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Ask HN: Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?
I've been a paying customer from https://www.notion.so/ since 2017 with my company. In the early days, I even exchanged emails with the founders giving detailed feedback.
Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their "Export" feature. Basically, you request to export all your data on Notion, and you're supposed to receive a link to download it. But the link never arrives.
I contacted them about this, and that's what they said at the time:
> Our engineering team is currently working through a large backlog, and there is no immediate fix for this issue...
I explained this wasn't a "nice to have" feature. It was a critical function that locks us with them and goes against their selling message of "you own your data".
I was ignored, with the same robotic tone.
So today, 3 months later, I contacted them again to say I'm having the same issue. They replied with the same message:
> Please accept my sincere apologies for the ongoing difficulties with this. Our engineering team is currently working through a large backlog, and there is no immediate fix for this issue. I’ve already alerted them to the issue and told them of your particular situation, and we’ll certainly follow up if there are any developments! Really appreciate your patience with us as we continue to improve. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with in the meantime.
I'm again explaining the same thing - If the feature isn't working, this is a critical function that they should at least try to generate manually as per my request.
They are basically locking me in. They, again, replied with scripted messages:
> Unfortunately, our engineering team is working through quite a backlog at the moment, and there isn't an immediate fix for this issue....
Any suggestions on what I can do? Thanks!
- neolog 5y agoAre you in the EU or California?
- haswell 5y agoAs a product manager, I understand this spiel, but that kind of answer should always be reserved for features that don’t exist yet. This tells me their marketing dept is writing checks their product team can’t make good on. Not good.
- fileyfood500 5y agoIt sounds like a potential GDPR violation, maybe you can open a case with the EU?
- xuki 5y agoMaybe not OP, but someone in the EU should definitely send in a request.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cloudking 5y agoMost likely a violation if they are not providing data export functionality to EU customers https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- mastazi 5y agoI'm not sure why you are being downvoted, OP might be in the EU, unless I missed it they didn't specify where they are.
- 3np 5y agoOP is a business customer, not an individual. GDPR rights apply to individuals, not companies.
- ceocoder 5y agoT-10 before founder shows up here and says something like, “I’m sorry that you feel this way, I’m going to personally fix this”. That will not go well. After about, say 5/6 hours of “reflection”, “soul searching”, “meditation” - they’ll offer a better non apology. Finally a day later, “we screwed up, we broke your trust and we own it”.
- vindard 5y agoAh the good old Basecamp non-apology apology
- rukuu001 5y agoT-35 or so :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27613632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27613632
- ryan-duve 5y agoI got the impression from your comment that you disapprove of the above scenario, when to me it seems ideal. If I interpreted that right, could you help me understand why the above is bad?
- louisvgchi 5y agoYou shouldn’t have to publicly shame a company on hacker news to make them be baseline level good to their customers. But many tech companies are like that once they scale up.
- koolba 5y ago> Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their "Export" feature. Basically, you request to export all your data on Notion, and you're supposed to receive a link to download it. But the link never arrives. Was it ever working? “Having issues” seems to imply the functionality disappeared.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI'm not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one. It's one thing to make a new feature request and have the response be "sorry, we'll get to it when we get to it." It's quite another to have a bug in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say "sorry, our engineers have a big backlog." Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog." Unbelievable!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eugeniub 5y ago> Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog." Unbelievable! The Mt. Gox story.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ghayes 5y agoI recently closed a bank account (due to Simple being acquired and the debacle of BBVA and now PNC) and it was quite difficult. I just wanted a "you send me a check with my remaining balance and we're done," and instead they told me I needed to withdraw my cash to zero (with limits that would have taken months), and only then could I close my account. Eventually, I was told a workaround where I could "Bill Pay" my own credit card for an unlimited amount and then close the account. But it's not like banks are strictly easy in comparison.
- greenyoda 5y ago> they told me I needed to withdraw my cash to zero (with limits that would have taken months)... I think that some state or federal banking regulators might have expressed displeasure if you had informed them of that policy.
- rglover 5y agoDepending on what you need, they have an API and a pseudo exporter could likely be built: https://developers.notion.com/reference/intro https://developers.notion.com/reference/intro. Not great, but better than being stuck.
- shados 5y agoHow much will you be able to export before getting rate limited to death though?
