Fully Managed CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync
as a Service

Deploy CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync as a fully managed service starting at €9/mo. Get automated backups, SSL, updates, support and monitoring included.

Obsidian LiveSync pairs the Self-hosted LiveSync plugin with Apache CouchDB®, the replication engine it was written against. You get near-live sync across desktop, laptop, phone and tablet, with the same convenience as a paid sync subscription while the vault and the passphrase protecting it stay yours.

✓Free 7-day trial  ✓99.9% Uptime SLA  ✓No credit card  ✓Cancel anytime

✓Free 7-day trial  ✓99.9% Uptime SLA
✓No credit card  ✓Cancel anytime

CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync

CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync

STARTING AT

€9/month
Automated Backups
Monitoring
Automated Updates
Auto SSL

USAGE

Unlimited
Human Support
Custom Domains
Terminal Access
File Manager Access
Deploy in your region — 21 locations worldwide
GermanyFinlandNetherlandsUKSwedenUnited StatesCanadaSingaporeJapanAustraliaBrazilSouth Africa+9 more →
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ABOUT THE SOFTWARE

What is CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync

Obsidian LiveSync is the combination of a community sync plugin and the replication database behind it. The plugin lives inside Obsidian on each device; the database is the shared point they all talk to. DANIAN runs the second half.

The Self-hosted LiveSync plugin is written by an independent developer under the MIT licence and distributed through the community plugin directory inside Obsidian. It watches the vault folder, splits changed files into content-addressed chunks, and replicates those chunks rather than whole documents, which is why a one-line edit to a long note does not push the whole note across a mobile connection. It supports optional end-to-end encryption, so what reaches the database is ciphertext that only your devices can read.

The database side is Apache CouchDB, an Apache Software Foundation project released under the Apache 2.0 licence. Its replication protocol is the reason the plugin exists: multi-master replication with revision trees, conflict detection and offline tolerance are built into the database rather than bolted on. Neither half restricts commercial hosting, and neither has a network copyleft clause, which is what makes a managed offering possible at all.

FEATURES

What CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync does

The plugin and the database together give you continuous replication, end-to-end encryption, conflict handling and device onboarding. These are capabilities of the software itself rather than of the hosting around it.

Near-live replication

Changes propagate as they are written rather than on a timer, so a note edited on a laptop is current on a phone opened a moment later.

Chunked delta sync

Files are split into content-addressed pieces and only changed pieces move, which keeps mobile data use proportional to the edit rather than the file.

End-to-end encryption

An optional vault passphrase encrypts content before it leaves the device. The database holds ciphertext, and the passphrase never travels with the data.

Conflict detection and merge

Concurrent edits create separate revisions rather than overwriting each other. Simple cases merge automatically; the rest surface as a prompt you resolve.

Desktop and mobile parity

The same plugin runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, so a vault is not split into a full version and a reduced mobile version.

Setup URI onboarding

Settings can be exported as a passphrase-protected setup link, so a new device is configured by pasting one string instead of retyping eleven fields.

Plugin and settings sync

Community plugins, themes and per-device settings can travel with the vault, so a replacement laptop comes back with the same editing environment.

Revision history in the database

The replication database keeps a revision tree per document, so a note that was overwritten can be recovered from the database rather than from a backup.

WHAT'S ALWAYS INCLUDED

Every app. Fully managed.
Nothing extra to pay for.

Every app on DANIAN ships with the same operational baseline. You do not choose a backup add-on or a monitoring tier. Hosting, patching, backups, SSL, and support are part of the €9, and they apply to CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync the same way they apply to everything else in the catalog.

Automatic updates and patches

Apps run the latest stable version. Security patches applied silently, with rollback if needed.

Daily off-site backups

Multiple daily backups in redundant off-site locations. One-click restore if anything goes wrong.

24/7 uptime monitoring

Continuous monitoring with instant alerting. We respond before you notice.

SSL, firewall, DDoS protection

Auto-renewing SSL, hardened firewall rules, DDoS mitigation on every deployment.

Performance and scaling

We monitor resource usage continuously. When your app needs more headroom, we flag it and upgrade with your explicit approval.

