The Best Notion Alternative for Teams? (SmartSuite vs. Notion Detailed Comparison)

If you're looking for a flexible database to organize your team's tasks, projects, ideas, initiatives, creative briefs, whatever else is in between, odds are you've heard about Notion and if you haven't, let me just catch you up on the last two years or so Notion has kind of been blowing up the Internet as it's taken this kind of flexible note taking tool that was primarily focused on personal use and started to expand it into the general business market. And if you search YouTube for Notion, you'll see tons and tons of videos of people making these MacGyvered setups inside of Notion to have it do all of the things you could possibly imagine. But as someone who has consulted on work management platform for quite come to me with these complicated notion based setups who are struggling to actually use it for teamwork management because it is just so flexible. And so today what I want to share with you is an alternative to Notion that odds are you have never heard about. That is the tool called SmartSuite. Since 2019 Smart SmartSuite has been developed in secret trying to build the perfect database based database, you know what I mean? Database style work management solution for small teams with a great emphasis on reliability, permissions and control in addition to all the things we take for granted in most work management tools. In this video I want to compare and contrast notion to SmartSuite so you can understand how this new player really fits into the market, the similarities with Notion and even some of the differences so you can decide for yourself which tool might be the better choice for your team and the projects you're trying to organize. Now before we start the video, I just want to remind you that there are timestamps in the description below where you can find the different sections of the video to skip around, as well as links to both products we're talking about today. But I also want to acknowledge that SmartSuite is sponsoring today's video. What that means is they've asked us to talk about this product, but they have no say in the information and opinions I am sharing in this video. So every opinion and analysis you're going to hear in this video is my own and I hope it helps you in your own journey. Starting off with Notion, our giant in the space. Notion is based in California in the US of A. They've just raised their Series C for a total of 343.2 million in venture funding. So they're a little bit more mature in their timeline and they are officially considered a unicorn. If we Contrast that to SmartSuite who is basically just entering the market right now. SmartSuite is a little bit younger, started in 2019 as opposed to notions 2016 here. And SmartSuite is also a much smaller team, privately held and has raised no money so far, so I'm sharing that. So you're aware that we're comparing software at two different stages of the software life cycle. So that's the company profiles. And just based on these profiles, I honestly if I was just reading these, I would not think there'd be much of a competition. Right. Like there doesn't seem like there'd be much of a fighting chance for SmartSuite in this situation. Yet as I go into the feature stuff coming on later in this video, I think you'll see why I think this is a tighter comparison than what anyone might expect. All right, let's move on to our next section though, which is pricing. When it comes to pricing, we're going to start off with Notion, who has a variety of plans, of which free is definitely the most tempting. So the free plan on Notion allows for unlimited pages and blocks, allows for up to five guests to collaborate with you, and of course it is free. From there, plans go to $4 to $8 per month per person, and they also have an enterprise plan that you can explore for additional options as well. If we compare that over to SmartSuite land spot, SmartSuite is definitely a slightly more premium option. It starts at 0 per user per month, which is expected at this point. Their team plan is comparable. But once we get into professional and enterprise, we are really looking at a higher price point than what we see Notion bring, at least on their publicly priced plans. But I just want to be clear that this is not really a one to one comparison here, particularly because inside of SmartSuite we have built in permissions and restrictive functionality. I guess I'll say that really we would have to be up on Notion's enterprise plan to really get what each software is promising us at. Each plan is so different that it is hard to do a one to one comparison. I would say for most business users, some actual team use cases where you have a small company, a large company, you're somewhere in there. I think you'll probably find that smartsuite for what you get for the dollar, it is actually cheaper than Notion once you take into account the cost of setting everything up and trying to keep people from breaking it. But for the vast majority of personal users or teams of one, I think by far Notion is going to be the more affordable option. Particularly if you need to collaborate with a variety of freelancers or stakeholders. Because of the generosity of Notion's free plan, I think we're going to have to give this category over to Notion. Now, last but not least, the features section. And this is where I want to go through some of the feature and functionality differences between Notion and smartsuite. So. So before we start talking about differences, I think it'd be interesting to first talk about some of the feature sets that both of these tools have in