Notion and Baserow are both popular platforms with task management and collaboration capabilities. Notion has some light database functionality while Baserow is more database-centric. Choosing between them often comes down to weighing up what you need as a user, as well as their pricing, benefits, and limitations. Notion’s pricing plans come with their share of disadvantages for teams, raising questions about its overall value.
In this article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about Notion’s pricing plans and the software’s pros and cons. We’ll also explain how Baserow’s advanced features and open-source core provide a cost-effective alternative for companies that need control, visibility, and scalability across all users and data.
- Notion pricing and key features
- Overview of Notion’s pricing plans
- Can you use Notion for free?
- Is the paid version of Notion worth it?
- The hidden costs of using Notion
- Notion’s limitations and disadvantages
- Comparing Baserow and Notion
- Baserow’s pricing plans
- Benefits of using Baserow
Notion’s pricing and key features
Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines notes, databases, wikis, and reminders. It lets users manage, store, and organize data in a collaborative environment that’s a bit like Google Sheets and Trello rolled into one.
While it’s used across various sectors, Notion is a document-based and text-centric platform. It’s suitable for individuals and teams managing a modest amount of data who don’t need to connect to lots of other apps and services.
While Notion and Baserow share some features, they have distinct purposes. Notion is well-suited for things like creating notes and wikis, whereas Baserow’s advanced functionality is tailored for handling extensive and complex data sets, something Notion isn’t suited for.
Key advantages of Notion include:
- All-in-one workspace: Notion integrates multiple tools (like pages, databases, Kanban boards, and more) into one unified workspace. This integration facilitates smooth workflow management and eliminates the need for multiple apps.
- Nested pages: Its unique nested pages structure allows you to create a network of related notes, tasks, or projects, providing a clear view of your work hierarchy.
- Databases: Notion enables you to create flexible databases with customizable views (including list, table, calendar, gallery, and board views) to manage and visualize data according to your needs.
- Templates: It provides a wide array of pre-built templates for various tasks, such as marketing, product, and design, making it easy to start a new project, task, or note.
- Collaboration: Notion allows real-time collaboration with team members. It supports comments, and mentions, and allows you to share pages or the entire workspace with others.
- Customizable and flexible: You can personalize the platform to suit your workflow. It’s highly flexible, allowing blocks to be easily moved, formatted, and linked to other pages.
- Integrations: It integrates with popular apps like Google Calendar, Google Drive, Slack, and more.
Overview of Notion’s pricing plans
Notion offers a flexible, four-tiered pricing structure that caters to a range of needs. Starting with a Free plan for individuals, it progresses through to a Plus and Business plan aimed at small teams and businesses, and finally an Enterprise plan for large organizations requiring enhanced control and support.
Notion’s free plan
Price: Free
Ideal for freelancers or individuals managing personal projects.
Features:
- Collaborative workspace
- 7-day page history
- One synced database
- Guest collaborators: 10
- File uploads: Up to 5MB
- Row limit per synced database: 100
Plus plan pricing
Price: $8 per user per month, billed annually, or $10 per user, per month, billed monthly.
Designed for small teams needing more collaborative tools.
Features:
- Unlimited blocks for teams
- Unlimited file uploads
- 30-day page history
- Guest collaborators: 100
- Synced databases: Unlimited
- Row limit per synced database: 20,000
- Priority support
Notion Business pricing
Price: $15 per user per month, billed annually, or $18 per user, per month, billed monthly.
Best suited for larger teams requiring enhanced security features and more control.
Features:
- Private team spaces
- Bulk PDF export
- SAML SSO (single sign-on)
- Guest collaborators: 250
- Synced databases: Unlimited
- Row limit per synced database: 20,000
- Priority support
Notion Enterprise pricing
Price: Contact sales for a quote.
Targeted at large organizations requiring advanced controls and dedicated support.
Features:
- User provisioning (SCIM)
- Advanced security & controls
- Audit log
- Dedicated success manager (100+ seats)
- Workspace analytics
- Unlimited page history
- Custom guest limit
Notion AI
Optional add-on
Add to any paid plan for $8 per member/month, billed annually, or $10 per member/month, for monthly billing and Free plans.
Features:
- Generate summaries, action items & insights
- Rewrite docs to be clear and effective
- Brainstorm new ideas and first drafts
Can I use Notion for free?
Yes, Notion does offer a free plan. It’s not a trial—you can use it indefinitely. It provides a good deal of functionality, including unlimited pages and blocks, syncing across devices, and community support.
However, it has some limitations compared to the paid plans, such as a limit on the number of guests you can invite, attachments cannot exceed 5MB, page history only lasts seven days, and it only includes one synced database that integrates with software such as Jira, GitHub, and Asana. It also limits the rows on that synced database to 100.
If you require more features, such as unlimited file uploads, version history, and team collaboration tools, you would need to consider upgrading to one of Notion’s paid pricing plans: Plus, Business, or Enterprise.
