> ou’re going to have to pay for your OwnCloud instance to host the info one way or the other,

I have fiber internet at home, and an Intel nuc with docker. I wasn't happy with Joplin. Over the years, I've checked out half a dozen or so note apps that did webdav (and could be hooked up to Nextcloud), but never found one that quite worked. Joplin's notes aren't really markdown, he spams them up with metadata... I think I know how I'd fix that if I were writing it, but I'm too lazy I guess. Keep hoping someone else will do it. Oh well.

>unless you’re hoping to leech as a free user

If I'm not going to trust iCloud for stuff like this, I'm not going to trust some smaller fly-by-night company or someone hosting for free. Nah, I have that part covered.