Evernote taught a generation to dump their brain into someone else's cloud — then changed the pricing, the privacy policy, and which devices still worked. Notes apps are personal archives: journal entries, client meeting notes, medical stuff you would not tweet. If the vendor can read it, or sunset your plan, you are renting memory.
Notesnook (~15k stars, GPL-3.0 clients) is an open-source, end-to-end encrypted alternative. Notes encrypt on your device with XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2; the sync server stores ciphertext, not your plaintext. Web, desktop (Electron), mobile (React Native), web clipper — same editor stack across platforms. They publish Vericrypt so you can sanity-check the crypto claims without trusting a marketing page.
What you get as a user
Think rich notes, notebooks, tags, attachments, and sync — without handing the vendor the keys. Import paths exist from other apps (see their help centre). Email is required for accounts on the hosted service; on your own instance you still run their identity flow, but you control who can sign up.
Clients since v3.0.18 let you point at a custom server URL, which is what makes self-hosting real instead of theoretical.
Self-hosting: the sync server
The main GitHub repo is the clients. The backend lives in notesnook-sync-server (AGPL-3.0): API, identity, SSE messaging, attachment storage. Streetwriters mark self-hosting as possible but unsupported — Docker is ready, full public docs are still on their roadmap. If you need hand-holding, use notesnook.com; if you want keys and disks under your control, read on with eyes open.
Quick path:
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/streetwriters/notesnook-sync-server/master/docker-compose.yml
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/streetwriters/notesnook-sync-server/master/.env
# set NOTESNOOK_API_SECRET (long random string), public URLs, INSTANCE_NAME, DISABLE_SIGNUPS as needed
docker compose up -dThe compose stack brings up MongoDB (replica set), MinIO for S3-compatible attachments, and the .NET services wired together. Optional profiles add themes server, CORS proxy, and inbox API. External Mongo or Garage examples live in their repo if you do not want everything on one volume.
Required env vars include public URLs for the auth server, app host, monograph, attachments, and API — you are expected to put TLS and reverse proxy in front (Caddy, nginx, Traefik) on a real domain, not expose raw ports to the internet.
Why self-host encrypted notes?
Data residency. Ciphertext still has metadata and blobs on disk; keeping that on a Canadian VPS answers "where does my team's notebook live?" without a US SaaS subprocessors spreadsheet.
Account policy. Set DISABLE_SIGNUPS=true when the instance is only for your family or company. You are the admin, not a support ticket.
Zero-knowledge still applies. E2EE means a compromised server does not automatically leak note bodies — but protect the host anyway (backups, SSH, updates). Back up Mongo and MinIO volumes; losing them loses sync state and attachments even if clients still have local copies.
Not the same as Memos. We have covered Memos — lightweight, server-readable markdown micro-notes. Notesnook targets Evernote-style workflows with client-side encryption and heavier infrastructure. Pick based on threat model, not star count.
Ops checklist
RAM and disk: budget 2–4 GB RAM for Mongo + MinIO + three API-style services on a small team; attachments grow with use.
SMTP: optional in .env, but without it email 2FA and password reset do not work — new users should switch to an authenticator app in Settings → Auth.
Licensing: clients GPL-3.0, sync server AGPL-3.0. Internal use is straightforward; offering Notesnook-as-a-service to the public triggers AGPL obligations.
Expect rough edges. No official self-host guide yet, community Discord and GitHub issues are your friends. Test client pairing against your public URLs before you migrate a decade of notebooks.
Hosting it with us
We run the Linux underneath — reverse proxy, TLS, firewall, volume backups — on Docker hosting in Canada. Notesnook is a multi-container .NET + Mongo + MinIO stack, not a single PHP container; we size the box and document restore steps before you flip DISABLE_SIGNUPS.
Tell us how many users sync and whether attachments are mostly text or PDF scans — we'll map domains to the five public URLs the compose file expects and keep SMTP on your mail provider.