- dheera 5y agoThe rate limit is 3 requests per second (https://developers.notion.com/reference/errors https://developers.notion.com/reference/errors). If your pages are in the thousands you are still looking at only a couple hours.
- arrel 5y agoYou could ask for them to make the service free for you until it’s resolved. You’re still locked in, but at least you’re not paying for it.
- ano88888 5y agowow, this sounds scary if you don't own your data
- dreyfan 5y agoUp next: Someone will read this post, write an exporter, immediately find that Notion's system is handling authentication but not authorization, and dump tens of thousand private notion datasets.
- arthurcolle 5y agograbs popcorn in anticipation
- rukuu001 5y agoI'm waiting for someone to launch a Notion-a-like weekend project next Monday
- holistio 5y agoYou should not only point out that withholding your data is not a nice to have feature, but also that it is illegal. A lot of gates open up once companies smell the power of the law, and anyone from their support likely _has to_ escalate any issue where a lawyer is plausibly mentioned.
- kortilla 5y agoThis can backfire. Support is trained to refer to legal anytime a legal threat is made. This results in amicable support ceasing and all communication going forward being done through lawyers. You have to be prepared to actually go after them using the legal system when you do this.
- sebast_bake 5y agoSomething tells me that the fix is about to skyrocket to the top of their priority list.
- dimgl 5y agoYep. However it really sucks that you have to out companies like this on social media in order to get them to act on things.
- thunkshift1 5y agoA trend I have noticed is new and upcoming companies lure in customers at a break-neck pace, just shoveling all their money in greedily, all the while providing abysmal or no customer support. Uber, airbnb, robinhood (screw them in particular) and now notion all are all guilty of this.
- xwdv 5y agoYou know what we should do? Sign up for Notion, add some data, and then ask to export it. If so many people on Hackernews do that, it would be like hitting them with a GDPR denial of service attack and they’ll be forced to push out this feature ASAP.
- villasv 5y ago> Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with in the meantime. This is the part where you ask for them to generate the export on their end and send you a link manually. It’s “normal” for a feature to stop working, but their support must be able to provide a workaround even if it takes them hours of manually zipping things. If they don’t, you should at the very least receive a refund.
- bertdc 5y agoExactly, I tried that over and over and was ignored. > I'm again explaining the same thing - If the feature isn't working, this is a critical function that they should at least try to generate manually as per my request.
- elliekelly 5y agoWhile it’s definitely not ideal it looks like they have a beta API... can you use it to extract your data? Or at least extract the most important data? If you still have the founders’ contact info in your email somewhere another option is to contact them directly and ask for help. Any good founder would quickly task someone with making a miffed but loyal paying customer happy again.
- snicker7 5y agoNo data export feature is pretty damning. Many organizations, especially government, have strict record-keeping requirements (e.g. for US federal agencies/departments, it's required by law). Data export isn't nice-to-have, it's critical functionality.
- barbazoo 5y agoJoplin is a great note taking app with complete authority over your data and has a good subset of the features that Notion provides.
- alexeldeib 5y agoCan you ask for a manual export of some sort? I realize that's annoying, but it seems like it would at least help you out.
- josephg 5y agoThis is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software. I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use it as wallpaper. I can get the author to sign the front cover and donate it. Software used to work this way too. If I have a Word document, I can interact with it the way Word expects - open it, edit it, save it and so on. And I can also do things microsoft doesn't expect. I can put it on my website. I can email it. I can back it up. I can delete it. I can reverse engineer the file format and edit it using other programs. I can archive it for 30 years, and know it will still work when I open it using the version of microsoft Word which created it. And so on. But the new software model with smartphone apps and data in the cloud takes all this away. You can only do with your data what the publisher expects. If Notion doesn't have a working export API, tough luck. If GMail is missing an API for searching by regular expression, tough luck. If Adobe shuts down their activation servers, or a startup fails, or Google kills a product, tough luck. You've lost all your data. There is no backdoor. There are no other ways, by default, for you to have any agency over your own data that a product manager hasn't approved of. Amazon can delete books that they've already sold you. And they have. You can't sell a game you bought on steam. Or get it signed by the author. Or reverse engineer the raw database entries which store a google doc. And this sucks. Its disempowering. I love the security on my phone, and the operational simplicity of not needing to manage my own backups. But this? I hate this. I hate that there's a good chance Notion will aquihired by a big tech company and shut down. I'm not ok with my own creations being at the whim of market forces like this. I reject the idea that word and google docs are the only options. Git + Github is the model I want, where the cloud is a convenience but everything is stored locally as well. We need to start fighting for that.
