Standard Notes remains independent
One question we hear often is whether Standard Notes will merge into a Proton subscription. The answer is no: It will continue to have its own plan and pricing.
Standard Notes remains a distinct product with its own brand, subscription, roadmap, and community. Our goal is to keep improving your writing experience while staying true to our principles of simplicity, longevity, and uncompromising privacy.
Who is independently running Standard Notes with Proton’s support when its founder is no longer with SN or Proton? That’s not clear.
Honestly a bummer. I moved to standard notes hoping it would get betrer integration and tasks and notes integrated with email.
Yeah, it feels like a “wasted” opportunity to not offer this to other paying users with an add on cost with access to a dedicated Notes app. I mean, they could do something. But apparently not.
Honestly, I don’t know how I should feel about that. One the one hand, I am kind of glad that Proton will be mostly keeping Standard Notes its own independent project and I like that they will be mostly keeping things hand off with it. On the other hand, I would like to see at least some sort of discount or bundle for Proton subscribers with Unlimited and above for a paid Standard Notes plan. For those with Visionary like me, it would be even nicer to see them just bundle in paid Standard Notes in for free for us. It would take the $30/month a longer way for me personally.
I am not convinced Proton plans to keep Standard Notes independent indefinitely. I believe it’s temporary to appease users who wanted integration after not publicly commenting on it since they acquired SN.
If SN remains a standalone app indefinitely, I will be worried. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t believe Proton’s office suite (Email, Docs, Sheets, etc…) can compete with Google and Microsoft, without a note-taking app. If I am right, to me that means that Proton might shut down SN eventually, and replace it with a new service (Proton Notes) that could make it easier to not honor existing subscriptions, and encourage people to switch to Proton Notes.
That would be a nice alternative as well.
They were pretty busy with fixes. The upcoming 2026 features are very welcoming. Hope they can go beyond that list.
What would be nice specifically? Shutting SN down and replacing it with a rebranded, fully integrated Proton app? As long as existing users don’t lose their subscriptions, I’m open to it. But if paying subscribers get left behind, a lot of people are gonna be upset.
Why would a shut down be warranted when they could just spin SN and rebrand to Proton Notes while keeping all the users and their subscriptions in tact - from a product POV, this is how and what makes more sense to me.
Yeah true. I meant for them to have a notes app that is integrated with the Proton Suite. I agree with you regarding on the fact that they hopefully will grandfather current subscribers of Standard Notes into a supposed Proton Notes if that happens. I apologize, should have clarified.
Yes, that is also possible. But if internally it’s too complicated to integrate SN into the Proton suite, and it requires revamping it from scratch to the point where existing subscribers have to manually move their data, that could justify a “shutdown”. I don’t know, I’m just speculating.
Shutdown or not, I personally don’t believe Proton can compete with other note-taking apps without revamping SN completely, which will definitely upset a lot of existing subscribers. SN was deliberately designed to be basic and simple. If Proton makes it more complex with more features like Evernote or Notesnook, they will upset existing users. Unfortunately, I think they have to.
The ideal middle ground would be for existing users to be able to keep the current UI, but I am doubtful that will happen.
As far as I know, the SN blog post does seem to suggest that they plan to continue being independent, maybe as just operating as a subsidiary under the parent Proton with some possible integration into the Proton Ecosystem in the future. Taking into context of the wording in the post.
I’m still waiting for Proton to clarify the very first question/comment up above. We know SN founder is out so who is at the helm of SN within Proton running it independently? It’s been while since that happened but no clear answer as far as I can tell.
Agreed. I guess we will just have to keep an eye on any further news that comes out on this.
It’s almost shitty of Proton to not come out and say it for the sake of transparency.
Not going to lie, it is strange that Proton is and has been unusually quiet specifically about their future plans for Standard Notes. Don’t get me wrong. I do like Proton and their suite, and I enjoy their Visionary tier, but it is admittedly hard to swallow that I can’t get Standard Notes included for the money that I’m paying without needing a separate subscription for it, especially since Proton fully owns them now. I guess we will just have to wait and see. For now, I it looks like Notenook will be my go-to, especially because it’s cheaper.
I was about to ask for some recommendations, but I’ve actually seen a lot of people suggest Notesnook. I think I might give that one a try.
Also, absolutely agree that they should at least give it to visionary users. Though that’s kind of easy for me to say as I’m one myself.
New member but first-time poster. I’m not sure whether you know about it, but as a Visionary Proton subscriber they may offer 70+% off the price if you email them. It costs me under $2 a month for the SN “Professional” plan; Notesnook is definitely more expensive.
Did not know this. Thanks for chiming in and letting us know.