
Notion – All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases - torvald
https://www.notion.so
======
kjksf
Just in case someone might need it: I reverse engineered their API and wrote
(an unofficial) client for accessing the data:
[https://github.com/kjk/notionapi](https://github.com/kjk/notionapi)

It's for Go but one could easily port it to any other language. It's just HTTP
requests and some light processing of JSON responses.

I use it so that I can have my blog content in Notion. In a daily cron job I
download the data from Notion, convert it to HTML and publish on Netlify as a
static website. This script is open source:
[https://github.com/kjk/blog](https://github.com/kjk/blog)

Basically I use Notion as CMS.

I described my reverse-engineering process in
[https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad2...](https://blog.kowalczyk.info/article/88aee8f43620471aa9dbcad28368174c/how-
i-reverse-engineered-notion-api.html)

~~~
rrix2
Yikes, they don't have an official API? Hardly interested in making a closed
system my "central source of truth"

~~~
kjksf
Official API is on their roadmap: [https://www.notion.so/What-s-
New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba...](https://www.notion.so/What-s-
New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba8b46c)

~~~
csytan
Also, it's easy to export your entire workspace as raw data. Markup files,
images, etc.

~~~
bohinjc
Problem is that the export does not preserve node nesting, which is a problem
for an outliner

------
ohadron
Used notion for about 6 months, but stopped for two main reasons:

1\. It's extremely slow on even a new iPhone - about 6-7 seconds until I can
start typing a note. By then I forget what I wanted to write. It's basically a
webview of a very heavy web app, so it's not snappy at all.

2\. No offline support whatsoever.

In addition it feels like they have abandoned development or are busy being
acquired (~bi-weekly updates until about three months ago:
[https://www.notion.so/What-s-
New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba...](https://www.notion.so/What-s-
New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba8b46c))

I migrated back to Bear ([https://bear.app/](https://bear.app/)) which was a
pain - exporting from Notion is also not one of their best features.

~~~
moystard
I didn't know about Bear. Just had a look on their website and the application
and user experience looks pretty stunning.

However, I am not quite sure it justifies paying for this service when Apple
Notes has got a lot better in the past few years (I also feel confident in the
privacy approach of Apple).

Out of curiosity, what features make you use Bear and not Notes? I take a lot
of notes, and if something can make my life easier, I would seriously consider
making the move.

~~~
antigremlin
Main difference to Notes is that Bear uses Markdown as the data format. It has
a rare capability of converting webpages to Markdown when you save them as a
note using a sharing extension on iOS. The conversion is decent.

But as mentioned above it also lacks important organisation features: no
folders, no dated notes, etc.

------
louis-paul
There is something about Notion that makes it feel very well-made and
coherent. It’s one of the few apps I use with this inherent feeling of quality
(off the top of my head Sublime Text/Merge, Beyond Compare, Things fall into
this category of intangible greatness). Every interaction is delightful, and
the app scales really well from basic note-taking to decently complex
databases with grouping, filters, relations, templates and permissions. It
comes with really good real-time collaboration.

On the flip side the software a bit slow to start and uses a lot of
resources—it’s based on Electron, but I encourage everyone to try it (the demo
on their website is cool!).

This is as close to “painting the back of the fence” as it gets.

~~~
ivanzhao
Notion's founder here. Thank you for the kind words - we are honored :-)

To be honest, nothing we are doing is that new. Most of the ideas came from
the 70s-80s (Alan Kay, Doug Engelbart, Ted Nelson...) We are just applying a
fresh coat of paint.

Of course, there's still a lot more to be done to fully realize these
pioneers' dreams of computing as a medium for everyone – not just programmers
like us. If you are interested to learn more or work with us, feel free to
message me directly at ivan at makenotion.com, or link below. We are happy to
host you for lunch: [https://www.notion.so/notion/Join-
Us-e7aeb157238a4603a2964b2...](https://www.notion.so/notion/Join-
Us-e7aeb157238a4603a2964b28c646f07f)

Have a good one! Ivan

~~~
givelinuxlove
Give linux love. I was interested in trying it after reading comments, but as
it is I can't touch it until there is a linux build.

~~~
manigandham
Notion is a webapp. You can use it fine with a browser. I think everyone is
missing the fact that the desktop apps are not necessary.

------
NikolaNovak
Hmm, I cannot seem to create an account without sharing my Google contacts;
which I see no need to do and it's needless friction. I get into a loop of
clicking checkbox "I don't want to share my Google contacts", then being
rerouted back to login page and requested approval to share my contacts.

Pricing wise, I wish these types of apps didn't have such a steep escalation
as soon as I want to share. $4 for individual, but $8/team member, which means
wanting to share this with my wife is _four times as expensive_ as just using
it myself, with limited to no appreciable improvement.

~~~
rolleiflex
Same here — I cannot create an account with a password. If you try to go in
and do an email signup, they will punish you for it by emailing you every time
with a new password, until you suffered enough that you'll relent and give
them access to your Google account.

Not a great first impression — especially not after their support tells me
that this is for my own security.

~~~
oscarpas
I use Notion with a non google e-mail and don't mind the password being
e-mailed to me. I have to re-auth maybe once a month, tops, and it's one less
password to manage.

~~~
ohadpr
It is an extremely frustrating practice (emailing you the password). I find
that I have to go through this every few days for whatever reason and I've had
cases where the email from Notion took five minutes to arrive.

------
ausjke
I am uncomfortable to put all personal thoughts, diaries, etc into a non-self-
hosting place.

Can they dockerize this and sell that so I can self-host the docker image
instead?

for people that is not tech-savvy, what about they buy a docker-container-
hosted-by-the-vendor-company but can encrypt the contents in a way that nobody
else can peek into the content ever?

~~~
owenwil
There's a reason nobody really does this: there's just no money in it. Nylas
mail is a good example of this: it offered the ability to self-run it and pay
them for the license, but nobody really did. I wonder what they would need to
charge to make it feasible? $1000 a year? It makes me pretty sad, but it's
just such a distraction for a company of Notion's size and stage.

~~~
dkarbayev
Well, then we should create open-source analog of notion. I actually was
itching wondering what could I create in OSS realm. Probably will have a look
at this task :)

~~~
QML
That seems to be pretty hard. I just finished a long search for an Open Source
one-page markdown editor (no split windows for preview and editing): the
closest I could find was an editor called MarkText but even that doesn’t have
half the functionality of Notion or Dropbox Paper. It’s hard to compete with
fully funded and devoted teams.

~~~
andruby
I've been looking for something too. GetCanvas (now defunct but released as
open source) was wonderful, but seems abandoned.

stackedit.io has been the closest that I could find.

------
mjulian
I love the product, but the login workflow is awful. Why innovate on logins?
We've solved that problem.

Specifically, the login is a randomly-generated one-time code sent to your
email address. Notion says this is more secure than them storing a
username+password, but that's a dubious argument. They've also said this is
two-factor auth (lolno). A side effect of this is that Notion is unusable on
my mobile device since I have no email on it.