- shados 5y agoOne of the big problems is that software doesn't sell (or at least is really hard to sell). Piracy and that pesky "pay once unless you want to upgrade" problem companies aren't fond of. Services are easy to sell and code on your server is hard to pirate. Still, there are gems out there, like Obsidian. Your files, put them where you want, how you want. Use the tool however you want, extend it if you want. Every other day someone comes up with some crazy plugin idea I didn't think I needed but now I do. If the company behind it goes poof, it will keep working.
- aliyfarah 5y agoI don’t see where you asked them to manually generate you a link.
- ebencooke 5y agoWell this makes the "should I start using Notion" question easy. 3 months of captive data and stonewalling from support -- wouldn't touch it with ___ foot pole.
- heavyset_go 5y agoReport them to your state's Attorney General. Have a lawyer send them a letter reminding them that you paid for a service that wasn't provided and that it's costing your business money.
- chirau 5y agoA threat of legal action will probably go a long way. I might be wrong, but I think it is actually illegal to withhold people's data upon request, especially if you claim to offer the feature. Also false advertising. I can see how they would try to skirt around it though, they'd probably say that it is a temporary glitch but the functionality is available. That way it wouldn't be them withholding your data or false advertising per se, but rather a temporary incapacitation. Another option would be to find other Notion customers who have the same issue or who can reproduce the same issue. That is, find other customers who you can ask to try to download their own data as well. If the issue is not isolated to you, then you can take class action against them and they would either have to take the feature down or issue a customer wide notice of of service/feature downtime. Either of these can be deemed a violation of the SLA on their part and give you a legal path for recourse. In the mean time, you should probably reply to that email telling them to do it manually. Tell them that it is the feature you even got the subscription for. So if they said at the time of contract it is doable, then they ought to be able to do it manually if not via the feature. Their backlog is none of your concern, they took your money and should deliver otherwise refund you. Hope that helps.
- dannyw 5y agoYes. Have your lawyer review and draft a letter referencing the approptiate laws. I'm sure they'll give you a manual export then.
- bentcorner 5y agoIANAL but would the GPDR apply here? Gut feeling is that Notion needs to have a way for customers to export their personal data to comply.
- axiosgunnar 5y agoI‘d assume company data (that OP talks about) is not personal data.
- dahart 5y agoOnly if @bertdc is an EU resident. The company is a US company, so GDPR does not apply to US customers. And even if @bertdc was in the EU, applicability can still hinge on whether the company “profiles” customer behavior and/or advertises specifically to EU residents. Also GDPR can’t compel a company to not write bugs. If they’re legitimately trying to fix it - and they might be - then they might not be out of compliance were the GDPR to be applicable. Threatening legal action might have the unintended consequence of slowing things down rather than fixing anything. * Oh, and TIL GDPR does not apply to company data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27613213 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27613213
- rdxm 5y agothere's a lesson in here somewhere....
- temp8964 5y agoFrom a technical perspective, why can't they manually create an export? How many man hours are needed to do this? Or, does this mean their backend development breaks their export code, so heavy rewrite the export code is required to make export work again?
- gauravphoenix 5y agoMuch like you posted your story on HN, make a twitter/linkedIn post and let it go viral. More viral it goes, more chances that the features will be requested by others and more chances of it getting due love by the engineering team. I am not a fan of social shaming, but sometimes that is the last resort and that's what you are doing.
- wolfgang42 5y agoYou’re not the only one, here’s someone who commented last month about having exactly the same problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149433
- austhrow743 5y agoAs far as I can tell you have two option. Try to write something to pull your data out yourself or get your lawyer to send a more formal sounding request on their letterhead. Probably the letter will be cheaper but also risks them going "oh shit legal threat" and slamming your account closed meaning you no longer have access to your data at all not just no export.
