Who this is for
This page is for people who have set up Notion more than once. You made the dashboard, the databases and the templates, and used it properly for two weeks. Then life got busy, the upkeep piled up, and you went back to texting yourself things. If that isn’t you, and you enjoy building and tuning your workspace, Notion is probably the right tool and you can stop reading here.
I have built more Notion workspaces and Obsidian vaults than I have used. Commonplace exists because I got tired of that.
The difference in one sentence
In Notion, you decide the structure first and then put information into it. In Commonplace, you put information in first and it decides the structure. Everything else on this page follows from that.
Side by side
| Commonplace | Notion | |
|---|---|---|
| Capture | One input for text, voice, photos, screenshots, files, PDFs and links. You don’t say where it goes. | You open the right page or database and add it there, or keep an inbox and sort it later. |
| Structure | Generated from what you send, and maintained for you. | Built by you: pages, databases, properties, views, templates. |
| Databases and trackers | Created from what you log. Say “$18 on lunch” and an expense tracker appears, with columns, totals and a chart. | Designed and configured by you, then filled in by you. |
| Relationships | Maintained automatically. Three messages about Sam end up on Sam’s page. | Relations and rollups you set up between databases. |
| New information | Updates the existing page or tracker. A moved class changes the schedule. | You find the right page and edit it. |
| Raw source | Every message is kept exactly as sent, and pages trace back to it. | The page is the source. What you typed is what is stored. |
| Time relevance | Reminders, birthdays and deadlines surface on Home when they’re relevant, with nothing to set up. | Reminders and calendar views you configure per database. |
| Setup time | None. | An hour to a weekend, then ongoing. |
| Collaboration | Built for one person’s life. | Very good for teams, shared docs and wikis. |
| Customization | Little. You choose your spaces; it chooses the rest. | Nearly unlimited. |
| Platforms | iOS and Android. Private beta. | Web, desktop and mobile. |
Where Notion is better
- Teams. Shared docs, comments, permissions, a company wiki. Commonplace doesn’t do any of this and isn’t trying to.
- Control. If you want a specific property on a database, a specific view, or a page laid out a certain way, Notion lets you. Commonplace doesn’t.
- Long documents. Notion is a good writing tool. A page in Commonplace is a record of what you told it, not a document editor.
- Templates and ecosystem. Thousands of templates, integrations and an API. Commonplace has none of that yet.
- Maturity. Notion has been around for years and has a free plan. Commonplace is a mobile app in private beta.
Where Commonplace is better
- Nothing to set up. There are no databases to design before you can log your first expense.
- Nothing to maintain. The structure changes as your life does, and stale pages don’t pile up because you got busy.
- One input for everything. You don’t open the right page first.
- Trackers appear from what you log, with real columns, stats and charts.
- New information updates what exists instead of becoming another note.
- Things come back to you. Home shows what matters today, reminders carry the relevant page with them, and it follows up on things you mentioned.
Three things that need setup in Notion
In Notion, logging an expense means an Expenses database with Amount, Category and Date properties, which you then fill in on your phone at lunch. In Commonplace it is one message.
Keeping track of people means a People database, or a personal CRM template, and a new entry every time you meet someone. In Commonplace you write the paragraph you would have texted yourself.
A class schedule means a database with a day, a time and a room for each class, and a calendar or board view on top. In Commonplace you send the screenshot.
And when the lab moves, you tell it, and the schedule changes. How it works has the full list of what it builds and how it keeps things updated.
Using both
Plenty of people will keep Notion for work and use Commonplace for their life. That is a sensible split. Notion is good at documents and shared systems. Commonplace is good at the stream of small things that never fit in a document: what you spent, who you met, when the lab moved, what your mom’s pasta recipe is.
What about Obsidian and Apple Notes?
The same comparison holds for Obsidian, with more setup and more control. It holds in the other direction for Apple Notes or Google Keep: easy to put things into, and flat, so nothing adds up and nothing comes back. Commonplace sits between them. It is as easy to put things into as a notes app, and it produces the kind of structure you would otherwise have to build in Notion.