I really hope they implement a more traditional login system. Until then, I'm
sticking with Evernote. :(

~~~
SomeHacker44
Thanks for telling me this. I will definitely avoid Notion now. I want a
username/password combo at the very least, both different for every site I
use, and preferably with TOTP as well. I never want my email to be used for
security purposes as it is among the most hackable target out there.

~~~
phponpcp
Yeah dude someone might go through the trouble of hacking your email just so
they can find your todo page with an unchecked checkbox for feeding your
goldfish.

~~~
dwaltrip
You have no idea what they want to put in their Notion account. And so what if
they want to have high security for something you deem trivial? You gain
nothing by being an asshole about it.

------
benjlang
I'm a big Notion fan. Use it for everything in my life, both work and
personal. Here's a screenshot of my Notion homepage:
[https://twitter.com/benln/status/1034475232445181952](https://twitter.com/benln/status/1034475232445181952)

I also made this site for people to share their Notion pages:
[http://notionpages.com](http://notionpages.com) You can use that to get a
better sense of use cases for Notion.

~~~
ddlec
I see that your site only includes screenshots of Notion pages. Have you
considered asking people to share Markdown exports of their pages as well?

~~~
benjlang
Some have templates. Hoping Notion releases clone feature soon. Didn't know
you could export markdown, will look into that.

------
tommoor
If you like Notion but are looking for something open source, similarly
polished and more wiki-focused then this will be up your street -
[http://getoutline.com](http://getoutline.com)

We've been building it for 2 years, happy to answer questions.

~~~
atschantz
I previously tried to sign up via a Google account but it required a 'company
Google account' \- I was slightly confused about the reasoning behind this.

~~~
tommoor
It's designed for teams, Google auth is used to avoid having to manage invites
etc. If you could sign in with any old Google account then it would introduce
a class of problems with having to manage invites / user management /
accidental duplicate teams.

Having said that, I do think it would be cool if signing in with your personal
gmail account gave you a personal non-team wiki.

------
mxwsn
For me, Notion replaced Evernote and I haven't looked back. Three features
that have been particularly useful for personal productivity are

1) explicit support for Kanban board-ing tasks and similar to-do management

2) collapsible blocks

3) substantially smoother linking to, or embedding, notes within notes

Notion is just as sleek as Evernote for small independent notes, but these two
features allow Notion to scale much better for projects that require an inter-
related network of notes with substantial breadth and depth.

~~~
hirundo
Evernote's killer feature for me is the automatic OCR on images, included in
the search. Any way to rig that in Notion?

~~~
mxwsn
Not that I know of, and probably an area that Notion won't catch up in for a
long time, if ever.

------
creativityland
Some good alternatives

\- Quip ([https://quip.com](https://quip.com))

\- Airtable ([https://airtable.com](https://airtable.com))

\- Taskade ([https://taskade.com](https://taskade.com))

~~~
viraptor
\- Coda ([https://coda.io/](https://coda.io/))

~~~
gregwebs
Notion is now becoming a lot more like coda. I love how Coda exposes tabular
data in a programmable way (but programmable as in easier than spreadsheets).
It also even has API access:
[https://coda.io/developers/apis/v1beta1](https://coda.io/developers/apis/v1beta1)

------
techntoke
This isn't self-hosted? I'm interested in a self-hosted solution that uses
local markdown files and directories to manage content.

~~~
sephoric
This is one thing I've wanted. A local app that lets me store all my data with
markdown syntax, syntax highlighting, in local files and directories,
specifically for macOS although a cross platform app would be fine. One that
doesn't require an account or the internet at all for it to work. I've wanted
this kind of app for many years (and wouldn't be opposed to making it if no
existing solution is all that great at it).

~~~
SirensOfTitan
Emacs with org mode, helm, and projectile as a starting point would hit all of
your asks (although org syntax has differences from markdown, it's still quite
intuitive).

I use org mode for: my tasks (gtd style), food log (using org columns), notes
(easy export to any other format), habits. Alongside beorg for iOS for quick
capturing on the go, I cannot imagine I would be any happier elsewhere.

~~~
mickael-kerjean
Same here, org-mode is going nowhere, it's one of those things that just
works. From wikis, todos, document authoring, agendas, code notebook, ... On
mobile, there's a few options, I made one, a web app called filestash:
[https://demo.filestash.app/s/hn](https://demo.filestash.app/s/hn) . It has a
lot of the org mode candies: agenda, todos, and the real org-mode exporters:
HTML, PDF, Markdown, TXT, Latex, iCal, ODT and even beamer

~~~
azureus
And literate programming too with Babel!

------
owenwil
For those just discovering Notion, it's one of the most liberating tools I've
ever used, because it offers just enough complexity to configure it however
you want, while still remaining simple on the surface. I just love that I can
mould it around how my brain works. I wrote this guide that might be useful
for anyone else in understanding its power and what you can do with it:
[https://medium.com/@ow/the-writers-ultimate-guide-to-
notion-...](https://medium.com/@ow/the-writers-ultimate-guide-to-
notion-6bf90d1cf45b)

------
lcall
After trying many different things over the years, I wrote this:
[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) (yes I plan to move to https
sometime). You can think of it something like a personal wiki + emacs org-
mode, very efficient, keyboard-oriented, using postgres, but with a much
larger vision than today's features, including sharing (linking/copying
securely) between instances, and computability of the info for things like
anki-like features. Self-hosted now but open to hosting for others. The most
current code is in github (AGPL). Comments/questions very welcome, preferably
via the mailing list; be patient if my answers are slow. The lists are
currently low-volume, and the announcements list should always be.

(It can store files, but isn't especially smooth about it yet. For personal
notes of all kinds, it is _the_ most efficient, effective, flexible thing I
know of. The FAQs link to a discussion comparing it with emacs org-mode and
others. It has fulltext search, some finicky but very functional
import/export, a nice numbered-outline export to text, and a journal/activity
log.)

I have noted to look at Notion, and Trillium, to see how much they overlap and
if we can collaborate. I have been quite slow lately though, hoping to get
more done sometime relatively soon.

------
atschantz
I used Notion for a significant period but ended up switching to Nuclino [1] -
which is identical in many respects, but without the various add-ons that are
unnecessary if you're working with text/images.

I've found it to be more responsive, and to my tastes, it has a better UI. I'm
not a big fan of the emoji/blank file image that is necessary with every
Notion entry.

[1] - [https://www.nuclino.com/](https://www.nuclino.com/)

~~~
keybits
I love Nuclino too. Their editor uses the wonderful ProseMirror
([https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/nuclino-a-lightweight-
real...](https://discuss.prosemirror.net/t/nuclino-a-lightweight-real-time-
wiki-built-on-top-of-prosemirror/146)) by Marijn Haverbeke
([https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/](https://marijnhaverbeke.nl/)) of CodeMirror and
Tern fame.

------
atombender
Notion looks great, and I've been hoping to migrate it. There are two big
problems.