common. Now, the first feature that both of these tools have in common is flexible databases. We can have a record in Notion, represent a dog, a task, a book, whatever it is we're looking to organize. And then we can have custom data fields organized based on what that is. So for example, if we're organizing a task list here, we create properties like you see here for due date, date, created status, and assignee. The Same goes for SmartSuite. If we're over in SmartSuite land, we can change what each of our data cells means. So perhaps instead of objective, we want to have a task here. And once we have this defined, we can go inside each and every record that we have, which is what they're called in SmartSuite land, and we can customize what fields are available. We can add new fields based on all of the field types, very similar to Notion. And just like Notion, we can define certain criteria about what we want that field to do. For example, inside SmartSuite, each one of these fields, much like Notion, allows us to customize things. So for example, I could have this task field span two columns. I could go in here and modify this field settings so it was auto generated, or I could require an entry. I could also go into my multiple choice fields and go ahead and change the field settings to have certain colors, certain display formats, or even have default values, almost like an automation. And much like Notion, I'm able to take each of these pieces of information, each of these records and report on them, create them into views, turn them into dynamic summaries of this information, using views and other kind of filtered areas. And much like Notion, I'm able to customize these formats to suit my preferences, to suit my time format, my date format, and so on. In both tools we can go ahead and delete fields we do not need and make sure we are only tracking the information that we actually want to have. Nothing is set in stone in either of these tools. When it comes to the actual data itself, we get to customize that exactly related to that, the Second, similar feature both of these tools have in common are the views. So so in SmartSuite we have the ability to choose from all of these view types such as a card view, Kanban, all the classics. And in Notion we have similar options. We can go ahead and add new views to view the same data in different ways to view things as a calendar, a list, a gallery, a timeline or a board. There are slightly more options in terms of smartsuite land, but I think these are both pretty powerful ways to allow us to view information in different formats and suiting our personal style. Now for the next few feature both of these tools have in common. I'm going to talk about activity history because I know this is a real concern. I want to know what happened to each of the records I'm creating. Well, inside SmartSuite you have the ability to find that history on a per record basis by heading in here as well as some reporting on the overview level. In Notion it's very similar. If we go inside one of these records that we've created, we can actually go up to the top to view the past changes to a given record and see exactly what's happened to it. Both of these tools also allow us to comment and discuss based on the records. However, I do think smartsuites are a little bit more powerful in this arena. Now for the next feature that both of these have in common is the ability to make bulk edits. For example, if I select all three of these records right here inside a SmartSuite and I change the status to say complete, they will all update to be marked complete all at once in bulk. If we head in here and we look at our objectives, we can select the different fields we'd like to adjust, head into edit property and change the statuses to whatever it is we'd like to have them change to and they'll all edit in bulk. Now last but not least, the final feature I want to highlight that both of these tools have in common, which is a super important one for productivity. It's the ability to relate data together. This is demonstrated inside this mock up here by the objectives being related back to the company goals we've created elsewhere in notion. If I go to this cell here and look to add another page, I can link to other company goals that I have already added inside my account. This is basically showing me a list of the resources over in the company goals area. Similarly, I have a goal priority roll up field. What this is is telling me hey, based on the connection to the company goals, what is the priority of that company goal. In this case it's P1, meaning priority one. If I were to change which company goals listed here, the rollup will change and I could add say let's add the hit 1 million US bookings instead. That's also a P1, it turns out, and that connection is linked here using the Relation and roll up fields. The same functionality is possible inside of SmartSuite. Here we've got our objectives area which I'd renamed to Tasks earlier. Let's change that back and these objectives, similar to Notion, could be related out to our goals we have here. Just like in Notion, we can relate information and records between things in the same solution, meaning the same goals and objectives area or anywhere else in our account. To make this happen in SmartSuite, I'm going to go into the add a new field which I can access from various places and I'm going to create a new linked record fields. This is very similar to the Relation field in Notion. It's just going by a different name. So here we're going to say Related Goals and inside this we can choose how we want this goal to look. If we want it to look