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Comment by hadsed | Hacker News Reader

There is one lurking competitor to Airtable that no one knows: Notion.

Except Notion is far more capable than Airtable. You can do all these table joins across pages but in Notion everything is a page whereas in Airtable it's just a form. That is the ultimate flexibility which makes it exceptionally well suited for any kind planning effort. And it's a great canvas for creative projects.

It's amazing to see that there's a billion dollar company building something comparatively so... bad.

Plus Notion has some of the best customer service around. Half the company are there for support!

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Thank you for the recommendation, I was not previously aware of Notion.

I've taken a look at it, and it seems to have all the amenities I wanted. It seems to have most everything I was using Airtable for, but what I really like is all the rich text formatting I can do to organize knowledge.

I'll definitely consider switching. Thank you!

Wow I never heard about this one, even though I was searching such tools. Sure enough, I open DDG, type in "Notion" and can't find anything. "Notion g!" pointed me here though: https://www.notion.so

Notion is such a treat. I need more apis and plugin action though.

I don't understand why there aren't more people using Notion.

It is like a better looking BaseCamp + Airtable in one.

My guess is that it's seems rather complicated and intimidating to non-tech users. I've been using and testing Notion for a while but when I consider my non-tech-savvy colleagues I imagine I'd have a much easier time explaining Basecamp and Airtable to them. Airtable feels more inviting compared to Notion.

Or put differently: I think we overlook how many people might be overwhelmed with building their very own specific todo list in something like Notion or to a lesser degree Airtable, compared to a solution that provides a fixed, rigid set of fields.

Airtable is web-based, Notion is for desktop use with Windows and macOS clients.

I use neither of them but my preference goes to the web since I work on Linux.

Notion has a web application you can use, no need to download.

Wow, your weren't kidding! I did a deep dive to compare airtable to a lot of other planning tools and never even noticed Notion...

The one downside compared to airtable seems to be no automatic backups. But the ability to format notes is super handy!

Love Notion so far, if only it had an API already.

It's on the roadmap!

https://www.notion.so/What-s-New-157765353f2c4705bd45474e5ba...

Not sure if you work there but the pay store link is broken. "app not found" when clicking through

Notion is nice, but I found it pretty buggy a year ago. And I wish it supported online live chat, like samepage.io.

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