Self-Hosted Obsidian Sync Server That Obsidian Users Would Pay for Today
Obsidian's own Sync service is cloud-only, and the power-user community has been asking for years for an official license to run the same sync backend on their own server. HN comments as recent as April 2026 explicitly state users would pay if Obsidian offered a self-host tier. Current workarounds (the community plugin obsidian-livesync on CouchDB, Syncthing, iCloud folder hacks) all break in subtle ways... conflict resolution is the actual hard part and each workaround implements a slightly different wrong answer. Opportunity: a paid self-host-compatible sync product, either official if Obsidian blesses it or as a community competitor that nails CRDT-style conflict resolution for markdown + file attachments.
Don't wait for Obsidian to bless you. Ship a paid plugin plus a self-host server image, nail conflict resolution with Y.js or Automerge, and price it $50 one-time plus $5/month optional hosting. The users will tell Obsidian about you... then either Obsidian acquires you or competes with you, and both outcomes are fine.
landscape (6 existing solutions)
The ask is narrow and the user population is deep-pocketed (Obsidian paid-sync subscribers are the self-selected 'I already pay for my notes' group). A CRDT-backed markdown-aware sync server with an Obsidian plugin client, priced as a one-time license plus optional hosted tier, walks into an existing revenue stream. The technical moat is conflict resolution for Obsidian's specific metadata and attachment model... Syncthing-level generic file sync is not enough.