.
I hadn’t even the beginnings of a clue that I might one day import 19,000+ diary entries from Day One and use AppleScript (of which, at the time of my licence purchase, I was merely dimly aware and had never used) and custom metadata to enhance them.
I’ve archived emails and imprinted Paid on more invoices than it makes me happy to recall. OCR works silently in the background when I import pdf files and it’s now second nature to regard all of those files as searchable.
This is so true! Everything is available to he or she who reads this forum. 
Stephen
10 Likes