One is the migration path from Evernote. If you look at all the current
notetaking apps, none of them seem to have capitalized on the fact that there
are lots of unhappy Evernote users out there who would kill for a smooth,
painless migration path. Instead, these apps ask you to export your Evernote
notes as HTML, something which Evernote only lets you do for a single notebook
at a time. I have lots of individual notebooks, so this would take forever.
Plus, you lose folders and images this way. Why not just write a small app
that scrapes the whole Evernote database? Last I checked, it's an SQLite
database!

The other is the lack of offline search. This isn't a dealbreaker, but it
seems pretty suspect for an app like this. Losing cell service completely is
one thing, but shouldn't it be "offline indexing first" anyway? Obviously it
has all my notes synced at all times. I want the search to be lightning fast
even if I'm on a slow connection.

It seems like "attachments" (files like PDFs, and also images) are not stored
offline, either. In the iOS app, clicking on a file or image brings up an S3
URL inside an embedded web browser.

~~~
PurpleRamen
The database is evernotes internal structure, and can change. The HTML at
least is their official export and somewhat stable. I bet when you search on
github you will find some scripts converting the database into html. But for a
company it might be to much hassle to maintain such a tool.

~~~
atombender
This should be the bread and butter of a company like this, no matter how much
hassle the technical implementation details are. In today's world, getting
people to bootstrap a completely new app with content is a very hard ask. Want
customers? Have great onboarding.

~~~
PurpleRamen
A company has always thousands of imporant tasks which they should do. But
ressources are limited, so most of them simply can't be done. This task here
is nice on paper, but in reality just a minimal enhancement over the existing
solution.

~~~
atombender
Not if you have dozens of notebooks and hundreds or even thousands of notes
containing images and attachments.

------
etchalon
I'm happy to see more people are realizing Filemaker is a great product.

~~~
ksec
Yes unfortunately it is not being more widely used.

------
asadkn
Notion is just awesome and I have been using it for 6 months now. It's the
only app I have used so far that feels like a text editor and despite covering
so many use-cases, excels at each of them and outdoes individual apps made for
that specific purpose.

Tools I have replaced with Notion:

\- Todos & Planning: Evernote, Workflowy, Text Files.

\- Notes: Google Keep, Text Files.

\- Work Wiki: MediaWiki.

\- Collaboration/Project Management: Confluence, Trello, Asana.

I also use it for pros and cons lists, inspirations and moodboards for design
and so on.

One thing that would be quite helpful in Notion is to have some sort of
"marketplace" where users can share pre-made templates. I am not sure if they
have an API for extensions yet, but that would be awesome.

~~~
MarsAscendant
What about the jittery performance?

~~~
asadkn
I haven't really experienced that but if I had, that would make me quit on the
product. I use it on my MacBook and Hackintosh Desktop, and perhaps there's
lag on other platforms but I haven't used them.

~~~
MarsAscendant
In this case, you _don 't_ want to downgrade.

------
drsh0
It's great to see Notion get continued exposure. I feel it truly is a great
step towards productivity online.

I made a list earlier (using Notion) of some next-get productivity platforms
that caught my eye if anyone is interested:

[https://www.notion.so/Next-gen-Productivity-Platform-
Researc...](https://www.notion.so/Next-gen-Productivity-Platform-
Research-6ba8df8c007c4e2881957270c3a815b2)

It includes both these all-in-one type of tools along with nice project
management and spreadsheet/db tools like airtable.

~~~
warpsprung
You might wanna add codeBeamer from
[http://www.Intland.com](http://www.Intland.com) to your list. This one can be
self hosted and probably has the largest capabilities of any of the mentioned
tools. It’s web based and has a good UI that you can get familiar with in 10
minutes while easy to configure and administrate. Think: Agile team planning +
Project Management + Dashboard + Wiki + Documents Management + Requirements
Engineering + Workflow Engine + Database

~~~
jlgaddis
And you'll only need to spend five figures to use it.

------
ajflores1604
+1 for having a native linux client. I'm not sure what the process would be,
but being electron based I can't imagine it being extremely hard. Right now
I'm using [https://github.com/sysdrum/notion-
app](https://github.com/sysdrum/notion-app) to basically wrap a browser
instance. But there's a very noticeable performance difference between this
hacky solution and my friends native electron client on MacOS. Especially on
my heavier pages with lots of photos. Notion has completely changed my life
and workflow, but I feel like I'm starting to run up against the limits of
what I can do on the operating system I'm on. I even considered reaching out
to CodeWeavers the makers of Crossover to see what it would take to make a
linux port, but it seems like I actually have to be the owner of the app being
ported for that to be an option.

~~~
evertheylen
I'm curious, why don't you use a 'normal' browser? I use Notion quite heavily
myself, and have never had any performance issues in Firefox (on Linux).

~~~
ajflores1604
I haven't tried it in firefox, I'll definitely give it a look. Using it in
chrome however, the performance feels the same as the hacky electron wrapped
version. I notice it the most when switching between two heavy pages or trying
to get to the bottom of a page I have 50+ pictures saved to. But it's useful
for me to still have it register as a separate application in case I ever need
to kill chrome for some reason. Or for organizing it across my different
desktops.

------
dawnerd
We use it to keep track of all Of our tasks and projects. Switched to it after
getting annoyed with Asana and not wanting to use something like Jira. We love
how freeform it is and allowed us to create a workflow that fit us.

There are some gripes I have with it, notifications are still hit or miss
despite talking to support about it multiple times - they’ll be delayed or
missed altogether if you’ve recently opened the iOS app or have the desktop
app open on another computer. Search still needs some love. It should probably
weigh recently opened pages higher. And I’d love it if the Mac app was native
instead of electron based.

Their team is pretty responsive when messaging them so that’s a huge plus.

~~~
ncphillips
We use Asana at work. What annoyances did you have with Asana that are solved
with Notion?

~~~
dawnerd
\- tasks getting lost easily (still somewhat of an issue with notion but
custom database views sorted by due date solves)

\- not showing today on top like it used to, unwilling to change or add an
option (same as above, database views are awesome)

\- forcing us into a flow that didn't really fit the way we worked (notion
lets us have a completely custom flow)

\- no good way to have documentation stored in

\- limited ability to document tasks, like images inline with the description,
code blocks, etc.

------
tomglynch
After downloading the mac app and signing up with google I got an email from
google saying

Security Alert: New device signed in to my@email.com

This is a concern. How are they doing the signup that google is not
recognising my computer? When signing up as there is no redirect to a google
sign in page, for all I know they have just created a fake google sign in page
and stolen my credentials.

------
nirv
I'm concerned about the privacy of this service. Do company employees have (or
are able to get) access to users' private data? Is there any data mining in
use?

~~~
throwaway382
They use FullStory, which probably means all employees can see your data if
they wanted to. There's no option to remove it, as far as I can tell.

~~~
hashkb
You can use an ad blocker to block FS.

------
andischo
In case anyone is interested in a similar open source solution that can be
self hosted I can recommend Trilium
([https://github.com/zadam/trilium](https://github.com/zadam/trilium)). It was
also recently featured on HN. I since host it on my private server and it
works like a charm.

