Self-Hosted & DIY Trip Planning

For SaaS-driven trip planning, see Trip & Itinerary Planning. For maps in the toolkit, see Maps & Geo. For offline navigation, see Offline Maps & Nav. For working offline-first in a web app, see PWA.

For travelers who already live in their notes app — or who don't trust a planning startup to still exist next year — a Notion / Obsidian / static-site setup is more durable than Wanderlog and more flexible than TripIt.

Notion-based trip planning

• ★ Notion — free + paid; ★ for shared trip planning with non-techy partners — clean UI, good mobile, easy templates. Limitations: no true offline, no maps, search across many trips degrades.
• Notion templates: search "trip itinerary" / "travel planner" — community templates abound; tested ones include those from Easlo, Marie Poulin, and others on Notion's marketplace.
• Tana — paid; outliner that competes with Notion; better at "links between things."

Markdown / file-based (FOSS first)

• ★ ★ Obsidian — free for personal + paid Sync; ★ for single-user / power-user — Markdown files, Map View plugin renders GeoJSON, Daily Notes for trip days, Excalidraw for sketches. Local-first, cloud sync optional. (Closed-source app but plain-Markdown vault.)
• ★ ★ Logseq — free OSS; outliner-flavored Obsidian alternative; fully OSS app + data.
• ★ ★ Trilium / TriliumNext — free OSS, self-hosted; tree structure; rich-text or Markdown.
• ★ ★ AppFlowy — free OSS; Notion-like; self-hostable.
• ★ ★ Anytype — free OSS; local-first cross-device sync; Notion-shape blocks.
• ★ AFFiNE — free OSS; Notion + Miro hybrid; self-hostable.
• ★ SilverBullet — free OSS; Markdown-first PWA with notebook semantics.
• Foam — free; VS Code extension that turns it into Obsidian-like.

Static-site trip blogs (FOSS)

• ★ ★ Hugo + PaperMod / Hello-Friend themes — free OSS; very fast.
• ★ Astro + Astro Paper — free OSS; modern.
• ★ Eleventy (11ty) + a clean blog template — free OSS; flexible.
• ★ Jekyll — free OSS; the original; runs on GitHub Pages free.
• Zola — free OSS; Rust-based; very fast; self-contained binary.

Common pattern: one Markdown file per day, front-matter with lat/lng, then a Leaflet/MapLibre map of all of them on the trip page.

Map-aware journaling

• Obsidian Map View plugin + Obsidian Geocoder — pin notes on a map by frontmatter or inline [lat,lng].
• Logseq with map plugin — similar.
• Day One — paid (~$35/yr); not OSS but exports cleanly to JSON; auto-geotags entries.
• Polarsteps — paid + free; not self-host but exports GeoJSON; pair with a static site (see Trip & Itinerary Planning).

Photo + journal pipeline (DIY)

A common DIY workflow:

1. iPhone / camera photos → iCloud / local NAS.
2. Photos imported to Lightroom / Darktable with location metadata.
3. ExifTool to clean / batch-set GPS metadata.
4. PhotoPrism / Immich / Photoview (self-hosted photo libraries) for indexed browsing.
5. Markdown post on Hugo/Astro, with a small script that reads photo EXIF and embeds a map.
6. Polarsteps export → static site GeoJSON layer.

ICS calendar exports

• ical-generator (Node), icalendar (Python) — generate ICS files for downloads.
• Manual .ics writing is straightforward; subscribe from Apple / Google Calendar to a hosted .ics URL for live updates.

Self-hosted maps (for the trip site)

See Maps & Geo for the full menu.

• MapLibre GL + Protomaps PMTiles on R2 / S3 — free + storage cost; offline-friendly.
• Leaflet + OSM raster tiles (low traffic, follow OSM tile policy).
• Tilemaker to generate your own PMTiles from OSM data.

Self-hosted trip planning (heavier)

• Trilium or Obsidian Sync — for the notes themselves.
• NocoDB / Baserow — free, OSS; spreadsheet-style trip databases (replaces Notion databases).
• Outline — free, OSS; team docs / wiki self-hosted.
• BookStack — free, OSS; book-organized wiki.
• Wikivoyage instance — most don't self-host this, but you can dump Wikivoyage and serve it locally.

Backup / sync

• Syncthing — free, OSS; ★ peer-to-peer file sync across devices; great for Obsidian vault.
• rsync.net — paid; durable Borg backup target.
• Restic to S3 / B2 — free + storage cost; excellent encrypted backups.
• iCloud / Google Drive / Dropbox — paid + free tiers; convenience.

Practical rules (2026)

• Set up the system before the trip — not in the airport at 6 am.
• Test the offline mode on your phone before flying — Obsidian, Notion offline, the static site cached, everything.
• Plain Markdown survives every tool change. SaaS exports are often lossy; vendor lock-in is real.
• One canonical place per concept — confirmations in TripIt, plans in Obsidian, photos in Immich, social posts elsewhere. Avoid duplicating data.
• Backup before each trip and after each trip. Phones and laptops get lost / stolen; Markdown files in three places survive.
• Public vs private: a public Hugo site is great post-trip; for live planning, lock things down (Notion private, Obsidian local-only, etc.).

Pick this if…

• Already in Notion, planning with a partner: Notion + a community trip-template.
• Already in Obsidian, single-user: Obsidian + Map View plugin + Syncthing.
• Want a public trip log later: Hugo / Astro + photo pipeline + Polarsteps export.
• Self-host everything, OSS-only: Trilium / Logseq + Immich + Hugo.
• Travel partner doesn't want a tool to learn: Wanderlog (SaaS) — see Trip & Itinerary Planning.