This was news to me, so this must have changed recently, as I have been billed more than that ever since I signed up.

I looked at my account, and I am charged $10 but it seems they automatically moved me to a "Plus" plan that has more storage. So no complaints from me really. Either that or the $4 plan is new. [1]

The $4 only comes with 1GB of storage. I would recommend the $10 for 50GB if you use images in your notes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37251708

The $4 plan was launched March 20, 2024

https://obsidian.md/blog/standard-plan/

It's a good price but still feels wasteful if you also run/pay for nextcloud or similar.

There are plugins allowing you to sync via other means (for free). I don't know how the author fails to realise/mention this. I've been using Remotely Save with WebDAV or years without issue.

And the notes are all just markdown files. If the obsidian software were to disappear you have all your notes. It's fine someone wanted to spend a load of time writing their own software but none of the reasons presented in this piece make sense.

It's not wasteful to support great software.

For me it was the It Just Works-iness of it combined with a handy way to support the project cheaply.

As long as I'm paying for it, I'm the client and not the product.

I tried some of the third party stuff, iCloud, Dropbox, etc and with all of them I either lost data because of notes not being in sync or had to manually fix stuff. $4/month and zero issues was well worth it for a tool I literally use every day.

I think your comment is very disingenuous. And not just because it's another subscription. That plan does not work if you got more than one vault, and if you use Obsidian you will probably have more than one vault.

https://obsidian.md/sync

It's a time/cost tradeoff and for me personally $4 has been fine for out-of-the-box syncing between clients for the last ~2 years of using just the one vault. It's now $8 for 10 vaults (I only recently added my second), which is still a relatively insignificant amount considering I spend more than that on toilet paper.

> if you use Obsidian you will probably have more than one vault.

Why would anyone ever want to use more than one vault? I just use different folders. The only reason I can think of would be if you are using Obsidian for work where you aren't allowed to use unapproved services.

Just me perhaps, but I have three. Personal, Work, and Shared. But only personal and shared are synced as work stuff needs to stay on the work PC.

I use Obsidian as a distant secondary notetaking app.

I use one vault per video game. I don’t need to clutter up a vault just so I can link from a page on Art combos in Xenoblade games to a page detailing all the random things I need to pick up around Hyrule to upgrade this or that piece of armor.

I use Obsidian and don't have more than one vault. What a weird thing to claim.

I don't think you know what the word "disingenuous" means, and I advise you not to makes such personal attacks in any case.