Why I Like Notion

Like any business / tech guy, I have a lot of information that I rely on every day. It all needs to be easily-accessed, fully searchable, and well-organized or I will never find it again.

Those pain points drove me to explore a huge range of tools- Airtable, Obsidian, Google Drive, Mindomo, Monday, OneNote, Jira, Wrike and various custom zettelkasten "personal information manager" setups to help me wade more efficiently through my piles of gold.

All of these tools are great, in their own way. But there is only one that's really stuck for me, as the center of my daily work - and currently, that one is Notion.

What do I need, and why?

Here are some of the things I do in my daily work-

Document projects, like APIs, with deep note hierarchies
Blog and share content
Manage and track my projects, tasks, and clients
Share content securely to clients, and to special groups such as partner development teams
Capture written notes, screenshots, images, and videos constantly

I generally perform these types of work at my desktop ~80% of the time, but I also use my laptop from cafes or client sites ~15% of the time, and need to work from my phone while travelling ~5%. Generally, I have internet access- but not always.

How I use Notion

Like most product hunts, I started with a pile of formal requirements, and kept searching for that one product that satisfied them all as closely as possible. But after using Notion for the past few years I've discovered that it's shaped my processes in ways I couldn't predict.

So let me approach it from that perspective- here is how I use Notion now.

Writing Blog and Knowledge Base articles for my website, and having them publish directly into Webflow's CMS, automatically. This required some custom integration work but was very achievable with Notion's webhooks and API.
Tracking client projects
Publishing client notes for clients, accessible only to them
Publishing early-stage project documentation to "mini sites" that are published directly by Notion as "mini-sites."
Tracking expenses, subscriptions, and warranties.
Tracking ideas and research for content I plan to create some day in the form of blogs or video content.
Tracking personal things like recipes, gift ideas, places to visit, and personal projects like brewing kombucha
Storing ad-hoc notes that... I just need to be able to find again.

Key features that put Notion on top, for me

For me, Notion combines the convenience and searchability of Obsidian with the flexible database capabilities of Airtable, the excellent kanban mechanics of Trello, and the document editing simplicity of Google Docs.

These features are the real winners...

Document structure - This is an odd one. Markdown is clean and simple, has inherent structure and represents a lot of object types, and I used to prefer it. But Notion's block concept is very practical to work with as each block type can have its own special characteristics.
Very effective linking. Link anything to another document, or database item, or an external link. Notion is very flexible here and the UX makes this smooth.
Powerful, accessible search. In Notion, CTRL+K is my best friend; it allows for very quick location of documents and I have well over 10k documents. Outside of Notion, CTRL+SHIFT+K is my best friend. It pops up Notion search no matter what app I'm in. Copy something, CTRL+SHIFT+K and paste it into the document I need.
Solid multimedia support. I use images, screenshots and videos a lot in my docs, especially published docs. In Obsidian that felt like a fight because binary files become part of the vault and by default are content-searched, which just kept resurfacing as a problem- though you can setup filtering to prevent that.
Excellent database support, rather like having Airtable built-in. That let me make some parts of my KB hierarchical for e.g. documentation structure, and other parts fully itemized, like my blog. The fact that the schema is fluid, but fields are strongly typed, that each record has a full document as well- really works. It's a customizable document attributes model.
Precise publishing control - I can publish any grouping of pages to a specific audience, like mini-sites
Team support - I didn't explore this in Obsidian much, but in Notion, I have a lot of non-technical clients who can use Notion but might struggle with a local Obsidian setup, and keeping it in sync. All of my API docs, admin instructional videos, developer notes, are neatly structured and shared.
Tables - Obsidian made some good steps forward here with it's MD table editor, but I still find editing Notion's tables much easier.

Technical Advantages

I didn't expect how useful these would be-

Full support for both desktop & mobile environments with excellent sync, and offline mode. Many airplanes still don't have wifi Internet, and yet you can still work.
API & webhooks, which open the doors to any kind of realtime integration you want, whether it's bringing data in, publishing it out, or using it in some other way. See below for some examples of integrations I've built.
Document data structure as JSON. Notion pioneered some big shifts in thinking in the CMS space, and most companies have switched to JSON over MD or HTML as the core storage format. I like that I get clean structural details for things like a callout ( icon + bg color + content ) and I can translate that into whatever HTML / MD I want.

Security & data custody

Cool features, yes- but let's circle back and hit some practical fundamentals.

First, I haven't researched security considerations deeply, but since it offers Google login, I use that with 2FA.

