4 ms·

My view is that Notion is an utterly mediocre product with great marketing that also benefited from the rise of "productivity porn" videos on YT. It probably f

by jatins 4y ago

My view is that Notion is an utterly mediocre product with great marketing that also benefited from the rise of "productivity porn" videos on YT. It probably finds success in enterprise because it can replace a bunch of tools (confluence, jira, google docs, wikis) if you try really hard so maybe it makes financial sense. But in my experience it is not better than any of those in a 1:1 comparison. Okay, probably better than Confluence.

emadabdulrahim 4y ago
Could you name a better designed product that has the flexibility and feature set Notion has?
- nucleogenesis 4y ago
  I was recently giving Coda a look and it’s got a lot of the same or similar features.
- mushbino 4y ago
  It's a bit of a different model, but Guru is pretty cool.
- blowski 4y ago
  That's like asking "can you name a product better at being Notion than Notion?". Rephrase the question as "what problems do you have which Notion is trying to solve, but you think there are better solutions on the market?". Personally, I prefer plain-text where I own the content, so Obsidian works great. When I need to collaborate on something in realtime, I usually prefer a more focused tool, like Google Sheets, Trello, Excalidraw.
- jatins 4y ago
  For that feature set and flexibility, I can't. However, for individual use cases I can. Note taking: Bear, Apple Notes, Obsidian Project management: Jira, Linear, Height Wikis: can't think of any IMO the flexibility and feature set Notion offers makes it a jack of all trades, but master of none tool. Maybe the sum turns out to be greater than parts for some people but for personal use I haven't enjoyed it. Fwiw I felt the same way about Coda. So it's a general comment on this category of "all in one" doc tools.
  - thiht 4y ago
    > Note taking: Bear, Apple Notes, Obsidian Bear is really bad. The fact it uses some kind of Markdown but not really is insufferable. Can you even make proper tables in Bear now? It wasn't even possible for _years_ Apple Notes is good enough but doesn't support code blocks properly, that's a deal breaker for me. Also it can't really be shared with people not on iOS/macOS. It's also really bad for writing structured documents: you get 2 title levels, and you can't generate a table of contents. I didn't fully try Obsidian because I didn't like its general UI. I really liked the graph philosophy it tries to push but couldn't make it work for my notes.
    - jonnybgood 4y ago
      I think Bear is great. Bear provides the exact UI for notes that I was looking for. I take simple straightforward notes as if I was writing on paper slips with a Zettelkasten-like organization. Apple Notes is the only other app for mobile and desktop that has that level of simplicity. In my opinion, if you need advanced formatting and editing features you're not making a note, you're making a document.
  - waprin 4y ago
    I'm not in any way associated with Notion but I find Notion way better than what you've listed _for me_. I love Notion because it makes it easy to organize lots of notes and has a good search feature. The databases are super useful, I have a bunch of them and I use the template buttons to auto-create new entries. I also use the template buttons to create new entries for my daily and weekly planning & review to make sure I check off all the things I need to do. For example, I write blog posts on programming, startups, and mental health. I have a database with ideas for each of those three things. Then I have a centralized database where I link to those other databases so I can see which ideas I'm most inspired to write about in a centralized queue. If you're interested in things like meal prep, using the gallery to show recipe idea pictures, then you can link a database of shopping needs to a database of meal ideas to automatically create shopping lists and meal prep ideas. I acknowledge that some people have the opinion that you can spend too much time futzing with your tool and not doing the work enough. I respect that for some people something as powerful as Notion is a distraction. For me, my mind races and I take tons of notes and do tons of planning and I find Notion very helpful for organizing everything in a way Apple Notes could never be. I think people need to be respectful of differences on this topic. I'm someone who's always hated Jira at work because I felt like we spent more time planning than doing work. But with Notion, I use it very quickly for the most part, there was a learning curve but it mostly just helps me out and stays out of my way. The keyboard shortcuts are amazing too, I like automatically adding different colors to my documents using them. I do like Bear for Apple Watch and I still think Trello has a better mobile UX for boards/cards, so I take notes in those two apps then organize them into Notion. I also think it's funny Notion advertises habit tracking on their SF billboards since I think habit tracking is one of the only use cases Notion is terrible for (disclosure: I'm building what I consider to be the Notion of habit trackers). But overall I think people are being incredibly uncharitable to Notion in this thread. Maybe it's a little overhyped, maybe performance could be better, maybe some people prefer more minimalist tools (my wife still likes pen/paper and whiteboards over all these things). But to me, Notion is still an incredibly well-designed tool that's incredibly powerful.
- RHSeeger 4y ago
  I would rather have multiple apps that do a smaller set of things, but do it well... than one app that does everything, but is bad at all of them.
bredren 4y ago
It is not mediocre. It has flaws but it’s not bad. It has experienced hyper growth. It is what slack is to irc in some ways. It’s far better than google docs, confluence and wikis. Jira doesn’t do it. I’ve looked at many options, some more developer friendly. It’s the best right now.
- yandie 4y ago
  We started with Notion with a team of 3 people. Just after 3 months our notes have grown too complex to the point of it crawling every time we load a page - especially if there are more than 1 person on theh page. We ended up switching to Confluence + Google Docs (depending on the use cases). Notion definitely has a nice UX but for any meaningful large document it's utterly slow - that was 2.5 years ago so maybe they've improved but our contents are now stuck in JIRA and migrating out will take too much effort :)
  - mizzao 4y ago
    We address this by moving old parts of the big document into sub-documents But, in general still find Notion to be way better than other solutions for both taking down and rearranging information.
lancesells 4y ago
I use Notion and don't think I was swayed by any marketing. For me, I can write a document with great formatting in a fraction of the time it would take me in Google Docs. All personal stuff I use Obsidian but for work I can type up something and share it quickly. Re: Performance. I only use it in the browser after suffering from the Electron app. It's fast but I am also on an M1 Mac.
- messutied 4y ago
  For me this is huge. No more random formatting on google docs from team members, notion removes this from the picture and ppl can focus on the content. Also the ability to nest documents, insert tables that are easy to manage and again formatting is a solved issue.
  - jchanimal 4y ago
    That's funny, it's all the bells and whistles on Notion that my team complains about. Markdown or Notes.app is way better for composition. Notion is where content goes to stop being iterated on.
    - lancesells 4y ago
      I'm sure your team already knows this but you can write in Markdown in Notion. It auto-formats everything. I'm sure it's missing some things and one of them is anything past H3(H4, H5, H6).
      - jchanimal 4y ago
        It’s more about the affordances. I can’t trust notion not to drop into some command system. Therefore I need to keep my monitor turned on when typing. If I can’t type with the monitor turned off, it must not be a very reliable word processor.
RHSeeger 4y ago
I like to describe Confluence as "a wiki written by someone who has never used a wiki". I feel the same way about Notion and everything it tries to do.
- mustacheemperor 4y ago
  I wonder if it is still impossible to toggle checkboxes on/off in rapid succession without crashing the page. We discontinued using Confluence partly because of this issue in 2019, and just out of curiosity I just checked the ticket again now - closed in 2021 not because it was fixed, but because "we are closing this bug to focus on our upcoming roadmap for all Confluence users."[0] That seems to be endorsing the exact behavior some users are complaining about with regards to Notion in this thread, leaving so many bugs unresolved while pushing new features. [0]https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-56972 https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-56972
raverbashing 4y ago
True, the Productivity Porn people is the worse aspect. It's about noting, saving, prioritizing, organizing every little thing. It's the "wake at 4am people, run for 30 min, meditate for 20min and drink quinoa juice" people. The ones that feel the need to be clockworks of effectiveness. And of course, the more you automate something, it will start getting in the way after a certain point.

