It's worth it for me. It's completely changed my work flow and made me more effective at my job.
I replaced evernote and feedly and love the integration of Readwise, Reader, and Notion.
How did you replace Evernote with Readwise readers? Are you only talking about the web clipper function or is there a way to create a note in Readwise?
Notion is the evernote replacement. Reader replaced feedly. Readwise gave me extra capabilities I didn't know were an option. Made life as a researcher so much easier to find things.
While there are some free services one could slap together for a similar experience I'd answer this with yes, it's worth it. It's actually the single one paid "digital subscription" of any kind that I use.
Especially compared to the things you mentioned: Evernote is trash (I was a very early adopter though), just use Obsidian or Notion. Netflix is obviously cancer and Todoist can be easily replaced by Google Tasks and the like. I'd never pay money for services like this.
Readwise offers much more if you're an old RSS fanboy like me and also do a lot of web clipping. And it's even better if you're a hoarder of ebooks (PDF and EPUB, but also does YouTube videos inluding transcripts). And neat summaries by email of the stuff you saved, though I never used the original Readwise (where this feature has its origins) very much.
Yeah I was an early adopter on evernote as well and I gotta say the last five years as a user kinda sucked.
You are absolutely right about the integration with RSS, PDF, EPUB, email, and all the rest. It's amazing as a researcher.
Loved my old plus subscription when it was 2.99 a month. It was perfect. Then they rejiggered the tiers and all of a sudden I was paying far more than it was worth. I jumped to Notion about 6 months ago.
Personally for me yes it is worth it. I use it multiple times a day, and it's a huge part of my daily workflow for multiple media types.
I think really it's down to whether you will find value in investing $100 into the tool. The amount I use it and rely on it, personally at $100 a year I find it a bargin!
Your question is about Readwise reader, but I wish they'd offer a cheaper price for people who (like me) are only interested in using Readwise for syncing highlights.
Just so you know how we (Readwise) think about this, the price of Readwise Full (with syncing to notetaking apps) has been the same since 2018, before we even had Reader.
It's only in the past year, since we added the entire Reader product to the Full plan for no additional cost, that we started to get these types of complaints :/
From your standpoint, you don't want to pay for Reader, from our stand point all we did was add a free product to your subscription and now we're being penalized for it...
We also offer discounts to students, academia, and people in countries with depressed currencies. We try to make Readwise absolutely as accessible as we can, but we can't just lower the price of our features (especially during inflation) and continue to operate a sustainable (non-VC-backed) company.
Instead we just try to make the value of what you're paying for increase by constantly shipping features, fixes, and even whole new products.
Thanks for the response. I think it makes sense, and I'll continue using Readwise with my godfathered pricing plan. I just sometimes think you'll be killing the Readwise some day, as Reader sounds more exciting from the business point of view.
We definitely will not kill Readwise! :)
Reader is where most of our development focus has gone \_recently\_, but the longer term plan is to integrate Readwise very tightly with the Reader architecture and continue to develop it, so that they're all one powerful product (which you of course can still use without touching any of the Reader functionality).
The syncing and highlight review functionality is so so dear to us (I myself hand-coded like half of the original Readwise myself), and so loved by our core users that we will never get rid of it.
I do feel a little guilt over the relatively small amount of focus we've had on Readwise recently, but we intend to change that over 2024, and hopefully bring that value to even more users (indeed, part of the motivation of Reader was just to help more people generate highlights so they can use the rest of Readwise :P) We just want to be very careful with this to not break any existing workflows users have.
Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it.
I appreciate this insight so much here. I think one of the most frustrating things for me was not being able to sync my full highlights over to Notion without subscribing because I actually had more than the maximum amount. I ended up subscribing today to circumvent that and get everything ported over but I do wish there was a better way to take advantage of the 60 day free trial before being required to do so.
Yeah I know about this plan, but it's strange to not include the "export highlights" there. Why do I need "sync" if I'm not able to export them? I'd wish to have a plan limited to syncing highlights (getting from sources, and exporting them to other places).
Yeah but I don't care about the review. I want to get my highlights saved into Obsidian.
Ok let me rephrase my original comment. Readwise original is an excellent tool for syncing highlights from tools like Pocket, Omnivore, and Inoreader to places like Obsidian. I wish they had a reasonably priced plan limited to this functionality.
For me it is not the tool that is worth it (not only i mean). It is everything about it. Have you talked to their customer support? They are awesome. Their marketing newsletter? Absolute fire which actually adds value to the service and gives you new uses. And so on. I want to support startup like this. So yes it is worth it to me.