Dedicated engineering support

Real engineers by email and ticket. DNS, SMTP & migration help. All included in €9.

WHY MANAGED

Why teams pick managed CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync

Obsidian stopped requiring a paid licence for work use, and teams moved in. Those teams then hit the same wall: the notes are local and private, but the sync layer is a subscription on somebody else's servers, priced per person.

Running the sync layer yourself removes the per-person bill and puts the vault on hardware you choose. What it adds is a database to keep alive. A fresh install of the replication database does not create its own system databases until single-node setup has been run, and until that happens the plugin reports a configuration error with no obvious cause. Getting past that is the first evening; keeping it healthy is the rest of the year.

The failure that catches almost everyone is cross-origin configuration. On a desktop the plugin connects and syncs immediately, so the server looks correct. On a phone the request carries a different origin, the database rejects it, and the plugin shows a generic connection failure rather than an origin error. People spend hours on certificates and firewalls before learning that the mobile origin was simply never on the allow list, and that a wildcard cannot be used here because the plugin needs credentialed requests.

REVIEWS

Hear from customers ​like you​​​​​​​

Successful businesses and professionals around the world rely on DANIAN every day

USE CASES

Three teams who run Obsidian LiveSync on DANIAN

Three shapes of team turn up most often for managed sync: small practices with confidentiality obligations, research groups with retention obligations, and reporting desks that would rather not hold notes in a subscription account.

FOUR-PERSON LITIGATION PRACTICE

Per-matter vaults instead of a shared drive

Each lawyer keeps a vault per matter and syncs it to a laptop and a phone. They chose a region in the jurisdiction they practise in, set a vault passphrase held only by the partners, and rely on the raised document ceiling so scanned exhibits replicate with the notes that cite them.

SIX-PERSON UNIVERSITY RESEARCH GROUP

Lab notebooks that outlive the grant

The group runs one instance for the project vault, syncing between office desktops and field tablets. The region sits near the institution. Daily off-site backups satisfy the funder's long-retention expectation without anyone maintaining a second copy by hand.

TWO-PERSON INVESTIGATIVE DESK

Interview notes that never reach a vendor account

The desk syncs a shared investigation vault between two laptops and two phones, with end-to-end encryption switched on and the region deliberately chosen away from the jurisdiction they report on. Custom domain, no anonymous reads, and terminal access when they want to check state.

COMPARISON

Four ways to run CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync

Four routes get a vault syncing across devices. They differ in what you pay, what you operate, and who can reach the notes. The table compares all three at one, five and ten people so the shape of each is visible.

Path1 person5 people10 peopleWhat it means in practice
Obsidian Sync subscription$4 to $5 per person$20 to $25 per month$40 to $50 per monthNothing to run. Storage and version history are capped by tier, the vault sits in the vendor's account system, and the bill scales with every person you add.
Self-host on a VPS$24 per month$24 per month$24 per monthFlat server cost, but you own setup, origins, certificate renewal, disk headroom and backups. Budget several hours to first sync and recurring evenings after that.
Home serverAbout $260 onceAbout $260 onceAbout $260 onceA two-bay Synology DS224+ plus drives, roughly $2 a month in electricity. Sync stops when the home connection does, and off-site backup is still your problem.
DANIAN managed Obsidian LiveSyncEUR 9 per monthEUR 9 per monthEUR 9 per monthFlat regardless of how many people sync into it. Tuned defaults, daily off-site backups, monitoring and support are included, and the region is yours to choose.

Price is only half of it. The subscription path is the one where a third party holds the account the vault belongs to; the self-run paths give that back but hand you a database to keep alive.

BY INDUSTRY

CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync for specific industries

Some professions cannot treat notes as disposable. Where a duty of confidentiality or a retention rule applies to working notes, the sync layer stops being a convenience question and becomes part of how the obligation is met.

Client confidentiality under ABA Model Rule 1.6 covers working notes, not just filed documents, and Formal Opinion 512 pushed the point further by asking lawyers to understand how any third-party tool handles the material they put into it. A note vault holding privileged strategy is squarely inside that.

