#1

Use case or problem

I feel there are some limitations with the way Obsidian Sync is currently implemented that stop certain ways of working. At the moment you are limited to 5 remote Vaults and 4GB per Vault.

I personally like to create a Vault for each main project I’m about to work on, and have all of them synced. The reason for many Vaults being when searching through the Vault, linking notes, looking at tags, I only see the things relevant to that project and not all of my notes. I also have some Vaults that could be a lot larger then others. An example of this is a Vault I use for art references that is over the 4GB limit, while another Vault may only be a few MBs of text.

Proposed solution

Since a Vault is just a folder with a little bit of metadata inside the .obsidian folder there shouldn’t be any reason to limit this to just 5. Instead it should be “unlimited” (within reasonable constraints). Along with this change, the storage allocation should be shared across the Vaults, so you will have 20GB of pooled space, allowing some Vaults to be much larger then others.

On top of this, it would also be nice to potentially pay for more storage. Something along the lines of $10 for 50GB (I understand you wouldn’t be able to match the economies of scale that companies like Google/Apple can for pricing).

Current workaround

Go elsewhere for syncing, which is currently more difficult with mobile platforms.

7 Likes
Storage size Sync
#2

I find the limitation of 5 vaults way too restrictive.

I use Obsidian for several book projects and have 8 vaults that I need to have synced. They are using app. 450 MB in total.

As @Toomosin writes “Since a Vault is just a folder with a little bit of metadata inside the .obsidian folder there shouldn’t be any reason to limit this to just 5.”

3 Likes
#3

Yeah I really hope the vault limitations are removed in the near future :frowning:

#4

You could just nest all eight into another vault called Books and sync that. You wouldn’t ever need to open Books as a vault once you have it set up.

1 Like
#5

Frankly, the pricing and restrictiveness of the Sync AND Publish features are sort of a joke when you factor in their pricing.

I’m not opposed to supporting the developers. But since this request is specific to Sync I’ll try to keep my thoughts on Sync here.

When paying yearly it’s $4/mo, that’s $48/yr. I only have two vaults: one for work, one for personal. Ideally I’d just have one and I’ll probably move to that eventually. But what I am guessing here is that for MOST users their vaults will primarily be text with a few images here and there to support some of their notes. I’d be surprised if there were many using 4GB of space for a vault. I’m sure there are some, but still… the average user is likely to use far far less.

I’d love to just sync with iCloud, but mobile makes that incredibly cumbersome… it’s almost like it was made to be a crappy experience to sell Sync. Nevermind that when the promotion ends it’s $8/mo when paying yearly. That’s nearly as much as iCloud’s $10/mo for 2TB of space plan.

I bought Sync because it’s convenient, but it was only made more convenient by the developers.

I really hope that when the prices go up there’s very little traction for these services and it forces the developers to rethink the pricing strategy.

2 Likes
#6

I like Sync— it’s critical for me since I am juggling a few devices with restrictive company management profiles (besides the duplicating notes… but hopefully that’ll be worked out). However, I have all my notes in one vault, so I’d really like to at least be able to pool space together. I have a lot of images and diagrams in my notes and I’m getting near enough to the 10 GB limit to be worried. Even at $4 a month, it is expensive for only 10 GB. 50 GB seems more reasonable.

I don’t blame the devs though, they seem extremely helpful and open to enabling routes to alternate sync platforms. Both OneDrive and iCloud worked decently well for me before switching to Sync.

1 Like
#7

I also advocate for the following changes to Sync’s service terms:

  • Pool storage (limit per subscriber, not per vault)
  • No limit on number of vaults per subscriber
  • Option to pay for additional pooled storage

Sync subscriptions are simultaneously payments for a service and expressions of trust in and support for @Silver and @Licat.

But unless Sync’s terms evolve, over time more and more Obsidian users will be forced to seek an alternative provider for the service. :frowning_face:

#8

I use just two vault and it’s mostly note taking so there is no chance i ever go close to the huge storage limit set on the sync service. 5 vaults however can be quickly reached, also i wish the publish subscription could be part of a single package witht he sync service, just one “premium” subscription that gives you online functionalities.

The current pricing however is a real problem for me. Although i subscribed sync for a year I did so thinking in my head “i hope i’ll find an alternative cheaper solution by then”, because the software itself is free, but sync alone made it more expensive than most full cloud alternatives. I know there is git but the ease of use of sync makes it very nice to have. On top of that, if I want publish i would have to add 20$ a month on top of that? For 30$ a month i can have several full cloud products, streaming services and so many other things. I think $4 a month is already quite a lot for the space i use, i can get hundreds of megabytes of cloud storage, and I’d rather support the product through donation, VIP/Insider account like i’m doing right now, feeling like i’m donating and contributing and not feeling like i’m overpaying for just syncing data…

Let’s hope by next year other options and tiers are available, as well as do-it-yourself solutions for people with their own cloud/git/storage ^^

#9

While I am happy to pay for things, I mean, as most in here have, I have donated to support free software.
But I, too, find the pricing of sync and the limitations too much to consider subscribing, I will more likely just donate more.
The initial $4/m IMO was borderline too high.

As for the publish being in the picture, I think comparisons to gitbook, notion, confluence, and wordpress are all completely reasonable. All offering significantly more, for significantly less.

To be honest, I consult to 2 companies, one using Notion.so, the other using Atlassian Confluence, and both offer sync (well, they are cloud) and publish for about $5/month per user.

1 Like
#10

I am new here and within two days of using publish it appears I’m already at a limit … it said 50 mb’s over … I’m assuming this is as much as I had to publish 4gb. But this is a crazy limitation. Is there any reassurance this will be changed soon? Did I read this wrong? There is no option to purchase more space? Really fretting over what to do next … what changes will I have to make. I do have pictures, but not many videos. The pictures go with 18 years of writing blog entries. Is this program useless to higher use?

Thank you for your thoughts,

Ann

#11

Not sure why the developers chose a vault limit of 5 - this seems like an arbitrary amount. I personally need 7+ different synced vaults and now I’m limited to the point that I am spending time merging vaults that shouldn’t be combined in the first place.

I hope this is changed soon and we start seeing more vaults per account or unlimited vaults.

#12

You could simply nest them purely for the purposes of Sync.

#13

@Silver and @Licat: Would you be willing to comment on this thread (summarized here)?

Of course the authors of these posts would most like to hear that you will adopt the changes to the Sync service’s limits that we’ve outlined.

But if you do not intend to do so, an explanation for that decision would be very much appreciated.

Thank you!

#14

Regarding pooling space, I can answer (after talking with licat) that it’s likely not going to happen because it will complicate the backend infrastructure significantly (and make it more brittle).

You can open two separate feature requests for your other two points (more remote vaults and pay for more storage).

Increase number of remote vaults in Obsidian Sync
Increase/buy more storage space in Obsidian Sync
#15

One of the OP’s use cases — “many Vaults [so] I only see the things relevant to that project” — would be solved if we had the ability to set a temporary scope as suggested in "Nested vault" / vault scoping plugin and the threads it links.

#17

Tried doing that this last month. Quickly hit the GB limit and now I’m separating them into their own vaults again. The main issue is each vault has heavy pdfs and imagery…