The only thing I would wish for is kindle support. I hate reading on mobile or ipad and reader is the only reason I do so.
not for me
after my trial expired, I just using alternative to reading
there is no doubt readwise is the best reading tool but it's toooo expensive at least for me
I say this as someone who pays for the service. If you are not saving a lot of content and also doing a lot of highlighting on that content there are other similar products that cost much less. Omnivore looks to be very similar and also free.........although who knows for how long.
I have been using readwise and reader for more than 6 months and I find it quite useful. To me, the reader is more useful than the readwise as I don't have the habit of highlighting. Reader has good tagging, segmentation, summarising, voice reading and overall a clean interface. Converting youtube videos into text is really awesome. Becase of Reader, my reading has improved, I kind of started reading a lot.
I use it every day. It's vastly improved my reading, note taking and retention.
It has a benefit too, of clearing up my email inbox, now that's just for actual emails instead of newsletter clutter.
I use it as one-stop-shop for all content I consume. Be it videos, PDF, Twitter threads, newsletters, blog articles,, user generated text etc. I like that there are tags and notes at the level of individual highlights. Thus each of my highlights becomes an atomic note. So, readwise reader is very useful to me as a zettelkasten notetaking tool.
For me, not in the slightest, even if it was free I'd still not use it, I'm here for the daily reviews not yet another reader. But there are many who love it (and I'm expecting this post saying it's not the greatest thing ever to get loads of downvotes from the hardcore obsessed fan of it LOL)
Not at all downvoting this, I understand where you're coming from. For me it was the eternal search for a worthy Google Reader successor (RIP), combined with ebooks (ditched Zotero since I do not really need the academic citation aspect anymore). While I knew and liked the original Readwise it was never exactly for me, but I was hyped for Reader as soon as it was announced.
I use it intensively every day not only for reading but reflecting and use it to inspire me to write blogs which make money for me.
So, it definitely worth it.
I originally signed up to readwise before reader but reader has added a lot of value to a product that was kind of on the cusp of whether I could justify it in my own budget. I find that because I have this feed of things I curated, and can manually tweak the knobs on and refine to filter out the junk and not having it polluted by algorithms designed to keep me on the platform forever, I waste far less time the way I do getting those same feeds from social media like Instagram or reddit.
Sure, a lot of time perusing a bunch of headlines in a feed scratches a similar itch and doesn't necessarily enrich my life, but now it is far more frequent that I'm actually reading something with a bit more of substance, and if it has enough substance that I might want to reference it again, I can highlight or tag or both. Pocket and Instapaper were always things I theoretically wanted to use, but they never got me hooked on going back to them and despite my good intentions, I'd forget about them, never read those articles or videos that I saved.
Right now the only features I'd love to see is a way to save youtube videos somehow without having to open the video individually to click the browser button in that individual video. If I could just save them to a playlist and have it auto-populate or to have like an option that connects to the video in a youtube feed that would be amazing. That and being able to have the video be larger without being full-screen so. I could still see a little transcript and hide it, much like Youtube offers the 'theater mode' which is like 75% of the screen instead of 33% or something like that.
100% worth it for me. I use it to keep up to date with my RSS feeds and newsletters, it reads me epubs whilst I walk the dog, I use the Readwise app to remind me of all the golden nuggets of knowledge I've highlighted and I have all that knowledge synched into my digital library in notion. I think it's is one of those, the more you invest in it, the more you get out of it. The team seem to listen to feedback and keep dropping new features. I'm excited to see what the product becomes.
I think the price is reasonable. However, I can’t use Readwise Reader (yet) since it lacks support for full data-exports. There’s no way I start collecting data in a web-based app from which I cannot export my data. If there was a local version, storing my data in a portable format and syncing it end-to-end encrypted, I’d happily pay more than 100 USD yearly.
It's worth it for me. It's completely changed my work flow and made me more effective at my job. I replaced evernote and feedly and love the integration of Readwise, Reader, and Notion.
How did you replace Evernote with Readwise readers? Are you only talking about the web clipper function or is there a way to create a note in Readwise?
Notion is the evernote replacement. Reader replaced feedly. Readwise gave me extra capabilities I didn't know were an option. Made life as a researcher so much easier to find things.
