4 ms·

I find Roam Research to be the the most zen note-taking app. The database takes a lot of mental overhead away and just allows me to write, and I know I won't ha

I find Roam Research to be the the most zen note-taking app. The database takes a lot of mental overhead away and just allows me to write, and I know I won't have to deal with files and folders at all. You could mount a Logseq graph in a location where it isn't easily accessible to other programs and yourself, and restrict the permissions to read-only expect for the 'Logseq' user, so that you think about the plumbing less often. And the new sync that they're adding will make it all even more zen. Syncing with cloud services or using Syncthing gives me a bit of anxiety over data loss.

ramraj07 4y ago
But their pricing is insane. Importantly, the reports of people losing everything is insane. Further, the guys just went and banned/blocked anyone making any complaint on Reddit or Twitter. Their tech stack also sounds dumb. I stopped using their tool on principle on top of the insane pricing.
- mandmandam 4y ago
  Don't know about the tech stack, but the first three are each complete deal-breakers on their own. The pricing truly is nutty. $165 a year for foldable bullet points??!! Gtfo. I wouldn't pay that much to own the app outright. I sincerely hope they lose their lunch, and I feel bad for having recommended them to people.
  - austenallred 4y ago
    $165/year for software isn’t nutty. Stuff is expensive to build. If it’s useful enough you pay. If it’s not you don’t. I believe the tech stack is clojure, which makes a ton of sense given that the data store is basically a graph database.
    - desku 4y ago
      How is £$165/year not nutty? That is more than I pay per year for Amazon Prime, Spotify, Disney+, MLB or The Economist. All for basically being able to just write text in a browser and store it.
    - ramraj07 4y ago
      I do grant you that for some prolific (borderline pathological?) note takers who wouldn’t mind paying that money for an app they spend a lot of their time in. That’s why the price alone was not a dealbreaker for me. The other points were though.
    - kstrauser 4y ago
      In a vacuum, perhaps $165/yr would be OK for some people. But when compared to other options that are mostly as nice for a fraction of the price, it's a bit much for me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - selykg 4y ago
    Obsidian's price is pretty nutty as well. I got lucky and snagged the sync product before they doubled the price, so I'm grandfathered into that. But even $50/yr is a fair bit given it's really just a storage mechanism. $50 isn't that bad, but I would give a hard no at the full price of $100/yr. Worse, the publish feature... holy insanity this thing is. $192/yr to publish a single repository.
    - oigursh 4y ago
      $10/mo for syncing 3MB of text is what failed Obsidian for me. They wouldn't offer a reduction.
      - selykg 4y ago
        Yea, it's pretty bad. My vaults aren't even 3mb, so it's really expensive, regardless. I just don't understand at all how they came up with the pricing. If they need to make money, make the app a paid product for like $10 or $15. Everything they put a price tag on is astronomical. * Catalyst (for early access) $25+ * Commercial $50 per year * Sync $8/mo ($96/yr) * Publish $16/mo ($192/yr) The app remains free, so it's clear they're trying to subsidize the cost of the app by cranking up the dial on the extra services, but I'd rather they just charge a reasonable price for the app and make the addon services reasonably priced. I'd be happy to pay like $10/yr for the app, and if, presumably, enough others were it would probably make them MORE money than the add-on services because a larger portion of their user base would have to pay for the app, and probably wouldn't shit a brick at $10/yr or something reasonable.