I hope my question isn't bothering anyone. I see that SiYuan is an excellent tool as a second brain, and I like it more than Obsidian, but I still have my doubts about whether it's worth migrating. Since I'm new to both tools, I'd like someone to explain the differences and advantages between them so I can make my decision.
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rali •PRO
- Open source: Unlike Obsidian, which is closed source, Siyuan's source is open. This gives a lot of benefits; some of them will be cited below
- Performance: Siyuan can handle millions of documents; Obsidian lags badly at the 280,000+ notes mark
- One-time payment for Sync & Versatility of choice: Obsidian offers only subscription-based sync; Siyuan offers one-time payment and also one-time payment for a subscription plan for limited seats
- Sustainability: Due to its small team, location, the enormous edge that Siyuan offers, and its rapid international adoption, Siyuan's sustainability looks stable.
- Posteriority & Aging: Siyuan's technical stack is future-proof, its usage of Go for kernel and pure HTML/CSS/JS for interface are good foundation for solid aging.
- Intentionality: Attention to details, precision, well-thought-out design decisions, focus on the right things...ect
- Experience & Wisdom: B3log dev team cumulated 20+ years of experience around markdown, editing and publishing. The remarkable adoption of Siyuan didn't come overnight, its the fruit of long years of making the right decisions.
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Mon •
Your question is valid imo and Im happy to share my thoughts/experiences on these two apps. Ive started using obsidian since its infancy stage and i was onboard with it because i wanted to use an alternative to notion that can be use offline and has better privacy. I got into the rabbit hole, like changing the layouts, formatting my templates, everything. But then i slowly realized that i spent a lot of my time customizing and optimizing everything that i end up not doing that very thing why i downloaded this app, which is to make notes! lol and at that time, it lacks proper tables and databases, although tables can be created now with the latest update but it still lacks the database that i need, it feels janky to me. Another thing, I struggle with text formatting in markdown without installing another plugin to suffice my needs. Also, just like what everyone has mentioned already, the plugins are overwhelming and annoying. These really lose my interest in note-taking in obsidian for a long while. Thankfully, i found about siyuan via reddit and i never look back ever since. I love WYSIWYG approach, making notes and organizing them is way easier for me. I only use minimal number of plugins in siyuan. Most of them are just QOL plugins like bookmark+, tab manager, link icon to name a few. There are still some room for improvement (still waiting for the official release of calendar view for database) and Im hoping for more features/updates to come. EDIT: Calendar view is already released and im pleased with the update. Thank you devs! :D
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Siyuan is far far better than Obsidian. Its even better than some other open source alternatives out there.
- The most impotant thing is that Siyuan is open source unlike Obsidian which is very important.
- Extrememly featureful mobile platform: If you have used the obsidian's android app you'll find how limiting and basic it is.
- Versatile and generous sync mechanisms: Synching on Obsidian is pardon my language god awful. Even if you subscribe you can only sync through their servers.
- Obsidian fans are basically markdown cultists. Their main argument is that because it is markdown there is no vendor lockdown but this argument is moot because Siyuan is already open source. There was never a lockdown to begin with.
I have tried many note taking apps both open source and closed soure. I have tried anytype, affine, appflowy, logseq, simplenotes, joplin, trillium, notesnook and ofcourse notion and obsidian, hoewever they all either did not have the lackluster or the ease of use as as siyuan. Either they leaned heavily towards a very particular notetaking paradigm that was far from conventional and wysiwyg or they never were as featureful as siyuan.
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