------
motdiem
I’ve started using notion as a kind of personal wiki a few months ago, and I
really like it for that. Breaking the distinction between files and folders is
one of the ways it’s way easier for me to navigate/structure than it is in
google docs.

My only issue with Notion is that I feel it’s hard to get stuff out of it,
especially on mobile. I sometimes type draft documents with it that I really
don’t want to share as notion links, and I haven’t figured out how to export
them on a phone - I usually have to go to my computer and export the
markdown/process it then share...

------
jatins
I think Notion tries to do too much (a database? really?) and because of that
it's not _great_ at any. Yes, at the end of it you can end up with pretty
looking pages but the process is not fun. For example, you _can_ use Notion as
Trello, but it always feels like fitting a square peg in a round hole. (a path
which Slite and Quip also took)

Apps like Bear on the other hand, don't try be a smarter paper and end up
being great at their limited use case.

Maybe, for enterprise customers it has some value, but as a personal user I
didn't find much utility in it.

------
torvald
I am wondering if this is just the thing for our workplace - it is remarkable
how spot on their value proposition is. It is not every feature from every
service - but they seem to deliver very well on core functionality. And I must
say that their landing page is one of the better I have seen for a SaaS.

I posted this in hopes of people posting stories and discussions about their
experiences and thoughts about the product - which you very well delivered,
thanks.

~~~
Aeolun
This was my impression of their landing page as well. One of the few that made
me go ‘I want this’ right when reading it.

------
juddlyon
Pro tip: copied text from Notion is pasted as Markdown in your text editor.

------
andyfleming
This seems like a mash-up of Air Table and Quip. I'm curious to see how the
functionality compares for day-to-day tasks.

~~~
bnt
And Coda.io

~~~
egeozcan
I just started using Coda.io now and I already think it's amazing. It's like
Excel in Word (Or Javascript in HTML) with superpowers and it's very usable.

------
evertheylen
I too am a big Notion fan. However, I have a ton of things I would improve,
two of which I kinda solved already: drawing input [0] and inline math [1].
The success of these has led me to create a small slack group to discuss other
such hacks, more info at [2].

[0]:
[https://www.notion.so/evertheylen/Notation-e7a4f861a5ed4d14a...](https://www.notion.so/evertheylen/Notation-e7a4f861a5ed4d14a767326062f80e89)
[1]: [https://www.notion.so/evertheylen/Notion-Inline-
Math-9c5047a...](https://www.notion.so/evertheylen/Notion-Inline-
Math-9c5047a4e7c84643848b3630db8d5a5e) [2]:
[https://www.notion.so/notionhacks/Notion-
Hacks-27b92f71afcd4...](https://www.notion.so/notionhacks/Notion-
Hacks-27b92f71afcd4ae2ac9a4d14fef0ce47)

------
ArtWomb
Not gonna lie. That knowledge base with the collapsible menu looks like a very
useful feature. Especially with integrated search. Will definitely give it a
try. As far as self hosting goes. If there is a feature to export to text, csv
or md. One could use the app to edit. Then archive and serve a read only copy
locally.

------
celestialcheese
Nothing to say but it's a fantastic product - if the team behind notion is
reading this.. keep up the great work!

------
mshanks
We're are developing an open source offering in this space:
[https://budibase.com](https://budibase.com) . Planning to have an MVP in the
summer - at which stage we will also make the source public.

We are more focussed around a tool for building SaaS products, fast. However,
we are planning to build a Notion-like app using BudiBase, for management of
the project & business.

Sign up for updates if you're interested!

Website is a bit vague on detail right now... a few features:

\- Design your own data model: create typed fields, data validation rules,
object relationships, indexing & scaling options

\- HTTP Api for all CRUD operations, based on your data model

\- User Management & User Role definitions

\- Generated UI, with the ability to drop in your own UI wherever suits

\- Fully pluginable backend, for integrations

\- Output is a Single Page Web application, with an HTTP Api & data storage.
Web app will be mobile ready (PWA).

~~~
joejohnston1989
Looks awesome. When will it be ready? Is it a LCDP?

------
kbos87
Having switched from Evernote about 6 months ago, here are some of the biggest
positives and negatives to me -

Biggest positive: The variety of formats & integrations. I use “toggles” and
tables a ton. This was the main reason I switched and it’s enough of a
differentiator to keep me around.

Biggest negative: Notion doesn’t handle a large volume of notes well. There is
no easily accessible metadata, no tagging, no way to see a table of notes
sorted by create date as far as I can tell.

Other observations:

It’s terrifyingly easy to delete a note and not realize it. Notes show up as a
line item in their parent note; a simple press of the delete button and a note
is gone with no warning

Sharing is also a little funny. Shared notes show up in a separate workspace
and are easy to forget about.

Also, no offline support at all... if you aren’t connected, you can’t do
anything on the desktop or iOS app.

------
grumblestumble
This seems like a great tool. What's the security model for this? I get that
it's offline first with sync capabilities, but is notion hosting any of this
content to facilitate syncing and if so is it encryped etc? Is there an easy
way to export all of my content?

~~~
grumblestumble
On that note, regardless of what the actual answer is here, insight is sorely
missing on the brochureware. Conversely, quip.io has an in-depth whitepaper @
[https://quip-cdn.com/iR2bxQSxnJmpXi8KbaQ-XQ](https://quip-
cdn.com/iR2bxQSxnJmpXi8KbaQ-XQ) which is linked to from their global page
footer.

------
incognita6
Like Notion a lot and we looked at a number of the modern wiki tools (cloud
based).

vs Confluence it is much faster. We did end up with Confluence, but that
wasn't my first choice.

vs Samepage it just felt a lot more modern. That might be harsh, but we only
had a limited time to eval all the options.

vs Quip, well, it's Salesforce. The sales was spammy and you just know how
hard the sale will be if you've ever used the core SF products.

Best OS with a combo of Bookstackapp and a ticket system that I forget the
name of now. No integration between the two, and no support.

The reason it lost in the end was it was the only one that didn't have draw.io
integrated and we do a lot of diagramming. But, as I say, really nice and I
would have preferred it to Confluence.

~~~
torvald
Yeah, a draw.io integration would have been great.

------
sonaltr
I wish they had an API to integrate with.

~~~
rickyc091
They do! It's just in beta.

------
josephpmay
I use Notion for my personal productivity, and I highly recommend it. It's one
of the few personal tools I'm happy to pay for. It many ways it's a personal
wiki, and it is incredibly easy to use.

Notion has made it much easier to keep track of and refer back to my old
notes. For example, I used to draft emails in an unorganized OneNote notebook.
If I needed to find an old draft, I'd have to use search and hope that I
remembered the right keywords. With Notion, I make all of my email drafts a
subpage of an email page, which makes them much easier to find.

------
djhworld
The amount of times note taking apps and products appear on the HN front page
is quite amusing. Has anyone ever cracked this nut?

I've been using Joplin for about a year, it works. Could be better, but does
the job

~~~
acutesoftware
I think the problem is that it isn't a single nut to crack - everyone works
slightly differently, some like a clean interface, others like all the info
laid for them.

