But:

The meetings leave your machine.

They sit on someone else's servers.

The lawsuit strategy sits there too.

And Granola gets expensive.

A guy I met got frustrated with the fees and lack of customization.

He created his own local meeting notetaker.

Then he shared it on GitHub so you could use it.

Like Granola, it does not slam a bot into your Zoom and recordings happen in real time.

But unlike Granola, your meeting is not uploaded.

Here is what Doodle Note ships:

• No bot. It captures your mic and the other side of the call on your computer
• Transcription on the device. The audio never leaves
• Notes from a local model, or a key you bring
• Ask anything about one meeting, or all of them
• Mac on Apple Silicon now. Windows is still beta. Comment for access.

Worth Noticing:

• Two GitHub stars.
• The app is still being updated.
• Windows is beta.
• The phone app is not out.
• You are early.
• The MIT code is real.
• Hosted sync is a separate $10 a month bill if you want notes on every device.

But:

Your product demo lives on their servers.

Your bug report lives on their servers.

When you share a video, they use it to sell Loom to your viewers.

Their prices climb to $240 a year.

Then a company built the open source Loom alternative.

Cap went on GitHub in November 2023. 21,000 stars. 82 releases. It is shipping.

Cap is the open source alternative to Loom.

You can save the file on your computer and share it, for free.

Or use their cloud for up to 5-minute videos, for free.

Or use your account on cloud storage solutions, like AWS.

Here is what Cap ships:

• Screen, camera, and microphone in one recording
• Instant Mode for a share link as soon as you hit stop
• Studio Mode for a polished local edit, with backgrounds, zooms, trimming, and captions
• Desktop apps for Mac and Windows

Worth Noticing:

• Instant Mode's free cap is short.
• Cap's website asks for a commercial licence if you use the official app for client work.
• Self-hosting is a real job: Docker, storage, a public URL, and you keep it patched.

But:

The app that used to fill a login in a second now waits.

Search in a big vault lags.

The keyboard shortcut misses.

It feels like a website you have to wait on, not the app you already paid for.

Then someone wrote an unofficial Bitwarden-compatible server and gave it away.

Vaultwarden went on GitHub in February 2018. 66,000 stars. That is not a toy password form. That is a server a lot of people actually run.

It works with the official Bitwarden apps. iPhone, Android, and the Chrome extension. You point them at your server.

Here is what Vaultwarden ships:

• A personal vault that the official Bitwarden apps already know how to talk to
• Organizations, collections, and password sharing, without a per-seat upgrade on the server
• Attachments, sends, and emergency access
• Two-step login, including authenticator apps, hardware keys, and email
• An admin page for the person who is actually running the box

Worth Noticing:

If the computer you host on dies and you have no backup, those passwords are gone.

But:

Substack charges rent on your readers.

And the more subscribers you get, the more they charge you.

The moment someone pays you, Substack takes 10% of every transaction, forever, with no cap.

Then a non-profit built the publishing platform and put it under MIT.

Ghost went on GitHub in May 2013. 55,000 stars. 1,002 releases. This is a 13-year-old publishing company that happens to give the software away.

Ghost takes 0% of your revenue.

• Paid memberships are built in.
• The publication lives on your domain, in your design, with your brand.
• Substack is a feed you rent. Ghost is a site you own.

Here is what Ghost ships:

• A real website for the publication, not only an email
• Member signups, free or paid, with monthly and yearly tiers
• 0% of your payments (Stripe still takes its processing fee)
• Your own domain and your own design
• Self-host it, or use their official hosted service, which funds the non-profit

Worth Noticing:

Self-hosting Ghost is a work. Their hosted plan exists because most writers do not want that job, and the money from it funds the software.

But:

The free CRM is the hook. Sequences, forecasting, and custom reporting sit behind Professional.

The bill is per seat, and it jumps when you want the sales tools.

You came for a contact book. You leave paying for a platform.

HubSpot Sales Hub Professional is $90 a seat a month, billed annually. That is $1,080 a year.

