Item: Notion
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Notion

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it to track entire spacecraft designs, component definitions, as-built assemblies, program schedules, issue tickets, and harness drawings. All of these are relational databases that I have built to make a robust systems engineering tool to build out spacecraft. I also use it to track meeting notes, assign tasks to my team, and track personal projects.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Relational Databases
Coordination within organization personnel
In-house wiki

Cons

Scheduling features, not as robust as Smartsheet or projects
Advanced automations, such as automatically allocating edit authority to key individuals
Revision control/page history

Return on Investment

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

Usability

It is very intituitve to use and start adding content. If anyone has used Wikipedia, then they can use Notion. It can get a bit out of control if you don't enforce some structure around it, but individuals can add information to their private workspace in any modality they want, and you can put in guardrails on the public space to keep it organized.

Alternatives Considered

Atlassian Jira and Smartsheet

Jira is a great tool, that is probably more robust than Notion and more scalable. But for a small company (under 50 people) the investment is hard to swallow without a significant revenue stream justifying it. Notion is a perfect low cost option that meets 80% of the capability, and that extra 20% is not needed by most organizations.

Key Insights

Do you think Notion delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Notion's feature set?

Yes

Did Notion live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Notion go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Notion again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Google Drive

Likelihood to Recommend

Notion lands in the 80/90 category of tools. 80% of the features at a 90% reduction in cost compared to alternates. While each of the capabilities of Notion also exist in other tools, such as Atlassian/JIra/MS Project, and granted they are more fleshed out and robust in those tools, a clever user can re-create much of the functionality at a drastically lower cost. I use Notion professionally, in my side-gigs, and for personal projects.

Notion Feature Ratings

Comments

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Great tool for the price!

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