the most similar to Notion, we might choose the standard display. Here we can link it to any of our other stuff in any area of our account. But here we're going to focus in on just the goals themselves and I can choose how exactly I want those link records to show up. For example, do I want them always to be sorted or filtered? Or only show certain fields such as the department instead of the status and description? I can go ahead and choose those settings here and click Save. Additionally, I can choose to have Help text here to explain what exactly this relationship means if folks are confused by that connection. Once I click Save, it's going to add this relationship here and you can see the linked record related goals. And much like Notion, I can come in here and say hey, let's connect this to our ARR goal. Link the record. And here it is also similar to Notion, I could have a roll up field to report based on that relation. And while there are so many other similarities that I could highlight here, I think those are the main ones to help you understand why these two tools can really go head to head with each other depending on what you're looking to do. But this is a competition video, right? So let's focus now on the stuff that is different between the two of these to help you decide. All right? Which one's the better one for me. Distinct feature Number one about Notion is the personalization that was weird to say that word. The personalization that's possible. So inside of Notion you can add different cover images, icons and just just about anything you would want into the page itself to organize it based on what you'd like to see. You can make different fields be deleted, make them different sizes, drag them around and drop them, and you really have no restrictions into what your pages look like. If you go inside the template gallery inside of Notion you can. You'll find examples of just about every kind of page layout you can imagine, ranging from databases to just brain dumps, depending on your preference. I think Notion has a real edge for note taking and unstructured data if you don't want everything to necessarily be a record inside your database. The second standout feature of Notion are back in the templates area, the availability of resources focused on personal and student use cases. I think it's safe to say that SmartSuite and many other business focused tools out there are don't really do a great job when it comes to things like reading lists or Cornell note taking systems. Yes, they can do them, but that was never really their main target, their main goal. So they haven't really built as much as what Notion has where really students and personal use cases is where Notion got its first rise. And so you'll find a lot of useful templates for that kind of personal life use case that can help you jump into those areas of organization on your own. The third standout feature of Notion is the Notion Web Clipper. I think this is really a leader in terms of all of the extensions for all the tools out there. This web Clipper allows you to go to different websites, click a little button in your extensions area and have information about the page. This includes a screenshot, the title of the page and the contents of the page and pull it in to your Notion account in a few clicks. I know personally there's a lot of folks I know who have used Notion simply because they love this Web Clipper functionality. Not to say other tools don't allow you to do this in some way, but I think the Web Clipper is a real leader in the online note taking information collection space for this particular add on. The next standout feature of Notion are the Synced Blocks feature. So if I go under here and I do synced block, you can see this baby pop up. This allows me to create an area of information such as hello, which you might want to have something more complex than this and have this same block of information, whatever is inside this area show up in multiple places exactly the same. So you create the structure once and it shows up on multiple pages wherever you add that synced block without you having to retype the information. I'm pointing this out because SmartSuite does not have a real comparable feature. But also SmartSuite doesn't need to because it's not as page focused as what Notion is. However, for those of you who like to have almost like a mini website inside your work management tool where you can have different headers and things that recur that you customize, I think the way Notion does this and how everything is kind of a page or a database, not always data, it's pretty interesting and not quite something that we would have or need to have in SmartSuite just because SmartSuite is a such, such a different tool. Now the final Notion feature I want to highlight as a standout here is their ability to embed outside information in pretty little previews. Now to be clear, SmartSuite also allows you to embed information. But the number of kind of ready to go setups here is pretty impressive on Notion's side. And I think this is really a testament to how long Notion has been in the game. So they've had time to build out so many more of these kind of ready to go embeds here to allow you to set, see and or even sync information from outside tools with them. I see SmartSuite making moves in this direction, but as the newcomer in the space or the newer comer in the space, they're just not at the same level as what Notion is with all of these different pre built options. So way to go Notion on that one. Now let's transition over to SmartSuite and talk about some of their standout features, the things that really