[ad_1]
Notion is a note-taking app that’s widely used inside the software industry but is little known outside of it. You can use it to take simple notes or to manage projects using databases with a variety of views. Notion can be as simple or as complex a tool as you want, but it has a steep learning curve—most people can’t go from taking simple notes to managing databases in an afternoon. This complexity, combined with a heavy bias toward people who work for software companies, makes Notion hard to recommend to the average person. If you’re looking for a powerful note-taking app, whether as a replacement for Evernote or not, we recommend Editors’ Choice winners OneNote and Joplin. Nore that review looks at Notion as a note-taking app. The company behind Notion refers to it as a “workspace,” suggesting it might also be classified as a collaboration app.How Much Does Notion Cost?Notion has a free tier for individuals. This version limits file uploads to 5MB, collaboration to 10 guests, and page history to seven days. You can make as many notes as you want and use almost all the features without paying. The free version is pretty compelling, although OneNote has an even more generous free version.
Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. See how we test.
A paid version for individuals, called Plus, costs $10 per person per month or $96 per year. Notion Plus removes the file size restriction, offers 30 days of page history, and lets you invite up to 100 guests. All things considered, $10 per person per month is a high price for a personal note-taking app. Many others that sell a paid plan charge a lot less, like Bear ($2.99 per month), Joplin Cloud (2.99 euros per month), and Obsidian ($50 per year).
Notion Business, the next tier up, costs $18 per person per month or $180 per person per year. That plan gives you a 90-day page history, the ability to invite up to 250 guests, bulk PDF exports of your pages, support for single sign-on, and a few other features for businesses. Notion also has an Enterprise plan with custom pricing. That version comes with everything in Business plus unlimited page history and a few other standard enterprise-grade features, such as user provisioning, advanced security and controls, and an audit log.As mentioned, Microsoft OneNote is also free. OneNote doesn’t have an individual file size limitation but instead limits you to 5GB of storage—though that’s contingent on your OneDrive storage, and you may have more if you pay for other Microsoft products. Apps like Obsidian and Joplin are also free for personal use. Neither of those apps has a limit on file size in the free version, though they store files locally, not in the cloud. Notion is one of many good choices if you want a free app. Notion’s paid plans are more expensive than OneNote’s, which you can get with a $69.99 Microsoft 365 Personal plan that includes 1TB of storage and no syncing limits. Plus, you get all the other apps that come with Microsoft 365, like Word and Excel. Evernote, one of the most expensive note-taking apps, charges about the same as Notion for a Business account ($17.99 per person per month), and it’s not a great value either. It’s worth noting that Notion’s free version is a great deal better than Evernote’s, and the personal plan costs less ($10 per month versus $14.99 for Evernote).Notion can include artificial intelligence (AI) features, but they’re sold as an add-on for an additional $10 per person per month or $96 per person per year. So, for Notion Plus, you double the price to get AI. AI note-taking applications are relatively new, and it’s still early to make pricing comparisons. However, as of this writing, Evernote does not charge extra for its AI integration, and Microsoft Copilot doesn’t cost extra if you run Windows 11 or Windows 10.Getting Started Can Be OverwhelmingNotion primarily runs in the web browser on the desktop. The two most recent releases of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge are all officially supported. Notion has desktop apps for macOS and Windows, but they’re essentially just a dedicated browser window—there’s no offline access or additional features. Notion has mobile apps for iOS (version 15.0 and higher) and Android (Android 8 and higher).
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
To start with the app, head to Notion.so and sign up for a free account. You need a working email address, or you can sign up by authenticating through an Apple or Gmail account. The signup pages ask you how you plan to use the app: for your team, for personal use, or for school. State that you’re using it for your team, and the app asks a bunch of questions about your workplace. Based on your answers, Notion sets you up with a few sample templates. For example, if you select student, you see a database for your class notes and a template for the Cornell Notes System—useful if you plan on taking digital notes for class. Teams get many tools strangely specific to software companies—more on that later—and individual users see templates for a task list, a journal, and a reading list.
