I have multiple very large Joplin instances. My OneDrive is used for several Windows clients and two mobile devices. Presently, it is slightly less than 7,000 notes with numerous attachments.
I've never had a problem with performance, sync, or data loss. I would use OneDrive for more of my Joplin-based projects, were it not for the "soft" limit on the number of OneDrive instance files (300,000), after which Microsoft warns of performance issues.
Similarly, I use a Dropbox instance with currently around 4,500 Joplin notes, also with no issues or performance problems that I can observe.
I won't infer that Joplin instances will never have performance issues. I have several concurrent research projects using a single Joplin Cloud instance with over 150,000 notes (plus attachments). There are obvious "issues" there owing to the size of the database--I use several work-arounds to get it to do what I need .
My point is that I doubt most users of either OneDrive or Dropbox (using the standard setup with a modest number of add-ons) will have problems with either.
what is an "instance". I have not seen this term before. you have a number of whatever they are. How do you switch between them? Are they one simply different profiles in one Joplin installation? Different profiles can sync to different cloud drives and folders?
nevertheless, sounds pretty positive for Onedrive use. I think that my usage will not come close to yours. But I see that Onedrive may be an option.
Here I'm using "instance" to reference one independent, single occurrence of the Joplin program—essentially a running copy of the software.
I do access the several cloud services that I use through Joplin profiles, but I use the profile configurations and the associated cloud providers independently for different purposes. I don't try to link them in some way.
Right now, I sync to Owncloud via WebDAV, but I used OneDrive sync for several years. In the first year or so it was pretty unstable, but after that it became rock-solid (not the fastest of sync targets though).
Here are my thoughts on Joplin and NextCloud as of 25 June 2025:
For several weeks now, my Joplin instance has worked very well in combination with a paid, managed NextCloud instance, with only a few easily resolvable conflicts arising.
i have switched to dropbox for syncing joplin. so far it is working well. I have yet to determine if this is a working solution, since the original problem stemmed from syncing failing through certain other wi-fi networks, and I haven't had the opportunity to try syncing from those other networks yet.
Sigh, the whole thing wasn't very well communicated in that case. I had been using OneDrive with no issues for years, but I wasn't going to rely on an unsupported sync method. Switched to nextCloud, which also has been working ok, but is very very slow with a free provider.
don't know what thing you are referring to as not being well communicated (speaking of not well communicated). If you are referring to the question of reliability of onedrive, and having switched to dropbox, I explained the problem I was having in the first post. I was seeing only criticisms of onedrive, and then went with recommendation to try dropbox. It was after that, some users offered experiences that were positive about onedrive; after i had just switched to dropbox.
I may have opportunity to try sync on a wifi network that previously failed with nextcloud, in a few days. can report back about that; problem solved, or not.
Don't worry, he wasn't referring to your communication @astro46
OneDrive sync was deprecated in Joplin Android v3.2.2 (with a visible message in the UI saying this) and there was also a conversation thread on the relevant commit on GitHub (which most users probably didn't see). Then in the very next version, the deprecated message was removed
I have tried joplin sync, using dropbox, on a wifi network that previously failed when using nextcloud. Worked fine. Can't try it on another wi-fi network that failed when syncing through nextcloud, since it is halfway across the country. At this point it seems that the syncing issue is resolved. time will tell.