Unclaimed: Are you working at Notion?
Notion Reviews: 4.7/5 — Highly Rated
Notion is the all-in-one workspace that combines docs, wikis, and project management. Tens of thousands of teams around the world use it to collaborate, stay informed, and get more done together.
Notion is also often used as Knowledge Base of choice in Venture Capital and Personal Productivity tech stacks.
| Capabilities |
API
|
|---|---|
| Segment |
Small Business
Mid Market
Enterprise
|
| Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Desktop Mac, Desktop Windows, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone, On-Premise Linux |
| Support | 24/7 (Live rep), Chat, Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Phone Support |
| Training | Documentation |
| Languages | English |
Notion Review: Is This Project Manager Right For You?
While a relatively new entry into the project management space, Notion has evolved quite quickly to meet the needs of its users. It’s a platform that is notable for its versatility, and it is a well-known option for individuals and teams who want a reliable tool to organize and manage tasks–from note-taking to in-depth project management.
But does it incorporate the best project management techniques to help you or your team get organized?
Let’s find out.
What is Notion?
Notion is a cloud-based workspace where individuals and small teams can take notes, create documents, track projects and organize and manage tasks all in one place. It’s often referred to as an “all-in-one” workspace because users can collate all of their projects onto a single platform.
Notion’s popularity among professionals and students is credited to its personalization that caters to any workflow. As a user, you’ll have the freedom to customize the layout of your workspace, while still getting helpful guidance and templates to help you get started.
Background on Notion
Founded in 2016, Notion started as a note-taking app but has evolved into a comprehensive project management tool for solopreneurs and small teams. The platform’s mission is to make it possible for people to shape the productivity tool they use every day to match their needs.
Getting Started with Notion
Every feature on Notion is designed to help users be as organized as possible.
The platform is segmented into pages that can be nested or interlinked at your convenience. As soon as you sign up, you’ll be redirected to your Welcome screen containing some tips to get started. This includes linked videos that guide you in creating your first page and setting up your to-do lists and projects.
On the left side, you’ll find a list of default pages, such as ‘Quick Note’, ‘Personal Home’, and ‘Task List’ which you can customize and add. Whenever you create a new page it will show up on the left panel. You can add personalized header images, descriptive comments, and add associated icons to your pages.
Simply click anywhere on a page to add blocks for individual pieces of content such as text, lists, media, links, and sub-pages. You can also just type “/” to bring up a menu of blocks you can add to your new page. 
How Notion Works: Key Features
Although Notion started as a note-taking app, it has become far more than that. The tool has promising features that go beyond creating to-do lists and make it a competent productivity and project management app.
Integrated User Guides
A commendable feature of Notion is that user guides are already embedded in the platform. For example, if you want to create a new document, you’ll find guides on how to get the most out of the preinstalled page.
Of course, this can be a hit or miss. Some users may be grateful for the step-by-step guides, while others may be frustrated with manually deleting pre-installed guide pages to clean up their workspace.
Customizable Pages & Templates
Notion makes it easy for you to create pages and documents in whatever style you want. Pages are like folders where you can store all information related to a particular topic. You can include a range of blocks or items on your pages such as text, toggle lists, to-do lists, images, video links, tables, boards, and maps.
Every change you make to a page or block is automatically saved in Notion. So you can always go back and view the history of a page if there’s something that you want to restore. This is pretty useful for when you make a mistake or just want to experiment with different versions of a page.
Notion is also very generous when it comes to templates. It provides users with a ton of options, whether they’re creating blog posts, articles, event schedules, or product launch plans. Fortunately, all templates are fully customizable so you can modify them to your taste without having to build from scratch. The platform also encourages users to submit their own templates so the library grows to fit a wider range of needs.
Collaborative Workspaces
Users can create different workspaces for different projects, which is useful if you need to manage multiple projects at once. Every workspace will have its own pages so all your information will remain separate and organized.
Notion allows you to invite other people to your workspace so you can collaborate in real time. The limit of guests you can have at a time depends on the plan you choose.
Integrations
As a good workspace should, Notion integrates with a wide range of popular productivity tools so you can easily share information across the platforms you use. These tools include Slack, GitHub, Zoom, Trello, Google Drive, and more.
For instance, you can make use of the Google Drive integration to quickly add and share files from your Google Drive directly to your Notion workspace.
Notion AI
Notion AI is a core feature for workspaces. It’s a connected assistant powered by multiple large language models that’s developed to help boost your creativity and write content faster. Essentially, it eliminates the need to jump between your work and a separate AI-powered tool.
