I used Joplin for a while but found that it was a bit too clunky. Also, yes it does store the notes locally, but they weren’t in a plain text format. My notes were fragmented across different files.
I switched to Obsidian after that and will never switch back. Yes, people make Obsidian complicated, but it’s honestly only as complex as you make it.
For me, all it does is text and sync. All the files are stored locally in complete markdown format. That way I can read them in any program that can process text. My personal workspace syncs to an S3 compatible service, while work synced to Google Drive.
I loved Joplin and felt so conflicted when I found Obsidian. But now I would recommend it over Joplin any day.
stackPeek