With Notes and tasks, it is quite personal, so any issues in the interface are
seen as worse, eg we are more likely to accept a slightly shitty interface
when paying a bill or logging on to a corporate system than a product we use
daily.

------
jamalex
I made a Python API wrapper in case annoying would find it useful:
[https://learningequality.org/r/notion-py-an-unofficial-
pytho...](https://learningequality.org/r/notion-py-an-unofficial-python-api-
wrapper-for-notion-so)

It has full read/write support for Notion data, with a local data store that
live-updates async when data changes on Notion, including callbacks. And you
can manipulate database entries using classes with columns mapped to slugified
attributes.

------
manigandham
Glad to see this here, it's a very well-built product that finds the perfect
balance between strict JIRA/PM tools and completely unstructured wikis/text
files.

Everything is a "block" and blocks can be nested and attached together to
create pages/subpages, tables, kanban boards, calendars, etc. It's a very nice
way of working and everything loads fast. The sharing links are nice too.

Only feedback would be fixing some UI issues that can be a little too
sensitive, with an errant keypress or misclick changing everything.

------
pbowyer
I've tried Notion (I've tried most PIMs since 2003) but it didn't fit my brain
/ what I wanted to do with it. Not enough structure yet too constraining.

The closest I've found is Workflowy, but it's just that bit too basic.

I store all web clippings in Evernote and hope to find what I want one day.

I bookmark heavily into an online service, and wish my tag vocabulary was
better constrained (but full text search helps).

And finally I mind map on paper; none of the digital ones have quite cut it.

One day there will be a PIM to rule them all. One day.

~~~
andruby
I'm in the same boat. I have a vision in mind for how a perfect PIM could look
like: a mind-map like structure to organize everything. A pintrest-like UI to
list all "cards"/"pages".

I'd love to create an ipad app with pencil support to just draw the mind-map
and allow unlimited nested depth.

zenkit.com tries to combine a table/kanban/mind-map visualization, but it's
not quite what I want.

It seems like we are all on a quest for a Holy Grail.

~~~
pbowyer
I'm a visual person, also dyslexic. I think in terms of relations between
items. I also find nested lists helpful for something more 'ordered'.

The Kanban-style board a lot of people love does nothing for me unless using
it for pure, strict Kanban. Sorting mixed stuff into 3-4 columns doesn't help,
unless ensuring I am always progressing through those tasks. It loses the
relationships between items which I see.

I plan to draw/write up my ideas this year. If you permit I'll keep in contact
with you via email.

~~~
pbowyer
Thinking further, what I'd like is something like fractals. You can keep
zooming in on your information down to the details - but also out to an
overview.

Nope, no idea how that would work, other than when I'm mind mapping I would
have it work like Workflowy, where you can focus on each node in turn -- so
you can zoom down to a node, and have an entire mindmap off there. Zoom to one
of its nodes and be in another mind map.

------
zoom6628
As a product manager I have to say the UI is great. Simple, clean, easy to
navigate. If only Enterprise apps could be made to look this good (yes its
possible but usually politics get in the way).

On Android also works smoothly even on my low capacity line at home.

Security aspects raised by others is a concern - there is enough secure
storage solutions out there it should be high on the roadmap to address that
so there is encryption at rest (and at REST :-D ) . Data should only be
accesible to team or public. Nobody else, ever.

My 2c.

------
alphagrep12345
One more todo and notes app. Why does the world need so many such apps? I
always find myself changing from one such app to another, porting all the
existing notes. Currently I'm using onenote and am very content with it. But
there's always this feeling that something's not quite right. I tried
evernote, onenote, and several other notes apps. I don't understand why I try
so many note taking apps. I think others too feel the same way. Any ideas why?

~~~
davidhehehe
I had the same feeling for as long as I can remember: just when I thought I
was content with some apps, I find a new one on Product Hunt or Hacker News
that promise something that I don’t know I want but after some thought think I
need esp. for note taking/organization/productivity combo apps.

Still coping with it with a better clue as to how to deal with it.

The antidote for me is to figure out this (with the help of pen and paper): a
list of what are the absolute basic needs I want out of productivity apps. For
example, I tried to find the best tools for my personal knowledge management.
My criteria (or deal breaker): cross device (iOS and MacOS); easy to export
and share in common formats to others; no need for collaboration features; I
can throw in any file without worrying that I need to import or convert
format. Upon examining the list, I figured out that I want a tool that’s more
like a file management system with full text search ability.

A bigger and prior than “basic needs for productivity tools” question that
took me some time to figure out last year between October and November is what
my workflows are, what kind of communication I need between different apps.
For example, I need a central tool to search all my files (preferably full
text) in a project, yet I need editing features in specific apps (Photoshop,
Mindnode, Numbers).

Last point is to be content. I was on a constant quest for finding the holy
grail of all-in-one app to no avail (I experimented with Notion on and off for
almost a year but ultimately decided that it’s not for me). And when I look
back, my real need disguised as “finding the perfect tool” is actually to
master the knowledge that I picked up from life and work, and the best way is
really just to routinely index, review and edit my knowledge scattered around
in the files (adding and deleting) and write reviews of what I learned
whenever possible.

P.S. I grow more skeptical of tools that need internet connection to function
(i.e., beyond syncing) because: can’t cope with my need to take down notes
fast (therefore I went with Drafts for times like this); files cannot be
loaded in places where internet connections are not great (surprisingly a lot
of places when you’re on the road a lot); you can’t control which features
they add or take down (for their own reasons).

------
plexiglass
Hello HN, first time long time here.

I use Notion.so personally and professionally and must say its totally changed
my game. Notion.so feels like a personal digi Marie Kondo.

------
stevoski
What Slack did for chat and GitHub did for source control, Notion does for
keeping information organised.

My prediction: In five years time, most of us will be using Notion.

------
elcomet
Is a Linux desktop app planned? It's only available on windows / Mac OS.

~~~
cweagans
It seems like they're coming around to the idea:
[https://twitter.com/NotionHQ/status/1080230116641300481](https://twitter.com/NotionHQ/status/1080230116641300481)

~~~
cobby
Is their web version limited in any way compared to desktop apps for MacOS /
Windows?

~~~
cweagans
You can't alt+tab to it and offline support isn't there. Not sure if there are
any global keyboard shortcuts for quick/easy note capture, but if so, those
wouldn't work in the web app either.

------
itaysk
If they added mind map as a progression, that would be the perfect tool. I
really need a hybrid text editor/ list editor / mind map

~~~
username3
Let us know when you find the perfect tool.

~~~
PurpleRamen
Whenever the perfect tool manifests, another demand appears to make it
unperfect.

------
mosselman
Notion is great in features, but it is just so slow and I find the editor hard
to work with. Text doesn't flow nicely and it is clumsy to navigate between
blocks. Some blocks are editable, some are stuck, etc. It is pretty hard. The
speed gets me the most though. Maybe the website is actually better than the
electron app, I always use the electron app.