- boplicity 5y agoHere's what Notion.so says about this on their website. https://www.notion.so/Back-up-your-data-1a8eb5bdfce34d19a6360fd015c0075f https://www.notion.so/Back-up-your-data-1a8eb5bdfce34d19a636... - *I tried clicking the `Export all workspace content` button but received an error message.* Oof, so sorry about this For particularly large workspaces, the `Export all workspace content` function may have some trouble completing the export. We're investigating this issue and hope to have a resolution soon. As a temporary workaround for this issue, you can export in smaller batches: 1. Navigate to a top-level page in your workspace 2. Click the `•••` button at the top right of the page, then click `Export` (you may not see this option if you're not an admin in the workspace) 3. Choose `Markdown & CSV` or `HTML` as the export format, and turn on the `Include subpages` toggle 4. Repeat for any other important top-level pages in the workspace that you'd like to have a backup of Please note that we keep per-minute backups on our servers, and can help with data recovery at any time at team@makenotion.com. Thanks for your patience while we work on fixing this issue!
- sebmellen 5y agoGod, if there’s one thing I hate it’s that condescending millennial speak to cover up a serious issue. > Oof, so sorry about this... What??? If your company is broken don’t make it seem like a funny “aw shucks” blunder.
- freedomben 5y agoInteresting, I've written stuff very much like that before for customers that were hitting bugs. I wasn't trying to be "aw shucks" funny. I legitimately feel sorry that my shitty software was breaking on them. That they provided a workaround seemed like a nice thing to me. In fact that whole message seemed pretty good to me. It's probably not entirely that employee's fault but they're still trying to empathize and help. I wonder how many people have felt the same way about me.
- naikrovek 5y agoit's disrespectful to respond like that, to me. infantilizing; like I'm incapable of processing a response that is genuine. "uwu we'we sowwy dis isn't wewking anymowe.. pwease don't be angwy wiff us"
- phuff 5y agoEmpathy. A lot of these suggestions here don't show it. Sure, Notion should fix this feature. If your backlog is completely free of features that are no brainers, raise your hand. Anybody with your hand raised should be ashamed of yourself because I bet it's not true :) Sure they should fix this -- but is this something they should be fined for? Or be DDOS-ed by Hacker News readers? Or GDPR reported for? It's just not a great way to get help from up and coming businesses to force major financial pain on them and it's certainly not empathetic to what's likely a hard working, reasonable set of people on the other end of this service.
- maeil 5y agoThere would be a lot more empathy if they would be voluntarily offering any kind of compensation, which really is the least you could ask for.
- phuff 5y agoI dunno -- if you work on software you get used to the fact that there's always something that could be better, something that could be fixed. Something that could have a smoother user experience. This is just part and parcel of the nature of the medium. Given that they likely didn't realize this was a high priority feature until the pile-on here, and given that they're likely to re-prioritize this item to the top of that long backlog... do they really owe compensation for just having a backlog? I mean -- I kind of feel like if you're going to store your core business information in software, you're just going to have to deal with the fact that software has bugs. It's the nature of the beast. So, is it really something they owe compensation for? Probably they owe a bugfix, that I grant you, but compensation? I mean I guess if there was an explicit contract for the feature that tied compensation to it I could see a good argument that they owe compensation. But do they owe compensation to the good people of Hacker News who are suddenly talking about DDOS-ing the feature? That seems like a much harder case to make.
- mtlynch 5y agoI was recently looking at self-hostable Notion alternatives for my team, and I was impressed with Outline. [0] I ended up going with Notion because it was overall more user-friendly and handled image embeds easier, but Outline would be a nice option if you want to control your own data. https://www.getoutline.com/ https://www.getoutline.com/
- xvilka 5y agoAlso the similar problem like with other alternatives - no mobile apps.
- smoldesu 5y agoThis is why I use Obsidian[0]. I'm a shameless shill for self-hosted solutions, and Obsidian is just the client-portion of the notes app. You provide the syncing backend, it provides the first-class markdown experience. [0] https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y agoMy suggestion would be to stop using Notion. It's a novel approach, but 90% of what you want is achievable with Google Docs/Drive, Office 365, etc. My suggestion might be different if the business side was in a healthier shape.
- akdor1154 5y agoStep 1: OP should export their data, then import to their desired service. Oh wait..
- JMTQp8lwXL 5y agoThe block concept doesn't cleanly carry over to services. Bugging Notion for exports, brings them here: Step 2: Import blocks to {Some other cloud service} Which just isn't realistic. Having step 1 changes nothing.
