Obsidian is now free for work
obsidian.mdIf you like the product, but are not interested in paying for sync or publish, consider buying the one-time $25 "Catalyst" license just to support development.
Thanks for noting this. They sold at least one more license because of it. I've been a casual user for the last couple years so they've earned it in my book.
You are good salesman, you've made them at least $50 now. Definitely money well spent.
I'm so fed up with subscriptions that I didn't realize it was a one-time payment. Time to get my license :)
They have "Multiplayer" on their current roadmap [0]. I assume this is to help reduce friction in getting their Sync offering for teams.
I personally like the move a lot and I hope this works well for them. The model of selling their add-on services seems to have worked for them well so far, and I hope it continues. It's a very functional free core with their paid add-ons being very additive and well made.
If you want to try out multiplayer in Obsidian today, there are a few plugins like Relay (disclaimer: I'm a dev), Peerdraft, and Screengarden. I'm not sure exactly what the Obsidian team has planned but hopefully we can make them interoperable.
Our plugin stores yjs CRDTs in indexeddb today, but I'd love to create some kind of file-over-app CRDT persistence standard that could go alongside markdown files to make markdown collaboration and edit history vendor agnostic.
If anyone would be interested in that type of thing, let me know! (email in bio)
Excellent development! I saw first Obsidian years ago but my main use case would have been for myself at work and I wasn't willing to battle the bureaucratic hoops at my job to try a product I wasn't sure I'd actually stick with long term (like my attempts with logseq). Ended up not even trying it on a personal level. Looking forward to seeing how it goes and who knows maybe I'll end up stick with it and battle to contribute some funds.
As someone paying personally for a commercial license that I use for work, I am not a fan. I like a clear business model otherwise I assume that I am the product being sold.
Edit: They should make it open source if this is the path they take. Then users can personally verify that they (or their data) isn't being sold to the highest bidder.
Obsidian makes money from its add-on services Sync and Publish. Commercial license is joining the Catalyst license as an optional ways to support Obsidian.
The problem with the Commercial license is that it wasn't clear. Many organizations were out of compliance without any way for Obsidian to enforce it, since the app is local and doesn't require sign up.
I thought it pretty clear. If it makes you money, you pay for it. And it's so inexpensive, I've never bothered to negotiate with my employer to fund it as I could easy pay it myself.
So now I am less incentiviced to pay and I have no path forward to negotiate with my employer to front money.
Regardless, I love the tool and your general approach, trying to keep things in publics hand (e.g. publishing and opening the canvas format) - so probably will still pay for it :D
I prefer using my own syncing though, as otherwise it's too expensive for "just syncing".
Thank you Steph! Your product is awesome, used continuously, and works well on all platforms (laptop, phone, etc).
I am grateful and happy that I got the opportunity to thank you here.
So, while you're almost certainly right about the impossibility of enforcement, I imagine many big organisations would purchase licenses anyway because they fear any minor risk of not doing so. Indeed, your Enterprise [0] page lists a number of big orgs with decent outlays.
Do you anticipate those companies to keep purchasing Obsidian now that it isn't a mandatory purchase for compliance?
(As a huge fan of Obsidian, and someone who personally purchased an Enterprise license to use within their company: god I hope so.)
> Do you anticipate those companies to keep purchasing Obsidian now that it isn't a mandatory purchase for compliance?
I don't know. We'll see. It's somewhat unknowable, in the same way we don't know how many users didn't buy a license but should have. My guess is that for every person who bought a commercial license there are 9 who were out of compliance. We anecdotally know that many tech companies have way more Obsidian users than they report. This change will remove a lot of admin work for our team of seven.
What I do know is that even without any Commercial revenue, our other revenue streams (Sync, Publish and Catalyst) are enough to keep the lights on, and we really mean what we say in our Manifesto: "We believe that everyone should have the tools to think clearly and organize ideas effectively."
The bet is that this increases the number of people who discover Obsidian and end up buying one of our add-ons. In the future I can also see us creating add-ons that are more focused on organizational use. This change makes the pricing much clearer in that regard. I expect much fewer questions like "does Commercial include Sync?" which has been a point of confusion for years.
Awesome to hear. Best of luck!
The data is local, obsidian is just a markdown viewer at it's core. They have sync but that's a paid for product.
Their model is selling to large companies and sync users. Not data sales.
