My Honest Notion Review After Using It For +2 Years (2026)

I have been a massive Notion user for more than two years. Along the way, I reviewed several other note-taking apps, so I had a chance to put Notion into perspective. Using this plus two years of personal experience and my knowledge in the note-taking space, I will share everything you need to know about this note-taking app, from features to pros and cons, in this Notion review.

Let’s dive in!

What is Notion?

Notion is like a Swiss army knife; you can use it for many purposes. It provides a centralized workspace where you can organize your thoughts, notes, tasks, projects, and documents in one single app. Personally, I use Notion to write scripts, track projects, and organize learning.

You can create pages for almost every purpose, such as reading lists, meeting summaries, goals, etc. Every item on a page is customizable; you can easily drag and drop items and insert pictures or videos.

It is also a great app with numerous team collaboration tools. You can invite your team members to work on pages in real-time, create and assign tasks and projects to others, and much more.

Let’s see Notion’s key features!

Notion’s key features

Here, I collected all the essential features I found during my Notion review.

Note-taking app

Notion is one of the most popular note-taking tools, and it is not an accident. Just to give you a background on how this app works: You can have multiple workspaces in which you structure your notes and basically everything. For example, you can have a workspace for personal or work-related items. The workspaces include your pages.

The Notion pages are the fundamentals of your workspaces. You can use them for notes, projects, tasks, and so on. There are no strict rules on how you structure your pages or what information you want to include in them. For instance, in my Notion’s workspace, there are pages dedicated to self-development, money plans, YT scripts, admin info, and notes. Now, let’s go back to note-taking!

Notion is a sophisticated text editor that allows you to easily add and organize different types of content called blocks. When writing your notes, you can add headings, sub-pages, bullet points, and tables without touching your mouse.

In your notes, you can insert images, bookmarks, videos, code, kanban board, and more by simply hitting the “/” button on your keyboard. I especially love the embedded functions. Notion offers multiple embedded forms like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps, Miro, and more.

Notion is incredibly useful for note organization and knowledge management. You can tag notes with custom keywords, add teammates, set a due date, etc. You can access all your notes with your sidebar on the left.

Project management tool

Notion also works as a lightweight task and project management software, where you can plan and execute your projects with your team. Let’s start with the project management features.

With Notion, you canvisualize your projects’ workflows in different formats, from calendars to boards. Depending on the format you choose, Notion allows you to use progress bars to show how your project is moving forward.

You can also create charts or visualize dependencies to see when one task is blocking another and avoid bottlenecks. Such data visualization options help a lot in project tracking.

When checking your projects, you can utilize filters to show only the tasks assigned to you or the urgent ones.

Notion’s task management features have everything that you need. You can break your projects into manageable tasks and add status, assignee, or due dates.

Whether you want to use Notion for project or task management, you do not have to spend hours creating the proper form for you or your team. This is where you can use the templates.

Templates

Notion currently has more than 20,000 free templates from which you can browse. This is an insane number. Just to give you an example: if you want to create a to-do list, you can choose from 460 templates.

Utilizing the templates, you do not have to go through the time-consuming process of creating pages to track your projects or tasks. With a few clicks, you can insert a template you like, and you just need to add the databases.

Notion AI writing assistant

Notion’s AI writing assistant is one of Notion’s AI features. It can greatly improve your writing by detecting errors and correcting misspelled words and incorrect grammar. But it can do much more.

On the bottom left corner of Notion, you can access the AI assistant feature that answers your questions, gives you summaries, translates your page, finds action items, and helps you improve your writing. Basically, it works like a built-in ChatGPT.

But it can do more than just work with text. The AI writing assistant’s feature can help you gather information from various file types, including PDFs and images.

Overall, these tools help you to become more efficient when taking notes. However, it’s worth noting that Notion AI is not included in the standard plans and requires a separate paid add-on. For individuals or teams who heavily rely on AI for daily workflows, this can be justified, but for casual use, the additional cost may feel unnecessary.

Wikis & knowledge management

Team members often struggle to find the information they need. Using Notion, you can create your own knowledge library. These hubs can help your team members find and understand the information they need to do their jobs.

Imagine how powerful it could be when onboarding new employees or just wanting to have organized databases where your team members can access the information they need to do their jobs.

Calendar

You can connect your Google Calendar with your existing Notion workspace, so you will be able to see your meetings and appointments in your Notion calendar. Notion’s calendar is synced with your entire workspace, so you can make references to specific pages in the meeting invite.

Notion Calendar is available for iPhone and Android devices and integrates with Google Calendar and Apple iCloud, while Outlook support is still pending.

Ultimately, Notion’s integrated calendar helps you to centralize your calendar management, notes, and project management tasks in a centralized app.

AI meeting notes

Notion recently released its AI note-taker for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet calls. Basically, it joins your calls without a bot and transcribes & summarizes them.

It is a useful AI feature for your calls, as it can turn your conversations into insights and action items in your Notion workspace.

Notion’s integrations

During my Notion review, I realized this is one of the note-taking apps with the most integrations. You can connect Notion with many other tools. First of all, you can connect it with Zapier, which will give you access to more than 7000 apps.

Besides the Zapier integration, you can integrate Notion with more than 100 other apps including Asana, ClickUp, Dropbox, Google Drive, or Jira.

Notion’s user interface

Notion’s user interface is simple. It has a minimalist ux design with white space, clear typography, and subtle colors are the focus. Even if you are a first-time Notion user, you will be able to quickly navigate the pages, as you will find every important information on the sidebar.