- sylens 5y agoI started using Notion last year and became increasingly uneasy about how little control I had over the notes and data I was entering into it. I switched over to Obsidian since then, which keeps my markdown files in folders on my local machine which I can then sync myself using OneDrive or something similar. You can also pay like $4/month for Obsidian to sync it for you, but you still retain copies locally.
- caconym_ 5y agoWhoa, Obsidian looks awesome. Thanks for the tip, I'm trying it now and it looks like everything I've been wishing for. Required proprietary cloud is a hard no for me. In today's world of crazy feature churn and products being abandoned if they don't have massive growth and/or millions of users, I don't see why anybody would rely on a tool that doesn't even give them free access to their own data, let alone a binary (or physical product) that will keep working even after support ends.
- kevinslin 5y agoWorst comes to worst, you could export using a library like this one: https://github.com/kjk/notionapi https://github.com/kjk/notionapi That being said, definitely not ideal and is always a risk when storing your data with a SaaS service (disclaimer: I'm the founder of dendron.so - a fast open source notion competitor made for developers)
- xvilka 5y agoLooks good (the dendron). One of the killer feature of Notion and alike are the mobile apps, to have most data available on the go, even with the ability to edit or add some notes. Many opensource alternatives "forget" about that.
- beprogrammed 5y agoStands to show a critical problem with relying on SaaS products. "Oh that critical function that we broke? Yeah were not fixing that." Solution, if it's not built here, we don't rely on it. A lot more work up front, a lot more stable in the long run.
- dheera 5y agoThey have an API now; you could use that to export the data ...
- elviejo 5y agoAnd that is why we need to keep using, and creating, free as in freedom alternatives... "there is no cloud just other people's computers"
- imron 5y agoCongratulations, front page of HN = front page of backlog
- MrWiffles 5y agoA few things come to mind, all under the theme of "lighting a fire under their ass". First, I'd contact your state attorney general's office. See this link to usa.gov for a contact database: https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general || https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/ Next, contact your representative in the House and both your Senators: https://www.house.gov/representatives https://www.house.gov/representatives && https://www.senate.gov/states/statesmap.htm https://www.senate.gov/states/statesmap.htm Then I'd reach out to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) with a formal complaint: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov https://reportfraud.ftc.gov Filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau might prompt some movement, even though AFAIK they have no real power over anything, but reputation damage may be threat enough to get them to play ball: https://www.bbb.org/file-a-complaint https://www.bbb.org/file-a-complaint And for "the big one": reach out to journalists in the tech industry. Posting here at HN is a good first step, but I'd tell every tech journalist who's got ears (or eyes) what's going on and see how many of them pick it up. Hopefully enough to cause some real damage (because, sadly, they've made it clear that's what it'll take to get them to stop holding you hostage). Finally, contacting an attorney for at least an initial consult can't hurt. See americanbar.org for a list of attorneys admitted to the bar for your state: https://www.americanbar.org/directories/bar-associations/ https://www.americanbar.org/directories/bar-associations/ I don't envy you, and I'll very likely never use Notion now that I've heard about this. How can anyone trust them when they literally hold their own customers hostage, ally the while lying about why they're doing it?
- hodgesrm 5y agoWouldn't it be less effort to figure out how to migrate off? Not every product works for everyone. It sounds as if you want to unleash the Spanish Inquisition.
- MrWiffles 5y ago> Wouldn't it be less effort to figure out how to migrate off? You can't migrate data you don't have and can't get. > It sounds as if you want to unleash the Spanish Inquisition. Forcing a company to face civil consequences and bad PR hardly compares with an institutionalized, brutal assault on human rights that tortured and murdered ~3000 people over three centuries, some by being burned alive. It DOES, however, bear at least a chance of the OP getting their own property (data) back from the hostage taker. Most importantly, by creating consequences for malicious action, the OP has a good chance (if successful) of PROTECTING FUTURE VICTIMS. When you're being attacked, you don't just lay back and take it because it's easier. You hit back, because otherwise the bad guy is going to do the same - or worse - to somebody else, next. “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” - John Stuart Mill, 1867
- jakecopp 5y agoIf you want to roll your own self-hosted wiki: Vimwiki [1] on command line + Obsidian [2] on mobile works great! [1]: https://vimwiki.github.io/ https://vimwiki.github.io/ [2]: https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/
- arthurofbabylon 5y agoWhen people get fed up with Notion, I urge them to check out minimal.app. (In some regions it’s in beta at minimal.app/#beta.) Minimal has fewer features than notion, but it is faster, more reliable, simpler, and more beautiful/delightful. And it is feature packed. I love designing and building Minimal, and thousands of people love writing in Minimal.