They also offer optional E2E encryption of synced vaults, such that you can only open them with your local password. Of course we can't know for sure that they're not peeking at the data, but it all seems above-board and I don't think it makes any sense to try and have that as a business model.
> Their model is selling to large companies
I'm not sure if that's the case now. Why would companies pay for licenses when they're optional and don't give any features?
The same reason companies contribute to FOSS projects and various charity efforts? Despite what many people believe, companies are not forced to make money at all costs.
Why should they have before? It was local and you could just use it?
Before you were in violation of the terms of use, and most companies would rather pay for a license than risk a lawsuit
> I like a clear business model otherwise I assume that I am the product being sold
I guess you don't like using Linux neither?
Even if you pay you are the product.
Updated link: https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
Can you use something like iCloud, Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive to get sync for free? Does it work well?
Many do that with Joplin.
You can use iCloud but it's quite slow.
There are different solutions really, some people use Git and treat the whole vault as a repo. Though I find it quite annoying to manage, also cause not every platform supports git.
That's also why I started writing a plugin to sync with any GitHub repo, it uses the GH REST APIs so it can be used on any platform. https://github.com/silvanocerza/obsidian-github-sync
I'm still actively developing it but the core features work nicely.
I have multiple vaults in my OneDrive, and use https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.on... (OneSync) on Android to have them available there as well. It's been working great.
If I was making edits more often, I might run into sync conflicts. But I mostly edit on my PC, then might make small edits to recipes while I'm working in the kitchen.
I synced using Google Drive on the desktop, and a third party app to pull and sync a local directory on my phone for mobile. Took a little bit of setup but it worked mostly fine. Now I run the paid sync subscription, and the main difference to me is that there's basically zero wait between replication across copies (unless your computer has been off for a while and it has to fetch a bunch at once). Eliminating merge issues and having everything "just work" was worth it to me.
I plan to pay if I migrate from Joplin for sure.
Easier sync and supporting developer = Win win.
Especially in these times I think it's important to support any software that is simply doing a good job for a reasonable fee. Rarer and rarer unfortunately.
Git works well, but you don't get realtime/live sync.
For my setup, I use the obsidian-livesync [1] plugin with a self-hosted CouchDB instance which has worked well for me.
I periodically do commit things to a git repo as a backup if the live sync breaks somehow.
I’m using github to sync 3 instances (iPhone, desktop and one web-based instance). It needs some upfront set up and configuration, and I had to buy a git client app for my iPhone (one time purchase), but it’s been working with near 0 maintenance for 3+ years now. I have versioning, and full auto sync (automatic commit, push and pulls).
Yes, but I ended up going with Obsidian Sync for file history and "it just works."
I tried Obsidian Git for automatic pulls, but frequently had file conflicts even if I wasn't working on files at the same time. Is there another sync tool designed for text that has file version history?
Yes, it works great.
I actually combine that, Git and Syncthing for different needs.
Details here: https://www.dsebastien.net/how-i-synchronize-and-backup-my-o...
I use iCloud, had no problems so far - it's just markdown files anyways
Works okay with iCloud but follow their iCloud setup though; it’s important for a sync related issue.
I use syncthing. Works flawlessly and took just a few minutes to setup.
you can use onedrive to sync the files, and there's also community-made plugins for onedrive and git
yep it's just text files anyway
I use Sync
I hope this doesn't destroy their financing. I would hate to see them go down, it's a wonderful piece of software.
I have to imagine they ran the numbers and found that that wouldn't be an issue. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of enterprise use was completely unlicensed before this.
I wonder if this is a prelude to make obsidian open-source. Would be pretty great.
based on the vibes I've seen on the forums, the team is very passionate about keeping Obsidian free, but averse to making it open-source
The commercial license used to be de-facto optional, now it is explicitly so. Good for them to officially acknowledge that reality. I bet they realized that payment was never enforceable, so it just didn't make sense to keep up the fiction.
I feel like the Obsidian Publish pricing model is a bit off. Having it "per site" feels like nickel-and-diming for small things that's kept me on Notion for a lot of miscellaneous web-published projects. It would be more appealing for at least me if it was something with a higher flat rate that then doesn't care about the exact divisions between your projects.