by jatins 4y ago

emadabdulrahim 4y ago

Could you name a better designed product that has the flexibility and feature set Notion has?

nucleogenesis 4y ago
I was recently giving Coda a look and it’s got a lot of the same or similar features.
mushbino 4y ago
It's a bit of a different model, but Guru is pretty cool.
blowski 4y ago
That's like asking "can you name a product better at being Notion than Notion?". Rephrase the question as "what problems do you have which Notion is trying to solve, but you think there are better solutions on the market?". Personally, I prefer plain-text where I own the content, so Obsidian works great. When I need to collaborate on something in realtime, I usually prefer a more focused tool, like Google Sheets, Trello, Excalidraw.
jatins 4y ago
For that feature set and flexibility, I can't. However, for individual use cases I can. Note taking: Bear, Apple Notes, Obsidian Project management: Jira, Linear, Height Wikis: can't think of any IMO the flexibility and feature set Notion offers makes it a jack of all trades, but master of none tool. Maybe the sum turns out to be greater than parts for some people but for personal use I haven't enjoyed it. Fwiw I felt the same way about Coda. So it's a general comment on this category of "all in one" doc tools.
- thiht 4y ago
  > Note taking: Bear, Apple Notes, Obsidian Bear is really bad. The fact it uses some kind of Markdown but not really is insufferable. Can you even make proper tables in Bear now? It wasn't even possible for _years_ Apple Notes is good enough but doesn't support code blocks properly, that's a deal breaker for me. Also it can't really be shared with people not on iOS/macOS. It's also really bad for writing structured documents: you get 2 title levels, and you can't generate a table of contents. I didn't fully try Obsidian because I didn't like its general UI. I really liked the graph philosophy it tries to push but couldn't make it work for my notes.
  - jonnybgood 4y ago
    I think Bear is great. Bear provides the exact UI for notes that I was looking for. I take simple straightforward notes as if I was writing on paper slips with a Zettelkasten-like organization. Apple Notes is the only other app for mobile and desktop that has that level of simplicity. In my opinion, if you need advanced formatting and editing features you're not making a note, you're making a document.
- waprin 4y ago
  I'm not in any way associated with Notion but I find Notion way better than what you've listed _for me_. I love Notion because it makes it easy to organize lots of notes and has a good search feature. The databases are super useful, I have a bunch of them and I use the template buttons to auto-create new entries. I also use the template buttons to create new entries for my daily and weekly planning & review to make sure I check off all the things I need to do. For example, I write blog posts on programming, startups, and mental health. I have a database with ideas for each of those three things. Then I have a centralized database where I link to those other databases so I can see which ideas I'm most inspired to write about in a centralized queue. If you're interested in things like meal prep, using the gallery to show recipe idea pictures, then you can link a database of shopping needs to a database of meal ideas to automatically create shopping lists and meal prep ideas. I acknowledge that some people have the opinion that you can spend too much time futzing with your tool and not doing the work enough. I respect that for some people something as powerful as Notion is a distraction. For me, my mind races and I take tons of notes and do tons of planning and I find Notion very helpful for organizing everything in a way Apple Notes could never be. I think people need to be respectful of differences on this topic. I'm someone who's always hated Jira at work because I felt like we spent more time planning than doing work. But with Notion, I use it very quickly for the most part, there was a learning curve but it mostly just helps me out and stays out of my way. The keyboard shortcuts are amazing too, I like automatically adding different colors to my documents using them. I do like Bear for Apple Watch and I still think Trello has a better mobile UX for boards/cards, so I take notes in those two apps then organize them into Notion. I also think it's funny Notion advertises habit tracking on their SF billboards since I think habit tracking is one of the only use cases Notion is terrible for (disclosure: I'm building what I consider to be the Notion of habit trackers). But overall I think people are being incredibly uncharitable to Notion in this thread. Maybe it's a little overhyped, maybe performance could be better, maybe some people prefer more minimalist tools (my wife still likes pen/paper and whiteboards over all these things). But to me, Notion is still an incredibly well-designed tool that's incredibly powerful.
RHSeeger 4y ago
I would rather have multiple apps that do a smaller set of things, but do it well... than one app that does everything, but is bad at all of them.