- franciscop 5y agoIf you happen to be in the EU or if you qualify somehow, you could try submitting a GDPR request for all your data, which they are legally forced to respond or face steep fines.
- SixFive7 5y agoAs I am from the EU and both a business user as well as an individual customer with the same issue I did exactly that. They ignored me flat out multiple times. It was very rude. I got it on record though so we'll see how legal goes about it. Doesn't help me get to my data any faster though. ;-/
- franciscop 5y agoIt should be fairly easy to follow up: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/personal-information/what-if-i-dont-get-what-i-asked-for/ https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/per...
- Aeolun 5y agoOne thing that always works well for these kinds of things is to post on Hacker News.
- brodock 5y agoIf you don't host yourself, you don't own anything.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoYou need to get tech blogs and YouTube channels to cover this. Everybody loves a good story about the little guy getting screwed by the big guy. Public pressure goes a long way. You're already halfway there!
- fudged71 5y agoWe got tricked by the spreadsheet-like behavior of Notion too. If you use any of the relational features in tables, they are exported only as URLs. There is no alternate export, and you can’t Copy&Paste the cells either. Our CFO is unable to use this fancy relational table tool that we spent a lot of time and effort to build. Similar response from support.
- 4D4M-dotcom 5y agoNotion founders clearly aimed at keeping the product useage / arr up by locking you in without exports. I stopped using notion when I saw how the they treat people and talk to them even on their own team...
- igotsideas 5y agoDamn. I recently started using notion but this is crap customer service. Sorry this happened.
- soheil 5y ago> Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their "Export" feature I'm surprised you continued relying on them even after you realized this feature isn't working 3 months ago. > I even exchanged emails with the founders giving detailed feedback It also seems like you've been an early adopter so didn't you half expect this product might have major flaws and probably not the best idea to rely on it so heavily? There seems to be an unofficial exporter you can use here: https://github.com/kjk/notionapi https://github.com/kjk/notionapi
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Gelob 5y agoI fucking hate the excuses that people who work in agile/scrum give. It's called agile development but sorry I can't fix your issue until a story is created and groomed then sized then we might put it into a Sprint and work on it and then maybe we will put it into a release. "We have a large backlog". How about you take it out of the backlog and work on fixing it or explain to me why it's complicated so I can empathize
- ivanzhao 5y agoHi, Ivan here. I am the CEO of Notion. I'm really, really sorry about this experience! Our in-product export feature exports to a single file, and for very large workspaces this doesn't scale very well. (I know this is not an excuse for this experience. We'll do better and prioritize fixing this!) Could you email me at ivan at makenotion.com? We'll work to fix this for you immediately. Apologies, and really appreciate you for understanding! Ivan
- gostsamo 5y agoCan we have a "Report HN" feature which allows people to open tickets to popular services which don't have proper support or are unwilling to solve the most pressing issues of their clients?
- tux3 5y agoHN is already the friendly status page of the Internet, I thought Twitter was the support channel! Companies should clarify which social media they are being kept honest by, as a customer being locked in I wouldn't like being ignored for three months due to using the wrong official support channel :)
- soco 5y agoThere's the technical problem and there's also the human problem of answering the customer problems in such a way. You need two fixes.
- 8589934591 5y agoFwiw, this has been an issue from last year. My wife has been having the same problem with her notebooks. This is the same for both her company data and her personal data. I'm sorry you and others have to go through with this, just wanted to highlight this isn't a new issue. She has now migrated all her personal notebooks to emacs orgmode and her company notebooks to gcloud/docs and MD files.