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  > Further, the guys just went and banned/blocked anyone making any complaint on Reddit or Twitter. It wasn't "the guys". It was the CEO. He believes the best use of his time is monitoring Reddit threads and banning people. He posted an official policy that any negative comment or any mention of a competing app is a permanent ban - even if you're a paying customer. I gave Roam a comprehensive evaluation last year before deciding to go with Obsidian, and paying for Obsidian Sync. I posted a short comment in one of the threads listing the reasons I didn't go with Roam. He could have learned from my comment. He could have ignored it. He banned me. A few days later, he banned Ramses Oudt, the leading community advocate for Roam, for making a negative comment. That's a little more drama than I'd like for a notetaking app I'm paying to use.
- Scarbutt 4y ago
  What's their tech stack?
  - bribri 4y ago
    Clojure, dart, and firebase.
gbro3n 4y ago
Logseq with Git is solid, very hard to loose data, and is the best option for ownership of data / GDPR compliance / privacy. But Git isn't for everyone. Looking forward to sync also.
- packetlost 4y ago
  Yup, I've been doing this for months. It seems like they recently removed the automatic commit feature from the app itself and instead moved it to this little script: https://github.com/logseq/git-auto https://github.com/logseq/git-auto
  - flkiwi 4y ago
    Well that's good to know. But I still say the OG logseq was the best of these apps: open source (mostly), plain markdown, visually clean, backlinks, browser accessible (so no issues jotting down a note from literally anything with an internet connection), almost zero friction for note-taking... It was just the best. Now the contortions we have to go through to synchronize notes is painful. A cynic would say it's a deliberate choice to make the paid sync more appealing, when previously it was unnecessary. Athens is getting there as an alternative, but I wish they were markdown-based for portability.
    - packetlost 4y ago
      idk what you're talking about, they have a pretty easy script. The only thing they've changed in this regard is removing the periodic auto-commit feature which wasn't very good in the first place and the github repo as a back-end, which was also half-baked and not very good. IMO they've only improved things and have not shied away from dropping features that do not work as they intended.
      - flkiwi 4y ago
        Moving from a simple, browser-based, git-backed model to something that requires bash scripts and git hooks and still has chronic sync errors and requires installing apps (that may not be available for a platform or installable for security reasons)? I mean, I respect that not every use case is the same and I'm glad many people find logseq useful (as I still do), but, from my perspective, they have significantly increased the friction of using what was an almost magical tool for capturing transient thoughts at high speed anywhere. I do like the features they are adding, which is why I continue to use it, but it's definitely not the magic tool it used to be.
jrm4 4y ago
I'll call it; for an app in this space, anything other than FOSS or perhaps a one time deal like Obsidian's model is 100% a bad idea, and self-hosting must ALWAYS be a first-class citizen. It's perhaps ironic that this reverses "you get what you pay for," but experience should teach all of us that these subscription type deals are strongly likely to screw you, usually through some change in the business model. (Personally, tried org-mode in the past, have also played with Obsidian, but for me http://zim-wiki.org http://zim-wiki.org is the perfect combo of easy and extensible)