For firms we turn anonymous access off entirely, so every replication request carries credentials, and we raise the document ceiling to 50 MB so scanned exhibits and signed PDFs replicate alongside the notes that reference them rather than living in a separate system. The vault passphrase is set by the firm and never held by us.

A typical workflow is a vault per matter: pleadings notes, deposition summaries and research linked by internal references, synced between an office desktop, a courthouse laptop and a phone. Client-file retention obligations commonly run six to ten years depending on jurisdiction, which is longer than most laptops last, so the backup copy matters more than the running one.
Funder data policies set floors that outlast the project. The UK research councils require research data to be preserved for a minimum of ten years, with population and clinical studies held to twenty, and a data management plan is expected at the application stage rather than at the end. Lab notebooks and analysis notes fall inside that scope.

For research groups we keep the revision history intact rather than trimming it, so the database preserves the sequence of edits to a protocol or an analysis note, and we run daily encrypted snapshots into a second datacenter so the ten-year copy does not depend on one machine in one building surviving.

The common pattern is one shared project vault syncing between office desktops, a field tablet and personal laptops, with literature notes and experiment logs linked into the same graph. Ten years is the number that matters: it is longer than most postdoc contracts, which is exactly why the vault should not live on a departing researcher's personal subscription.
Reporter's privilege is statutory in forty states and the District of Columbia and absent at federal level, which means source protection depends on where material sits and who can be compelled to produce it. New York's shield statute is the well-known example. Notes held in a vendor's account are reachable in ways notes on infrastructure you control are not.

For reporting desks we recommend end-to-end encryption enabled from the first device, so the database holds ciphertext and we could not read a source name if asked, and we help pick a region deliberately outside the jurisdiction the desk covers.

The workflow is an investigation vault per story: interview notes, document indexes and timelines, synced between two laptops and two phones so a reporter in the field is working from the same graph as the editor. Forty-one places have a statute and the rest do not, which is why the location of the database is an editorial decision rather than a technical one.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Three groups of questions come up. The first is about the plugin and the database themselves, the second about moving an existing vault across, and the third about billing, support and how the platform behaves.

01

Technical and configuration

Almost always the mobile origin is missing from the allow list. The phone sends a different origin string than the desktop, the database rejects it, and the plugin shows a generic connection failure. We set all three client origins before you connect.
No. A stock database has no system databases until that step runs, which is the usual cause of a configuration error on first connect. We complete it on first boot, so the plugin's configuration check passes without manual work.
Yes. The stock document ceiling is 8 megabytes, which quietly rejects larger attachments. We raise it to 50 megabytes and keep the request ceiling high, so a note carrying a scanned exhibit replicates rather than failing.
If you enable the vault passphrase, yes. Content is encrypted on the device before it is sent, so the database holds ciphertext. We never receive that passphrase, which also means we cannot recover your notes if you lose it. Store it somewhere durable.
The database is append-only and the plugin stores content in chunks, so revisions accumulate. Two to three times the vault size is normal, and heavy editing of very long notes pushes it further. We keep compaction running and watch the growth curve.
Both edits are kept as separate revisions instead of one overwriting the other. Simple differences merge for you; anything ambiguous is presented as a conflict you resolve in the editor, with both versions intact until you choose.
The plugin is designed for one person syncing several devices, and that is where it is most predictable. Teams do share a vault, and it works, but treat it as a shared folder with revision history rather than as a live collaborative editor.
Yes, keep them matched. Mixed versions are the usual reason a device reports that the remote database is newer or unreadable. Update all devices in one sitting rather than letting a rarely used tablet drift several releases behind.
It can, if the phone holds a live connection all day. Most people set the mobile device to sync on events instead, trading a few seconds of latency for much less background radio use. Desktops stay on continuous.