make them stand a head above Notion. To me, the very first one, which I've kind of touched on already, but I need to emphasize further, it is the ability to organize tasks properly in Notion, to get your tasks to be tasks, you have to build all this extra stuff in SmartSuite, it's there for everybody. You go right up here, you'll see all your assignments grouped by the things you care about most. So for example, if I want to see things by due date, I can see all of these things here and it's going to report on everything across my entire collaborative SmartSuite account. What this looks like down on the record level is inside these records we can create a assigned TO fields. I'm going to Modify one right here because this will show you what it looks like. These assigned to field types are where you can actually say hey, this thing, this is an assignment that other stuff's data. But because I have an assigned to field, treat this thing as a task and have it show up in my my work area, I can have multiple assignments per record. And with this assigned to field, I have the option to choose how many people can be assigned, which members in my space should be allowed to be a viable assignee, how I want it to be displayed inside that my work roll up, do I want it to see the status field, and I can even choose to require an entry. If I wanted to make sure one person was always the default assignee on a project, I could do that here. And if that wasn't enough detail. SmartSuite also have some pre built assignment features, a layer below the record itself, which again is a little unique than Notion where everything is just a record or bust. In addition to adding just general extra assigned to fields all for the same record, we could add things like checklists inside the record which could allow us to have sub steps like this that also have their own assignees and due dates, not to mention the sub items that we can also choose to add if we want to choose even more additional details here. And this ability to have statuses, due dates, assignments and an overall reporting area to see all of our work I think is a really powerful feature of SmartSuite and why it does a better job of mixing both tasks and data than Notion, which I mean, I just think Notion focuses a lot more of its feature set on just data, unambiguous unformatted data of whatever kind. And when it comes to tasks, it's a little funny. SmartSuite's features around task management make it a little bit stronger in this area. Now, the second standout feature I want to highlight for SmartSuite is the fact that you have an ability to see less, which is particularly helpful when you're trying to use a tool with other team members who may not need the same level of detail as the power users in SmartSuite, we can take information and put them inside sections. These sections inside the record are ones that we can choose to have collapsed by default, meaning smushed or not collapsed by default and exposed like this. And inside this record itself, we can also change the page settings to change the overall look to either make it just one column like this, or head back into page settings and have a side by side view. If we prefer things viewed in this format and what this allows us to do is ensure that we're just showing the right amount of information for what a given person wants. So if I head back to this 5050 view and collapse some of these sections, you can see why this is a lot less overwhelming than Notion's approach to having tasks where everything is a sidebar and it's all always exposed. And no matter who you are, whether you're a CEO or a team member, you're seeing all the same information. I think throughout SmartSuite's interface, they've done a really nice job of making things easy for the end user, while also giving those power users the opportunity to dig deeper without bothering the rest of the team. Collapsing sections like this are just one example of this, but you really see the same thoughtfulness throughout the entire interface at the solution, app and view level. The third standout feature is one that particularly I think is important for Notion users. In Notion, you are unable to take Notion and embed it into other tools. Well, in SmartSuite, you can. And for anyone who's looking to share views from their work management tool and share it with, say, a client or a stakeholder or an investor, this is pretty important. Inside SmartSuite, you can hit the Share View button and and generate a publicly shareable view with anybody you choose to share that link with. Coming very soon, we also have the ability to add some additional options, such as maybe making it protected by a password and so on. But even at this point, for such a new tool, we have the ability to share this view with outsiders, which is just a really nice way to make sure you can share or embed this information in your website, your report, your PowerPoint, whatever the heck it is that you need to have to make sure your outside stakeholders know what's happening. Notion right now is pretty aggressive about not allowing embedding anywhere. And so I think this is a real feature I want to make sure our Notion users here are aware of. For the fourth standout feature of SmartSuite, I want to highlight dashboards. Dashboards are a view type in SmartSuite, even though it's not quite about viewing your data in the same. Some of these other views are inside of these dashboards. You can create widgets that allow you to report and summarize your information in a given area. And I think this is a standout because in Notion, I feel like we often live in the weeds and, and there's not a