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
The templates feel more burdensome than helpful. Instead of trusting the user to explore, Notion fills your notebooks with examples. Trying to edit those examples—most of which are built around databases, a concept the examples do not do a great job explaining—gets overwhelming quickly. This app is for people willing to spend plenty of time customizing and fine-tuning their tools. Taking basic notes is relatively straightforward, though even it takes some getting used to. You can apply formatting to text notes using markdown, standard keyboard shortcuts, or by highlighting text and using the toolbar that pops up. The confusing part for many people is Notion’s “blocks.” Every line or paragraph of text is considered a block; a six-dot icon to the left of the current line lets you drag blocks into any order. Blocks don’t have to contain text. They can have images, subpages, tables, and even databases. Typing a forward slash (/) at the beginning of any block brings up a list of options.
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
Once again, what you see is overwhelming: a list of menu options that scrolls and scrolls and scrolls. Most of what’s in that menu isn’t even useful if you’re mostly interested in taking notes. If you want more than that, though, there’s an awful lot to dig into. One thing I noticed about Notion—and I’m not alone—is that the app feels extremely slow, even if you only use it for text notes. I found this to be true in my browser, in the Mac app, and on my iPad. I won’t speculate on why this is, but I will say that the sluggishness is noticeable and annoying when you’re trying to write a simple note. A Different Method to OrganizingAnyone used to OneNote, Evernote, Joplin, or another standard note-taking app will find that using Notion requires some adjustment. Yes, you get the usual left sidebar with a list. But everything there is a page, not a notebook, as in other apps. You can add subpages to any page, and they appear both on the page itself and in the left-hand menu. Delete the note from the page or the menu, and it’s gone. In other words, Notion uses a very different paradigm for organizing thoughts.You can add all sorts of databases to any Notion page and see them in the following views: Table, Board, Gallery, List, Calendar, and Timeline. These databases show information outside your list of pages and subpages, though each item in the database can have a page. You can also add automations and all kinds of bells and whistles that are more relevant if you use Notion to manage a team’s work and organize notes. Needless to say, you can customize these databases to work in all kinds of ways. Strong Support for CollaborationNotion is built with collaboration in mind. You can share any page or workspace with any other Notion user. You can also publish any note to the open web, meaning a public URL to a read-only version of your note that you can share with anyone regardless of whether they have a Notion account.You can use Notion alone or as part of a group and collaborate in near real-time. When multiple people log in and view or edit the same note, their profile images appear at the top. Clicking on anyone’s image jumps you to the text block where they were most recently active.If you follow a page, you receive notifications of changes to it. Notion also supports @ comments for flagging someone’s attention. Sharing notes so the recipient can only read and comment on them is also possible.An OK Web ClipperI like that Notion has web clippers for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. The problem is the clipper is light on features. You can clip any website and decide which note it should be added to, and that’s it. You can’t configure what text is or isn’t clipped, and you can’t highlight text before clipping. OneNote has all those features.
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
Notion’s clipper is also a little slow. At first, I thought it didn’t clip the full text of articles, but it turns out it just takes a few minutes for the text to show up. I haven’t seen this problem while testing any other note-taking application, so it was a little surprising.Capable at Importing, Less So at ExportingNotion can import data from many applications, including Evernote, Quip, and Asana. A Universal import feature lets you upload a ZIP file containing text, markdown, CSV, and other files. I tested it with a large folder full of Markdown files, and it worked, though it took around 20 minutes! Notion offers useful, clear instructions for importing information from a variety of applications.
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
Exporting is a little less extensive. You can export any page as a PDF, HTML, or Markdown file. You can also export databases to CSV. In the settings, you can export your entire workspace as HTML, Markdown, or CSV files.Is AI in Notion Useful?More often than not, adding AI to an application seems like something technology companies do to please their investors. In general, I’m not a fan of such features. They feel tacked on to take advantage of The Next Big Thing instead for the user’s benefit.I’m surprised that Notion’s AI integration isn’t like that—at least, not the Q&A feature. It lets you ask a bot about your own notes. For example, I clipped a bunch of my own articles and then used the feature to ask questions about those articles. The results were generally accurate and included a link to the relevant pages. I can imagine using it!
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
There are a few other clever AI features. You can add a block to any page that automatically shows a summary of said page. It even occasionally updates itself. Another feature automatically pulls the action items out of meeting notes.