02

Migration and onboarding

21 datacenter locations across six continents. You choose the region at provisioning. Application data sits in the region you choose; pick whichever is closest to your users or matches your data-residency preference.
Yes. Request a region migration from the dashboard and we run the move in the background. The system emails you when the migration completes; total transfer time depends on data volume but typical instances finish in a few hours. There is no extra charge for a region change.
Yes. Full data export is available at any time, in a portable format you can bring to any infrastructure.
Back the vault up first, then turn the existing sync off completely before enabling the plugin. Running two sync systems over one folder is the reliable way to corrupt it. Once the first device has uploaded, pair the others by fetching.
No. A file-level cloud drive and the plugin will fight over the same files and produce duplicates or losses. Use the daily off-site backups as the safety net instead, which is what they are for, and let one system own the folder.
Export the configuration from the first device as a setup link protected by its own passphrase, then paste it on the next device. Send the link and the passphrase through different channels. Choose to fetch from the server, not to push, or the empty device wins.
It depends on vault size and connection rather than on us. A few thousand text notes usually finish in minutes; a vault heavy with attachments takes longer because every file is chunked and uploaded once. Later syncs move only the changed pieces.
Yes. Custom domains are included, and we will walk you through the DNS records or check the ones you have already created. Certificates are issued and renewed automatically afterwards, which matters here because mobile clients reject untrusted certificates outright.
Your notes are already plain Markdown files on your own devices, so leaving costs you nothing in the vault itself. You can also take a copy of the replication database. Cancel from the dashboard and nothing is held hostage on our side.

03

Billing, support, and platform

€9 covers everything we do for that app: hardware in the region you choose, daily off-site backups with one-click restore, automatic security patches and version upgrades, 24/7 monitoring, SSL and firewall, and engineering support on email and the ticket section in the client portal. There are no setup fees or hidden line items. For more info see our Pricing page.
If you decide to continue, we charge €9/app/month from day 8. If you don't, the trial ends and you can export your data. No card is required for the trial, and we never auto-charge you without explicit consent.
No. The €9/month is flat regardless of how many users log into your app. Add 5 users or 50; the price doesn't change.
24/7 email and ticket support, both staffed by engineers who run the systems. We handle DNS configuration, SMTP setup, app integrations, performance tuning, troubleshooting, and migration help. Response time is typically under an hour. There is no tier system — every customer gets the same support.
Yes. Cancel from the dashboard. We don't charge a cancellation fee, we don't lock data, and we will export your data to you on request before deletion. data to you on request before deletion.
Every customer instance is backed up daily to a separate region from the primary. We test restores. You can request a restore at any backup point within the retention window — usually 7 days for daily backups.
Your application data sits in the region you choose at provisioning — 21 datacenter locations across six continents. Account-level data (billing, account email, support ticket history) is processed centrally. Application data region is picked by you, per app.
99.9% uptime SLA on every app, every tenant. Service credits are documented at danian.co/service-level-agreement. The status page is located at status.danian.co.
When your tenant approaches the resource ceiling — the base tier holds 1 vCPU/RAM, 30 GB storage — we notify you. Resource upgrades happen with your explicit consent; we will not upgrade your tenant or charge you without it.
We wait. We don't suspend the app or delete your data on the first failed charge. We email you, you fix the card on file, and we continue.
Invoices can be downloaded from the billing dashboard in PDF the day each charge succeeds. EU VAT is added where applicable and the VAT-reverse-charge regime applies for VAT-registered businesses with a valid number.
150+ open-source apps across automation, team chat, file sync, analytics, AI, password management, email marketing, dev tools, project management, smart home, CMS, and federated social. See the full catalog →
Yes. Every instance comes with a web-based terminal and a file manager in your DANIAN management dashboard. Useful for managing your data and customizations.
Resources scale with your usage. If your app needs more vCPU, RAM, or storage, we add it — and we ask first before any change to your plan. €9 is the floor; resource-heavy workloads may price higher, but you'll always know in advance.
Yes. We have both a Partner program and an Affiliate program available. Anybody can sign up.
No contract. No minimum commitment. Cancel anytime from the dashboard with one click. The 7-day free trial requires no credit card. After the trial converts to paid, you can still cancel at any month without notice or penalty.

DEPLOY IN YOUR REGION

21 datacenter locations on six continents

Pick the region closest to your users.

United States, Germany, Finland, Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Malaysia, India, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Chile, South Africa and more coming soon

Global Reach Map

Try managed CouchDB for Obsidian LiveSync for 7 days

No card. Cancel from the dashboard.