Why? Because my initial flush of enthusiasm for Joplin has turned first to annoyance and then exasperation and finally hopeless dejection. Something like the Kuebler-Ross stages, I guess.
Why? Because all of Joplin's wonderful features (simplicity, speed, folders of folders of folders, and more) are completely nullified by its synchronization issues. My problems are not unique (see Reddit) and they have been around for years with no sign of resolution. This is a deal-breaker.
And so I will trudge back to Evernote and live with all its horribleness. That is made bearable by its rock-solid synchronization algorithm, which has not hiccupped once in my 15 years with it.
I'll check back with Joplin in a few years and see if anything has changed. Good luck, all.
too many issues with evernote to list, sync errors, versioning not working, windows client not working, web client issues... oh and the fee... I can host a decent VPS for less...
Of course those are fair criticisms because you experienced them. In my time with Evernote I have had many problems too, although not those particular ones.
I've only been with Joplin for a month and have already had to start over from zero twice because of synching issues. Right now both my Joplin Android app and Windows program are completely nonfunctional - one day before setting off for two weeks vacation where I really need everything working. Evernote is my Plan C, after Plan A (Evernote) and then Plan B (Joplin) both drove me away.
Yes, the Evernote fee is really bad. But so is the 20+ hours I spent last month trying to solve Joplin's unsolvable synching issues. In the end I would much rather pay the money and know my system won't suddenly completely stop working because I inadvertently synched a device at the "wrong" time.
Hi @scerwin
I understand your problems and frustrations with synchronization issues in Joplin. However, after you and many other users have experienced a lot of difficulties with Evernote, I would like to suggest two different alternative plans before thinking to return to the known worst issues of Evernote:
Try Different Locations or Repositories for Synchronization: Although I frequently read about synchronization problems, I have rarely encountered them myself. Is Joplin entirely the problem, or is it an issue with a combination of desktop and phone operating system + a way and location synchronization process?
Or explore other alternatives before returning to Evernote: Obsidian, Logseq or many other better options.
Hi Eduardo. Thanks for weighing in with your suggestions. I am very much open to alternatives to Evernote, so I appreciate your thoughts.
I am using Joplin Cloud for synchronization. I chose this from the beginning because I noticed other users were having problems with all the alternatives and I didn't want to invite this trouble. I don't really know what caused the synchronization problems with Joplin Cloud. I need to have a desktop program and a mobile app and they need to synchronize without me having to carefully plan how to save/synchronize/exit/etc each device in order to avoid conflicts.
I have briefly looked at Obsidian and may try it. I haven't heard of Loqseq and will check it out, thanks.
I am guessing that Joplin Cloud itself is perfectly stable, in some sense. It's probably the file-locking during synchronization that isn't well-implemented. (Sorry, easy for me to say, I'm sure this is extremely challenging.)
In a nutshell: everything was fine until suddenly it wasn't. A few dozen conflicts were flagged but it wasn't clear to me what I should do about them. I "retried" them all on the mobile app and they went away. A few minutes later several hundred conflicts were flagged. I reasoned that things were in bad shape and decided to uninstall the mobile app and start over. It never was able to synch back up, even after multiple uninstalls/memory wipes/phone restarts.
Weird. I have been using Joplin for ... 6 or 7 years. Never once have I had a sync issue (several laptops, mobile phones). And in that time, I have swapped out at least one laptop and two phones. Anyway. Just haven't had an issue. And I have never lost data. Every so often, I hear of people who have struggled, and I just don't get it. The cell phone has been maybe an issue for some because, IIRC, with the initial sync you have to keep the phone focused on the app or something. ? I can't recall; it has been so long. Anyway. I have a sizable footprint of stuff and ... I just haven't had an issue.
Anyway. Sorry to hear your experience has been a bad one. I just wanted to ensure anyone reading this hears an alternative experience. I'm not saying your struggle isn't real; just that it doesn't seem to be typical. At least from my perspective.
I can relate to the OP. I had sync problems (no disasters but a lot of inconsistency), memory issues (as in huge amounts consumed because every add-on added a 100Mb even if it did BA), and I didn't really like the Android app. So I opted out - although, obviously, I'm still watching because there is a lot to like with Joplin.