ramraj07 4y ago

But their pricing is insane. Importantly, the reports of people losing everything is insane. Further, the guys just went and banned/blocked anyone making any complaint on Reddit or Twitter. Their tech stack also sounds dumb. I stopped using their tool on principle on top of the insane pricing.

mandmandam 4y ago
Don't know about the tech stack, but the first three are each complete deal-breakers on their own. The pricing truly is nutty. $165 a year for foldable bullet points??!! Gtfo. I wouldn't pay that much to own the app outright. I sincerely hope they lose their lunch, and I feel bad for having recommended them to people.
- austenallred 4y ago
  $165/year for software isn’t nutty. Stuff is expensive to build. If it’s useful enough you pay. If it’s not you don’t. I believe the tech stack is clojure, which makes a ton of sense given that the data store is basically a graph database.
  - desku 4y ago
    How is £$165/year not nutty? That is more than I pay per year for Amazon Prime, Spotify, Disney+, MLB or The Economist. All for basically being able to just write text in a browser and store it.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    I do grant you that for some prolific (borderline pathological?) note takers who wouldn’t mind paying that money for an app they spend a lot of their time in. That’s why the price alone was not a dealbreaker for me. The other points were though.
  - kstrauser 4y ago
    In a vacuum, perhaps $165/yr would be OK for some people. But when compared to other options that are mostly as nice for a fraction of the price, it's a bit much for me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- selykg 4y ago
  Obsidian's price is pretty nutty as well. I got lucky and snagged the sync product before they doubled the price, so I'm grandfathered into that. But even $50/yr is a fair bit given it's really just a storage mechanism. $50 isn't that bad, but I would give a hard no at the full price of $100/yr. Worse, the publish feature... holy insanity this thing is. $192/yr to publish a single repository.
  - oigursh 4y ago
    $10/mo for syncing 3MB of text is what failed Obsidian for me. They wouldn't offer a reduction.
    - selykg 4y ago
      Yea, it's pretty bad. My vaults aren't even 3mb, so it's really expensive, regardless. I just don't understand at all how they came up with the pricing. If they need to make money, make the app a paid product for like $10 or $15. Everything they put a price tag on is astronomical. * Catalyst (for early access) $25+ * Commercial $50 per year * Sync $8/mo ($96/yr) * Publish $16/mo ($192/yr) The app remains free, so it's clear they're trying to subsidize the cost of the app by cranking up the dial on the extra services, but I'd rather they just charge a reasonable price for the app and make the addon services reasonably priced. I'd be happy to pay like $10/yr for the app, and if, presumably, enough others were it would probably make them MORE money than the add-on services because a larger portion of their user base would have to pay for the app, and probably wouldn't shit a brick at $10/yr or something reasonable.
bachmeier 4y ago
> Further, the guys just went and banned/blocked anyone making any complaint on Reddit or Twitter. It wasn't "the guys". It was the CEO. He believes the best use of his time is monitoring Reddit threads and banning people. He posted an official policy that any negative comment or any mention of a competing app is a permanent ban - even if you're a paying customer. I gave Roam a comprehensive evaluation last year before deciding to go with Obsidian, and paying for Obsidian Sync. I posted a short comment in one of the threads listing the reasons I didn't go with Roam. He could have learned from my comment. He could have ignored it. He banned me. A few days later, he banned Ramses Oudt, the leading community advocate for Roam, for making a negative comment. That's a little more drama than I'd like for a notetaking app I'm paying to use.
Scarbutt 4y ago
What's their tech stack?
- bribri 4y ago
  Clojure, dart, and firebase.

gbro3n 4y ago

Logseq with Git is solid, very hard to loose data, and is the best option for ownership of data / GDPR compliance / privacy. But Git isn't for everyone. Looking forward to sync also.

packetlost 4y ago
Yup, I've been doing this for months. It seems like they recently removed the automatic commit feature from the app itself and instead moved it to this little script: https://github.com/logseq/git-auto https://github.com/logseq/git-auto
- flkiwi 4y ago
  Well that's good to know. But I still say the OG logseq was the best of these apps: open source (mostly), plain markdown, visually clean, backlinks, browser accessible (so no issues jotting down a note from literally anything with an internet connection), almost zero friction for note-taking... It was just the best. Now the contortions we have to go through to synchronize notes is painful. A cynic would say it's a deliberate choice to make the paid sync more appealing, when previously it was unnecessary. Athens is getting there as an alternative, but I wish they were markdown-based for portability.
  - packetlost 4y ago
    idk what you're talking about, they have a pretty easy script. The only thing they've changed in this regard is removing the periodic auto-commit feature which wasn't very good in the first place and the github repo as a back-end, which was also half-baked and not very good. IMO they've only improved things and have not shied away from dropping features that do not work as they intended.
    - flkiwi 4y ago
      Moving from a simple, browser-based, git-backed model to something that requires bash scripts and git hooks and still has chronic sync errors and requires installing apps (that may not be available for a platform or installable for security reasons)? I mean, I respect that not every use case is the same and I'm glad many people find logseq useful (as I still do), but, from my perspective, they have significantly increased the friction of using what was an almost magical tool for capturing transient thoughts at high speed anywhere. I do like the features they are adding, which is why I continue to use it, but it's definitely not the magic tool it used to be.

jrm4 4y ago

I'll call it; for an app in this space, anything other than FOSS or perhaps a one time deal like Obsidian's model is 100% a bad idea, and self-hosting must ALWAYS be a first-class citizen. It's perhaps ironic that this reverses "you get what you pay for," but experience should teach all of us that these subscription type deals are strongly likely to screw you, usually through some change in the business model. (Personally, tried org-mode in the past, have also played with Obsidian, but for me http://zim-wiki.org http://zim-wiki.org is the perfect combo of easy and extensible)