Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Notion is a highly flexible collaboration environment. Notes, databases, checklists, kanban boards, it has all that, and a lot more. For the sake of this review, I googled “notion personal CRM templates” and found several free options. If I decided to use Notion, I would build my template.

Links

• Developer site and Web App: notion.so

Evaluation

• Design

Notion is decent from the design perspective but doesn’t stand out. Like most no-code tools, it is based on a few different data views like tables, boards, pages, lists, and some basic customization options, involving headers and emoji.

• Performance

The performance is excellent with a couple of hundreds of records. However, I tried to import several thousand, and it became sluggish. I am not sure where the limit is, but keep that in mind if you have a large list of contacts.

• Platforms

A strength of Notion. It is available as a web or native app on all platforms.

• Integrations

Notion is integrated with productivity, notetaking, and project management apps, from Slack to Asana, Jira, or Evernote. Nothing specific to relationships management. The calendar integration is limited, and there is no way to pull and update contacts automatically.

• Flexibility

Notion is a blank canvas where you create pages, lists, databases, add rich content, relations, and some automation. The upside is that you can configure it precisely as you wish and need. The downside is that you have to do more work to customize it.

• Cost

A limited version is free. $4/month remove most limits.

Conclusion

My relationship with Notion is odd. I have wanted to find a good reason to use it for years. Still, I inevitably end up in the same place: the only way to get enough value to compensate for the extra work required to configure it would be to run everything I do in it, which I can’t justify as I love specialized apps.