great automated way to make things summarized outside of relating records to records and using rollups and so on. Inside of SmartSuite we have a ton of widgets to allow us to report on things visually. For example, I could create a bar chart with my own defined values, X, Y axis, filters, group by, and so on to report on a given achievement or progress. In addition to conferencing options and embed options, you can also, if I scroll on down here, you can also have websites and custom code and text embedded. So this is really how we can replicate some of those page qualities of notion. Although it's not quite the main emphasis of SmartSuite. If I show you just this basic dashboard I've whipped up here, in a few minutes we have objectives progress. This is a report that's showing us how far we are on all of our objectives. As you can see, this is set up with just a few basic settings, like, hey, we're looking at objectives and we're looking at the status value to show us the summary. I could change this chart type if I wanted to, like maybe a pie chart instead. And I could also choose to go ahead and filter this down just to show certain goals, if that was more important to me. Over here to the right, we have a goals widget. Right here. If I go on inside, you can see that this is showing me my total of measurable goals, which is something we have over in my goals area, this is a field I have and I'm only showing the goals that I have achieved I've completed. And I'm comparing that to our goal of 5 million. And I'm trying to see how quickly we move towards these as more and more things move into that goal achieved status. And this whole bar is going to move up automatically and this will help us track and gamify our progress towards our goal. Below this we have a countdown widget which is counting down to the end of the year when we have to achieve those goals. And then we've got an embedded website down here. So these dashboards can be a nice hub, a rallying point for our team to report on what's happening in all of these other levels. And particularly for leaders or CEOs who don't necessarily want to get into all of the weeds. These dashboards and the widgets you can add into them can be a nice way for you to visualize your data in whatever format you want. There's really a lot of inside these flexible drag and drop choose your values kind of widgets here. The fifth feature I want to highlight that stands out for SmartSuite is the permissions and profiles features that are built in I'm going to talk about this just briefly because we talk about this more up here at the top, but if we go inside the member directory up at the top of the page, SmartSuite has pre built this kind of like online offline system, similar to what you might see in something like Slack, where each person can go into their profile, show whether or not they're online, add information about themselves, including things like their preferences, their hobbies, their certificates, and even give themselves an availability status such as not working and have it clear after a certain amount of time. These kinds of features that are built into the SmartSuite interface allow us to have better communication and collaboration, particularly for remote teams where you might not know who is or isn't in the office at a given period of time unless these are available. Sure you could recreate this using some manual data inside of Notion, but it'd be a whole lot of manual data entry versus just using the pre built functionality directly in here. This is particularly helpful for larger teams, as you might imagine. Now I could go further and talk about how SmartSuite's formulas are a little bit more powerful than even Notions and their rollups make Notions look like nothing. I could also talk about some of the page settings that are available in Notion that make it a little bit more aesthetically pleasing for folks to like to have different fonts and colors. But I think we've already gone on probably longer than you would want anyway. So to please the YouTube algorithm and to wrap this puppy up, which tool is going to be the best choice for you? I feel like both of these tools have a place in the market. They're both awesome. I use both of them. If you haven't been able to tell by some of the stuff that you've seen in this mockup today, to me, personal projects and note taking is where Notion really shines. That's where I use it, that's where I recommend others use it. And in fact in this Personality video Up Top, I actually highlighted Notion for just that reason. But I think for team users, for folks that are working in a business environment where you need to have both project management and databases, and more flexibility doesn't necessarily mean more good. I think you're actually going to find a higher return on your time and investment in SmartSuite, and that's kind of why I wanted to make this video because I think both of these are great tools, but for teams who are trying to just get the work done and they need a little bit more stability and structure for that. I think SmartSuite has a real edge, particularly for teams who are used to notion and love that database way of thinking, but need a little bit more reporting, dashboards, notifications and just kind of permissions based control. But of course that's just my two cents. I would love to hear what you think and if you want to explore either of these tools for yourself, check out the affiliate links below in the description and leave a comment to let me know what was the deciding factor for you while you're down there. Please do like and subscribe and until next time, enjoy the process.