- ncphil 5y agoSome here have advocated taking legal action, although I wonder if they bothered to read Notion's terms and conditions beforehand (https://www.notion.so/Terms-Conditions-4e1c5dd3e3de45dfa4a8ed60f1a43da0#d77b9b3e68504d72952d4cd9d1f503ca https://www.notion.so/Terms-Conditions-4e1c5dd3e3de45dfa4a8e...). There's a lot in there that a lawyer might find... troublesome. Like most software service agreements, it's pretty one-sided in favor of the vendor with the usual kitchen sink disclaimers and arbitration provisions. I think you've actually made a good start by posting here on HN. As someone else wrote, going on other social media could also help. You could also file a complaint with the California Department of Consumer Affairs (whose contact info is helpfully provided in the terms). If you're a US resident you might also reach out to your local member of Congress. Many Congressional constituent services people can work wonders in cases like this. Of course those are all the hammer. Another approach, if you've got the technical skills or willing to pay for them, is to look into writing something to leverage their API to extract your data -- although their terms prohibit spidering or scraping that's technically not the same as invoking an API. Depending on the real value of the data involved, it would probably be worth consulting a lawyer who does IP work _before_ you do any serious queries. Did I mention that you should probably talk to a lawyer?
- foobaron 5y agoI back up my notion data to sqlite or postgresql using a Python package I wrote (that in turn uses notionpy). It's pretty easy to run. I can share my code with you if you want, let me know.
- rognjen 5y agoEvery time a thread like this pops up that gains attention I wonder how many other customers are in the same spot but haven't had the same exposure so their issues remain unresolved.
- discordance 5y agoIf you are an EU citizen, you can request a copy of your data as a part of GDPR[0]. 0: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/reform/rights-citizens/my-rights/how-can-i-access-my-personal-data-held-company-organisation_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y agoUnrelated, but you might be able to download all your data with their new api
- jmstfv 5y agoThis is something that has been worrying me for quite some time. Considering how many folks use Notion as a knowledge base for their personal and professional lives, I'm sure others feel the same. Since their API is in public beta, I'm building a tool to back up and restore your Notion data to a storage provider of your choice: https://notionbackups.com https://notionbackups.com
- nojvek 5y agoI've had this idea in my head to make a notion-like editor which uses Git/GH as it's store of data. When you save, it makes a commit. Everything is saved as flat json files and image/data blobs. Seeing this comment, is further solidifying the idea. Notion is a great editor, but having little control over data isn't great. User should be able to control where the data lives. And when they want it gone, it should be gone. Poof!
- nelsonlok 5y agoGhost's source code might be a good start. They already have most things you need but the Git integration.
- steve_adams_86 5y agoThis is an "old" thread now, but something that stands out to me here is how damaging things like this must be for Notion's ability and opportunities to recruit developers. I interviewed with them years ago after sharing a lot of feedback and bug reports in their early years. I was PUMPED about this space and really wanted to help make something like Notion awesome. I wanted it to work for me, I wanted it to work for others, and I knew there would be tons to learn in the space. But my impression of Notion (not their devs specifically) left me feeling like it wouldn't happen there, and I just abandoned the process. This happened with Slite, too. But it's stuff like this which lead me to believe I shouldn't work on those teams. As a dev, I probably can't fix that the company overwhelmingly doesn't care enough about making an important feature work. I noticed a keen interest in my ideas about which features me or my team needed, or how existing features could expand to meet our needs, but not much interest in fixing bugs or limitations. Now we're here, and the export feature doesn't work while the company continues to move forward with other things. I can't help but think this sort of outward appearance has a negative affect on how easily they can hire, and who they can hire. This sort of things is a nail in the coffin for me - I don't want to work somewhere where we deploy day after day after day knowing that things are effectively broken.
- louisvgchi 5y agoI guess I can add Notion to my list of companies that ignore its customers unless shamed on social media. One to avoid.
- kurgan_ 5y agoFirst rule of SaaS evaluation: the tool MUST have an export feature that works. Notion grew massively with a targeted campaign "move from Evernote to Notion". Evernote's export feature works perfectly and you are free to go anytime. That's what honest SaaS companies do. Notion seems to be a SaaS that wants to own your data. Their API was a promise for years until they had to give up. They wanted to be your walled "one stop shop": eyeballs and data 100% in their tool (like Google Workspace). BTW, second rule of SaaS selection: choose a SaaS that do not make money selling your data to the big adtech players. Read the privacy policy!
- boplicity 5y agoI agree completely with this. I've recently started considering SAAS companies for a certain area, and I'm starting to lean more heavily towards open source self-hosted software, for the simple reason that I get complete control over the data. It's not fun to build a core part of our business under someone else's control.