The note-taking landscape has consolidated, and in 2026 a clear hierarchy has emerged between tools that treat your text as a database row and tools that treat it as a permanent document. If you care about both privacy and longevity, the shortlist is much shorter than it used to be.
Permanence is not just about uptime — it is about URL stability, export formats, and what happens when the company changes ownership. A truly permanent note is one whose URL you can paste in a printed book without worrying.
Secure is not the same as private. Secure means the data is hard to steal; private means the data is hard to discover. The best tools let you choose your point on that spectrum per note, not per account.
Textpad treats every pad as a permanent document with a stable URL, full revision history, and per-note visibility. Anonymous by default, claimable later, with optional custom domain — that combination is unusually well-suited for a long-lived knowledge base.
If you want absolute control, self-hosting is still an option. The cost is a server you cannot ignore. For most people, the maintenance overhead outweighs the benefit, and a hosted solution with strong export guarantees is the better trade.
For everyday notes that you want to share with one or two people, Textpad is the cleanest answer in 2026. For an air-gapped vault of personal secrets, use an offline tool. Mixing the two is fine — they are not competitors, they are complements.