Notion alternatives when you only ever wanted the notes part

Notion is a database with a very good editor attached. If you use the database part, it is hard to replace and you should probably stay.

Most people do not use the database part. They write notes, they paste links, they drop PDFs into pages, and they built two trackers in the first month that have not been touched since. For that, Notion is a large tool doing a small job, and the small job is easier to solve elsewhere.

Work out which one you are

Open your workspace and look at the sidebar. If the things you opened this month are pages of text and files, you are in the second group. If they are databases with views and filters you actually change, you are in the first.

A quicker test: does anything break if relations stop working? If nothing comes to mind, you have a notes app with extra steps.

If you want plain notes

Markdown files in a folder. Obsidian if you want links between them, or any text editor if you do not. The files are yours, they open anywhere, and they will still open in twenty years.

The catch is search. A folder of Markdown is only as findable as your memory of where you put things, which is fine at two hundred files and not fine at two thousand.

If the files are the real problem

This is the case people underestimate. What made the workspace feel heavy was rarely the writing. It was the PDFs, the screenshots, the contracts, the invoices, all sitting inside pages because there was nowhere better to put them.

Those do not belong in a notes app at all. They need something that reads them, names them and makes them findable, which is what Stash is for. You drop a Notion export in, the files get pulled out of the mess of hashed folder names, read, named for what they contain, and sorted into stashes you defined in a sentence each.

And then instead of navigating to things, you ask for them. Which lease did I sign for the flat. Ask answers in plain words and shows the documents it used underneath, so you can check rather than trust.

What actually comes out of the export

Before you choose a destination it helps to know what you will be holding. Notion exports Markdown and CSV, one file per page, and every page that had files in it becomes a folder. The folders are named after the page plus a long hash, and the files keep whatever names they had when you uploaded them, which for most people means a pile of IMG_4471 and scan0003 and document (2).

Databases come out as CSV, one row per page, with relations flattened into text. That is the part that does not survive, and it is the reason the first question above matters. Text and files survive an export almost perfectly. Structure does not.

So the export is two different problems wearing one zip file. The Markdown is easy and you can drop it anywhere. The folders of files are the bit people open once, look at, and quietly leave on the desktop for a year.

The split most people end up with

Notes in one place, files in another. It sounds worse than one tool and in practice it is better, because the two have genuinely different shapes.

Notes are things you write and rewrite. They want an editor, version history, and links. Files are things you receive and need again later. They want reading, naming and search. A tool that does both usually does one of them grudgingly, and in Notion the grudging one is files.

What you are giving up, honestly

Three things go away when you leave, and it is worth naming them rather than discovering them later.

• Sharing a page with a link. If you send pages to other people regularly, a folder of Markdown is a downgrade and you will feel it in the first week.
• The editor. Notion writes well, and slash commands and toggles are genuinely good. Most replacements are plainer.
• One place for everything. Splitting notes from files means two apps instead of one, which is a real cost even when it is the right trade.

What you get back is speed, files with names that mean something, and the ability to find a document by what is in it rather than by remembering which page you nested it under.

Do not cancel immediately

Export everything, move what you use, and leave the Notion workspace sitting there for a month on whatever plan you are on. It costs very little and it removes the anxiety that makes people abandon migrations halfway.

The migrations that fail are the ones where somebody cancels first and then discovers in week three that the thing they needed was in a database view that no longer exists. The ones that work are boring: export, sort, move, wait, then cancel.

Keep reading

• How to clean up your desktop and have it stay cleanClearing a messy desktop takes an afternoon. Keeping it clear is a different problem, and it is the one worth solving.
• What to do with four thousand screenshotsScreenshots are the easiest thing to make and the hardest thing to find later. Here is why, and what actually helps.
• Leaving Notion: what actually moves, and what does notAn honest account of what happens to your pages, databases and files when you export from Notion, and what to do about each one.