Obsidian, Joplin, and Standard Notes

I have been using Obsidian for more than a year now, but recently, I decided to try other popular note-taking apps Joplin and Standard Notes. These 2 are well-known for their end-to-end encryption.

I am happy with Obsidian but I just wanted to try these 2 apps and see if they can cut down my monthly spending of $5 on Obsidian Sync.

Let me share my experience with each of the apps:

Joplin

Joplin is a simple yet powerful note-taking app that supports all kinds of devices — Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS. The best feature is that you can sync your notes between multiple devices for free using cloud storage providers like Dropbox and Onedrive (also Joplin Cloud, a paid feature).

I used the app for 2 days and the major problem was with the synchronization feature, whether you set up the sync with Dropbox or with the paid feature Joplin Cloud, it takes a comparatively longer time to sync the changes. Also, instant sync is not available, you will have to set it to run automatically after a time interval, and to make it worst, the minimum interval that you can set is 5 minutes.

Seriously? If I am in hurry and I wrote something down from my laptop that I want synced to my phone instantly, then I will have to either wait for 5 minutes or manually click the Sync button before shutting down the laptop — not good.

Also, the Joplin app is a bit slower as compared to Obsidian.

Standard Notes

For an hour, I thought that I am moving all my notes from Obsidian to Standard Notes and felt like this is the app I was looking for. But… when I learned that the free version only supports plaintext notes, I became sad.

I loved the instant sync and end-to-end encryption feature in the Standard Notes app but the free version of the app doesn’t support markdown format notes. The UI looks amazing and the app loads fast too.

I would have upgraded but the price is $2.48 per month only if you upgrade for 5 years otherwise the monthly price is $9.99.

5 years? No one knows what’s gonna happen in those 5 years, maybe some better and cheaper alternatives come.

So, Standard Notes was a no-no too.

Guess, I am sticking with the Obsidian app for now. It’s working perfectly fine for me though.