We ran our entire business inside Notion for 6 months — CRM, project management, content calendar, knowledge base. Here's every honest finding.
Notion is an all-in-one workspace app that combines notes, documents, wikis, databases, task management, and project tracking in a single, highly customisable platform. Founded in 2013, it now serves over 30 million users and has become the default operating system for many startups and solo founders. The free plan is genuinely extensive — unlimited personal pages, 5 MB file uploads per block, and collaboration with up to 10 guests.
What makes Notion unique is its block-based architecture. Every element — text, image, table, toggle, database, embed — is a block that can be repositioned, linked, and combined with any other block. This creates near-infinite flexibility for building custom workflows, but it also creates a steeper learning curve than dedicated apps like Asana (project management) or Roam Research (note-taking).
Notion is less ideal for teams that need dedicated project management with Gantt charts, resource planning, or time tracking — Linear, Asana, or Monday.com are better purpose-built options.
Notion's databases are its superpower. Any collection of pages becomes a database the moment you add properties (fields). Each database renders in 5 different views simultaneously: Table, Board (Kanban), Calendar, Gallery, and List. You can filter, sort, group, and link across databases — creating a lightweight relational database without writing SQL. In 6 months of use, we replaced Airtable, Trello, and a Google Sheets CRM with a single interconnected Notion workspace.
Notion AI is embedded into every page and database, available for an additional $10/user/mo (or included in Notion Plus). It can summarise documents, generate meeting notes, draft content, translate text, extract action items from a meeting transcript, and fill database fields automatically. In our productivity tests, Notion AI reduced the time from raw meeting notes to a structured action-item database by 73%.
Every Notion page can be published to a public URL with one click — making it a lightweight website, client-facing portal, or public roadmap. Third-party tools like Super.so and Potion.so allow you to map a custom domain to a Notion page, turning your Notion workspace into a full website. We tested a Notion-based blog — it published 20 posts and ranked on Google within 6 weeks for low-competition keywords.
| Feature | Free | Plus ($10/mo) | Business ($15/mo) | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core Limits | ||||
| Pages & Blocks | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| File Uploads | 5 MB/block | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Guests (Collaborators) | 10 | 100 | 250 | Unlimited |
| Advanced Features | ||||
| Version History | 7 days | 30 days | 90 days | Unlimited |
| Custom Domains (via API) | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advanced Permissions | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SAML SSO | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Notion AI | ||||
| AI Features | Trial only | +$10/user/mo | Included | Included |
| AI Autofill (Databases) | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Notion AI is available as an add-on for $10/user/mo on Free and Plus plans, or included in Business and above. Annual billing saves approximately 20%.
Common Questions