What is vendor lock-in in a notes app?

It is the gap between what you can put in and what you can take out. A cloud-first tool stores rows in a database rather than documents, so an export has to rebuild your pages from parts. The button exists; what comes out of it is the question.

Is a Markdown export enough to avoid lock-in?

Nearly, if it is one file per note and the pictures come with it. Check three things: that headings survive, that images are in the archive rather than linked to a server, and that links between your own notes still point somewhere.

Are my notes files on disk with TaskNote?

On Windows they live in one SQLite database on your disk, not as loose .md files. Exporting writes every note as its own .md file into a folder you choose, and a full backup writes one file with everything in it.

What happens to my notes if the company disappears?

For the Windows app, nothing: it needs no account and no server, so it keeps opening the file you already have. That is the reason to keep a copy on your own disk whatever tool you use.

Does TaskNote require a subscription?

No. There is a free plan with limits, a monthly plan at 19.99 dollars, and a one-time payment of 49 dollars that does not expire. The Windows app works without an account either way.

Vendor Lock-In in Notes Apps | Leave Without Losing Your Work

Every notes app has an export button. Most of what comes out is unusable. A fifteen minute drill tells you which one you are in.

Ask one question of the tool holding your notes: if I left tomorrow, what would I walk out with? Not "does it have an export button" (they all do, the law sees to that) but what the file looks like on the other side, and whether anything can read it.

Most people answer that question for the first time on the day they need to leave: a price rise, an acquisition, a service closing, a subscription audit that went badly, or simply a tool that stopped suiting the work. That is the worst possible day to find out that six years of notes come back as one JSON file.

This piece is the drill for finding out today, in about fifteen minutes, plus what to change if the answer is bad.

What lock-in actually is

Lock-in is not a clause in a contract. It is the gap between what you put in and what you can take out.

A cloud-first tool does not store files. It stores rows: blocks, references, properties, all inside a database on a server, arranged the way that product happens to think. Your page is assembled from those rows when you open it. Nothing anywhere is "your document" in a form the rest of the world understands.

That design has real advantages, which is why it won: instant search across everything, links between pages, several people in a document at once. The cost lands later, when the assembly has to be reversed, and nobody at the company is paid to make that part good.

The export illusion

Three things come out of an export button, and only one of them is any use.

What you get	What it is good for	What it loses
JSON or CSV of the database	Feeding into another program, if you write the program	Everything a person reads: layout, order, what linked to what
HTML	Reading in a browser	Editing. It is a copy of the presentation, not the source
Markdown or plain text files	Reading, editing, searching, and importing into almost anything	Some formatting, sometimes attachments

The trap in the middle column is the phrase "if you write the program". An export that requires a developer is a museum of your work, not a working copy.

The fifteen minute drill

Run this today on whatever tool you use now. It is short and the result is unambiguous.

Export everything. Not one note; the whole thing. Note how long it takes and whether it arrives by email hours later.
Open the archive. Count the files. One file for everything, or one per note, or a folder tree that mirrors your notebooks?
Open the three notes you would miss most. Is the text readable without the app? Are the headings still headings, or is everything one paragraph?
Check the pictures. Are they in the archive at all, or did the export leave links pointing at a server that will stop answering once the account is closed?
Check what connects. Links between your own notes: do they still point at anything?
Check the tasks. Boards, due dates and checkboxes usually live in a different part of the database from the text, and usually come out worst.
Import the archive somewhere else. Any other editor. This is the real test: not "can I open it" but "can I carry on working in it".

Write down the score as one line at the top of that day's note. It becomes a fact you can act on, rather than a worry you carry.

Why plain text keeps winning

Markdown is a small idea: a plain text file plus a handful of symbols. A hash for a heading, asterisks for emphasis, a dash for a list. That is nearly all of it.

Because the file is plain text, everything can read it: your editor, someone else's editor, a script, the search built into your operating system, a version control system, a phone. A file written this way in 2016 opens now with nothing missing, and the reason is that there is nothing to open, it is already text.

Two practical consequences worth more than they sound.

Search survives. The plainest search on the machine finds a word inside a folder of Markdown files. No index, no service, no account.

Your backups become real. A folder of text files is something your existing backup already handles: a drive, a sync folder, a git repository. An account you cannot copy is not backed up by anything.

Folders of files, or one database?

Not every local tool keeps notes as loose files, and it is worth knowing which kind you are holding.

	A folder of files	One local database
Open in another editor	Immediately	After an export
Back up	Copy the folder	Copy one file
Search across everything	Fast enough, but the app usually builds an index anyway	Fast, the index is the point
Risk	Thousands of small files get messy over years	One file to corrupt, so back it up

A database is not lock-in by itself. It becomes lock-in when it is the only copy and the way out is bad. The question is never "database or files", it is "can I get files out of it in one click, and are they any good".

Where TaskNote sits, honestly

TaskNote is ours, so treat this as a description rather than a review, including the parts that do not flatter us.

The Windows app keeps everything in a SQLite database on your disk, not as a folder of .md files. That is a deliberate trade: instant search, no sync service, and one file that your backup already covers. The way out is a menu item: export every note as Markdown into a folder you choose, one .md file per note. The board exports as JSON, and a full backup writes one file with everything in it. The web app has the same idea with a different shape, since notes there are encrypted in your browser before they reach us: the command palette will write your whole library out as Markdown whenever you ask.

What this does not give you is a folder that is always there, live, next to the app. If your requirement is that every note be a file on disk at every moment, a plain text editor over a synced folder is a more honest answer than we are, and we would rather say so than pretend.

On money, the draft of this piece we started from said "zero subscriptions", and that is not true of us either. There is a free plan with limits, a monthly plan, and a one-time payment of 49 dollars that does not expire. The part that is true, and the part that matters for lock-in: the Windows app needs no account, so it keeps working whether or not you ever pay us anything, and it does not stop when a server does.

The day you actually leave

When the decision is made, the order matters more than the tool you are moving to.

Export before you cancel. A closed account often means the export button is gone with it, and support cannot always get it back.
Check the archive opens before deleting anything. Not a spot check of one note: open the three you would miss most, and the one with the pictures.
Move the live work first. The projects of the next month, not six years of archive. The archive can sit in a folder until you need it.
Keep the original export untouched. Copy it somewhere and work on the copy. A migration that goes wrong halfway is fixable only if the source is still there.
Give it a week before cancelling. The things you did not know you relied on turn up on day four.

The short version

Portability is not a feature you notice while things are going well, which is exactly why it should be checked while things are going well.

Export everything today and open what comes out.
If you cannot read your own notes without the app, that is the finding.
Prefer text you can read in any editor, and keep the pictures with it.
Whatever the tool, the copy you have on your own disk is the one that survives the company.

The longer argument for keeping the whole workspace on your machine is local-first, the engineering behind it is in native desktop apps, and the daily habit that makes any of it worth keeping is one page a day.