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4 self-hosted Penzu alternatives

Penzu is a cloud-based journaling and diary service for creating, organizing, and securely storing personal journal entries. It provides encryption, reminders, tagging, rich-text editing, photo attachments, and cross-device syncing via web and mobile apps.

Alternatives to Penzu

Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted notes app with secure file storage, offline access, and cross-platform sync, with optional self-hosting of the sync server.

Standard Notes screenshot

6.6k stars548 forksAGPL-3.0last commit Actively maintained

Lightweight self-hosted web app for managing checklists and Markdown notes with file-based storage, PGP encryption, REST API and Docker deployment.

Jotty screenshot

2k stars114 forksAGPL-3.0last commit Actively maintained

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

Journiv screenshot

1.2k stars46 forkslast commit Actively maintained

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

497 stars41 forksMITlast commit Actively maintained

What replacing Penzu actually involves

Every option on this page is open source and free to run on your own hardware, so you own the data and there is no subscription to cancel. 4 of 4 shipped a commit in the last six months. Licences in this list: AGPL-3.0, MIT. In exchange you take on hosting, backups and updates yourself.

Browse everything in Notes & Personal Knowledge Management.

Other tools people replace alongside Penzu