Complete Notion Review: The Ultimate Productivity Tool for Teams

The views expressed in this post are the writer's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Aloa or AloaLabs, LLC.

Project management tools are an integral part of successful team management, and this Notion review will make it easier for you to delve deeper into the tool's capabilities and features. Keeping that in mind, having a reliable project management tool that streamlines workflows and processes is essential to any startup or business. 

Without it, internal and external collaboration tends to encounter roadblocks, breakdowns in communication, and misdirection. Luckily, project management tools like Notion enhance a team's ability to take on projects at a high velocity, leading to better collaboration and successful project completion.

Aloa,as a software development outsourcing company, leverages Notion.so in multiple ways. Our team applies its comprehensive suite of features and templates to ensure seamless team collaboration and client management. It provides an excellent solution for aggregating all business information in one place. We've used the tool to create wikis, business documents, brand assets, and more while also using it as a project management tool. 

Sharing our experience using Notion software, we've compiled this comprehensive Notion review, breaking down its features, use cases, and overall value for money. After reading our review, you'll know how Notion fits your startup's project management or team collaboration goals. From there, you can decide if it is the best project management tool to invest in as your startup scales to new heights!

Let's begin!

What is Notion.so: Notion Review

Notion.so is an information-sharing and collaboration tool that evolved into a project management tool. It stands out for its extensive features and use cases that startups and businesses in any industry can apply to their daily operations and project management needs.

Browsing through the long list of the platform's capabilities and templates, you'll find customizable choices to fit a variety of operational tasks, such as: 

  • Resource-sharing options
  • Business asset management
  • Workspace organizational tools
  • Employee onboarding and training
  • Task-tracking systems for internal and external projects
  • Calendars for social media management and marketing releases

These capabilities make Notion.so a highly unified workspace for teams to create internal team wikis, manage projects, and track tasks more precisely. Teams can also quickly build a comprehensive library of helpful resources for other departments and individual employees.

As a project management tool, Notion is designed to streamline team members' communication, collaboration, and productivity. Its features offer a wide range of templates for different projects and workflows. These premade templates and workflows save time and overall effort in the workplace setup.

In tandem, the Notion tool is a robust platform that allows teams to collaborate on projects, easily track progress, and reference other materials from the same hub. Notion also offers a mobile application to stay connected while out of the office or on the go. This makes it simple to keep up with tasks and projects no matter where you are.

Notion Review: Use Cases

Because of its versatility, the Notion software has many use cases that startups and businesses can apply to their daily operations across every department or team type. The highly customizable templates make it easy for project managers and team leads to aggregate and organize information in an easy-to-understand format that everyone can get behind! 

These use cases include:

Project Management

Notion's features allow teams to track progress and accomplish tasks more efficiently. With its templates, team members can add notes, set milestones, assign tasks, make checklists, or embed documents from other sources into their projects.

Notion Project Management template page
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Task Management 

Notion.so offers users a task-tracking system that allows teams to assign tasks easily and track progress in real time. They can also view the timeline of each project they manage, set deadlines, and check on workloads.

Notion Task Management templates
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Business Asset Management

Notion helps users organize their business assets, such as branding documents, marketing plans, and other resources. This makes it easier to find information quickly and efficiently. It also ensures that all essential assets are located in one place, making it easier to keep track of updates or changes. 

Notion Business Asset Management templates
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Content Creation

Notion also allows users to create multiple content types within the platform, like documents and wikis, to sort through the content easily. Using these templates streamlines the process of organizing and managing content. The additional benefit of customization and pre-designed structures is that they help users quickly create documents, wikis, and other types of content without starting from scratch.

Notion Content Management and Planner templates
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Employee Onboarding

Notion helps teams make onboarding new employees easier by providing them access to all the necessary documents and resources to do their jobs efficiently. A centralized platform for training materials, company policies, and team guidelines in an easily navigable space ensures that new hires can quickly get up to speed. This reduces the time spent on administrative tasks and allows new employees to focus on their roles from day one. 

Notion New Hire Onboarding templates
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Correctly applying the suitable template for the right purpose furthers the ability of teams to work smarter and faster. With Notion, users will have the power to create their own templates should they have a specific need. Another point to note is that Notion is excellent for nearly every industry, such as:

  • Education 
  • Healthcare
  • eCommerce
  • Tech startups
  • Small businesses
  • Retail businesses
  • Non-profit organizations
  • Non-governmental organizations

And more! No matter the industry, any team or business can benefit from the multitude of features Notion offers. Of course, those with more technical needs will find even more value in this tool.

