The best Notion alternatives of 2024

Ahh Notion. Some love it, some don’t, some only know that term as meaning ‘a concept’ and have no idea what the little diced ‘N’ logo is on this page. If you have heard of Notion, then you know it’s emerged as leading platform in the world of digital productivity. If you haven’t, Notion is a product that looks like a Google docs alternative at first glance, but goes much, much further than that. You can learn more about Notion here.

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What can you do with Notion?

Notion does a lot of things, it can be a lot of things (depending on how you use it). It allows you to pretty much create something that boosts your productivity in whatever you do, exactly the way you want and need to (and it’s a lot more aesthetic than its predecessors).

With Notion you’re not stuck with a Kanban board, you can eliminate busywork with automations and their new native AI, you can pull in or send out your data to other tools and platforms (be it emails, CMS items, project updates, tasks, directories, etc.) using lego-like building blocks to pull together your ultimate second-brain. Notion is a very effective tool.

But not for everyone.

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What can’t you do with Notion?

Notion has been referred to as a ‘second-brain’ before. It goes with the idea that we get so busy we need two of ourselves to get everything done. But we need more than two people to build and run a business, service or product.

Notion is so extendible in the realm of personal and small-biz productivity that we feel like it should be able to do everything, and it almost can. But where we try to use Notion to build fully-functional CRMs, comprehensive, multi-faceted no-code backends or complex websites where there’s larger volumes or data, it can fall short.

The layered versatility of Notion’s platform can also be too much for what you actually need, and when trying to create something like a personal task management system, we can end up getting carried away with all the additional features and functions, perhaps creating a bit of a monster that can consume more of our time than it saves.

If you’re anything like me it feels like an episode of the Fairly Oddparents, you’ve got unlimited wishes and you wish for everything and then chaos ensues, leaving you at the end of the day a little bit:

When you open Notion, it looks like it does nothing except just be a document. There’s definitely also a massive learning curve if you’re new to a tool like this, and learning how to make it work for you would likely take up more time than it’s worth.

This is not to say Notion is not an effective tool for anything we’ve mentioned, but there are tools like Notion, but that are there to solve a problem more tailored to you and your business.

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Notion Alternatives

And so we’ve curated a list of the best Notion alternatives available in 2024 that might work better for you and yours.