BookStack vs. Notion

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BookStack
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Notion
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Notion aims to present users with an all-in-one workspace — for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases, from Notion Labs in San Francisco.
$5
per month per user
Pricing
BookStackNotion
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Free
$0
Plus
$12
per month per user
Business
$24
per month per user
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BookStackNotion
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsA discount is offered for annual billing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BookStackNotion
Features
BookStackNotion
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
BookStack
-
Ratings
Notion
7.3
79 Ratings
5% below category average
Task Management00 Ratings8.174 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings6.846 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings7.057 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings6.455 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings7.372 Ratings
Search00 Ratings8.075 Ratings
Visual planning tools00 Ratings7.968 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
BookStack
-
Ratings
Notion
7.8
76 Ratings
2% below category average
Chat00 Ratings6.329 Ratings
Notifications00 Ratings7.568 Ratings
Discussions00 Ratings7.349 Ratings
Surveys00 Ratings6.820 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings8.869 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings8.98 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
BookStack
-
Ratings
Notion
8.1
76 Ratings
1% above category average
Versioning00 Ratings7.657 Ratings
Video files00 Ratings7.649 Ratings
Audio files00 Ratings7.443 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings8.571 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings8.271 Ratings
Advanced security features00 Ratings7.351 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings9.213 Ratings
Device sync00 Ratings9.253 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BookStackNotion
Small Businesses
Front
Front
Score 9.0 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BookStackNotion
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.6
(85 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(55 ratings)
User Testimonials
BookStackNotion
Likelihood to Recommend
BookStack
BookStack is fantastic for having business users and not-so-technically-savvy IT users. It enables them to create a documentation they like in a visual way while still forcing them to adhere to logical structure of a document. It works fine even for more technical matters such as integration guidelines, especially when these concern some of the more obscure technologies. The exported docs are presentable but lack any interactivity. Where it lacks is generating heavily technical documentations. Heavier REST or GraphQL integrations should for example be documented through other means. As for developer documentations, there are definitely more suitable alternatives, also.
Read full review
Notion Labs, Inc
If you want a customizable solution that can be adapted for just about any scenario, I recommend using Notion. If you need a solution that's easy to share with people outside your organization, Notion is great and allows individual or team permission-setting. If you want a turnkey solution, Notion might not be the best since it requires a fair bit of set-up. There are templates that can be purchased to handle this, but I haven't found them very helpful.
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Pros
BookStack
  • Documentation
  • Guides
  • Knowledge-base
  • Version control
Read full review
Notion Labs, Inc
  • I love that you can create nested pages, allowing for separate sections to organize information as needed.
  • I appreciate the convenience of effortlessly uploading images to any section.
  • I appreciate that when adding links, you can embed them so the website displays directly on the page.
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Cons
BookStack
  • Continuity in backward compatibility
  • Dark mode
  • Absent tree view
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Notion Labs, Inc
  • I use Notion on my personal tablet, and unlike on the computer, I have a lot of difficulty editing backgrounds, GIFs, and page dividers. It's not as user-friendly, and often the elements end up cut off or misaligned, which is frustrating.
  • While the current calendar feature is helpful, I'd love to see more customization options. The Google Calendar style isn't always ideal, especially for tasks without specific times or for ongoing projects that require daily maintenance.
  • It would be fantastic to have more flexibility in customizing Notion pages. For example, I'd love to create planners with the freedom to add illustration boxes, stickers, or GIFs without being restricted to a fixed layout.
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Likelihood to Renew
BookStack
No answers on this topic
Notion Labs, Inc
We're too settled in the ecosystem and we have no major complaints with it. No reason to move unless you have a burning pain point
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Usability
BookStack
No answers on this topic
Notion Labs, Inc
Very easy to use (I learned how to use everything on my own) and I was able to set up an entire ecosystem without any courses or other tools. I often say that Notion is like Lego for adults, because there we can use all the available tools to create a multitude of things, from funnels to projects with calculated deadlines and tags.
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Alternatives Considered
BookStack
Confluence, having only a slight advantage in terms of features compared to BookStack, really only makes sense to procure as a part of the Jira bundle. It requires much more maintenance from my experience and does not really deliver any extra value aside from the very strict certifications like HIPAA. DokuWiki and MediaWiki both provided way too much in terms of customizability, not really focusing on the business need. Of course, MediaWiki was conceived for a whole different purpose but is very often seen being used for both internal and public documentation delivery. DokuWiki did not provide the authors with the user-friendly environment that BookStack has and integrated most poorly with LDAP. As for OneNote, which was used for support docs prior to BookStack, it provided the authors with too much of a user-friendly environment, rendering the product of their work very inconsistent. Also, the sharing model was either peer-to-peer or within Teams, neither of which made it easy to audit and supervise.
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Notion Labs, Inc
The company uses both Notion and Trello within the company. Notion is more for North America employees while Trello is used between Operation team overseas and in North America. Sometimes it's a preference of how the tools look like for project management. I would say both Notion and Trello are nice tools and serves our needs.
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Return on Investment
BookStack
  • Spillover within Business IT staff up, nearly double substitutability. This is through the ability of a support technician servicing a different product to find a guide describing how to solve the more frequent issues the way a product lead would do it.
  • Time to draft and publish a documentation down some 20% compared to previous solution.
  • OpenSource that integrates fine with enterprise-grade software and somehow even passes security audit. 20 times cheaper to implement compared to Confluence, almost free to maintain.
Read full review
Notion Labs, Inc
  • It has streamlined our processes across various teams to all work from a signle source of truth
  • Maintaining this source of truth is a full time job
  • It has reduced our overall tool set by completely eliminating two other softwares we were paying for
Read full review
ScreenShots