The feature can help you generate ideas for blog posts, social media posts, press releases, job descriptions, meeting agendas, and more. You’ll also be able to summarize pieces of content, correct spelling, and grammar, and translate text (English, Spanish, Chinese, and French).
Notion Use Cases
Solopreneurs
Individuals who are working freelance will benefit from an organizational tool like Notion. It can help with a variety of processes such as:
- Documenting and managing career goals
- Organizing projects for different clients
- Managing content creation schedules
Professional teams
Small professional teams can benefit from Notion’s features because it ensures that all team members can collaborate on the same tool for multiple purposes. These purposes include:
- Planning meetings and recording meeting notes
- Setting task lists based on priority
- Drawing up onboarding documentation for recruits
- Brainstorming internal team goals (digital suggestion box)
- Organizing a company roster
Students
Students also make great use of Notion because of its impressive note-taking and organizational capabilities. Students can easily organize their notes by class and keep track of all reading and assignments (by the due date) for each class. The best part is Notion can even allow easier collaboration for group projects since the free plan allows sharing with up to 10 guests.
What makes Notion stand out from other platforms?
Notion stands out in two major ways; it’s very customizable to support any workflow, and it brings all work together in one shared location.
Unlike many productivity tools, Notion doesn’t just focus on solving one problem, such as organization. The way Notion is designed gives users the freedom to mold their workspace in a way that works best for them. On one hand, individuals can use it to keep their notes, to-do lists, calendars, and journals in one accessible platform. Additionally, professional teams can use it to build collaborative docs, product roadmaps, and wikis for their company.
Notion Pricing
Notion has four pricing plans: Free, Plus, Business, and Enterprise. Visit Notion’s pricing page for current rates.
- Personal (Free): The forever-free plan allows users to create unlimited pages and blocks with an allowance of 5MB file uploads. You can also share or collaborate on projects with a maximum of 10 guests, and receive basic page analytics, 7-day page history, and integration with other tools such as Slack or GitHub.
- Plus: The Plus plan is geared towards small professional groups. On this plan, you can invite up to 100 guests for collaboration. You’ll also get unlimited file uploads and 30-day page history.
- Business: This plan is for companies that use Notion to connect many teams and tools and you can invite up to 250 guests. You also get authentication features (SAML + Single Sign On), private team spaces, bulk PDF export, advanced page analytics, and 90-day page history.
- Enterprise: This subscription is targeted toward medium to large businesses and offers more advanced capabilities. You will need to contact the Notion sales team to discuss the pricing plan that fits your business’s complex needs. You can request a trial of this specific plan if you’d rather try it before making any significant investment.
Notion AI is included in all paid plans at no additional cost.
Beyond its core workspace, Notion has expanded its product suite with Notion Calendar, a standalone calendar app that integrates directly with your workspace, and Notion Sites, which lets you publish any Notion page as a polished website.
Notion’s Pros and Cons
Pros
- The customization features are better than most.
- A great solution for note-taking and creating to-do lists.
- You can use Notion to create wiki pages or simple websites with useful information about your business or products.
- Pricing is affordable for solopreneurs and small teams.
- The forever-free plan has sufficient features for solopreneurs.
- The structure of folders allows for shortcuts so you can reach your content from multiple places.
- Notion’s tutorials are comprehensive for everyone to understand and the support team is responsive and helpful.
Cons
- Although Notion’s UI is very usable, it can sometimes get cluttered once you start adding multiple projects, which can be overwhelming for newbies.
- Advanced project management features, such as reporting, time tracking, and Gantt charts are lacking.
- Managing multiple projects on Notion can become tedious.
- May not be the best option for those looking for project management software for software development.
Is Notion Right For Your Organizational Needs?
Notion should be commended for its simplicity, familiarity, and affordability. If you need a straightforward entry-level solution for creating content and planning and managing projects then Notion is a great choice.
With that being said, large businesses that have complex needs may not see the platform as comprehensive enough to streamline their project management. However, Notion is a tool that keeps evolving and works hard to improve its capabilities to fit businesses of all sizes.
If you want to keep checking other project management software that may suit you better, Findstack has more helpful reviews and insights that you can take a look at. Our goal is to help you find the right tool for your needs.
Compare Notion with other popular tools in the same category.
I love being able to upload videos with unlimited storage
Sometimes I select text and delete and it doesn't actually erase the text
We use it as a centralized repository for all of our company knowledge. Of course it gets unruly at times but overall has worked well for us.
I love the free form nature of the tool and the low barrier to entry.
I am having a hard time moving to the "advanced user" stage.
I want to take notes that are accessible anywhere I go. So far it's coming through.