~~~
kevinlou
Block navigation is definitely clumsy (maddeningly so), but I haven't had any
issues with it being slow. Are you working with a lot of data on a single
page?

------
KuroSaru
Notion looks polished, the mobile app on the other hand is clunky, simple
tasks like adding a member to a worspace is a hard task and if you don't close
the android app completely it wont always update.

Like many others id like a version I could host myself locally, id happy pay
for a licence to do so, and no id not expect any support at all. granted i'd
expect yearly or monthly licences that had user limits, 10,50,100,enterprise.

Sadly i suspect that the reason there is no own-hosted version, be it paid or
free open source is the fact that notion has been built around services like
AWS/DO/RS for scalability and was never designed to be able to run in a single
container and use a local datastore be it a MongoDB or (Ms/My)SQL(lite)
database.

I may consider paying but not knowing where my data is stored, in what
country, if it is encrypted or not or truly who has access is always an issue
for me, as I'm sure it is for others.

Still a great service well worth checking out.

------
patcon
This whole all-in-one thing has near-zero appeal to me :/

I have an urge to willfully resist entering monopoly scenarios. I prefer the
ability to evolve process through a non-linear opportunity space (though I of
course want to insulate the majority of others in my communities from being
forced to grapple with that full infinite opportunity space :)

------
wordpressdev
I am in the process of moving my digital life to Notion. This includes my huge
collection of bookmarks, 40+ browser tabs, dozen or so text files and content
of some spreadsheets.

Here's my work in progress:
[https://imgur.com/a/LKY7RlP](https://imgur.com/a/LKY7RlP)

------
hanley
Does anyone use this with their spouse / significant other? Seems like a great
tool to have shared docs, lists, todos, etc. I'm thinking things like house
and car maintenance, financial planning, shopping lists, and all the other
things that I normally keep in a combination of Google Docs and Apple Notes.

~~~
pushtheenvelope
yes! we did start using it and loved it, until we realized needing to pay
$20/month for it -- which was a bit out of our current budget.

~~~
drewkett
I pay for one personal account and then just share a page with my spouse and
then she can put anything she wants in it, including creating subpages. It
works great for us.

~~~
acjohnson55
A proper family plan would be nice.

------
MarkyC4
We use them in lieu of JIRA. Overall I like the product!

I wish they had ticket numbers (I like to put ticket numbers in TODOs in the
code for more context; I think it leads to more TODOs being done). I had to
hack them in using timestamps and hashes.

The ability to see tickets assigned to you (and not in closed status) would be
useful too

~~~
k__
A friend of mine said, Confluence is much better than JIRA.

I started using Trello.

------
bauerd
Only partly on topic, but I wish there was a Confluence/Notion-inspired
knowledge management software that's embedded in Git, like git-bug:
[https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug](https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-
bug)

------
PurpleRamen
Looks like a sleek and powerful interface, but at end seems to be just another
kitchensink for manual input. No scripting or other automation and service-API
is still in work.

Im always a bit surprised that programmer invest such an amount of time into
recreating the same software again and again. Notes&Task-Manager are all more
or less the same, and most of them are not something which a programmer really
should use. Those people are handling code and data for other people as
natural as a cook his knife. And yet when it comes to their own data they
always go for the stale and static, the dumb solution which can is so
different from their normal self. Why is that?

------
reaperducer
How well does this handle large file attachments? One of the problems one of
my teams has is that they regularly need to trade and update files that most
collaboration tools can't handle (Several hundred megs to 1GB).

------
tapsboy
Been a paid user for a while. I love all the UI elements, markdown support,
cross-platform compatibility etc. I have used Evernote, Simple Note and
Boostnote previously.

Some problems however:

Desktop app takes a while to load. I understand it's electron, but so are
Slack and VSCode. I am ready to keep it open on Mac. But on pressing Cmd+W, it
closes the app, though not quit. Re-opening from that state is still slow. No
other electron apps do that.

Offline experience on mobile isn't good. When I am in subway and want to jot
down something quickly, it searches for internet for a while before allowing
me to do anything

~~~
cobby
Have they added tags support? Last time I checked there were no tags in
Notion.

------
ernsheong
A great deal of comments here want self-hosted capability, understandably
given the HN crowd. But really, Notion is (probably) not in a position to do
that, given their code being proprietary from Day 1.

I run PageDash [1], a personal web archive service, and that is also the No. 1
ask. While I can understand it, for any startup to focus on self-hosting from
Day 1 is probably a shot in the foot, unless I have an open-source model from
Day 1.

Just a cautionary note.

[1] [https://www.pagedash.com](https://www.pagedash.com)

------
lunchables
Why is anyone using this? From reading the comments:

>Requires Google contacts to be shared to sign up

>Can't export my data

>Extremely slow on mobile (iPhone)

>Updates stalled, seems abandoned

>No Linux electron app

And I'm only half way through the comments.

------
bjeanes
I've been using Notion for a couple of years now and it has consistently
gotten better, faster, more useable, and more exciting.

I cannot recommend this product and the team behind it enough.

------
rcarmo
I really, really want something like this as a desktop, fully native app, for
personal use, and maybe with Groove-like peer to peer sync for small, closed
groups.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
> Groove-like peer to peer sync

This guy gets it.

Groove is one of my favorite examples of the damage done by Microsoft in the
90's. That product would STILL be useful today, 20 years later. I still
wonder: Did Ozzie make the product _just_ to get acquihired?

Is there _anything_ that does this out there? EDIT: Now that I think about it,
maybe OneNote does this in the background.

~~~
rcarmo
OneNote is fully webservice based these days, and tied to OneDrive/SharePoint.

------
honkycat
I would love to use a product like Notion, but I cannot leave my vim/Emacs
keybindings behind!

Would be cool if they had the ability to import / export structured text.

~~~
traviscline
[https://github.com/tmc/notion/tree/master/cmd](https://github.com/tmc/notion/tree/master/cmd)
I wrote some tools to use notion from vim.

------
amai
See a nice comparison here:
[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fabiospampinato/notable/ma...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/fabiospampinato/notable/master/resources/comparison/table.png)

from
[https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable](https://github.com/fabiospampinato/notable)

------
chooseaname
I love this.

Slightly OT, but does anyone have some links to open source apps / tutorials
from creating pages that are fairly free form like this? I'm a backend kind of
entity, so the front end is a mystery.

Edit: I'm not asking in an "I'm going to make my own" kind of way. I'm asking
in an "I've always been curious how other devs solve problems / create things"
kind of way.

~~~
e12e
Do you mean like the notion service? I'm not a notion user, but from the
description here, it sounds a lot like Google wave with less hype and more
"product focus"...

Wave is now dead(?) and Free:

[http://incubator.apache.org/projects/wave.html](http://incubator.apache.org/projects/wave.html)

[https://github.com/apache/incubator-
wave](https://github.com/apache/incubator-wave)

------
crooked-v
I've pretty much immediately fallen in love with this service. For me, the
killer feature is that the 'share' functionality lets me share a public link
to that page and subpages with no personal info included, so it can double as
a pastebin/Dropbox-share replacement.

