git-backed hosting for your notes
Git is a distributed version-control system for tracking changes in source code during software development. It is designed for coordinating work among programmers, but it can be used to track changes in any set of files. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows.
Git is perfect to store plain text notes, you can easily go back in time, restore complete files, parts of it. It’s super efficient when we talk about text files and with things like Git Large File Storage (LFS) it’s even possible to store large binary files within git.
I use git to store all my notes and also sync them between devices. There are tons of solutions out there to host a Git repository, you can also host it yourself if you fancy.
git hosting
GitHub
Probably the Git hosting provider out there. You can create repositories, either public or private ones, just for you. The cool thing about GitHub is: it’s managed for you, free, and they provide a super slick web interface to edit your files and commit them back into the repository immediately. This makes it awesome for editing files from other computers.
GitLab
They provide hosted git repositories, but you can also self-host a version of GitLab yourself. It’s a kinda large or rather huge thing to just store notes, it’s usually leveraged by larger teams. I think it’s way overblown. They just implement every feature someone requests and often it’s only half-baked (sorry, my opinion)
Otherwise, for note-taking they provide the same features as GitHub, there’s a web editor, public and private repositories for free.
AWS CodeCommit
This is for more advanced users since it’s cumbersome to configure a git repository. You can clone via https and/or ssh but this requires extra users, permission to set up and so on, I won’t go too deep into this. Repositories are free for up to 5 users and 50GB of storage which is super nice, you’ll probably never reach this limit even with binaries in git.
Editing on the web is super annoying, you need to login to your AWS account, the sessions expire, so you have to login every day, then you have to navigate to CodeCommit and so on and so forth. They also rarely update this product, so it looks old.
Google Cloud Source Repositories
Basically the same as Amazon CodeCommit (yes, the interface is also super cumbersome, not a lot of updates etc., really the same), but way easier to set up if you’re used to these cloud providers.
At the moment this is the solution I’m using.
Google Cloud Source Repositories
Azure DevOps Wiki
Azure DevOps is one of the best things. It provides a lot of DevOp features, like kanban boards, issues (I think) and also wikis to store your notes. All git backed. I think the pricing and free tier are more or less the same as with Amazon and Google. The set up requires a bit of time, but then you really have a private wiki with web-editing capabilities.
self-hosted
For the crowd who wants to manage everything on their own, I think the general recommendation nowadays is either this super huge installation of GitLab or a rather small solution like Gitea. Gitea also provides a web interface, issues and wikis. It’s basically a full-blown GitHub and/or GitLab solution, just quite small in comparison.
Downside, of course: You need to manage it, you need to keep it up to date and secure and backed up. Pros and cons.
tl;dr
You probably want to go with GitHub or GitLab. These serves provide private repositories for free, are managed and super easy to sign-up for. They also provide a web interface so you can edit things on other devices.