Notion Software Project Management Features

The next point in our Notion review is the tool's project management features. As mentioned earlier, Notion.so can be more than just a project management tool. However, we'll focus on Notion's project management features for now. Notion's project management features include the following:

Tasks and Sprints

Notion's Tasks and Sprints feature helps teams meet deadlines and track progress. Users can set up tasks and organize them into sprints, then assign them to different team members with due dates. Used in conjunction with the Notion calendar, it becomes a powerful tool for keeping things on track and organized when things get complex. This feature also streamlines communication and keeps everyone on the same page.

Each plan also lets teams use Notion to create permission groups, making sharing multiple documents and boards with varying departments or project teams easier. With it, you don't have to worry about individuals getting confused about which aspects to focus on. Each plan also includes open, closed, and private team spaces, which allows the creator to control who can view, edit, or comment on the space. 

Multiple Views

Notion offers several views and ways to visualize project assignments and outstanding tasks:

  • Kanban (Board): Notion's Kanban board includes all the essential components that allow users to easily assign, update, and aggregate project information. Customizable fields such as URLs, file uploads, and checkboxes also make it simple to add the required information for all to see.
  • Gantt (Timeline): The project template option provides users a Gantt-style timeline based on the information on your initial Kanban board. The automatic conversion creates a seamless option for high-level overviews. 
  • Table: Similar to Google Sheets or Excel, the table view organizes project information into rows and columns. Users can move, customize, and add columns and rows as necessary.
  • Calendar: The calendar view shows when tasks are due for completion, mirroring Google Calendar's monthly view. Project leads can use it to get a high-level overview of upcoming tasks and completed assignments.
  • List: The list view is ideal for creating quality assurance checks, process checks, and prerequisite completion. The simple checkbox mechanism makes it simple to see if any steps have been missed.
  • Grid: A gallery view organizes all views and projects into squares with a brief description on top, streamlining members' search for specific information.

Tags and Assignments

The Tags and Assignments functionality helps team members easily identify tasks and priority levels. With tags, users can sort tasks by priority or category, and assignments let team members know who is responsible for each task. 

The feature improves organization and communication, ensuring everyone knows what to do. Additionally, you can easily filter project views to quickly identify specific segments, tasks, or assignees, making it easier to manage project sheets with a multitude of data.

With a free plan, users can invite up to 10 guest collaborators. The Plus and Business plans allow up to 100 and 250 guest collaborators, respectively. For larger businesses, the Enterprise plan offers the option to set a custom number of allowable guest collaborators.

Integrations

Part of what makes a great project management tool is its ability to integrate with other essential software tools that teams need to enhance collaboration and communication. Notion.so integrates with:

  • JIRA
  • Figma
  • Asana
  • Trello
  • Zaiper
  • Slack
  • Confluence
  • Google Docs

To see their complete list of integrations, visit Notion's page here. Notion also includes dynamic link previews and public APIs with all plans. 

Workspace Export

Notion's ability to export entire workspaces as HTML, Markdown, and CSV is a valuable feature for businesses needing to share data with others outside the platform. Exporting workspaces also makes it easier to track changes in project deliverables and refer to original documents should any issues or inconsistencies arise.

New in 2024: Notion AI Writer

Project teams focused on enhancing social media engagement, website content, or email marketing campaigns will find Notion's AI writing feature is a great way to get the ball rolling. The Notion AI writer was recently added in February 2024. While in the early stages, it shows a lot of promise in drumming up valuable and (mostly) accurate content. 

It takes a lot of handholding to get the content you're after. Still, once you know how it works, it's easy to modify and guide the AI writer towards the direction you're after. It's an added benefit to having an in-app AI writer compared to subscribing to a separate tool. 

Notion.so Pros And Cons

Notion review entries across popular review sites show that it is known for its easy-to-navigate userinterface (UI) and smooth user experience (UX), making it a popular choice for many users. However, itlacks task automation, and its in-platform tutorial may not be as comprehensive as some users wouldlike. Unlike other project management tools like monday.com, which offer more advanced automation and customization features, Notion's capabilities in these areas might feel limited.

