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Best notion alternative



Love the power notion has, but this is out of hand. Way to slow to start up.

What's your favourite notion alternative?


I love Obsidian. It's got the best bits from Notion & Roam, simple and extensible using plugins. I've been using it for a while now.

I just downloaded it. I do enjoy it so far. Specifically the exaclidraw community plugin.

What are you using Notion for? Task tracking in Asana and Trello are both good. Slight edge to Asana for having project management features

I agree with Ben in finding out what you're using it for. Notion has a lot of pros, but I don't think it's a cure-all for every business need.

I never thought I'd say this, but I've moved my interactive client portals (1:1 strategy clients) to Basecamp and have been loving it. It's WAY more organized and easily adaptable if projects change (without me having to reinvent the portal every time).

I could use Basecamp to track my own content marketing, but I'm still using Notion, just to have some separation. (Plus, I can organize each article/email with different tags and sort them in databases easily then write them right there without having to integrate anything.)

I'm debating whether to keep using Hello Bonsai or Notion as my client acquisition system -- tracking cold emails, proposals, calls, etc. (There are so many advantages for HB, especially for proposal + form integration, but it's pricey.)

At one point, I bought a lifetime license to use a software that allows you to create your whole website in Notion, but I've moved away from that and used Squarespace instead. (But I'm assuming you know tech well enough to create a full website in Notion without having a breakdown like me lol.)

Anyway, what are you using Notion for now? I bet we could all brainstorm different solutions for you. :)

I think lots of the competition are pretty good, I've tried Clickup and Coda. However it really boils down to what specialty features you need and if you need multiple users. For just yourself, I second Obsidian. Bonus is it has the Publish paid feature so you can publish notes on the internet, either publicly or lock the site with a password.

Check open source alternative: github.com/clearview/rootspace

That's what I was going to recommend also.
I use the self-hosted version of joplinapp.org
It's pretty barebone but enough to keep some notes.

I have used Coda at my startup. I wouldn't say it is better, but it is quite nice.

I feel working with tables, coda is better than notion. However, their search is terrible.

What made us use it was their pricing model per document creator. We have a single account that can create new documents if we need to, and editors don't pay, so you can share a Wiki document with everyone and it only costs around 20$ per month.

Has anyone tried anytype.io/ ?
I had been using a private GitLab repo to keep notes across devices and a simple static site generator for organizing things through tags. I switched to Notion when I couldn't figure out why my markdown editor wouldn't access the folder where the git client was cloning to. I stuck with it for the embed feature.

Are you sharing docs externally? In other words, do you need the SSG at all?

For personal use local markdown files + preview is a much easier workflow. VS Code with the Markdown All In One extension is more than enough (if you don't already want to use Obsidian).

It's all private, but I have a mix of journals, project logs, work experience, random thoughts, etc. I like having an interface that lets me quickly review, filter, and collate

Markdown IMO is still the best for that - even Notion acknowledges that given its interface works very well with (and is partly based on) Markdown.

Obsidian also has plugins that are stored per-vault so you can enhance your setup with things like kanban boards, data tables/spreadsheets, etc.

I was going to but it's pretty complicated to setup on a server, you need at least a MongoDB database and a Redis.
Here is the installation guide: tech.anytype.io/how-to/self-h…

Currently testing out SkedPal for 14 days.

It's an AI scheduling tool similar to Motion. One of my exec assistant clients uses it, and it seems to help her get more organized. (Bonus: It's actually super affordable. USD$15/month or like $120/year.)

Have you tried saga.so/ ? It's similar, yet so simple : )

I absolutely love Bear. Not full featured product management, but unbeatably fast for quick notes.

Hey @dillondotzip 👋🏻, a pretty similar alternative is capacities.io/ and a close one with a decent startup time is craft.do.