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
The other AI features will be familiar to anyone who has used ChatGPT or similar apps. Built-in tools let you do things like write blog posts, summarize the current page, and even quiz yourself on your own notes if you’re a student, for example. You can expect a familiar stew of technically readable and occasionally accurate prose we’ve all come to expect from large language models. All this makes Notion one of the best AI-powered note-taking apps.The major downside to all the AI is the cost. As noted, adding AI to Notion costs $10 per person per month on top of whatever you’re already paying for the app. That’s hard to justify.What’s Missing in Notion?Several features common in note-taking applications are missing from Notion. There’s no optical character recognition (OCR), meaning you can’t upload an image or PDF that contains text (handwritten or otherwise) and have that text become machine-readable and searchable. OneNote, Evernote, Google Keep, and even the intentionally minimalist Bear all have some form of OCR. You also don’t get any tools for scanning paper documents. There’s also no sketching, so you can’t use a stylus or Apple Pencil to write notes by hand. Notion comes off as a text-document, digital-first kind of application, so maybe people attracted to the app don’t need or want these features. It wasn’t made for people who have paper or handwritten documents, annotate digital files, or sketch ideas.The bigger problem is the total inability to work offline. Like many people, I take notes in all kinds of contexts, and not all of them include access to the internet. Notion is useless in those contexts, even if you install the app. Notion is the only note-taking application I’ve reviewed or am aware of that doesn’t work offline.Stuffed With Silicon Valley JargonHave you ever used an app and slowly realized it wasn’t made with you in mind? That’s how I felt while testing Notion. The app is full of language that’s cryptic to anyone who hasn’t worked inside a software company. The homepage for Notion uses screenshots that show things like OKRs, PCI compliance, and weekly syncs. I wouldn’t expect a typical person to know what most of those things are.
(Credit: Notion/PCMag)
The app itself isn’t much better. Use Notion, and you will notice that every example of how to use the application is oriented around the software industry in general and Silicon Valley startup culture in particular. For example, click the large Templates button in the sidebar, and almost everything you see is related to running a software company. The categories listed are the divisions inside a standard software company; the templates are for things like Tech Spec, Funding OS, and API Reference. It gets worse if you try to use one of them. I added a Product Launch Tracker and was greeted with example tasks like “Enhance permissions levels” and “Public API release.” It is as though this application was built by people who have never worked outside the software industry or talked to someone who has. All kinds of businesses have information that needs organizing. Why aren’t there templates for local retailers or law firms or—I don’t know—farmers? Notion comes across as being built by people who don’t have much regard for other kinds of businesses outside the tech sector.Because of this, Notion may feel unwelcoming to the vast majority of people, most of whom don’t work in tech. I’m a technology journalist who used to work at a software company, and I still struggle to comprehend much of the jargon in the user interface. I can only imagine how users who hadn’t been exposed to the industry would feel. A Few Good Notions, But Not Enough GuidanceWhile researching for this review, I read that Notion has a very active Reddit community—an article cited it as evidence that the app is growing quickly. I checked that Reddit page. The top posts included someone complaining about the lack of an offline version, someone asking why the app is so slow, someone else saying the app is too busy, and a fourth person asking if the iPad version will ever get any better. It wasn’t all griping. A few people had shared screenshots of custom dashboards they made, for example. But overall, the tone was negative, even for Reddit. I’m willing to admit that it’s possible the app simply doesn’t click with me. There are some good ideas at the heart of Notion. Combining note-taking with other productivity functionality—you can use Notion to keep up a company wiki, for example, in addition to maintaining database sets—isn’t a bad idea if the user is guided through how everything works. Notion is missing that help. It could work well in a company where a Notion advocate sets up elaborate dashboards for the entire team, for example.Tough to Recommend to Most PeopleFor most people, Notion is hard to recommend. If you really like customizing your note-taking apps, check out Obsidian instead. It works offline and is just as flexible as Notion, if not more so. Everyday users should look into OneNote, an Editors’ Choice winner that’s far easier to wrap your head around. And if you don’t want to leave your notes on Microsoft servers, try Editors’ Choice winner Joplin, an open-source app that works entirely offline and is free if you bring your own storage.
The Bottom Line
Notion is a good note-taking app for collaborating and is packed with features, but it’s overly complicated and doesn’t work offline.
Like What You’re Reading?
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
[ad_2]