I do think frequently about data custody, meaning the ability to own my data. In part this means protecting it from prying eyes ( and AIs ). But mostly it's about ensuring I can leave Notion if I ever need to.

My approach to this problem is that any SaaS I use must have full data export, which Notion does ( and as markdown + csv as well ). So I like the credible exit there into Obsidian if I ever had to.

Integrations

Any of this could be built from Obsidian as well, and I've played with the publish and sync features to a small extent. But Notions API and webhooks are very well done and made it easy for me.

So far I have 2 primary integrations for publishing from Notion.

Notion DB to Webflow CMS

One publishes updates from Notion to Webflow's CMS, for public-facing content. Blog, KB, courses, services directory- things that I am often adding to, and update continually.

My workflow is simple...

go to Notion, find or create my doc
paste in clipboard images, looms, links, figmas, whatever I need
as soon as I'm ready to publish, drag it into the Done column of my kanban, and it publishes to Webflow

To me, this is publishing nirvana. In the past I've always sought "smooth" workflows but they always involved multiple tools and workarounds. Trello for tracking articles and links. Google docs for storing and formatting content. Copy paste into Webflow's own CMS editor and tidying for the publishing step.

This introduced a lot of friction, slowed me down, and introduced a bunch of unnecessary cognitive load and way more windows on my screen than a person could want.

Now, the process is so frictionless that for the first time ever, my blogs and lessons are actually evergreen, updated the moment I have something to change.

Live Portal to Notion Content

My second integration is also for publishing but has no CMS- as it uses Notion's API in realtime. Authorized users log into a portal, and can then search through a knowledge base of content that I maintain entirely in Notion.

But reports
Feature requests
Product strategy directions

I easily include screenshots, Loom videos, Figmas, tables, anything I need to tell the story.

And all of it published instantly, and securely.

The setup is very slick, and I can add convenient things like tracked documents and the ability to notify a user when I've updated a doc they're tracking. I like that the "app" is thin, with no database. It just pulls live from Notion on demand.

Extending Notion

I've mostly worked with the API and webhooks to build custom integrations, however Notion does have an excellent range of integrations.

https://www.notion.com/integrations/all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YVCerT3vdE

Afterword

This article was 100% written and published in Notion, to Webflow.

Notion is great for me, and my current tool of choice- but that doesn't mean it's right for everyone.

And there are a lot of other options, including many open source ones.

Alternatives

Open-source Notion competitors

Name	What it is	Key features
AppFlowy	Full open-source workspace	Notes, tasks, databases; self-host; customizable UI; Notion-like experience Open Source Alternatives+1
AFFiNE	Local-first all-in-one workspace	Notes, whiteboards, planning; privacy-focused; self-host options It's FOSS+1
Focalboard	Project/task management	Kanban boards, tables, calendars; open source; self-hostable Open Source Alternatives+1
Wiki.js	Self-hosted wiki/documentation	Markdown editor, powerful wiki features; runs on Node.js Docmost
Docmost	Collaborative wiki	Pages, permissions, team spaces; open source Docmost
BookStack	Wiki/knowledge base	Organized book/chapter/page structure; open source HeroThemes
Logseq	Personal knowledge base	Markdown/outliner with graph linking; local-first Wikipedia
Joplin	Note-taking + to-dos	Markdown, offline first; not full Notion but useful for notes/tasks XDA Developers
Zettlr	Markdown note manager	Uses Markdown files with graph/PKM support Wikipedia
TiddlyWiki	Personal wiki notebook	Single-file, highly customizable; open source The New Stack

Notes

https://www.nuclino.com/lp/documentation-tool

https://zapier.com/blog/best-notion-alternatives/#scrintal

For Powerful Databases & Formulas:
For Personal Knowledge Management (PKM):
For Teams & Project Management:
For Privacy & Local-First:
For Simpler Note-Taking:

https://slite.com/en/learn/best-notion-alternatives

XTiles

AnyType

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBwL5P1OD3A

Coda - Coda is a popular Notion-like app, known as an all-in-one workspace that blends docs, spreadsheets, and apps, offering powerful automation, custom formulas, and deeper integrations than Notion, making it great for building interactive tools and workflows, while Notion excels at sleek UI, notes, and simple documentation, though Coda offers unique team pricing where only "doc makers" pay.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Notion/comments/1igatv4/has_anyone_tried_coda_recently_how_does_it/

Slite

https://zapier.com/blog/best-notion-alternatives/