I was an ardent Notion fan, to the purpose the place I ran my total life in Notion, and truly stayed organized. However as nice as Notion is, it isn’t excellent, and as I discovered later, it isn’t fairly appropriate for my workflow. Because it seems, I choose spreadsheets over Notion’s databases.
However I nonetheless wanted a notetaker and a information database the place I may dump concepts, take notes, create dashboards, have to-do checklist, and extra. So among the many sea of self-hosted Notion alternate options you possibly can select, I picked AFFiNE. It has been a little bit over three months since I switched, and it is going method higher than I anticipated.
Notion slowly become extra work than it saved
When your productiveness app begins feeling like a second job
Notion is perhaps the web’s default second mind, however when you construct your life round it, you begin to see the downsides too. Subscription creep, vendor lock-in, and the nagging thought that all the pieces you are writing lives on another person’s server are all simply the tip of the iceberg.
Though my Notion subscription ended up paying for itself each month, it was nonetheless beginning to really feel restrictive, to the purpose the place I solely began utilizing Notion for only one factor.
As I stated earlier than, I choose organizing information in tables and spreadsheets. Now Notion has databases which could look much like spreadsheets, however are fairly restricted as compared. The way in which Notion handles information, particularly on the subject of tables and databases, is not fairly as versatile as one thing like Microsoft Excel and even Google Sheets. Sure, you should use formulae in Notion, however you aren’t getting the liberty of selecting information from any cell or cell vary as you need.
Eager to self-host my personal information was one other main purpose. My Notion held my mission concepts, brainstorming information for upcoming duties, notes and even supply code for initiatives I labored on on the time. That is vital info, and I am unable to have this going darkish if or when I haven’t got web entry or Notion simply decides to cease working.
OS
Home windows, macOS, Android, iOS
Free Trial
Free model obtainable
Notion is a flexible all-in-one productiveness software program that features as a linked workspace for pondering, writing, planning, and organizing all the pieces that issues, whether or not for private use, groups, or companies.
AFFiNE is the proper Notion substitute for me
The open-source app that does (nearly) all the pieces Notion does
AFFiNE caught my consideration as a result of whereas it offers nearly each function Notion does, it is also open-source and fully free to run and use, though there are paid plans if you wish to keep away from self-hosting. You’ll be able to host it your self and keep away from betting all the pieces on a closed platform’s roadmap. It is also constructed round a local-first philosophy, which implies your information lives in your disk first and might sync to a server for collaboration, as a substitute of the opposite method round.
It feels pure to maneuver between the doc mode and canvas mode in the identical software. I may define my day in a structured web page after which zoom out right into a whiteboard-style view to attach associated duties, add visible notes, or sketch flows with out ever leaving the app.
AFFiNE’s block-based editor makes it straightforward to rebuild buildings like wikis, linked notes, and mission dashboards, even when you must recreate a few of them manually. I used the migration as an excuse to wash up years of half-finished pages and duplicated templates. Notion exports could be introduced over as Markdown-like content material, however I nonetheless discovered it extra productive to rebuild the vital pages by hand and let the remaining sit in an archive.
OS
Home windows, macOS, Linux
Developer
Toeverything
Worth mannequin
Free, Open-source
AFFiNE is a workspace with absolutely merged docs, whiteboards, and databases.
Self-hosting sounded painful—it wasn’t
Why proudly owning your information beats comfort each time
Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOfCredit: Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOf
AFFiNE formally helps self-hosting, and Docker Compose is the beneficial method to do it with a superb official tutorial that’ll get you up and operating in lower than an hour. Beneath the hood, the stack is fairly customary for a contemporary net app: an AFFiNE service, Redis for caching, and PostgreSQL because the database. When you’re already operating different self-hosted instruments, it feels acquainted.
Now self-hosting is one factor, however having AFFiNE run reliably so you possibly can hook up with it from one other gadget could be a problem based mostly on how snug you’re working with networking stacks. My ISP assigns a dynamic WAN IP that modifications roughly each 24 hours. That is advantageous if you happen to’re simply shopping the web, but it surely’s annoying if you happen to’re attempting to reveal a self-hosted service like AFFiNE to the web. Each time your exterior IP modifications, the area or URL you’ve got configured to achieve your server stops working.
My answer was to make use of a dynamic DNS service which updates your DNS file robotically each time your private home IP modifications. You can too request a static IP out of your ISP to make issues less complicated, however they could or might not present one. Even then, there are occasions when my AFFiNE occasion goes down with none explicable purpose. That stated, this difficulty is extra because of my ISP always altering configurations as a substitute of any bugs with AFFiNE, so I am unable to actually blame this system.
Associated
I changed Notion with a plain textual content file and I am extra organized than ever
A word app that works on my phrases, effortlessly.
Regardless, as a result of AFFiNE is open supply and self-hostable, it sidestepps one other long-term concern: if the corporate disappears or modifications pricing in 5 years, I am not caught. I can maintain operating my very own occasion and even fork the mission if I actually wish to. That is not only a philosophical profit; it modifications how keen I’m to pour time into constructing methods and templates.
Moreover, figuring out that my information can stay by myself disks, backed up alongside all the pieces else I self-host, matches neatly inside a workflow of operating self-hosted companies as a substitute of renting all the pieces from the cloud. As soon as I spotted AFFiNE may slot into that ecosystem, the concept of retaining my total information base in a proprietary SaaS began to really feel rather a lot much less interesting.
There are options you will miss after switching
The downsides nobody mentions till you hit them
The change is not an improve in each course although. Notion nonetheless wins massively on the subject of polished templates, an enormous ecosystem of shared setups, integrations with third-party instruments, and the sheer comfort of getting all the pieces simply run in a browser with out having to fret about dynamic DNS, community configurations, or Docker containers. When you rely closely on Notion’s integrations or its database-driven dashboards, switching to AFFiNE might not make a lot sense.
AFFiNE additionally requires you to be extra intentional. You are a lot nearer to the system structure as your recordsdata, storage, and backups are all of your duty. Positive, as soon as the preliminary setup is completed and dealing as anticipated, the duty shrinks to roughly monitoring, however there’s nonetheless a whole course of that it’s essential to arrange, and nobody’s saving your information if you happen to make a mistake.
I am not going to lie, however there are irritating days after I’m reminded that self-hosting and shopper ISPs do not at all times get alongside. When the IP modifications and DNS lags, or after I’m away from dwelling and one thing is not reachable, I miss the senseless reliability of a giant hosted SaaS.
I’m not going again to Notion
My change has caught, and yours would possibly too
Three months after switching, I am shocked at how little nostalgia I’ve for Notion itself. There are options I miss in concept, however in follow, the mixture of local-first efficiency, self-hosted management, and an easier, extra targeted construction has been higher for getting actual work completed.
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Discover out why paying for Notion won’t be for you.
As a substitute of endlessly rearranging blocks in a phenomenal, cloud-hosted sandbox, most of my power now goes into the writing, planning, and pondering that truly matter. All that whereas figuring out my information is secure and sound on {hardware} I personal—and that, greater than something, makes the change really feel value it.
