I was more than a bit surprised to discover that the amazing web application, Evernote, just came out of Beta.

Why? Because I had all but forgotten that Evernote was IN Beta.

For months now I have been using it seamlessly on my iMac , my MacBook Air and my iPhone to store and access all kinds of information and I haven’t had so much as a blip in its function. It certainly didn’t FEEL like a Beta to me and now it isn’t.

Evernote is all grown up and better than ever. It is by far one of my favorite applications/services for storing and organizing notes, emails, pictures and more. And as Doug reminded me earlier, you can even "Jott" to it.

(Yes, "Jott" has become a verb. "I am Jotting." "I will Jott." "I Jotted.")

So is Evernote coming out of Beta good news or bad news?

In my opinion it is VERY good news.

Evernote will continue to offer a free version of its service that has all the capabilities as the premium service. This includes both the Web and the resident-based accessibility, the Web-Clipper for sending web pages to Evernote, the iPhone-optimized site and Evernote Mobile for Windows Mobile and Java-enabled devices. It also includes an upcoming iPhone Clipper for sending web pages to Evernote right from your iPhone.

So if all the power and flexibility of Evernote is available for free what is the Premium Service all about? Capacity.

Evernote Premium bumps up the capacity from 40mb per month to 500mb per month. It also offers stronger security via SSL, priority image recognition and a premium level of support. This chart clearly shows the differences.

Upgrading to a Premium account costs just $5 a month or $45 per year.

If you sign up for a full year right now you also get an Evernote t-shirt (while supplies last).

I had been worried that as some of my favorite web Applications emerged from Beta they would price themselves out of my usability range. I’m glad to see that Evernote has not done that but has, instead, decided to offer a very usable Free version and a reasonably-priced Premium approach.

Way to go Evernote.

Tags: Evernote, JAMM, web applications, the cloud, web 2.0, iPhone