What I like the most is how easy it is to use and that it can be used for many purposes, a handbook, a project management tool, an intranet website, a collaborative document.
Slow to load, especially in slow connections and app on android only works on latest android versions
My work in start-up is more organized
It's good to work with a team and the most valuable thing is that you can add all the information/images/files/links that you need in one project so it's easy to find in the future, and easy to work with everything together.
If you edit something you can edit for everyone and all the projects at the same time. That's confusing. Some things have to technical names
We work with content creation teams to make it easier and simple, You assign projects to people, give all the information necessary, and then you receive the final assets.
It's minimalistic design, together with the feeling that yu can use notion for everything
The lack of an usable api is what brings notion down. If there were only an integration with zapier, I would be much happier
We're trying to solve collaboration issues with it. It's still hard, because of the lack of integrations with other softwares.
I like the knowledge base best. It is convenient for not having to go to people for quesitons
it can be very slow and difficult to use for mobile
the knowledge base solves questions my customers have, means more sales for me
I love Notion and use it a lot for personal-related projects
Team prices are too high. I can't switch my team of 10 users because it's too expensive for our small business
Project management works great
I use Notion to jot down and organize my notes and projects. The simple and intuitive user interface encourages me to put my thoughts into a single place. After all thoughts typed out, I can drag and drop to reorganize the points into better or more meaningful way. I can create templates for my specific use. The whole application is a great tool for me to organize my thoughts.
I am a new user. It is hard to think of one. If I need to say one comparing to the marketplace. Comparing to Evernote, Notion has only English Version at the moment.
I try to organize my thoughts and notes in a single place. It has Infinite hierarchy and Tables & databases. I like to put my thoughts into hierarchy. I have not used tables and databases yet. But seeing the reviews from others, I might use it in the future.
Notion is very affordable to the startup business and provides a rich array of features and customization. Plus, you can get almost everything you need for a little less than one hundred dollars per year.
It's not user-friendly and you have to check the internet for decent tutorials. It may not cost much, but when it comes to learning the program, you're on your own.
Beyond project, time management, and project tracking, Notion feels specifically geared towards creatives. I've been able to complete entire first drafts in the notepad of this app, something I've not been able to do with other project management software.
I like how customizable each notion document is. There are a ton of features and for the most part, anyone can pick it up and start figuring it out as they go.
Some of the more common UX tools & functions are different. Even things like typing two // triggers a seemingly random menu but it makes more sense the longer you use it.
We needed something that wasn't a google doc where we could brain dump tons of ideas, notes, vague plans, etc. and then transfer it into Asana once it all made sense and everyone was clear on what needed to be done.
Our company has been using Notion for over a year now. We use it to draft and maintain our policies. It is stored on the cloud and highly collaborative. Various members of the organization can comment on your Notion document. The software is also highly integrated with Notion, Slack, such that you receive updates when there are edits and comments.
Things can easily get lost in Notion. The amount of documents our company has created as been staggering and you can just imagine how hard it is to keep track of all these.
Knowledge Management, note-taking.
I love that I can import documents from Google Drive and Trello to make our collaborations easier! We all use a different method to keep our notes in order, so instead of having to copy and paste things over into another source, it makes it nice that we can just add them all together.
It's a bit of a bland interface and sometimes its easy to lose track of documents - it would be awesome to have tabs to separate certain things (like budgets) to keep them away from others (like meeting minutes) instead of just putting it all in a folder - we can already to that with Google Drive.
Some benefits of using Notion include ease of sharing information/ideas through document linking/transferring as this has hindered us in executive board meetings before and it's helped keep everyone on the same page as they have the others' notes and thoughts at the touch of a finger.
Nice way to organize all projects and notes in one place
Very difficult to learn, so many different nuances
Nice way to keep all projects in one place, ability to share with team members inside my team and outside.
It's good for notes and summary and translations. It should use open ai 4.
That it's not ai 4, I find it a bit sad since I'm paying.
Anything student related, not taking tables graphs etc
Notion is capable of become home to your digital second brain with its ability to capture, organize and recall all the inputs you give it.
Notion's strength is also its weakness, in that it tries to be all things to all customers. It's versatility comes at the price of lacking focus, ease of use and simplicity.