bredren 4y ago

It is not mediocre. It has flaws but it’s not bad. It has experienced hyper growth. It is what slack is to irc in some ways. It’s far better than google docs, confluence and wikis. Jira doesn’t do it. I’ve looked at many options, some more developer friendly. It’s the best right now.

yandie 4y ago
We started with Notion with a team of 3 people. Just after 3 months our notes have grown too complex to the point of it crawling every time we load a page - especially if there are more than 1 person on theh page. We ended up switching to Confluence + Google Docs (depending on the use cases). Notion definitely has a nice UX but for any meaningful large document it's utterly slow - that was 2.5 years ago so maybe they've improved but our contents are now stuck in JIRA and migrating out will take too much effort :)
- mizzao 4y ago
  We address this by moving old parts of the big document into sub-documents But, in general still find Notion to be way better than other solutions for both taking down and rearranging information.

lancesells 4y ago

I use Notion and don't think I was swayed by any marketing. For me, I can write a document with great formatting in a fraction of the time it would take me in Google Docs. All personal stuff I use Obsidian but for work I can type up something and share it quickly. Re: Performance. I only use it in the browser after suffering from the Electron app. It's fast but I am also on an M1 Mac.

messutied 4y ago
For me this is huge. No more random formatting on google docs from team members, notion removes this from the picture and ppl can focus on the content. Also the ability to nest documents, insert tables that are easy to manage and again formatting is a solved issue.
- jchanimal 4y ago
  That's funny, it's all the bells and whistles on Notion that my team complains about. Markdown or Notes.app is way better for composition. Notion is where content goes to stop being iterated on.
  - lancesells 4y ago
    I'm sure your team already knows this but you can write in Markdown in Notion. It auto-formats everything. I'm sure it's missing some things and one of them is anything past H3(H4, H5, H6).
    - jchanimal 4y ago
      It’s more about the affordances. I can’t trust notion not to drop into some command system. Therefore I need to keep my monitor turned on when typing. If I can’t type with the monitor turned off, it must not be a very reliable word processor.

RHSeeger 4y ago

I like to describe Confluence as "a wiki written by someone who has never used a wiki". I feel the same way about Notion and everything it tries to do.

mustacheemperor 4y ago
I wonder if it is still impossible to toggle checkboxes on/off in rapid succession without crashing the page. We discontinued using Confluence partly because of this issue in 2019, and just out of curiosity I just checked the ticket again now - closed in 2021 not because it was fixed, but because "we are closing this bug to focus on our upcoming roadmap for all Confluence users."[0] That seems to be endorsing the exact behavior some users are complaining about with regards to Notion in this thread, leaving so many bugs unresolved while pushing new features. [0]https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-56972 https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-56972

raverbashing 4y ago

True, the Productivity Porn people is the worse aspect. It's about noting, saving, prioritizing, organizing every little thing. It's the "wake at 4am people, run for 30 min, meditate for 20min and drink quinoa juice" people. The ones that feel the need to be clockworks of effectiveness. And of course, the more you automate something, it will start getting in the way after a certain point.