I’m all over the place with my notes… but I like it. Lol. I didn’t realize how many writing apps I used until I drafted this post. I’m a mess. I use apple notes for meeting notes and personal stuff, I use dayone for my journal and morning planning, I use notebooks 10 for project planning that requires various files but temporary files (e.g. planning conference trips that require storing emails and notes, apple notes for meeting notes and personal stuff (eg. Recipes), drafts for temporary text/drafts of emails or post/announcements for class, and ulyssess for book notes, personal growth, and first drafts for research writing. Oh yeah, and then there are Word Files too. 
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It’s a poorly written article that’s dated and has a clear bias. Notion no longer limits its free tier, and there are a lot of ways to export data out of Evernote. Had he or she looked, they would have seen that Notion does support importing from Evernote.
This is Mac Power Users; the example of offline capabilities not working was a Windows only use case. Did the author try a mobile device? How about a Mac?
A very narrow use case doesn’t make the entire app or service “bad.” And by the way, I used Notion on my Dell and Lenovo Windows 10 PCs without Internet and didn’t have any issues with offline mode.
Also, it’s 2020; Internet access is everywhere. Can’t get online? Go to a coffee shop, fast food joint, Home Depot, or Lowe’s or get satellite Internet if it’s that important.
I’ve used a number of these kinds of apps on mobile devices (Android, iOS, iPadOS) and PCs (both Windows and Macs) and they work offline and will sync when the Internet is available.
Back when I could travel, I would use these services all the time and never had an issue sync new notes, pages or edits when I was connected again.
Oh yeah, and now we even have Internet at 30k feet so we don’t even need to be offline when we fly around the planet.
Notice the author never mentions what he/she is using Notion for? What’s important, what’s the purpose behind using Notion or any one of the other all-in-one apps? No idea. That lack of basis and subsequent context makes the article pointless.
I think the airier was using Notion as an excuse to rant. That’s not a judgement, it’s a hypothesis.
I don’t have an issue with many of his/her arguments. In certain contexts, any one of them can be absolutely valid. The style of writing just isn’t my cup of tea.
Take a look at this all-in-one app space: Coda, Stile, Workflowy, Quip, Google Keep, One Note, and more.
It’s a competitive market, and guess what, there are other services/apps that are even worse. Try to export your documents out of Coda for example, sure you’ll get your text, but forget about formatting or meta data. If I’m going to pay that much for an app and service, being able to export what’s yours should be easy.
Just like Apple, Google and Amazon have walled gardens to keep you tied to their services, so do these companies. It’s how it works these days. Ditto for digital media companies and their paywalls, or the Public utilities you pay for every single month.
Most of these services do offer an export capability. They all have quirks. Text and Markdown exports work quite well in my own tests. Well, except for Coda.
I’ve been able to export to and from Notion, Stile and others with minor issues in formatting. It falls in to the good enough, but not perfect category for me.
I’ve found solutions to most of my import and export issues by using their provided API’s. The author didn’t even touch on this.
Again, I’m not saying they are perfect, but what software application or service is? When was the last time you bought an app or used a service didn’t need updates and improve on functionality over time?
Even the lauded DEVONThink app wasn’t (and isn’t) without its fair share of issues.
Full disclosure,I have free and paid accounts for all the services I mentioned here. It’s part of my due diligence to see what will and won’t work for me for my particular needs. I like Notion, I like Stile, I don’t need the added complexity or features of Coda.
It’s important to know what the pros and cons are for any app or service. Go in with eyes wide open, please.
Determine your needs, wants and then non-negotiables first, and then evaluate accordingly.
Price, flexibility, capability, data portability are all factors, and there are countless more.
With regard to subscriptions, they are here to stay. Put your head in the sand and ignore it if you’d like. Yell, holler and scream too, but it’s not changing.
Perhaps iAWriter will meet your needs, or the aforementioned Obsidian. Heck, even TextEdit with iCloud will work, depending on your use cases.
And that’s the point that the referenced article completely overlooks. I’m just not a fan of that kind of writing style because there is no context or basis for any of the points made because the individual didn’t disclose what his or her needs, goals or use cases were.
Lastly, they all over a free level of capability to test and see what will (or won’t) work for your particular needs.
The joy of living in 2020 is that we have a plethora of options to suit a wide variety of needs. Let’s leave the rhetoric at the door and share solutions (and articles) that actually help folks as opposed to just blowing a bunch of hot air.