Creates an organized, searchable and actionable repository for all note taking, research and task management.
ease of use, strong community and various plug ins available
Copying and pasting text from notion into pure text or into word is often patchy. Mosts critically, no offline function is terrible. It currently requires users to keep tabs open but app or windows do close and you lose access immediately. not idea for productivity, say when i am on the road with no internet connectivity
easy databases, particularly via browser extensions and other app integrations like readwise
It is clean, functional and collaborative
Need to spend time learning how to use it well, otherwise it could get somewhat complicated or messy
repository to contain our documentation and processes
Notion team added ai technology to notion. so it makes work easy. during writing something if you want to search then you can use ai function then it writes information well.
sometimes notion ai don't give proper answer and when i upload image then sometimes i want to use image that i upload as icon. but now if i use then i need to upload every time again for usign that icon.
my problerm was saving information about thechnology. after using notion it made me save info well. and i can open easily when i want , also i can share it well with people.
it is very user-friendly and creative. Creative writing is very helpful when you need to brainstorm ideas.
Misleading information and unclear explaination when you ask specific questions.
Writer-block. When I have to brainstorm the ideas for my social media posts, I just simply gave Notion AI my request and it gave me a lot of ideas.
I love the boards, the databases for different types of projects I am working on.
I dislike the lack of customization in regard to font, lists, tags, and colors in general.
Notion is solving most of my organization problems and makes it easy to have all of the stuff you need for a certain project on one page.
It's a great organizational tool! Put everything together.
There is a learning curve. But easy to use afterward.
Origination, and put all parts of my life in one place
I like the benefits offered by Notion and Notion AI. Super user friendly, and includes lots of user scenarios (starting from personal notes, useful for PM everyday planning and for academic studies). AI Writing Assistant is great, helps to structure the info.
The only thing that pushes me away from Notion is their political views. They continue to work in a terrorist state (Russia). AI Writing Assistant very often gives links that do not work.
1. AI Writing Assistant. Helps structurize the thoughts and information. Gives great examples and proofreads my documents. 2. Note-Taking Management. Helps develop "second brain" technique.
helps my writing in a different styles ok
suggesting songs that were not related to the musician
helps me writing in different writing style helps me achieving basic knowledge
It's very easy to use and intuitive. I use it on a daily basis at my work. It makes my workflow very efficient.
Considering all the free AI tools available in the market, NotionAI is kinda expensive. I won't purchase it for my personal use tbh.
I use Notion for a variety of things - like documenting my workflow, making to-do lists, project management etc.
What I prefer in the use of notion is the use of databases with the different views we can have (kaban, timeline, table)
What I like less with notion are the notifications I find that it can be improved especially for the notions with several collaborators
Notion helps us to have access to the personal dashboard of each member of the company in order to have access at any time to the projects of each
Freedom of expression There is no right or wrong way to use it. But I didn't ready your privacy statement yet, hopefully my documents are mine and stored responsibly.
Too easy to get lost in an ocean of possibilities. Would be good if you have a learning centre to give me utility of the product. Notion is always with me but I use Apple notes. They have offline access.
None. It's what I struggle with. Since it's endless with possibilities I don't know how to achieve something out of it. If there is a way to extract utility please let me know
It's a really powerful platform, and the decision to model all elements similarly (databases, lists, paragraphs, views, etc) provides the user with a lot of flexibility in how to use it. For personal use, I'm a huge user of org-mode, and I see Notion as a very similar project that solves a lot of the problems that org-mode works around.
The structure of notion is really confusing - because pages can be linked, it's not clear what a page's parent and subpages are. Traditional wikis, like Confluence, make it much easier to know where a conceptual "section" lives. For instance, say I wanted to navigate around my release engineering team's wiki. In Confluence, they would have a home page, and relevant sub-pages for various topics. In Notion, they may have a home page, but that home page will link out to other areas of notion, as well as subpages, and it's not clear which is which. The "boundaries" around sections in Notion are not clear, and that leads to difficulty organizing.
Notion is my company's primary documentation engine and is where the vast majority of our knowledge base lives today. it is used for team pages, status updates, proposal documents, and even some dashboards.
i think notion is somehow easy to use and easy
quite unflexible sometimes, like for example create a table, it prevent me to inject new pages inside the table
it sort of help me to do a lot of documentation
For me, the whole Notion experience is now centred around AI, I'd say it's the most valuable feature there.
Main downside is the difficulty of sharing the doc (to be edited by others). It's unintuitive for someone not using Notion and they need to create an account which is even bigger downside. This means I'm the only notion user and have been deliberating multiple times if google docs would be a more suitable option. With google rolling out Bard this might be the way for me.
task management is the biggest one, AI writing assistant is good as well although it has it's severe downsides too.
As English is not my mother tongue, the writing aids are wonderful for me. The translation is very helpful as well.
brainstorm idea is not that good. not very informative, or too general when I ask something.
Notion solves my writing needs. As it is integrated in Notion, it becomes so much better for note-taking and project management.