Then a team put an open source CRM on GitHub.

Twenty is the CRM you can run yourself.

You can self-host it.

Contacts, companies, pipelines, and workflows live on a box you own.

You can also use their cloud if you do not want to run a server.

Here is what Twenty ships:

• Contacts, companies, and deal pipelines you can reshape
• Custom objects and fields, with no extra seat tax for that
• Workflows, plus email and calendar on the records
• An API you can build on

Worth Noticing:

GitHub labels the licence "other" because some files are commercial. The bulk of the code is AGPL-3.0. Twenty Cloud Pro is $9 a user a month.

But:

They keep pushing the paid seat.

Every spell check is another upsell.

Grammarly Pro is $144 a member a year.

Then a team put a writing checker on GitHub.

LanguageTool is the open source writing checker. It works in more than 30 languages.

You can run the checker on your own machine.

Point the browser add-on at a local server.

Your sentences do not have to leave the room.

Here is what LanguageTool ships:

• Grammar, spelling, and punctuation checks
• More than 30 languages and dialects
• A browser add-on and a desktop editor
• A server you can run yourself

Worth Noticing:

Grammarly Pro (as well as LanguageTool's own paid Premium tier) uses proprietary, closed-source AI models to offer complex sentence rewrites, tone detection, and fluency improvements.

The local version cannot perform these deep structural rewrites.

But:

Google gets every visit.

Google gets the page they lingered on.

Google gets the campaign that brought them.

The standard product is free. The cost is the data.

Umami:

• Privacy-focused: No personal tracking data collected.
• No cookie banners: Fully compliant with GDPR and CCPA out of the box.
• Fast loading: Tiny script size (~3KB) keeps website performance high.
• Accurate metrics: Bypasses most ad blockers to capture true traffic counts.
• Total data ownership: Open-source code allows for complete self-hosting.
• Simple interface: Clean, minimalist dashboard focuses on essential data.

Worth Noticing:

• The GitHub tracker is still privacy-first and you can run it yourself.
• The product they sell now has funnels, session replay, and revenue reports.
• It is no longer the tiny Google Analytics alternative it used to be.

But:

Your files live in Google Drive.

Your contracts live in Google Drive.

And if they change the rules, you need to leave, which is hard.

Google AI Pro is $199.99 a year for 5 TB.

Then someone put the files on GitHub.

Nextcloud is the folder you run yourself.

Here is what Nextcloud ships:

• Files on a server you choose, not a drive you rent
• Sync to the computers and phones you already have
• Sharing, with access you control
• Contacts and calendars in the same home as the files
• A huge app catalog. Mail, video, whatever you actually need

Worth Noticing:

Self-hosting is the real product, and it is an ops job. You patch it. You back it up. Nextcloud GmbH will sell you enterprise support and a hosted option if you do not want that job.

But:

Every person who answers a customer is another seat that you pay for.

The Intercom Expert plan is $1,584 a seat a year.

A team created an alternative.

Chatwoot consolidates customer interactions from live chat, email, WhatsApp, and social media into a single view.

It can put an agent on the replies, but that sits on the paid plan.

Here is what Chatwoot ships:

• One inbox for live chat, email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, and the rest
• A help center so people can answer themselves
• Private notes, labels, canned replies, and assignment
• Contact profiles and the history of what they asked
• Reports: conversations, agents, satisfaction

Worth Noticing:

AI staff is a paid product.

But:

It's loaded with useless, distracting features.

They keep trying to upsell you.

And their AI integration is a lie.

QuickBooks Online Advanced is $3,300 a year.

Then a fed-up entrepreneur decided to build a replacement.

One that lets you own your software and data.

And works with AI.

You send invoices. You track bills.

The numbers live on a computer you can point at.

And you can get Claude, Codex, Grok or any agent to help you.

Here is what Slowbooks ships:

• Invoices and bills
• US payroll
• Inventory
• Bank feeds
• A set of books on the computer you host

Worth Noticing:

The books stay on your machine. The licence is source-available, not a standard open-source licence.