Notion Reviews Pros and Cons

Despite its drawbacks, Notion offers a seamless collaboration system, flexible project management capabilities, and an organized system for managing data. Its hundreds of pre-designed templates with easy-to-customize mechanisms make it a great choice for businesses looking to improve their productivity and workflow.

Notion.so Price Plans 2024

Notion.so offers four pricing tiers with the option to pay via an annual or monthly subscription. 

  • Free Version: Ideal for personal use, freelancers, and internal teams of up to 7 people looking to organize workflow and project assignments.
  • Plus ($10/user/month): Best for new startups just beginning to solidify their processes and workflows for optimal outcomes.
  • Business ($15/user/month): Ideal for established small businesses and startups looking to start scaling quickly with a growing team.
  • Enterprise (custom price): Best for medium to large businesses that require a high level of project and business management across multiple departments.

Reviews and Recommendations

Getting down to the overall Notion review, using the software solely as a project management solution to create a connected workspace for startups and businesses, the platform has high flexibility and usability. 

The added benefit of quickly setting up a project management system with premade templates and customizable components makes it a go-to option. These quick creation features are also great for those who want to increase the velocity from project planning to implementation to completion.

Notion Review: Overall Rating

Considering that Notion.so started as a simple note-taking app, it's come a long way in expanding its usability for startups and businesses looking for an all-in-one business documentation and team collaboration platform. Here are Notion's ratings across software review sites:

Notion Ratings:

Notion Ratings

The unified workspace increases productivity and prevents misplaced information by aggregating everything in one place. Notion.so continues to add more premade templates and features, so be on the lookout for updates to the tool. 

Notion.so Alternatives

Going through the Notion review we've put together gives you an idea of what to look for in a project management tool. There are multiple options out there, so startups and businesses should check out alternatives to Notion to compare features, solutions, and prices to discover the best choice based on their needs. While most project management tools generally have the same components, looking into what makes them unique can decide which provides the most value added. 

Airtable

Airtable homepage

Airtable is a highly customizable project management tool perfect for startups with unique workflows. Its flexible data management features make creating custom workflows that fit your specific needs easy. At the same time, its powerful collaboration and reporting tools ensure that your team is always working together effectively. Check out our full Airtable review for more details. 

Airtable Pricing Plans:
  • Free: Best for individuals or small teams looking to organize internal or personal tasks and collaborate.
  • Team ($20/seat/month billed annually): Best for teams looking to collaborate effectively in one platform and require integrations to streamline project management.
  • Business ($45/seat/month billed annually): Ideal for larger teams and departments that want to integrate their apps into one platform for better collaboration.
  • Enterprise Scale (custom price): Best for large businesses that need a robust project management tool that scales and grows with the company. 

Airtable Ratings:

Airtable Ratings

‍NiftyPM

Nifty Homepage

NiftyPM’s project management platform is built with client satisfaction in mind. Startups that handle external client projects benefit from pricing plans built for customer collaboration. It includes many features to keep projects organized, on time, and within budget. Additionally, startups can use the features to manage internal projects and plan the next steps in scaling and growth.

NiftyPM Price Plans: 
  • Free: Ideal for freelancers and solo entrepreneurs who work with 1 or 2 clients at a time.
  • Starter ($39/month): Best for teams of up to 10 members handling up to 40 monthly projects.
  • Pro ($79/month): Best for scaling startups of up to 20 users requiring client-facing project management capabilities while organizing client portfolios.
  • Business ($124/month): Best for large teams of up to 50 members who require much storage space aside from client management capabilities.
  • Unlimited ($399/month): Best for large businesses that handle more than ten clients at a time across multiple departments and teams. 

NiftyPM Ratings:

Nifty PM Ratings

You can also check out our list of other project management tools for consideration on our blog, 10 Best Project Management Tools For Startups In 2024. Each alternative tool mentioned above provides users with seamless experiences with desktop, Android, Mac, and iOS usability, just like Notion. Apart from project management tools, you can explore other versatile note-taking tools like OneNote and EverNote for more options.

Key Takeaway

Our Notion review has given you a comprehensive look into the tool's full capabilities. To sum things up, Notion.so is a comprehensive project management tool offering several features to help teams streamline their workflows and improve productivity. When choosing the ideal project management tool for your startup, you need to know the features and integrations your team needs. Knowing where your startup is heading helps you choose a tool to scale and grow with your team. 

For more options on the best project management tools your team can use, read our blog and access our free startup resource list for a handful of other tools that help you sustainably scale your startup.

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