I like the idea of not using heavy electron UIs, but really, I does not matter much nowadays, at least for me.
Important features are synchronized notes, with mobile and desktop support, and syncing should be end to end encrypted. I should be able to link a note to another, include some media, and use markdown, that is easily importable/exportable. I still to this day couldn’t find a good foss alternative to Joplin with WebDAV or Joplin Server (or cloud offerings).
I am not using Joplin’s cloud offering but hosting it on my own. But I think their cloud pricing is fair (2.40 euro/month for yearly payment, for the basic plan). I’d pay for that
I don't like electron bloat but notes are something I absolutely need to be on every platform for portability, I'm willing to accept the trade off. To be fair to electron, the software I use (trilium), runs like a dream.
Do you mean encryption decryption happens locally of each individual note and only the encrypted string is stored online?
How would you trust to sync the decryption keys across devices?
Yes. Joplin supports this (although sync gets slow when the number of notes is large). Syncing the encryption keys is your responsibility. I transfer them over the wire to devices I use without sharing them with a third party service.