For me, I am tired of data sprawl and having to manage multiple paid and free services. I want a system and platform that will allow me to consolidate many things including, project management, task management, notes, spreadsheets (well, tables, actually), databases, contact management, finances, and a lot of what others are doing as well.
I’ve not decided what my final choice is yet, but I’ll know soon.
For the OP, @Bmosbacker, I’d be interested in understanding your situation and what’s most important for you to help you find a solution. You stated that Notion wasn’t a fit, but you never shared what your requirements were.
If your down for that, please share and I’m sure this fine community of technophiles will have a good number of ideas and opinions to share. I know I would be glad to assist.
, 
& 
,
//Shawn
P.S. Hat tip to all those that mentioned Obsidian. I’m going to check that out. I have no idea what the business model is or how they will be able to sustain and maintain the code base, let alone add capabilities over time, but that’s never been my strong suit anyway. 
[Edit] After looking at the Obisidian site, I see the model that will (hopefully) allow them to be sustainable over the long haul. Next time, I’ll stop typing my reply and look at the site before looking and sounding like an idiot. 
I’m glad to support open source projects, and if I can get it to work with my Synology NAS’s (plural) then I may be able to roll my own version of these kinds of apps with Obsidian.
Actually this is a very limited view.
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Working in many developing countries where much of the Global industry is moving to reduce costs the Internet is terrible if available. aka Philippines the worst and this by government design.
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Many companies due to IP and Security prevent you from taking in phones to a factory aka TSMC the largest semiconductor foundry in the world.
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Sometimes you want to get disconnected and focus on Deep Work with all the distractions possible from the Internet
Unfortunately, many applications are not giving a choice and require Internet access. Miro, I am talking to You. I think it is poor form to state that you have an app and all the app does is pull up a browser and load the real Web app.
Now onwards to Notion. I just turned off access and pulled up a database and added an entry and it worked flawlessly. Upon reconnection, to the Internet I saw that it automatically saved my updated record. I think Notion handles data perfectly balancing between connected and nonconnected and wish that most applications would follow the same operational model.
I gave her review a listen again and while for the most part, it is outdated, incorrect on some points (Such as offline operation) and biased, She does bring up a good point that one should not keep all their data in one application.
I know people want the convenience of having a one for all application but this is not optimum as one, you tend to piegon-hole many functions into applications that they are not suited for and two, you have a critical risk path just asking for failure. It is hard to feel sorry for these individuals afterward.
I see this happening with Notion and Roam Research. Well, I am not drinking the Kool-aid.
Especially in the note-taking area. Notion does not even make the cut for note-taking amoung the many great apps out there.
Notion is not my note application nor my task manager but I do love it. There is a void in database applications with only Notion and Airtable available unless you go to an enterprise SQL solution which is beyond me and most other users. Airtable is a strict database whereas Notion offers additional functionality but updates to both are bringing feature parity. When you distill many of your life’s requirements many of them fit quite well in a database structure.
Collection Tracking of any type:
Subscription Tracking
Bucket Lists
Travel Planning Checklists
Goal Planning
Software Tabulation
Content Planning (Movies to Watch, Books to Read or Listen to, Music or Podcasts to listen to, Concerts to Attend, Museums to Vist)
Wishlists and lists of all types
This is a great video by Ali Abdaal on using Notion as a Resonance Calendar.
Ali Abdaal YouTube Resonance Calendar
August Bradley designates them as Vaults
This is what I use Notion for and it serves me well.
I do not like the way she polarizes the review for example saying Notion does not work on Windows offline. Maybe it doesn’t, but she should indicate that it works offline on the Mac.
Being that she uses an iPhone and a iPad, I find it very inefficient then to use a Windows based computer and if required for some specific applications she should run Windows in Parrelells or something similar. You should pick on eco-system and stick with it.
Being she pinned a comment on the 9 month old article 3 weeks ago without updating the content indicates that she has interest in banging her own drum with her petition.
Everything is a petition or protest nowadays, I prefer to engage with the developers in a collaborative environment in forums like this one and others (i.e. Obsidian) because in the end developers just want to develop what their customers want but they also need to be profitable.
In many of my business dealings, I would be transparent and negotiate what is a fair profit margin and then tabulate everything including the kitchen sink in the business model. There were companies who did not care and I viewed this as not being a partner and felt happy to tell them to go pound sand. I think this is a lesson that Evernote has not learned yet. Sometimes you have to fire your customers and focus on a reduced set of customers who are engaged with your product. I guess I will never understand this grabbing of market share for market share sake. It brings down the standard of service to all.
