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Joplin

E2EE notes with self-hostable sync

provisional — pending verificationAGPL-3.0self-hostable

Arete score

4.3 / 5

Autonomy5

Return4

Efficiency3

Transparency5

ἀρετή “AH-reh-tay” — excellence: a thing being good at what it’s for. Mean of the four principle scores. How we score →

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~ Provisional — seeded estimate by a human researcher; full rubric pass pending.

Why it's listed

Joplin is listed in notes & personal knowledge because it competes on utility: e2ee notes with self-hostable sync. It's built by an independent, bootstrapped team — no growth-at-all-costs pressure, no ad-tax passed to you. Licensed AGPL-3.0; pricing: free / paid cloud sync. Its resource footprint is reasonable for what it does, though not featherweight. This entry is provisional — the scores are seeded estimates pending our full manual rubric pass, and the verification date will appear here once complete.

Facts

License: AGPL-3.0
Pricing: Free / paid cloud sync
Funding model: Indie bootstrapped
Self-hostable: Yes — deploy difficulty: easy
Replaces: Evernote
Verification: Provisional — scores are seeded estimates pending manual verification

Also in notes & personal knowledge

Memos (4.8) — Lightweight self-hosted micro-journal
Obsidian (4.5) — Local-first markdown knowledge base; your files, forever
Trilium Notes (4.5) — Hierarchical personal knowledge base
Zettlr (4.3) — OSS markdown editor for academic writing
Standard Notes (3.8) — E2EE notes built to last decades

Spotted a problem — trackers added, dark patterns, abandonment? Report a violation. Scores change when evidence does.