As you can see, Notion has many features. This is the only thing that might feel overwhelming at first. Even though I have used Notion for more than 2 years, I have not explored all its features and potential.

When working in Notion, you will quickly realize that it uses a block system that works like Lego. It transforms all the content into movable, customizable pieces, which gives you the flexibility to move these blocks around.

Notion’s pricing plans

Notion has a free plan and three paid plans.

The free plan includes a collaborative workspace, basic forms and sites, Notion Calendar and Mail. It also supports databases with subtasks, dependencies, and custom properties. Based on my experience, Notion’s free version is totally sufficient for individuals to organize their notes and projects.

The plus plan is $10 per seat per month. It has unlimited collaborative blocks, unlimited file uploads, charts, custom forms and sites, and basic integrations. The plus plan is ideal for small teams and individuals who work a lot with others.

The business plan costs you $20 per seat monthly. It offers features like granular database permissions, private teamspaces, domain verification, conditional forms logic, and premium integrations. Business users also get access to Notion AI features. I recommend the business plan for bigger teams who want to utilize more advanced features.

Finally, Notion has an enterprise plan as well with custom pricing. By choosing the enterprise plan, you will receive a dedicated success manager, advanced integrations, and advanced security and control features, among other things.

In addition to the base plans, Notion offers an optional AI add-on. Notion AI costs an additional $10 per person per month, or $96 per person per year, which means the total cost can add up quickly for teams. This is something to keep in mind if AI features are a core part of your workflow.

For users who rely heavily on documentation and structured workflows, the pricing still makes sense, especially if Notion replaces several other tools.

My experience with Notion

In the past years, Notion has become a must-have tool for me to keep my notes and projects organized. While I think there are tools with more features for note-taking, Notion is still the best or one of the best note-taking apps in 2026.

For me, the reason behind this is not purely about note-taking. It is about centralizing my ideas, databases, and stuff in one platform, instead of juggling several separate tools and Notion stacks. With its calendar feature and email capabilities (Notion Mail), Notion is on its way to becoming an all-in-one app.

While it has a steep learning curve compared to other tools like Xtiles, Notion can be an ultimate solution for both team and individual users since it can replace 5+ apps.

Overall, Notion has helped me increase my productivity in the past years and take my organization to the next level.

Notion’s pros and cons

Let’s see the pros and cons I found during my Notion review!

Pros of Notion

Cons of Notion

Notion alternatives

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZQ4sKd9C44&list=PLrRm3Kq-V4MfL_nmxAgr29g8QYrsHkTjo&index=1&ab_channel=Thebusinessdive

Here are some of the best Notion alternatives:

• Coda: A more user-friendly app than Notion, with a less steep learning curve..
• Xtiles: A visually appealing note-taking app.
• Taskade: A simple but effective note-taking, task, work, and project management tool.
• Anytype: An excellent but more complex Notion alternative.
• Obsidian: A powerful note-taking app with massive backlink functions.
• NotebookLM: A note-taking and research app with a fantastic podcast feature.
• Evernote: A popular, but expensive note-taking app.
• ClickUp: A solid project management app with note-taking features.
• Todoist: A to-do-list app with an extensive free plan.
• Morgen: A daily planner that prioritizes your most important to-dos, events, and projects in one app.

Related posts:

• Xtiles Vs Notion: All Features Compared (2026)
• Notion Vs Taskade: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
• Notion Vs Obsidian: Which Note-Taking App Is Better For You?
• Notion Vs NotebookLM: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
• Best 6 Notion Alternatives In 2026 | 100+ Personally Tested Tools
• Best 6 OneNote Alternatives In 2026 | 100+ Personally Tested Tools

Final thoughts: Notion review

Even before my Notion review, I knew that it was a fantastic note-taking app. But honestly, it is much more than “just” a note-taking app.

Related article:

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One of the standout features of Notion is its versatility in organizing information. Notion users can create databases, projects, Kanban boards, and more, all within the same platform. It can effectively replace many other apps, which makes it a must-have app for my tool stack.

With his wide range of collaboration features and affordable pricing, I highly recommend Notion for teams as well.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Have a question or suggestion? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out anytime at aronkantor@thebusinessdive.com.

Frequently asked questions

Is Notion worth it in 2026?

In 2026, Notion is still a great tool that you can implement in multiple workflows. For example, note-taking, project and task management, generating summaries or to-do lists, or fixing spelling. It has affordable pricing, especially if you consider how many apps it can replace for this money, whether you’re using it as part of a personal plan or within a team setup.

What is the disadvantage of Notion?

The biggest disadvantage for me is that this note-taking app has no offline mode. It would be awesome if I could reach my notes without an internet connection. Also, you can not protect your pages with passwords. As my notes include sensitive data, I would feel safer if I could protect them with a password.

What is better than Notion?

Notion is an outstanding app for note-taking. However, if you want to try out other apps, I recommend trying Xtiles, Anytype, Evernote, Taskade, or Miro. They are all great note-taking apps and can improve your productivity.

Related article:

• 7 Best Note-Taking Apps For 2026 | +2 Years Personal Testing

Is Notion really free?

Notion has a generous free plan. It covers a collaborative workspace, basic forms and sites, Notion Calendar and Mail. It also supports databases with subtasks, dependencies, and custom properties. Based on my experience, Notion’s free version is totally sufficient for individuals to organize their notes and projects.

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are our own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission. Read the full privacy policy here.