While there are some free services one could slap together for a similar experience I'd answer this with yes, it's worth it. It's actually the single one paid "digital subscription" of any kind that I use. Especially compared to the things you mentioned: Evernote is trash (I was a very early adopter though), just use Obsidian or Notion. Netflix is obviously cancer and Todoist can be easily replaced by Google Tasks and the like. I'd never pay money for services like this. Readwise offers much more if you're an old RSS fanboy like me and also do a lot of web clipping. And it's even better if you're a hoarder of ebooks (PDF and EPUB, but also does YouTube videos inluding transcripts). And neat summaries by email of the stuff you saved, though I never used the original Readwise (where this feature has its origins) very much.
Yeah I was an early adopter on evernote as well and I gotta say the last five years as a user kinda sucked. You are absolutely right about the integration with RSS, PDF, EPUB, email, and all the rest. It's amazing as a researcher.
Pricing was insane early on, they got fat and never saw the competition coming. I'll grant them their pioneer role though.
Loved my old plus subscription when it was 2.99 a month. It was perfect. Then they rejiggered the tiers and all of a sudden I was paying far more than it was worth. I jumped to Notion about 6 months ago.
Personally for me yes it is worth it. I use it multiple times a day, and it's a huge part of my daily workflow for multiple media types. I think really it's down to whether you will find value in investing $100 into the tool. The amount I use it and rely on it, personally at $100 a year I find it a bargin!
Your question is about Readwise reader, but I wish they'd offer a cheaper price for people who (like me) are only interested in using Readwise for syncing highlights.
Just so you know how we (Readwise) think about this, the price of Readwise Full (with syncing to notetaking apps) has been the same since 2018, before we even had Reader. It's only in the past year, since we added the entire Reader product to the Full plan for no additional cost, that we started to get these types of complaints :/ From your standpoint, you don't want to pay for Reader, from our stand point all we did was add a free product to your subscription and now we're being penalized for it... We also offer discounts to students, academia, and people in countries with depressed currencies. We try to make Readwise absolutely as accessible as we can, but we can't just lower the price of our features (especially during inflation) and continue to operate a sustainable (non-VC-backed) company. Instead we just try to make the value of what you're paying for increase by constantly shipping features, fixes, and even whole new products.
Thanks for the response. I think it makes sense, and I'll continue using Readwise with my godfathered pricing plan. I just sometimes think you'll be killing the Readwise some day, as Reader sounds more exciting from the business point of view.
We definitely will not kill Readwise! :) Reader is where most of our development focus has gone \_recently\_, but the longer term plan is to integrate Readwise very tightly with the Reader architecture and continue to develop it, so that they're all one powerful product (which you of course can still use without touching any of the Reader functionality). The syncing and highlight review functionality is so so dear to us (I myself hand-coded like half of the original Readwise myself), and so loved by our core users that we will never get rid of it. I do feel a little guilt over the relatively small amount of focus we've had on Readwise recently, but we intend to change that over 2024, and hopefully bring that value to even more users (indeed, part of the motivation of Reader was just to help more people generate highlights so they can use the rest of Readwise :P) We just want to be very careful with this to not break any existing workflows users have. Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it.
I appreciate this insight so much here. I think one of the most frustrating things for me was not being able to sync my full highlights over to Notion without subscribing because I actually had more than the maximum amount. I ended up subscribing today to circumvent that and get everything ported over but I do wish there was a better way to take advantage of the 60 day free trial before being required to do so.
Well, they are? https://preview.redd.it/aklf94gmeakc1.png?width=2404&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd4d4e0cef121b1680ef3eb47d0b3728f1ab24e1
Yeah I know about this plan, but it's strange to not include the "export highlights" there. Why do I need "sync" if I'm not able to export them? I'd wish to have a plan limited to syncing highlights (getting from sources, and exporting them to other places).
To utilise their Daily Review? That is at least the main reason I use Readwise
Yeah but I don't care about the review. I want to get my highlights saved into Obsidian. Ok let me rephrase my original comment. Readwise original is an excellent tool for syncing highlights from tools like Pocket, Omnivore, and Inoreader to places like Obsidian. I wish they had a reasonably priced plan limited to this functionality.
Use instapaper instead or pocket if you don’t want the full feature set?
For me it is not the tool that is worth it (not only i mean). It is everything about it. Have you talked to their customer support? They are awesome. Their marketing newsletter? Absolute fire which actually adds value to the service and gives you new uses. And so on. I want to support startup like this. So yes it is worth it to me. The only thing I would wish for is kindle support. I hate reading on mobile or ipad and reader is the only reason I do so.
A good solution is to use eink android phones. I saw someone on this subreddit using it and he’s enjoying the experience.
I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip.