For the sake of having stuff I can reliably use day-to-day, I've gone with SyncThing for syncing, and then different editor choices on each platform according to my preferences. I like Typora on Windows, Markor on Android and so on. This means I can even come back and look at Joplin from time to time just to see how it's going.
I wish I could say the same, t0dd. In the same vein I have heard from lots of people reporting Evernote sync problems, but I never had one in many years of use. (I have plenty of other gripes about EN, just not about EN syncing.)
I don't think there was anything especially unusual in my Joplin setup. I set up Joplin on two computers first (one Windows 11, the other Windows 10) and imported several thousand Evernote notes in batches, testing syncing between them for several days until I was satisfied it was working perfectly. Then I added the Android app into the mix and continued testing. That went smoothly too, until suddenly one day it didn't. I never recovered from that sync error and now Joplin on both my Android and Windows is completely hosed, with no access even to my Joplin Cloud database.
I see some Joplin users (here or on reddit) advising a very specific sequence like save, sync, exit in order to avoid these sync problems. I feel that if this is really required then something in Joplin needs to be fixed. I just can't live with the ever-present fear that a syncing failure will occur someday and take down my entire Joplin database, as it did in my case. That's why I'm leaving.
GeoffW, thanks for your thoughtful and interesting reply. I looked up SyncThing and think it looks quite promising. My use case is a little different from yours: although I do occasionally write notes, mostly I just need to store pdf scans of all the things I don't want to keep around in physical form anymore. For that reason, the notes organizer itself should ideally have built-in pdf previewing, like Evernote and Joplin.
I've used Joplin for years now with a beta S3 plugin and don't have sync problems. I used it with Onedrive before and never had sync problems. I sync PC, iOS, and Android devices.
scerwin, since I use Samsung mobile stuff, my first thought for your situation was Samsung Notes which allows attaching and annotating PDFs ... I can sync across Samsung devices but I've not yet found a way sync back to Windows (haven't spent much time looking, to be honest), and I'm not sure it would be suitable for a large collection of PDFs anyway.
But one of the useful things about using SyncThing is that once you're using it you can mix and match apps according to what you need. So if don't need to annotate your PDFs then you can pick whatever you like to manage your PDFs. If you are scanning with your phone pick the best scanner, and view your PDFs in Office, Gallery, OneDrive, etc. etc. etc.
One downside of SyncThing is that you're copying everything everywhere that's synchronised, and you may or may not have capacity on your phone for all your PDFs. (Something that cloud options like OneDrive can help manage.)
If you do need to annotate the PDFs, you might want to look at Nebo (iOS, Android and Windows). I don't use it myself, but found out about it because the notebooks produced by Kobo ereaders are apparently Nebo compatible which made it appealing to me ... I can't actually remember why I chose not to proceed with it.
SyncThing leaves you spoilt for choice, which plays havoc with my decision-making-disorder . You could even use Joplin if sync was your main gripe.
I agree with you, t0dd - after a long, long time with Joplin, I don't think that I have experienced any sync issues at all, using several different devices, new and old. I rely on Joplin Cloud. Super happy with Joplin and certainly NOT going back to Evernote!
Let me say this. When I had no encryption, I had tons of sync issues. Since I've turned encryption on? ZERO sync issues. I'd go as far as to say that, from my experience, Joplin is almost unusable without turning on encryption.
Back when the global OneDrive outage happened, my Joplin sync-ing went kaflooey. I ultimately switched to Joplin Cloud and it's worked flawlessly ever since. As a sysadmin, I can understand the challenge of having a syncing service that deals with lots of small files. Whatever Joplin Cloud is doing, they seem to be rock solid for MacOS, Linux, and Windows.
Using Joplin as a filestore isn't really it's use case. I would think something like Dropbox or Google Drive would be better as a filestore. Or even running your own Nextcloud instance.
Have used them all. So far the best are OneNote and Obsidian, in different ways. If Joplin doesn’t work you, given them a try. I will never consider EverNote today given the new owner’s greedy pricing policy—there are so many free apps that simply work.
. You could even use Joplin if sync was your main gripe. 