Self-hosted note apps still have practical trade-offs
After several weeks of hands-on testing, the biggest problems were not only setup, but daily editing, mobile use, and sync. Obsidian was difficult to run on a VPS, and even a with did not feel good because editing behaved unpredictably and switching between edit and preview modes was tiring.
Anytype became easier to understand over time, but its desktop and s did not match well enough; mobile did not show queries and basic formatting like paragraph indentation did not work. Joplin had the same problem with Markdown-style editing and a webview feel, and sync was not instant because it ran every 5 minutes unless triggered by hand.
SiYuan had the best editor experience of the group, but mobile access through a browser was too awkward because each shortcut tap opened a new tab. Notesnook also had a strong editor, close to SiYuan, but running more than 8 , opening many ports, and setting up multiple s made it too heavy to operate.
Key points
- Editing quality, mobile behavior, and sync speed were the main across the tested apps.
- Obsidian was hard to run on a VPS and still felt awkward with a local setup.
- Anytype had a large desktop-to-mobile gap, including missing mobile queries and weak basic formatting.
- Joplin did not provide instant sync and its Markdown-style editing flow did not fit the need.
- SiYuan and Notesnook had strong editors, but mobile access and server complexity made them hard to accept.