my biggest gripe with Standard Notes got sort-of better and sort-of worse. before: the free plan only had plain text editing, you had to upgrade to get any of the "plugins" such as Markdown...
my biggest gripe with Standard Notes got sort-of better and sort-of worse.
before: the free plan only had plain text editing, you had to upgrade to get any of the "plugins" such as Markdown formatting, todo lists, or spreadsheets
$29/year plan gets you rich text and Markdown editors
$79/year plan adds in code and todos
$119/year plan gets you spreadsheets
all of those are just Javascript plugins loaded into your browser. there's no meaningful difference in the cost-per-user Standard Notes has on their backend.
this all just seems like extremely arbitrary market segmentation. (also...some of the color schemes are limited by which tier of paid plan you get???)
I shied away from using them back when I was still searching for a long-lasting note taking solution without any lock-in. I scrupulously take notes, so I didn't mind paying for a good product, but...
I shied away from using them back when I was still searching for a long-lasting note taking solution without any lock-in. I scrupulously take notes, so I didn't mind paying for a good product, but their previous pricing model didn't make any sense to me at all. I'm glad I trusted my gut and didn't choose them because this new pricing model is even worse than the previous one.
Feature sets of a note taking app is obviously important and people have niche needs, but I think one general thing most people can agree on is that these type of apps should inspire trust in their users. If you fragment your product with vague terms like "some" editors and themes, that just tells me there's a chance I can get screwed down the line when you adjust your pricing again. Not to mention fragmentation naturally requires you to divert your focus from the main product because you have to offer different feature sets to different people.
I'm obviously speaking from a user's perspective, but if I were them, I'd just offer a generous free plan alongside a paid plan that just covers everything at a premium price. No fragmentation, no hassle, just simple, easy to understand offerings. The last thing I'd want to do with my note taking app is thinking about it and follow its development cycle to see if I'm on the right plan and missing useful features.
I switched to Obsidian, and while it isn't open sourced, you can run it without needing to pay for anything and if they start pushing some less-than-great features (which I doubt), you can just...
I switched to Obsidian, and while it isn't open sourced, you can run it without needing to pay for anything and if they start pushing some less-than-great features (which I doubt), you can just stay on the older versions that work fantastically well and sync with your own cloud/file manager.
I think they have far more usable extensions and a larger community.
It seems to be a bit of a grey area, but I use this open SN extensions repo and have no issues getting color themes or other editor extensions on my free plan. If they close off this workaround,...
It seems to be a bit of a grey area, but I use this open SN extensions repo and have no issues getting color themes or other editor extensions on my free plan.
If they close off this workaround, it'll just be the motivation I need to start self-hosting Standard Notes instead.
Joplin is StandardNotes, except actually open source and functional. There are mobile apps, a console app, and a Desktop app that all work great. Plugins Discourse forums GitHub
Joplin is StandardNotes, except actually open source and functional. There are mobile apps, a console app, and a Desktop app that all work great.
The spirit. StandardNotes provides the source code as an excuse, in my experience with the product. For example, the project claimed to provide long-term data integrity. Data integrity issues...
The spirit. StandardNotes provides the source code as an excuse, in my experience with the product.
For example, the project claimed to provide long-term data integrity. Data integrity issues started cropping up in notes. Turns out the editors plugins are repackaged upstream dependencies, which is fine, but those projects were minimally repackaged under another license and sold for money. When issues were pointed out to the team, StandardNotes responded by blaming and divesting themselves from some plugins.
If you repackage upstream dependencies under a different license and sell it for money, you don't get you blame the upstream dependencies- you get to make the ecosystem better. The StandardNotes team went essentially dark for months on end to. StandardNotes checked the box on providing the source code, but not playing the community role.
Joplin also has weird formatting style, it's not easily exportable to other markdown editors.
Not sure what Markdown editor you're exporting to, but this list of Markdown Options in Joplin should help you narrow things down. Simply disable all the extension options for maximum Markdown compatibility between editors. When I left StandardNotes, it exported binary data for the SpreadSheets, which is truly a weird export format.
I donno, Joplin acts like better community stewards and provides a more reliable product. Paying for StandardNotes sent money to a team that avoided responsibility. Paying for Joplin seem to support the whole ecosystem around the product. Give Joplin a try. Worst case, you'll still be able to export your data.
This is sad to learn. I love Standard Notes as an end user, but I'm admittedly not aware of any of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Does Joplin have support for spreadsheets? The two apps are pretty...
This is sad to learn. I love Standard Notes as an end user, but I'm admittedly not aware of any of the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Does Joplin have support for spreadsheets? The two apps are pretty comparable in my book (and I actually briefly tried out Joplin before settling on Standard Notes), but last time I checked Joplin didn't support spreadsheets, and that's a killer feature for me.
I've been using Standard Notes since the early days. I just checked, and I have notes dating back to the beginning of 2017, so almost 5 years. For 2 years in there, I had a paid subscription (paid...
I've been using Standard Notes since the early days. I just checked, and I have notes dating back to the beginning of 2017, so almost 5 years. For 2 years in there, I had a paid subscription (paid for with cryptocurrency).
