You have plenty of choices when it comes to note-taking apps. Evernote, OneNote, Apple Notes, Bear, and Simplenote are just some of your options. What if you’re looking for something different though? Notion is a promising new app that takes what we usually think of a note-taking app and turns it on its ear. Not only does it tack on a bunch of new features, but it also rethinks how we approach documents in the first place.
Notion in a Nutshell
The Notion website describes it as an “all-in-one workspace.” What this means is that you can keep all your notes, documents, tasks, projects, and more inside Notion. There have been other projects that have tried to do this, but Notion seems to be one of the best examples.
Notion uses the concept of “blocks” for data storage and lets you present them in a handful of ways. This means you can have a list of tasks, then display them as you would a Kanban board. If you’re a Trello power user, you won’t find all of those features here, but there is a surprising amount of functionality.
Your data and the presentation of it are two different things in Notion, which is part of why it is so powerful. It can take some getting used to, but once you wrap your head around it, you’ll be hard-pressed to find things you can’t do in Notion.
Notion’s open-ended nature also means it’s almost infinitely flexible. If you want, you can use it as a notes app, task management tool, CRM, or all of the above. You just need to make sure you have the right amount of storage available.
More on Blocks
A block in Notion is any piece of content you add. It can be a to-do item, a code snippet, an image, an embedded file, or anything else. These are essentially the building blocks from which everything else in Notion is built.
This is different from the sheer amount of storage that apps like Evernote limit based on pricing. Fortunately, Notion doesn’t charge for different amounts of blocks.
Notion Pricing
Notion’s free offering is pretty impressive, especially when you compare it to the free offerings from some of its competitors. You get unlimited members, 1,000 blocks of storage, and a 5 MB upload limit on files.
Upgrading to the Personal plan will cost you $4 per month. Most importantly, this gets you unlimited blocks and no limit on file upload size or how many files you can upload. You also get priority support and version history, letting you roll a block back to any version within the last thirty days.
The Team plan costs $8 per member per month. This gets all of the features in the Personal plan for each member, as well as advanced administration tools.
Why Should You Use Notion?
If you’re looking for an all-in-one hub for your data, Notion might be perfect for you. It picks up where Microsoft OneNote leaves off, letting you combine all sorts of data and organize it in a way that works for you. It only continues to add features and functionality as well.
You might just be looking for a replacement for Evernote. In that case, Notion can absolutely work, but you might find its block-based storage odd. Before you settle, you might want to take a look at our list of amazing Evernote alternatives.
Kris Wouk is a writer, musician, and whatever it’s called when someone makes videos for the web.
Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox
