If you're reading this, you likely missed the free upgrade period from GoodNotes 4 to GoodNotes 5 which was from January 15th, 2019 to January 15th, 2020.
We want to excuse ourselves for that and unfortunately, the free upgrade is no longer available.
We still hope that you will consider getting GoodNotes 5 at the regular price. Since the initial launch on January 15th, 2019, our team has worked hard and delivered a significant number of updates with improvements, bug fixes, and new features, including previously missing ones. We will continue to release exciting new updates for free for existing users of GoodNotes 5.
Why the free upgrade is no longer available
We offered the free upgrade for an entire year after we launched GoodNotes 5. After one year of supporting GoodNotes 4 and 5 in parallel, we removed the old app from sale to focus entirely on the development of our latest version. We used a “loophole” on the App Store and offered a bundle that included both apps. However, since one app is not available for sale anymore, the bundle cannot be offered any longer.
The system we used to provide a free update for GoodNotes 4 users to GoodNotes 5 on iOS was never intended for this purpose.
Grey areas and abuse of the system, as well as very bad user experience on the App Store for it, resulted in a massive amount of work for our team, financial damage to our company, as well as tons of non-self-inflicted bad ratings on the App Store [1].
We don't regret offering this fair way of upgrading for existing customers of our iOS app and are very grateful for all the support and kind words we received.
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[1] We had many cases where people didn't follow the exact instructions that we had provided but instead purchased the app for the full price even though they were eligible for a free upgrade. In other cases, customers ignored the alert that the app wasn't supported on their device's operating system.