Comment by dmje
2 years ago
FWIW - the sync service provided by Obsidian is really worth paying for. Dropbox / Github just aren't as slick and integrated. The mobile app doesn't work without sync (not without some really nasty workarounds), the option to "view sync version history", the fact that it's rock solid... all worth paying for IMO.
Yeah I can think of 30 different ways to make the sync work, but I can't be bothered to, Sync works really well, and I feel like financially supporting the Obsidian team in some way.
$8/month is a bit steep, but I snatched $5/month early bird pricing and I consider that to be a lot more acceptable of a price.
Edit: worth pointing out there's a 40% discount for non-profits and students: https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Education+and+...
It kind of boggles my mind when people say 8$/month is steep. I get that we don't all live in rich countries, but still. If you are using a tool everyday this is really not much. I think we have been conditioned to expect software to be free. Maybe because there is nothing tangible?
It's also hard to do micro payments on the internet ironically, on that 8$ you can easily pay almost a dollar of fees. If that wasnt the case I expect we would have a much different internet...
Sure, $8 by itself isn’t much, but when everything costs $8/mo it starts to add up.
I just had similar sticker shock recently to the remote access service for Home Assistant, which is $6.50/mo. You still have to host and maintain HA locally, the service just allows you to easily access it remotely.
Or Kagi Search, which charges $25/mo for unlimited searches.
For me, if it’s more than $5/mo it better be something I really need.
> I get that we don't all live in rich countries, but still.
And I'm one of those people (there's dozens of us!), hence why I said it's a bit steep for me.
I can afford to spend some money on subscriptions (~$70-80/month last time I summed it up), but that sum means a lot more to me than it does to someone earning six figures. I have to budget it between dozens of different services that all want a small amount on a monthly basis.
But you're right, I do use it every day, which is why I have decided to allocate some of that amount to pay for a feature that I can absolutely replicate without paying. Similarly, some of that amount goes to NGOs even though I also don't get anything tangible out of it.
Of course not everyone uses the app every single day. That's a poor assumption to make.
I think nearly $100 a year is steep for something that doesn't meet my needs (I use a community sync plugin instead). So I made a one-time donation instead because I still want to support the core product. I only recently realised you can do this: https://help.obsidian.md/Licenses+and+payment/Catalyst+licen...
Dude you use ironically for no good reason, no wonder you don't understand how much $8 is in many countries. Utter ignorance.
also consider this is a note app to run your life with. 8/mo forever is a lot. is rather but 12 months and if I do use it buy it for life
I haven't tried Dropbox or Github or Syncthing like others have suggested but having tried Obsidian Sync I'm not as impressed as everyone else seems to be. Maybe I need to set my bar lower but especially on my phone, background sync doesn't work well and it usually takes a few seconds to load and a few more seconds to sync the data which feels like ages considering all the data required to load it is already on my phone and the diff is a few paragraphs at most.
> The mobile app doesn't work without sync (not without some really nasty workarounds)
You simply synchronize the folder as with the desktop apps. Works right of the box without any workarounds.
Yeah, not sure what this guy is talking about. I'm syncing my notes with my Nextcloud using the FolderSync App on Android which I used for other stuff anyways. Works like a charm, never had any problems.
Obsidian is great, but I'm not paying over 90 bucks a year for a simple file syncing service I can build in less than an hour.
Maybe the publish feature is worth it, but I'm content with the ObsidianPublisher workflow I set up for now.
It works great for me just using iCloud Drive.
I tried iCloud Drive and didn't mind it. I ended up moving to Sync, though, because 1) it's end-to-end encrypted and 2) I can sync any directory, not just subdirectories of iCloud Drive.
> view sync version history
Actively working on that. It’s a feature I’ll need since I mess up *very often*
just a friendly reminder as it bit me often: the version history is gone/gets wiped any time you rename a file/folder.