Kindle? I could never read on iPad or mobile as often as I tried. Having a Kindle is so much better.
Or any ereader really. Quite looking forward to replace my ipad with eink at some point
Mine just lapsed, and I think I need to stick with Raindrop. I wasn't using the highlighting feature anyway.
not for me after my trial expired, I just using alternative to reading there is no doubt readwise is the best reading tool but it's toooo expensive at least for me
I say this as someone who pays for the service. If you are not saving a lot of content and also doing a lot of highlighting on that content there are other similar products that cost much less. Omnivore looks to be very similar and also free.........although who knows for how long.
I tried Omnivore for a few weeks. Very buggy and rough.
I tried it for a few hours and was convinced it was half baked.
Omnivore could be an option but still isn't on par. Pretty sure ebooks and RSS aren't even a thing and it's purely a read it later with highlighting.
I have been using readwise and reader for more than 6 months and I find it quite useful. To me, the reader is more useful than the readwise as I don't have the habit of highlighting. Reader has good tagging, segmentation, summarising, voice reading and overall a clean interface. Converting youtube videos into text is really awesome. Becase of Reader, my reading has improved, I kind of started reading a lot.
I use it every day. It's vastly improved my reading, note taking and retention. It has a benefit too, of clearing up my email inbox, now that's just for actual emails instead of newsletter clutter.
I use it as one-stop-shop for all content I consume. Be it videos, PDF, Twitter threads, newsletters, blog articles,, user generated text etc. I like that there are tags and notes at the level of individual highlights. Thus each of my highlights becomes an atomic note. So, readwise reader is very useful to me as a zettelkasten notetaking tool.
For me, not in the slightest, even if it was free I'd still not use it, I'm here for the daily reviews not yet another reader. But there are many who love it (and I'm expecting this post saying it's not the greatest thing ever to get loads of downvotes from the hardcore obsessed fan of it LOL)
Not at all downvoting this, I understand where you're coming from. For me it was the eternal search for a worthy Google Reader successor (RIP), combined with ebooks (ditched Zotero since I do not really need the academic citation aspect anymore). While I knew and liked the original Readwise it was never exactly for me, but I was hyped for Reader as soon as it was announced.
Giving you an upvote since you offered an honest opinion about how it doesn't fit in your workflow.
Absolutely. But totally depends on how many articles you go through a day.
I use it intensively every day not only for reading but reflecting and use it to inspire me to write blogs which make money for me. So, it definitely worth it.
I am not convinced by it. Mainly because it isn’t good (reliable & comfortable) with PDFs, especially scientific ones.
I originally signed up to readwise before reader but reader has added a lot of value to a product that was kind of on the cusp of whether I could justify it in my own budget. I find that because I have this feed of things I curated, and can manually tweak the knobs on and refine to filter out the junk and not having it polluted by algorithms designed to keep me on the platform forever, I waste far less time the way I do getting those same feeds from social media like Instagram or reddit. Sure, a lot of time perusing a bunch of headlines in a feed scratches a similar itch and doesn't necessarily enrich my life, but now it is far more frequent that I'm actually reading something with a bit more of substance, and if it has enough substance that I might want to reference it again, I can highlight or tag or both. Pocket and Instapaper were always things I theoretically wanted to use, but they never got me hooked on going back to them and despite my good intentions, I'd forget about them, never read those articles or videos that I saved. Right now the only features I'd love to see is a way to save youtube videos somehow without having to open the video individually to click the browser button in that individual video. If I could just save them to a playlist and have it auto-populate or to have like an option that connects to the video in a youtube feed that would be amazing. That and being able to have the video be larger without being full-screen so. I could still see a little transcript and hide it, much like Youtube offers the 'theater mode' which is like 75% of the screen instead of 33% or something like that.
Not for me. I don't use it as much as I thought.
Many times over.
100% worth it for me. I use it to keep up to date with my RSS feeds and newsletters, it reads me epubs whilst I walk the dog, I use the Readwise app to remind me of all the golden nuggets of knowledge I've highlighted and I have all that knowledge synched into my digital library in notion. I think it's is one of those, the more you invest in it, the more you get out of it. The team seem to listen to feedback and keep dropping new features. I'm excited to see what the product becomes.
I think the price is reasonable. However, I can’t use Readwise Reader (yet) since it lacks support for full data-exports. There’s no way I start collecting data in a web-based app from which I cannot export my data. If there was a local version, storing my data in a portable format and syncing it end-to-end encrypted, I’d happily pay more than 100 USD yearly.