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Notion API – public beta

developers.notion.so

211–220 of 262 posts

Re: Notion API – public beta

#211

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. In fact I…

Sigh, it is a paradox. As a consumer, I want my software on-prem. But as a producer, I want to deploy as frequently as possible, so that I could iterate without friction, and I would try to avoid platforms/techs that are not hot upgradable. As a consumer, I want no data tracking. But as a producer, I want data-driven growth, so that I could understand where I did wrong and how to improve it. And data comes from track…

It's not a paradox as much as a difference between you and the public you target.

Compared to you, they don't care about tracking, don't want the hassle to set-up on-prem and don't mind or prefer videos over text.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#212

So Notion is essentially a CMS now. I still wonder what one could realistically do with the API other than small quirky experiments

One of the things I use notion for is to centralize my trackings:

- tv, movie and actors from trakt.tv;

- books from gooodreads

- anime and manga from anilist

The reason is that: I can make better notes, I can add extra data/properties, easier to organize in a kanban or other visualizations. But now, if I add more movies on my trakt, I run a script to export to CSV, and then have to import the new rows into Notion. With this, now my exports can add the new rows and update the data.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#213

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. In fact I…

Sigh, it is a paradox. As a consumer, I want my software on-prem. But as a producer, I want to deploy as frequently as possible, so that I could iterate without friction, and I would try to avoid platforms/techs that are not hot upgradable. As a consumer, I want no data tracking. But as a producer, I want data-driven growth, so that I could understand where I did wrong and how to improve it. And data comes from track…

Why do you want your software on-prem and be responsible for deployment and monitoring,”?

Re: Notion API – public beta

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obsidian ( https://obsidian.md ) also offers offline, + for free.

Zero cost but not Free Software. Another untrustworthy thing like Notion.

I'm most saddened by the people who spend their time writing plugins for Notion / Roam (and to a lesser degree, Obsidian), providing extra value for free to a non-free product that will profit off the free labor. (or rather, I'm saddened that companies like Roam are so willing to exploit community engagement for a profit)

Time would be better spent contributing to an open source alternative like Athens!

Re: Notion API – public beta

#215
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, that’s how they present it, though in reality it’s pretty clunky as a project management tool, and you’d almost always be better off using a purpose-built solution. Notion makes a decent tool for a personal/organizational wiki but it’s too slow/unresponsive/janky to use for many other purposes IMO. I’ve been using it for a couple years and I used to hold out hope that the performance could be optimized, but at t…

Your comments reflect my almost two-year experience with the paid version of Notion. I found it very difficult to figure out how to use the tools beyond very narrow use-cases they provided in examples. And I found the docs were almost useless in explaining the overarching design. As a result, despite a lot of time spent, I kept bumping into unexpected limitations or design corners with no way out other than to scrap…

Also had the same experience. Couldn't stand the unresponsiveness and clunkiness. Ended up moving to Bookmark OS

Re: Notion API – public beta

#216

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. In fact I…

(Cristina from Notion here) We shared a bit more in the past about how most of our user content was stored in a single database instance (see more here: https://www.notion.so/notion/Focus-on-performance-reliabilit... ). That is no longer true and we recently re-architected this database to scale horizontally. Totally understand that you want more options for how to host your data. Unfortunately, we don't have any pla…

Thanks for being upfront about “don’t have any plans for that”, instead of a vague “we’re looking into it” which sounds better but effectively means the same thing.

Re: Notion API – public beta

#217
post #97

I was a huge Notion fan. However, the long sync times were driving me nuts. I have since moved to inkdrop ( https://www.inkdrop.app/ ) because it's much better for my use case: * I can write Markdown notes. I've only wanted to write markdown notes. * The syncing is incredibly fast because it's using an existing technology purpose-built for syncing (CouchDB) * I can bring my own CouchDB and not have my data locked in…

Does it support teams like Notion?

Re: Notion API – public beta

#219

Big fan of notion. Not a fan of the data lock-in or haphazard security. For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction. So I’m willing to forego the open source alternatives. But I really wish Notion gave me more options for how to host my data. AFAICT they offer no “dedicated storage” or “on premise” plan, even if you want to pay for it. In fact I…

> For tools like this, SaaS will almost always beat open source just by virtue of elbow grease and a product direction.

You mean a broken wiki and slow project management tool is better than specialized open source tools which are way better at the same thing

Re: Notion API – public beta

#220
post #145
post #97

I was a huge Notion fan. However, the long sync times were driving me nuts. I have since moved to inkdrop ( https://www.inkdrop.app/ ) because it's much better for my use case: * I can write Markdown notes. I've only wanted to write markdown notes. * The syncing is incredibly fast because it's using an existing technology purpose-built for syncing (CouchDB) * I can bring my own CouchDB and not have my data locked in…

The big attractor to Notion for me is the All-in-on workspace idea. It's a table-database, it's a wiki, it's a kanban board, it's a team calendar, it's a project gallery, it's a blog. Tables can have wiki notes, which can have tables. The recursive nature works very well for organizing your knowledgebase and having an entire org work together. The things I hate about notion. 1) pressing / anywhere opens the menu. So…

> It's a table-database, it's a wiki, it's a kanban board, it's a team calendar, it's a project gallery, it's a blog.

So what does it do that something like gitlab or phabricator cannot do ?

And if you are willing to consider different products for different things then you have dokuwiki/xwiki/wikijs/bookstack for wiki and multiple popular project management tools like kanboard/focalboard.

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