Journey

Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Journey

A curated collection of the 3 best self hosted alternatives to Journey.

Cross-platform digital journaling app for creating dated diary entries with text, photos, mood tags, location, and reminders. Provides cloud sync across devices, export/import options, search and basic organization features.

Alternatives List

#1
AdventureLog

AdventureLog

Self-hosted travel tracker and trip planner with map-based logs, itineraries, sharing, and travel statistics; SvelteKit frontend and Django/PostGIS backend.

AdventureLog screenshot

AdventureLog is an open-source travel tracker and trip planner that helps users log visited and planned locations, build multi-day itineraries, and visualize travel history on an interactive world map. It combines a modern web frontend with a geospatial backend to provide map-driven trip planning and rich location entries.

Key Features

  • Interactive world map interface for adding, filtering, and viewing locations with geospatial detail
  • Detailed location logs supporting dates, descriptions, personal ratings, photos, categories, and privacy controls
  • Multi-day itinerary planner with activities, flight info, packing checklists, and collaborative editing
  • Sharing options for public links and direct collaboration between users on itineraries/collections
  • Travel statistics dashboard summarizing countries, regions, cities, and other travel milestones
  • Modern tech stack split between a SvelteKit/Tailwind frontend and Django + PostGIS backend with a REST API
  • Docker-based deployment artifacts, Docker Compose and Kubernetes-friendly manifests for production

Use Cases

  • Personal travel journaling: keep a searchable, map-based archive of trips with photos and notes
  • Collaborative trip planning: co-edit itineraries, share packing lists and day-by-day activities with travel companions
  • Travel analytics: visualize visited countries/regions and generate simple travel statistics for blogs or archives

Limitations and Considerations

  • Advanced geospatial features require a PostgreSQL instance with PostGIS enabled; setup is necessary to unlock full map functionality
  • Deployment and scaling assume familiarity with containers and orchestration (Docker Compose, Traefik, Kubernetes manifests) for production use
  • Map rendering depends on MapLibre and a configured tile provider; large-scale tile usage may require external tile hosting or additional configuration

AdventureLog provides a focused, map-first experience for logging and planning travel with an emphasis on privacy, extensibility, and an open codebase. Its split frontend/backend architecture and container-friendly deployment make it suitable for personal use or small community installations.

2.5kstars
171forks
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#2
Journiv

Journiv

Self-hosted private journaling app with mood tracking, prompt-based writing, media uploads, analytics, and powerful search for full data ownership.

Journiv screenshot

Journiv is a privacy-first, self-hosted journaling application designed to help you capture entries, track mood, and reflect over time while keeping full control of your data. It combines a clean writing experience with organization, search, and insights.

Key Features

  • Rich journal entries with a minimal, distraction-reduced UI
  • Mood tracking with visualizations and trend insights
  • Prompt-based journaling to help start and maintain a writing habit
  • Media uploads attached to entries
  • Tags and multiple journals to organize different areas of life
  • Advanced search across entries, media, and metadata
  • “On This Day” resurfacing of past entries for reflection

Use Cases

  • Personal daily journaling with mood tracking and long-term insights
  • Maintaining separate journals for work, travel, or personal growth
  • Searching and revisiting past moments using tags and full-text search

Limitations and Considerations

  • The project is in beta and under active development; breaking changes may occur, so regular backups are recommended

Journiv is a strong fit for privacy-conscious users who want an owned, self-managed journaling workflow. Its mood tracking, prompts, search, and analytics make it useful both for quick daily entries and longer-term reflection.

770stars
24forks
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#3
DailyTxT

DailyTxT

Encrypted diary and journal web app with client-side encryption, markdown editor, file uploads, searchable entries, multi-user accounts and PWA support.

DailyTxT is a self-hosted encrypted diary and journal web application that encrypts user data before writing it to server storage. It provides a responsive web UI with a markdown editor, file attachments, tagging and search while keeping each account's data encrypted with per-user keys.

Key Features

  • Client-side encryption workflow using ChaCha20-Poly1305 for stored data and Argon2id for deriving keys
  • Per-user encryption keys and backup-key mechanism for password recovery; admin cannot read user plaintext
  • Markdown editor with live preview and custom entry templates
  • Encrypted file uploads (images automatically detected) with a 500 MB per-file limit
  • Full-text server-side search across entries, tags and filenames
  • Tagging, calendar navigation, read/distraction-free mode and per-user statistics (GitHub-like activity graph)
  • Export entries (including uploaded files) to HTML and data stored as JSON files (no external database required)
  • Multi-user support with an admin panel for user management and temporary open registration
  • Responsive design and PWA support for mobile/home-screen installation

Use Cases

  • Personal encrypted journaling where entries and attachments are stored encrypted on a self-hosted server
  • Small teams, families or groups needing separate user accounts with per-account encryption and admin-managed access
  • Portable, long-term archival of journal data stored as readable JSON files and exportable to HTML

Limitations and Considerations

  • Search requires server-side access to decrypted data for indexing; the project does not provide full end-to-end searchable encryption
  • Data is stored as JSON files rather than a database; this favors portability but may affect scaling and performance for very large installations
  • Authentication stores a derived key in an http-only cookie for API calls; administrators should follow best practices for TLS and host hardening

DailyTxT is focused on privacy-minded journaling with practical features like search, attachments and export while keeping user data encrypted at rest. It is suitable for users who want a portable, self-hosted diary with per-account encryption and straightforward deployment via Docker.

420stars
37forks
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Why choose an open source alternative?

  • •Data ownership: Keep your data on your own servers
  • •No vendor lock-in: Freedom to switch or modify at any time
  • •Cost savings: Reduce or eliminate subscription fees
  • •Transparency: Audit the code and know exactly what's running