Is the paid version of Notion worth it?
The value of Notion’s paid plans depends largely on your specific needs and use cases. If you’re an individual user or a small team who heavily relies on Notion for organizing life, managing projects, or even building a personal wiki, upgrading to the Plus plan could be worthwhile. This plan unlocks features like a 30-day page history, unlimited blocks for teams, and a 20,000-row limit per synced database.
For businesses, the paid versions can significantly enhance productivity and collaboration. The Team and Enterprise plans provide advanced collaboration features like a collaborative workspace, unlimited team members, and advanced permissions, making it an excellent tool for project management and more. Plus, the Enterprise plan offers features geared towards larger organizations like SSO, a dedicated manager, and custom contract options.
However, it’s also important to consider your budget. While Notion’s pricing plans come with a robust set of features, its per-person pricing can be expensive for teams. There are free or better value alternatives available, such as Baserow, offering unlimited databases and rows. If you seek a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective Notion alternative, it’s worth checking out Baserow’s hosted and self-hosted plans.
The hidden costs of using Notion
Notion’s pricing structure is relatively transparent and its paid plans include the specified features and storage without additional costs. However, there can be hidden costs in terms of operational inefficiencies and potential limitations that could impact your organization or personal use:
- Learning Curve: As Notion is quite different from existing tools, it requires existing teams to change the way they collaborate. If users are familiar with tools like Word, Google Docs, they might not understand easily the variety of options in Notion and therefore may disregard it as a new tool.
- Migration costs: If you’re migrating to Notion from another platform, the process can be time-consuming, especially if there’s a lot of data and multiple integrations to handle. The time, resources, and potential disruption during this migration process represent a hidden cost. The types of formats that you can import and export include CSV, Markdown, HTML, JSON, and more.
- Scaling up costs: As your team grows or your needs become more complex, you may need to upgrade to a more expensive plan. The Enterprise plan, for instance, offers advanced features like increased version history, more granular permissions, and priority support, but comes at a high price point.
- Additional storage solutions: While Notion offers unlimited file uploads, the files aren’t stored in Notion, they are stored in Amazon S3, a service similar to Dropbox but built with websites and services in mind. This means that if you have large files, you might need to invest in additional cloud storage, which is an indirect cost associated with using Notion.
Notion’s limitations and disadvantages
While Notion’s pricing plans offer enhanced features, there are several reasons why they may not be worth the investment for some users. Here’s a look at some of Notion’s limitations and disadvantages:
- Notion’s pricing: Starting at $10 per user/month for Plus (when billed monthly) and going up to $18 per user/month for Business, and pricing on request for the Enterprise plan, Notion’s pricing can quickly add up, especially for larger teams.
- Performance: One of Notion’s big disadvantages is its speed. It can start to slow down when dealing with a large amount of data or complex pages. Users have reported sluggishness when working with databases with large amounts of entries, especially when those entries are linked or related across multiple databases.
- Row limit: Notion has a row limit per synced database of 20,000 in its paid plans, which might prove limiting for users working with larger datasets.
- Search functionality: As datasets get larger, finding specific information can become challenging. While Notion does provide search functionality, the results are not as instantaneous or refined as some users might wish for when handling extensive databases.
- Not a dedicated database: Notion is designed as a productivity and collaboration tool, not a dedicated database management system. As such, it lacks some features found in relational databases like Baserow, such as complex data analysis capabilities and the ability to host the software on your server.
- Difficult to manage at scale: even with a fairly small team, the ability to find information easily becomes challenging. It feels a bit messy with lots of workspaces and documents, which embed task trackers and databases. It is a lot more unstructured than a collaborative database. For freelancers and small teams, it can be a great collaboration platform though.
- Tracking changes is nonexistent: A major downside if you are used to working with tools like Google Docs is the lack of change tracking in Notion Docs. Everything works with comments but changes are not tracked in a document. This is impractical if you collaborate on content like blogs, press releases, etc.
- Alternatives offer better value: Tools like Baserow offer more cost-effective solutions with advanced capabilities. Baserow, for instance, allows more customization and has a scalable structure with its open-source core, making it a strong competitor to Notion’s paid plans.
Comparing Baserow and Notion
Notion is essentially a note-taking application that can be extended into a database tool, with added functionalities for simple databases. It works well for personal productivity, small teams collaboration, and content management, but its capabilities as a dedicated database tool might feel somewhat limited.
On the other hand, Baserow is a powerful no-code database that offers the familiarity of a spreadsheet while providing users with robust database functionality. It allows for a deeper level of customization and provides support for real-time collaboration, an array of database views, and creating relationships between tables. It has easy import and export functions and an array of templates to help users start their projects swiftly, while its API-first nature allows seamless integration with other platforms.