If they just had a way to associate shared pages with a custom domain, this
could be a Medium replacement too.

------
geekamongus
This is really, really awesome and has the crucial features I require out of a
notes app, including pasting images from the system clipboard and a deep
hierarchy of pages/folders.

Sadly, I just poured hours of time into putting all my stuff from OneNote into
a self-hosted instance of BookStack. However, I like the looks of Notion so
much, I am probably going to have to move again!

------
ben7799
Not sure how this product (if it's new) isn't running afoul on Presonus'
trademarks for "Notion".

[https://www.presonus.com/products/Notion](https://www.presonus.com/products/Notion)

Presonus' product is for music but it is a software product, it is
trademarked, and it is older than this one AFAICT.

~~~
JeremyBanks
Trademarks only protect against competition in the same category, or where
consumer confusion is possible. They may both be "software products" (what
isn't, these days?), but these products seem sufficiently removed from each
other -- one a music authoring tool, the other a notes and project
collaboration tool -- that I don't think trademark protection would apply.

------
joelrunyon
Notion is my favorite app of 2018. It's seriously a game changer for my
personal organization and how my team communicates.

------
thiago_lira
Does someone who uses Notion has a working pipeline to automatically import
notes from Kindle Highligths?

------
killjoywashere
These "I will organize all your world" apps pop up at a non-trivial rate.
Seems like they're mostly designing some database tables and then serving a
front-end. Am I missing something? Is there something deeper than database
design that I'm missing?

~~~
copperx
No. But I wouldn't dismiss them on the basis of being trivial to implement.
The added value is in the UX.

------
traviscline
Some cli tools here:
[https://github.com/tmc/notion/tree/master/cmd](https://github.com/tmc/notion/tree/master/cmd)

I use these plus some vim recordings to do bidi synchronization of buffers

------
lazyant
We've been using Notion for a year or two now (a lot of people didn't like
Confluence) and it's been working pretty well.

I particularly like how they construct URLs for documents; it always keep its
ID regardless of title changes, but it also shows the title in the URL.

------
_____s
I've been using Notion for quite some time now. It's pretty neat although I
wish it was (a) faster and (b) had a better writing experience. I find Dropbox
Paper to offer the best writing experience but Notion is unbelievably
flexible, so I use it instead.

------
sebastian
There is an small bug that I found when trying to signup. The signup form
doesn't allow signing up with .co domains [1].

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/NDcd6X1.png](https://i.imgur.com/NDcd6X1.png)

~~~
kjksf
I've reported your issue to Notion.

In the past, they've been quite responsive about bugs (and even feature
requests).

------
thatthatis
Notion feels like SVN. The implementation that is workable and delivers enough
value to tolerate, but isn’t quite there.

Somebody please take what they’ve done, fix the annoyances, and turn it into
Git.

A single central source of truth is long long overdue

------
lucasfcosta
I wish I could import stuff from Evernote into Notion. Just copying and
pasting would be amazing. If I could copy and paste checklists (or maybe even
just copy a list and turn multiple items into checklist items at once).

~~~
kjksf
It's not a perfect import but they do have it:
[https://www.notion.so/Importing-
Guides-18c37b470e8941789548b...](https://www.notion.so/Importing-
Guides-18c37b470e8941789548b68049af750b)

------
raz32dust
Does it allow exporting data to human readable form like csv? I am very wary
of exposing myself to the risk of losing all this information and history if
the company goes under or if I want to change to something else.

~~~
traviscline
[https://github.com/tmc/notion/tree/master/cmd](https://github.com/tmc/notion/tree/master/cmd)
Has some tools

------
asdkhadsj
Can anyone compare this to Dynalist? I've been experimenting with Dynalist as
more of an information / brain dump tracker. A notepad, for people who can't
write -_-. Yet, I'm not super happy with Dynalist.

Thoughts?

~~~
edjroot
It depends on what makes you "not super happy", but as someone who uses
Dynalist all the time for everything, I must say the only reason I haven't
switched to Notion is that their free plan has a hard limit of 1000 "blocks"
(vs. unlimited in Dynalist). I actually haven't used it that much, but
Dynalist doesn't have many features so it's easy to compare them and come to a
conclusion.

From what I've seen, there are only two things I still prefer Dynalist for:
Zooming into nodes (minor issue, since in Notion you can quickly turn a node
into a page and "zoom into" it) and contextual search (major one, global
search is a real pain if you have lots of data - but you can still make up for
it by being more organized than I am).

As for everything else, Notion is a clear winner to me.

------
JunaidBhai
This is one of those products that I feel I should've come across earlier.

------
methou
I really like the make and structure of the notion, but lack of encryption
beyond tls is a deal breaker to me. Also, their developer has no intention to
implement encryption whatsoever, just like the Evernote.

------
peterwwillis
If somebody could develop some products like this that either create or extend
open standards so we have the freedom to use any client or service provider we
want, I'd throw my money at them so fast.

------
danols
400 comments and now one mentions the missing web clipper feature, which is a
deal breaker for me.

I guess that answers the question why this feature has been 'in development'
for close to 2 years now.

------
synaesthesisx
Unfortunately due to privacy concerns we have issues using this - I would be
very interested if they offered a self-hosted option. Notion looks great and I
might try it out for side projects.

------
ahuth
The product looks really really nice. Wish it had better accessibility, though
- from what I can tell, everything is a div :/

No links, buttons, or anything (that I saw in my 5 min of checking it out).

------
bovermyer
Oh, I love this. I'm especially fond of how well the keyboard integration
works!

I JUST got my cofounder to regularly use Trello, though, so I'm not going to
make him switch to this. Not yet.

------
bg0
We use this for our companies sprints and it's been working out pretty well
for the last few months. Give's us a LOT of flexibility in the way we want to
do things.

------
agsilvio
I've been working on a similar project more suited to my own tastes. It's free
and online and in-progress. jumproot.com.

Sure, it's self-promotion, but highly pertinent.

~~~
cyansmoker
While your project seems nice, at this point in time there is little overlap
with the concepts found in notion.

Did you publish a roadmap, that would allow us to differentiate it from
something more like evernote?

~~~
agsilvio
Respectfully, I disagree. Notion and jumproot both have the philosophy of an
arbitrary node structure used for composition. I prefer my ui, that's why I'm
working on it.

Thanks for your feedback though.

No I haven't published a roadmap. I don't liken jumproot to evernote much.

To illustrate my point, see the Viewer node types in the demo. You can see
that it allows composition of documents using the node structure. Was super
handy in university.

------
thecoppinger
I've been using Notion on and off for the past year, and have to say it's
exceptionally well made and thought-out. If you haven't yet, give it a try.

------
Sholmesy
Really satisfied (free) user that will likely pay the monthly fee at some
point.

It's friction-less, but with some rules/ideas in place to help you.

Well done Notion team, 100% satisfied

------
satanic_pope
Looks clean.

Would love to try some time but can't imagine porting all my notes (and
knowledge base) from Evernote that I've accumulated over the years. Too
exhaustive.