I have never had any kind of problem with anything in the tool, or with the project, supporters, or anything. It has been an excellent tool that seamlessly links and syncs my work across machines--laptops, desktops, browsers and phones. While I do agree this latest pricing scheme seems ... odd ... I don't really understand why there is such intense dislike for it. Use the free tier, or pay for the tier that covers the plug-ins you want to use. Seems straightforward enough.
I should note that I also host my own Nextcloud server, and over the years, I have gradually used StandardNotes less and less, simply because my Nextcloud provides most of the same functionality, along with a lot of other tools, and it's just become my "goto" tool.
my biggest gripe with Standard Notes got sort-of better and sort-of worse.
before: the free plan only had plain text editing, you had to upgrade to get any of the "plugins" such as Markdown formatting, todo lists, or spreadsheets
now:
free plan still has only the plain text editor
$29/year plan gets you rich text and Markdown editors
$79/year plan adds in code and todos
$119/year plan gets you spreadsheets
all of those are just Javascript plugins loaded into your browser. there's no meaningful difference in the cost-per-user Standard Notes has on their backend.
this all just seems like extremely arbitrary market segmentation. (also...some of the color schemes are limited by which tier of paid plan you get???)
I shied away from using them back when I was still searching for a long-lasting note taking solution without any lock-in. I scrupulously take notes, so I didn't mind paying for a good product, but their previous pricing model didn't make any sense to me at all. I'm glad I trusted my gut and didn't choose them because this new pricing model is even worse than the previous one.
Feature sets of a note taking app is obviously important and people have niche needs, but I think one general thing most people can agree on is that these type of apps should inspire trust in their users. If you fragment your product with vague terms like "some" editors and themes, that just tells me there's a chance I can get screwed down the line when you adjust your pricing again. Not to mention fragmentation naturally requires you to divert your focus from the main product because you have to offer different feature sets to different people.
I'm obviously speaking from a user's perspective, but if I were them, I'd just offer a generous free plan alongside a paid plan that just covers everything at a premium price. No fragmentation, no hassle, just simple, easy to understand offerings. The last thing I'd want to do with my note taking app is thinking about it and follow its development cycle to see if I'm on the right plan and missing useful features.
I switched to Obsidian, and while it isn't open sourced, you can run it without needing to pay for anything and if they start pushing some less-than-great features (which I doubt), you can just stay on the older versions that work fantastically well and sync with your own cloud/file manager.
It seems to be a bit of a grey area, but I use this open SN extensions repo and have no issues getting color themes or other editor extensions on my free plan.
If they close off this workaround, it'll just be the motivation I need to start self-hosting Standard Notes instead.
Joplin is StandardNotes, except actually open source and functional. There are mobile apps, a console app, and a Desktop app that all work great.
What in Standard Notes did you find not open source?
Joplin also has weird formatting style, it's not easily exportable to other markdown editors.
The spirit. StandardNotes provides the source code as an excuse, in my experience with the product.
For example, the project claimed to provide long-term data integrity. Data integrity issues started cropping up in notes. Turns out the editors plugins are repackaged upstream dependencies, which is fine, but those projects were minimally repackaged under another license and sold for money. When issues were pointed out to the team, StandardNotes responded by blaming and divesting themselves from some plugins.
If you repackage upstream dependencies under a different license and sell it for money, you don't get you blame the upstream dependencies- you get to make the ecosystem better. The StandardNotes team went essentially dark for months on end to. StandardNotes checked the box on providing the source code, but not playing the community role.
Not sure what Markdown editor you're exporting to, but this list of Markdown Options in Joplin should help you narrow things down. Simply disable all the extension options for maximum Markdown compatibility between editors. When I left StandardNotes, it exported binary data for the SpreadSheets, which is truly a weird export format.
I donno, Joplin acts like better community stewards and provides a more reliable product. Paying for StandardNotes sent money to a team that avoided responsibility. Paying for Joplin seem to support the whole ecosystem around the product. Give Joplin a try. Worst case, you'll still be able to export your data.
This is sad to learn. I love Standard Notes as an end user, but I'm admittedly not aware of any of the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Does Joplin have support for spreadsheets? The two apps are pretty comparable in my book (and I actually briefly tried out Joplin before settling on Standard Notes), but last time I checked Joplin didn't support spreadsheets, and that's a killer feature for me.
I've been using Standard Notes since the early days. I just checked, and I have notes dating back to the beginning of 2017, so almost 5 years. For 2 years in there, I had a paid subscription (paid for with cryptocurrency).
I have never had any kind of problem with anything in the tool, or with the project, supporters, or anything. It has been an excellent tool that seamlessly links and syncs my work across machines--laptops, desktops, browsers and phones. While I do agree this latest pricing scheme seems ... odd ... I don't really understand why there is such intense dislike for it. Use the free tier, or pay for the tier that covers the plug-ins you want to use. Seems straightforward enough.
I should note that I also host my own Nextcloud server, and over the years, I have gradually used StandardNotes less and less, simply because my Nextcloud provides most of the same functionality, along with a lot of other tools, and it's just become my "goto" tool.