4 ms·

I've never heard of companies using Obsidian. Notion isn't really marketed or suitable for individuals (even if their free plan says otherwise).

sfennell 1y ago
It is suitable for individuals, I used it for a couple years and was very happy with it. I only decided to move on because I wanted a local database that I could mine as my personal knowledge base.
layman51 1y ago
I think you're correct. But I remember back around 2020 when Notion became very popular, it was definitely marketed toward individuals like students, or professionals who wanted to do a lot of planning or organization related to their working/personal lives.
- numbers 1y ago
  yeah, when I downloaded the beta back in 2017/2018, I was using it as a replacement for Evernote. It was amazing. As the feature bloat made it slower and as the push towards companies made it less individual-focused, I started to use it more for group projects and now for teams. Obsidian is just better for writing especially longer notes etc. Notion is great for sharing data intensive stuff, nicely formatted docs, and for collaborating.
- cholantesh 1y ago
  I actively used Notion with a lot of my fellow students at the time. I've subsequently gravitated towards Joplin for 'richer' content and Obsidian for general text.
- louisbourgault 1y ago
  I love notion for school stuff. The databases are just absolutely neccesary for me, and collaboration is a must for me (and without a paid subscription as well). I'm going to check out Obsidian Bases too though now they're out.
kepano 1y ago
That's somewhat true for team collaboration, but not if you consider individuals on teams. There are people at least 10,000 companies using Obsidian, and some large corporate sponsors. See obsidian.md/enterprise
- paxys 1y ago
  I'm an "enterprise user" of Obsidian, but all I use it for is personal note taking at work. My company shows up on that page because I get them to pay for a commerical license. Outside of that it isn't an official internal tool. I don't use it to work on projects together with my teammates, for example.
- rafram 1y ago
  Oracle has 162,000 employees, but because about 25 people total asked for reimbursement for licenses, they're on that page.
  - CER10TY 1y ago
    Isn't that pretty much how every "Trusted by these companies" marketing badge works nowadays?
mmargenot 1y ago
I use Notion extensively as an individual, but I spend a lot of time thinking about knowledge management and have accordingly tuned it pretty closely to my typical workflows. Without that initial time investment it can be overwhelming.
fudged71 1y ago
Notion is used individually by a lot of students
pavel_lishin 1y ago
Notion works great for me as a store of WYSIWYG documents that I can drag around in a hierarchical set of pages. This means that I can easily use it on my phone, on the go. But I don't use any of its Database functionality, or any of the other 90% of its features.
- echelon 1y ago
  Notion needs to fear all of the people using (and loving) Obsidian at home that want to use it for work. Notion is going to have a very hard time turning corporate Notion users into at-home/personal Notion users. Obsidian has already won this use case with one of the most rock-solid products ever. Now Obsidian gets to fight the battle for corporate on their terms. And their tool is already developer friendly. There are a million Obsidian champions, and there's probably a dozen of them in your org. I think Notion should be shaking in their boots right about now. If Obsidian can get their organization management and syncing/backup strategy right, and if they make their product interface well with distributed git automations, Obsidian is going to take over so many new workflows. Not just knowledge bases, but mdbook -> webpage workflows, documentation, customer-facing pages, everything. Notion makes product managers smile. Obsidian makes developers and product managers smile.
  - pavel_lishin 1y ago
    > Notion is going to have a very hard time turning corporate Notion users into at-home/personal Notion users. Obsidian has already won this use case with one of the most rock-solid products ever. I don't think that's true; my (admittedly limited) understanding of Obsidian is that it strongly appeals to the type of person who reads HN; they're not going to appeal to someone who wants a WYSIWYG editor that they don't have to think about manually syncing with anything. Obsidian makes developers smile, but it won't make sales people, customer service people, or executives smile unless they're already inclined to.
kid64 1y ago
Apparently Amazon purchased a block of licenses recently. Since the product isn't usable without community extensions, the scale of data exfiltration resulting from this asinine idea will be staggering, and is likely underway.
- pityJuke 1y ago
  > Since the product isn't usable without community extensions Love when people just spout straight bullshit without any substance to it. Gladly using Obsidian with no community extensions. It is completely usable as a PKM without any additions.
  - kid64 1y ago
    You're defending your own low standards with respect to software usability. That's fine, but not overly relevant.
    - pityJuke 1y ago
      “low standards” Again, love when people spout bullshit. Are you ever going to elaborate on what is so “low standard” about Obsidian, or just going to keep speaking in vagueness?