------
thomasfl
Lotus Notes was not dead, it just got reinvented as Notion.

------
tequila_shot
Sorry, how is this different from Quip? Looks exactly same?

------
anigbrowl
Eh...this is nice, I really like it, but it's just solving the same problems
that some of the things it offers to replace were solving. Call it Lessware.

------
tzhong
I use Notion for everything now - work and personal. The blocks are super
smart.

I crowdsourced a bunch of workflows and product suggestions on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/TZhongg/status/1067234359915163648](https://twitter.com/TZhongg/status/1067234359915163648)

all I do is talk about Notion with my friends tbh. if anyone wants free $10
credit, here ya go:
[https://www.notion.so/?r=02c3100209a54c48b22e19771ba4c916](https://www.notion.so/?r=02c3100209a54c48b22e19771ba4c916)

~~~
Timothee
I expect posting a referral link on Hacker News to be frowned upon.

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komali2
Gorgeous UI - whiffs of web brutalism, though not so "purposefully ugly" as
sometimes that can get. Appears very functional without any cruft.

------
deckar01
Notion is synonym of inkling, Matt Macinnis invested, and it has drag and drop
composition... I wonder if some people from Inkling are working on this.

------
homakov
Why use anything that's not end to end encrypted this day? Why share you data
with a server that has no actual reason to have your data in plain?

------
o_____________o
What sets this apart from incumbents like Basecamp?

~~~
cooperadymas
I haven't used either one in some time, but I would reframe the question: what
makes you think this is similar to Basecamp?

If you're familiar at all with Basecamp, 10 seconds on the page makes it clear
how different it is. If you're not, I guess I don't understand why the
question is asked.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
I'm wondering too, I mean the interface is obviously completely different but
it solves the same problems. Why is whatever this interface is better since I
already enjoy basecamp? Edit: Also highly enjoy basecamp's pricing.

~~~
cooperadymas
Does the linked page not answer this? That's what I'm confused about I guess.

In a nutshell, the biggest philosophical difference between the two is that
Notion is "free form" while Basecamp has a sort of built-in workflow.

(Take this with a grain of salt, I haven't used Basecamp since shortly after
they rolled out the new interface and it was much more limited then than it is
now. And I've only briefly used Notion.)

Notion is sort of a wiki, with built in to-dos and spreadsheets. You can build
your own workflow or adapt an existing template to how you work.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
The page needs to answer why freeform is better. Basically, explain benefits
to the user not features.

------
ranie93
Tangent: How fine is it to build a business with a Somalian/International TLD?
Could a rug be pulled underneath you?

------
dirtylowprofile
I’m using iOS default Notes and Things 3. Why should I migrate all my notes
and tasks here and pay to sync?

It can’t even cache online

------
brightball
Alright...this looks great.

One question though, if it's electron based why in the world isn't there a
Linux Desktop client?

------
iddan
Best app in the game. Since we started using Notion we’ve documented any
important procedure just because it’s fun

------
bg0
My only hope for Notion is that the Calendar gets updated so we can view
different pages into one calendar view.

------
robohoe
So how does Notion make money? By mining your tasks/knowledge base articles?
Analytics? Serving ads?

~~~
methehack
[https://www.notion.so/pricing](https://www.notion.so/pricing)

Basically it's free to start with limited data/upload and then a small ($4)
monthly for a personal subscription that is unlimited. Team and Enterprise
subscriptions from there.

------
deskamess
For any existing users, is there a provision to create alarms/due dates
attached to your notes?

~~~
akothari
Yes! You can type @Remind and pick a date/time for the reminder.

------
perfunctory
Has anybody compared it with coda.io?

~~~
kjksf
I have.

Don't get me wrong: Coda looks like a fantastic product. It also has features
that Notion doesn't have, like built-in support for charts inside the
document.

If there was no Notion, I would give it a serious try.

But Notion just fits my use case better.

The biggest difference is that Code is like Google docs on steroids: the UI is
structured as a collection of separate documents. Which makes perfect sense in
an enterprise scenario.

Notion is hierarchical. It's just an infinitely nested collection of pages.

It makes for a different (and for me vastly superior) user experience.

But ultimately both products have free tiers so you should try them both to
see which fits your use cases better.

------
travisluis
Can Notion do infinitely zoomable lists, a la workflowy? As far as I can tell,
it cannot.

------
rcdwealth
Who is so stupid to give up all contact information to anonymous people over
website...

------
sidcool
This is so well made. I love the concept and the ambition of the idea. Good
luck!

------
spraak
Check out Dynalist for a more minimal (and slightly different paradigm)
offering

------
toshvelaga
Got a chance to meet the founder a few weeks ago. He's a really cool guy.

------
jgamman
What's with the playboy bunnies as the team avatars on your homepage?

------
leowoo91
Looks nice. Are we getting away from the term "ERP" by the way?

------
lgregg
I love notion, been using it to collaborate with my friend on a project.

------
Hernanpm
looks good as an alternative to my github wiki
[https://github.com/hrnn/wiki/wiki](https://github.com/hrnn/wiki/wiki)

------
vijayrawatsan
Overall UI is nice but it takes a lot of time to create a new template.

------
Uhrheber
Why would I put my most important data on someone else's computer?

------
uvu
Great app. We use notion as a team. Happy to see on HN front page.

------
amai
Can I send emails to notion and it will store them as notes?

------
agumonkey
I had visions of Google Wave watching their screenshots :)

------
vijayrawatsan
I like the app but it is too slow to create new items.

------
amai
What are the advantages over Atlassian Confluence?

------
amai
Does it support math formulas in LaTeX notation?

------
exitcode00
Another electron toy saves the day complete with flat buttons and hamburgers -
I wonder how reliable and fast it is?

Is it that hard to make something in QT that doesn't eat up a gig of RAM?

------
nofunsir
So... like Lotus Notes, reinvented/respun?

------
urlwolf
This looks very close to quip.

------
nerdponx
_Terms and Privacy_

 _TLDR: Notion does not own your data, nor do we sell it to others or use it
for advertising. It 's your data, period _

------
alinspired
Looks a lot like OneNote, how this is different?

------
patrickxie
does this work over in china?

------
kemitchell
Somalia?

------
camerondoll
What about privacy? I read through their pages and found nothing. Is it end to
end encrypted? I don't want some disgruntled employee to leak my life plans.
How is this protected against such event?

------
coleifer
Looks nice, but I am uneasy putting this kind of information into an opaque
platform. Google, Salesforce, a self-hosted wiki...not going anywhere plus
options to export and move.

If it were a desktop app with a local sqlite DB then, yes, definitely (for
single user). If I could run a network security and host it on my company
intranet, absolutely.

------
thegabez
Stopped reading after I saw emojis splattered EVERYWHERE in the UI.

------
asdf333
Only 1000 blocks for free

1000 blocks == 1/3 of Moby Dick?

that sounds like a terrible deal compared to evernote and all the other apps
this promises to replace

~~~
eckza
> free

> terrible deal

God forbid that anyone ever charge for their software.