I commented that she should buy a real computer
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Can you access other pages that you haven’t recently looked at when offline? Didn’t have this ability when I checked on mac/ios.
Notion is fine, I guess. I’m not a fan, but I guess other people are and they have their reasons.
Here are my reasons for why I don’t use Notion:
- No robust offline support, although this (may) have been fixed?
- Text selection is flaky; if you want to select more than a paragraph it becomes a block selector.
- I experienced data loss. I also talked about this elsewhere on this forum so won’t harp on it here.
- I prefer having each app “specialize” in one area, not an app that is so-so at everything. This is personal preference and may not be applicable to other people.
4.1. I noticed Notion was slowly sucking me in, convincing me to do things in the app that would have been better suited for other apps. If you’re the kind of person that likes having one large bucket, well then this is a good thing I guess.
4.2. Notion was leading to uneccessary complication in my life, as the features were “just there” and I had to play with them XD. Also personal preference. - It doesn’t fit in any one area of my life. It’s not the best at anything for my use cases. Task management, works better with Reminders. Note-taking, Apple Notes covers me with handwriting support and more OS integration. Spreadsheet-style stuff, I just use Excel/Google Sheets/Numbers. I appreciate that some people have use cases that Notion (somewhat) satisfies though.
- SUBSCRIPTION! Some people say subscriptions are inevitable. If so, life is about to get a lot harder as I’ll have to develop all my apps myself
All in all, I personally think people shouldn’t use Notion. But that is mostly personal preference and if other people want to use it, well, that’s their problem. As long as you have reasons and aren’t making a baseless conclusion, do whatever you want 
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NO, that is totally inaccurate! You cannot guarantee acces to internet in much if the western rural US. Not even businesses. And if you are in a place with internet, like at a clients, you may not be able to access it nor should you, esp. if youa vhe other client information on your devices.
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Interesting, I just came across this whilst searching for Notion on the forums. I started having a play with it yesterday for the first time, and have started using it for task management.
I’m using a .ac.uk email address, as I’m using it for work, and I therefore get the personal pro version free. Means I can have a proper play with a reasonable amount of the functions.
For me so far, the task management is quite nice. I had considered moving back to Trello, which I used in a previous firm, but after MacSparky’s recent article about Omnigraffle, I thought I’d try Trello again, as Omnifocus wasn’t sticking. Being able to have a Kanban but able to access via a table format as well is nice, and then being able to open each task individually and then add further information is great - for whatever reason, I struggled with the comments section on Omnifocus.
Time will tell if I stick with it - I foresee it’s main use being task management, as I’m using Obsidian for items like daily work journal, meeting notes and personal wiki - Obsidian being the markdown version of Zim Wiki with extra features, overcoming one of Zim’s biggest issues for me which was that it didn’t work on the Mac!
I may give the web version of Omnifocus a go again if this doesn’t work out (as I do quite like the defer dates and recurring tasks).
I guess that tops off the ToDo.txt and Taskpaper experiments (with todo.txt often being a go to in the past, as I’ve been able to use multiple programs to interact with it, as it’s text).
In terms of the above, E2EE isn’t a huge deal breaker, as I’ll just be inserting links to documents - usually Teams/Sharepoint links, as then they work on both OS’s I use, rather than rely on Hook. Anything majorly important is in Obsidian (stored on Onedrive in accordance with our University security/backup policy). Offline isn’t an issue for me either - campus has WiFi throughout and as I work in professional services, no travel to lectures abroad for me!
I think Notion is excellent. I agree that the different views or the same data are really nice - I particularly like the calendar view so I can see my “do dates”.
I only use it to maintain actions and objectives with my team members, but might start using it for meeting notes too.
The relational nature of tables means I can have an Objectives table and an Actions table, with actions being linked back to longer term objectives.
The sharing is also great.
I don’t have issues with the proprietary format. I’m honestly not convinced there is an alternative for an app like this.
I do feel exporting should be freely available.
Walling looks pretty impressive. As someone who is stuck with Windows at work, the inclusion of a Windows app appeals to me. I have been reluctant to have a good look at Craft, since it seems to be Apple ecosystem only.
I know this thread is old (though the activity here is more recent than I thought it would be).
For anyone who may be interested, I cleaned up the the course planning template I mentioned earlier in the thread and submitted it to Notion. They haven’t picked it up for the template gallery, but it’s available for anyone who might find it useful.
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