You can always publish on GitHub Pages using a suitable tool, like https://emanote.srid.ca/
Disclaimer: I'm the author of Emanote
This is a good change. Most people using it at work do it individually and don’t pay. But they do potentially pay for sync services.
I run my life through Obsidian checklists. Sync is worth it for me and I bought a gift subscription for my partner as well.
Shameless plug, I'm working on a plugin to sync your vault with a GitHub repo. It's still under active development but it does the job.
https://github.com/silvanocerza/obsidian-github-sync
Feedback is more than welcome.
How are you differentiating from the other current leaders[1][2]?
Main difference is that I don't use Git, but GitHub API.
You don't have the full flexibility of a git repo but you can use it easily on different platforms. Works the same way on desktop and mobile too.
Most of those plugins don't work that well on mobile.
Nice, that's a big differentiator! I use git sync with my mobile vault, but it's very hacky (using a Termux cronjon) and it's often flaky. Plus I have to open up Termux any time I need to troubleshoot, which is a bit annoying.
Sound reasoning! Thanks for the reply.
I've been using plain git with a git server to sync several machines even though I have to execute a script to do it in each machine. If you see the vault is just the workspace plus markdown files. I didn't know you could add plugins to obsidian. This is interesting. I do wonder if this can be added to mobile - Android/iOS.
Mine doesn't use any script that you must run on each machine.
It uses the GitHub APIs to sync, so it works seamlessly on desktop and mobile. I'm actively using it both on my Mac, Windows machine and iPhone with no issues.
Didn't try on Android but I expect it work fine.
How is this different from the widely used https://github.com/Vinzent03/obsidian-git?
That uses git to sync, mine uses the GitHub API.
This way it works both on desktop and mobile with no issues, cause you don't need git.
This is awesome news for the community. With a built-in multiplayer mode, it would be epic.
Shameless plug(in) -- While not built-in, Relay [0] is a plugin that makes Obsidian multiplayer. Our broader goal is to make Obsidian great for work.
You can make individual folders collaborative in your vault with several different parties. We use yjs CRDTs for real-time collaboration, and we're making the collaboration server (optionally) self-hosted.
Check it out :)
Also for enterprises, being able to point to a different plugins source through config would be great. At work we're mirroring many things using JFrog Artifactory, giving us control and oversight
How do the use-cases for Obsidian differ from Zotero?
Zotero is a file manager with support for research-related tasks like indexing and bibliography generation, Obsidian is a programmable notebook. They can both be used "for research" but they're fundamentally different products.
anyone have any good tips or plugins so that I can have browser plugins on all my devices and save web pages from multiple devices to it? It's basically the only reason I still use Notion. (As a former emacs guy, I like a lot about Obsidian, most of the plug-in ecosystem, including it saving my data as just text.)
There's an official web clipper now: https://github.com/obsidianmd/obsidian-clipper
You can use it on a phone as well via Firefox / Safari.
Try the Obsidian Web Clipper: https://www.dsebastien.net/supercharge-your-knowledge-captur...
I do this already. I use FF on Android and the desktop and the Obsidian Clipper works phenomenally for this.
I am not really comfortable relying on a tool that has a free tier and a subscription. I really like the app, but I will never again have the rugged pulled out under me with a quadrupling of license costs.
Do the make any kind of promises wrt the free tier?
There are no "tiers" with Obsidian. The app is free without limits. You don't even need to sign up. You own your data locally. You can pay for the add-ons like Sync and Publish if you want, but there's also third-party alternatives to those.
At its core, it’s just a text editor. You don’t need any subscription. It’s Local-first, uses Markdown, and if you want to sync or publish, there’s plenty of other tools for that purpose that don’t require an account, like Syncthing or Github Pages.
It is different enough that it will lock me to a certain workflow.
Obsidian is great, because it is not like other apps. Using it daily will mean moving to another app will be some work.
What does it matter if the data is portable?
https://help.obsidian.md/import
Promises aren't ironclad anyhow.
Here’s a piece from their current CEO about data openness: https://stephango.com/file-over-app
I think that the data isn't really the problem, it is the workflow.
Why guys? Let my employer pay for your work.
It might honestly be too cheap to deal with the pain of the bureaucracy. Small purchases still have to go though all of the compliance, legal, whatever nonsense required to send money.
The difference between free and $0.01 is enormous.
KYC and related laws are not 'nonsense'