sfennell 1y ago

It is suitable for individuals, I used it for a couple years and was very happy with it. I only decided to move on because I wanted a local database that I could mine as my personal knowledge base.

layman51 1y ago

I think you're correct. But I remember back around 2020 when Notion became very popular, it was definitely marketed toward individuals like students, or professionals who wanted to do a lot of planning or organization related to their working/personal lives.

numbers 1y ago
yeah, when I downloaded the beta back in 2017/2018, I was using it as a replacement for Evernote. It was amazing. As the feature bloat made it slower and as the push towards companies made it less individual-focused, I started to use it more for group projects and now for teams. Obsidian is just better for writing especially longer notes etc. Notion is great for sharing data intensive stuff, nicely formatted docs, and for collaborating.
cholantesh 1y ago
I actively used Notion with a lot of my fellow students at the time. I've subsequently gravitated towards Joplin for 'richer' content and Obsidian for general text.
louisbourgault 1y ago
I love notion for school stuff. The databases are just absolutely neccesary for me, and collaboration is a must for me (and without a paid subscription as well). I'm going to check out Obsidian Bases too though now they're out.

kepano 1y ago

That's somewhat true for team collaboration, but not if you consider individuals on teams. There are people at least 10,000 companies using Obsidian, and some large corporate sponsors. See obsidian.md/enterprise

paxys 1y ago
I'm an "enterprise user" of Obsidian, but all I use it for is personal note taking at work. My company shows up on that page because I get them to pay for a commerical license. Outside of that it isn't an official internal tool. I don't use it to work on projects together with my teammates, for example.
rafram 1y ago
Oracle has 162,000 employees, but because about 25 people total asked for reimbursement for licenses, they're on that page.
- CER10TY 1y ago
  Isn't that pretty much how every "Trusted by these companies" marketing badge works nowadays?

mmargenot 1y ago

I use Notion extensively as an individual, but I spend a lot of time thinking about knowledge management and have accordingly tuned it pretty closely to my typical workflows. Without that initial time investment it can be overwhelming.

fudged71 1y ago

Notion is used individually by a lot of students

pavel_lishin 1y ago

Notion works great for me as a store of WYSIWYG documents that I can drag around in a hierarchical set of pages. This means that I can easily use it on my phone, on the go. But I don't use any of its Database functionality, or any of the other 90% of its features.

echelon 1y ago
Notion needs to fear all of the people using (and loving) Obsidian at home that want to use it for work. Notion is going to have a very hard time turning corporate Notion users into at-home/personal Notion users. Obsidian has already won this use case with one of the most rock-solid products ever. Now Obsidian gets to fight the battle for corporate on their terms. And their tool is already developer friendly. There are a million Obsidian champions, and there's probably a dozen of them in your org. I think Notion should be shaking in their boots right about now. If Obsidian can get their organization management and syncing/backup strategy right, and if they make their product interface well with distributed git automations, Obsidian is going to take over so many new workflows. Not just knowledge bases, but mdbook -> webpage workflows, documentation, customer-facing pages, everything. Notion makes product managers smile. Obsidian makes developers and product managers smile.
- pavel_lishin 1y ago
  > Notion is going to have a very hard time turning corporate Notion users into at-home/personal Notion users. Obsidian has already won this use case with one of the most rock-solid products ever. I don't think that's true; my (admittedly limited) understanding of Obsidian is that it strongly appeals to the type of person who reads HN; they're not going to appeal to someone who wants a WYSIWYG editor that they don't have to think about manually syncing with anything. Obsidian makes developers smile, but it won't make sales people, customer service people, or executives smile unless they're already inclined to.

kid64 1y ago

Apparently Amazon purchased a block of licenses recently. Since the product isn't usable without community extensions, the scale of data exfiltration resulting from this asinine idea will be staggering, and is likely underway.

pityJuke 1y ago
> Since the product isn't usable without community extensions Love when people just spout straight bullshit without any substance to it. Gladly using Obsidian with no community extensions. It is completely usable as a PKM without any additions.
- kid64 1y ago
  You're defending your own low standards with respect to software usability. That's fine, but not overly relevant.
  - pityJuke 1y ago
    “low standards” Again, love when people spout bullshit. Are you ever going to elaborate on what is so “low standard” about Obsidian, or just going to keep speaking in vagueness?