If your needs include managing substantial amounts of data, adhering to data governance and security policies, and creating customized databases without technical expertise, Baserow’s no-code platform is a better choice than Notion. Offering both SaaS and self-hosted options, it ensures flexibility and scalability, as well as freedom from vendor limitations.
In terms of pricing, Baserow’s plans are a more economical choice than Notion’s pricing plans, as they provide a significantly larger capacity for records and storage space, with features like unlimited rows and storage on self-hosted plans. As the source code is available to everyone, users have the freedom to modify and tailor the software to their specific needs, enabling a level of customization not often found in proprietary solutions like Notion.
Baserow’s pricing plans
All of Baserow’s pricing plans come packed with powerful features such as advanced search and filtering, collaboration tools, a variety of viewing options, and an extensive range of pre-built templates for use cases like marketing, sales, finance, IT, and more. The Enterprise plan goes further, offering an admin panel, signup rules, SSO login, and priority support.
Baserow offers hosted plans on the baserow.io website including a free plan, a Premium plan at $5 per user per month, and an Advanced plan at $20 per user per month. Each provides unlimited databases with row limits of 3,000, 10,000, and 100,000 respectively. Self-hosted plans come with unlimited databases, unlimited rows, and unlimited storage.
For detailed pricing information, visit Baserow’s pricing page or refer to the details below:
Baserow’s hosted plans: SaaS on the baserow.io website
Free
- Pricing: Always free
- Unlimited databases
- 3,000 rows
- 2 GB per workspace
- Collaborators, Grid, Form, and Gallery views
Premium
- Pricing: $5 per user/month
- Unlimited databases
- 10,000 rows
- 5 GB per workspace
- Advanced collaboration, additional Kanban, Survey, and Calendar views
- Row comments/coloring
Advanced
- Pricing: $20 per user/month
- Unlimited databases
- 250,000 rows
- 20 GB per workspace
- All Premium features, plus role-based permissions, free read/comment, and priority support.
Self-hosted: Host on-premise or in the cloud
Free
- Pricing: Always free
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited rows
- Unlimited storage
- Collaborators, Grid, Form, and Gallery views
Premium
- Pricing: $5 per user/month
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited rows
- Unlimited storage
- Advanced collaboration, additional Kanban, Survey, and Calendar views
- Row comments/coloring
Enterprise
- Pricing: On request, ranging from $15 USD to $35 USD/user/month based on the number of users.
- Unlimited databases
- Unlimited rows
- Unlimited storage
- All Premium features, plus role-based permissions, free read/comment, instance-wide admin panel, audit logs, and priority support.
Benefits of choosing Baserow over Notion’s pricing plans
- Unlimited records and databases: Baserow’s self-hosted version offers unlimited records and bases, a clear contrast to Notion’s pricing plans, making it a more scalable solution without incremental cost hikes. Baserow also doesn’t set a cap on automation per base, an area where Notion falls short.
- Configurable storage and attachment limits: Baserow’s self-hosting option allows users to tailor their storage and attachment constraints to their infrastructure, enabling scaling at substantially higher data volumes.
- Full data and hosting environment control: Baserow’s open-source framework ensures users have total control over their data and hosting environment—a vital feature for businesses subject to strict security or compliance demands.
- Developer-friendly: Baserow encourages the creation of custom or third-party plugins, significantly expanding database functionalities beyond what Notion can provide. With its API-first approach, Baserow facilitates easy integration with any required tool.
- Speed: Unlike Notion’s slow load times with larger bases, Baserow is built to efficiently handle substantial data volumes, maintaining stability even when dealing with hundreds of thousands of records.
- For larger teams: Baserow’s Enterprise plan offers role-based access controls, an administration panel, Single Sign-On (SSO), and direct priority support. Users also gain access to all Premium features such as JSON and XML export, row coloring and comments, removal of public logos, Kanban and Calendar views, survey form mode, audit logs, and more.
Baserow’s top features:
- Relational open-source, no-code database
- Available in hosted and self-hosted versions
- User-friendly, spreadsheet-like interface
- Unlimited rows and storage on self-hosting
- Customization with personal plugins
- Real-time collaboration with @-mentions, notification system, edit and delete comments, and more
- Lightening fast
- Wide array of pre-built templates
- API-first, supporting integrations with any tool
- Enterprise-grade access and security controls
- A supportive online community
- Dedicated support for Advanced and Enterprise plans
Switch to Baserow
If you’re iffy about Notion’s pricing and software limitations, it’s easy to switch to Baserow, the no-code, open-source database. With Baserow, there are no hidden charges or nasty surprises. Our platform is designed for scalability, delivering speed and stability, even while managing large or complex datasets. While Notion has its merits, companies in pursuit of greater control, visibility, and scalability should consider Baserow as a cost-effective, open-source alternative.
Ready to get started? Create an account with Baserow today! Or contact us if you want to chat about Baserow or ask the community.
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