Notion or Knack – When to Use Each Tool

You’re familiar with Notion, right? It’s a pretty great team collaboration tool. It’s a platform where teams can create, edit, and share documents in real time. And it’s pretty suitable for brainstorming sessions, meeting notes, and collaborative project planning.

It’s also good for note-taking and it’s pretty flexible overall. It’s a versatile tool. You can do things like knowledge management with it. You can task manage with it, put things in nice little board views, and track things to create content.

Exploring Knack’s Advantages

It’s a great platform overall. And it can even do a little bit of project management in there as well. But there is some overlap here that I believe could better suit people who are using Notion to switch over to Knack for a myriad of different reasons. Knack is a great, well-designed tool for creating custom web applications without the need for extensive coding.

It’s very suitable for businesses that need tailored solutions to address specific challenges. Knack excels in managing structured data through customizable databases. Users can define data relationships, create forms, and build views tailored to their data management needs. And something that Notion really lacks is business process automation that Knack excels in.

Business Process Automation with Knack

Knack enables the automation of business processes by creating workflows and automation rules. It’s valuable for streamlining complex processes and improving efficiency. Sure, you can build something like a CRM in Notion, but Knack can be used to build custom CRM systems to manage customer interactions, track leads, and streamline sales processes according to the unique requirements of a business. Similar to that, it can do wonderful things on the project management side thanks to its pretty amazing automation.

Comparing Data Management Capabilities

And I know, as I’ve mentioned in a previous video, the inventory tracking capabilities—as can be seen with our template here—showcase how businesses can utilize a tool like this in order to track a myriad of different products, purchases, and orders, and then put them in a front-end interface that unlike Notion can be pretty separate from the back-end data that exists. Sure, you can have a client portal sort of inside of Notion, but what you can really do inside of Knack is create a database structure that then—with those mix of forms and different use cases I talked about—allows for users to really see the difference between these two types of systems.

Flexibility vs. Rigidity in Data Handling

One is pretty much a text editor and one is a complete portal creator system that allows for form fill-outs within the platform and then front-end reports to communicate well with clients. I know for me as a pretty avid Notion user for just like personal note-taking and whatnot, well on the back end we can track data similarly and put things into databases. What you see with this application is the ability to, from a multiple layered level, actually improve your flexibility or rigidity.

Now Notion is known for its flexibility and it allows you to create a wide range of content including notes, documents, all those things.

Custom User Roles and Data Privacy

What we see though with Knack is the ability to, for specific fields, edit field settings, and allow validation rules and conditional rules to take place for specific fields and for specific user types. You can add your own custom user roles like admin or manager, etc.

And what is amazing about this is mixing it with the different fields and record types that you have. As you can see within here, you can add a specific record for a manager. You can adjust the fields that are allowed to be edited within here. While the primary focus of Knack is on app development, this can also be utilized as a much more data-oriented and data-privacy-oriented platform for a lot of the same things you can do inside of Notion.

Client Portal Challenges in Notion

In project management, you really can’t prevent people from editing fields as much as you’d like. You can only edit it from a certain level. Right? Within my Notion account, when I add anyone here—so say I were to add this account to my Notion system—I can give them edit access, which allows them to edit all of the different fields in this database, or I can give them edit access that only lets them edit the content. You can see how much more limited that is in comparison to what we have with Knack.

Inside of Notion, it is extremely difficult to actually make a client portal. Sure, I can share things out with people, but you have to essentially only share the databases in the back end, create a whole front end in an interface that doesn’t come built with any sort of toolkit or public documentation as to how to do it. And if you want to put forms in there or have any integrations, you have to use third-party tools like Tally.so and others in order to have forms built into the website that you’re going to create. And at the end of the day, it’s still not gonna be a website.

Forms and Integrations in Knack

Whereas with Knack, you can have forms built in. Right? Like this add product is a form in itself that is a low-code, easy, low-touch effort option for creating a form that can then integrate with different applications and automations in order to make this inventory management work a little bit better.

The same goes for a bunch of different use cases here: project management, financial management, sales and marketing, business ops, event management—and so many others are very similar to what you can do in Notion.

Real-Time Collaboration Features

However, just imagine it with an extra layer of automation and an extra layer of data security that just doesn’t exist in—frankly—a note-taking application. Knack focuses on empowering users to build sophisticated web applications in a much different way than Notion does.

What is cool though for both of these platforms is that Notion and Knack provide real-time collaboration features, allowing users to see changes made by team members instantly. Knack on its own does have collaboration features that are integrated into the applications users build, allowing for real-time updates.

You can see that it’s using live data on this page preview, and it allows for collaboration in real time within the context of the custom applications. While these similarities do exist, it’s important to note that the primary use cases for Notion and Knack do differ a little bit. Notion is definitely more for knowledge management while Knack is specifically designed for making custom apps and databases.

Choosing the Right Platform for Your Needs

Sometimes people try to use Notion for everything. They switch from using it for their personal to then using it for their business. And to be frank, users should choose the platform that does align with their specific needs and objectives. And we believe that many times Knack is the case for them.

Project Management Setup in Notion

Within Notion, you can make a simple project management setup by doing things like typing /table and creating a new database and then setting up something simple with new fields, like a status property and a due date. And while this is a nice drag-and-drop building setup—and even if you don’t want to get this crazy with a database—you can do a /table to literally make it a table, or you can drag out all of these.

It’s pretty simple. Like, you can do relations inside of it. But in our solutions with Knack, it has much more powerful relationships.

User Access and Interconnectivity in Knack

Similar to what I showed you before, you can imagine that in project management, if I were to share different levels of users, all of the records within here are able to be interconnected between tables and specifically adjusted from an access standpoint within the product.

And then from this Knack end, you can easily create pages. As you can see within here, we have an entire login system. Once again—not possible using Notion.

Drag and Drop Builder Features

And inside of here, when I get logged in, we have a very easy drag-and-drop builder where, as you can see, you can easily drag different parts of this page around, create more pages, have all pages, and then user pages specifically for things like account settings. So entire login systems. Forms—as you can see right here—not a thing within Notion.

And based on these forms being filled out, what’s really cool is if you go to the records area—say for example you have a form that’s filled out for a project—this will then populate the inside of the database, and you can make conditional rules for certain situations.

Conditional Rules and Automations

Like, I can make a conditional rule where if a status were to get moved to complete, it could impact other parts of the system—create automations, create tasks.

And beyond that, unlike what we have in Notion—as I mentioned previously—you can actually make reports. Like, the fact that I can make this custom report and have charts—that is not something you can do with Notion. I still don’t understand why.

But regarding this—the database back end can then go into a more visual front end with real-time updates. You have to use a third-party app every time you want to make something inside of Notion—every time you want to use a form, every time you want to have a higher level of access—even to make a portal. Sometimes there are people who utilize other applications in order to use Notion as a back end and then their tool as a front end for a portal.

Eliminating Third-Party Dependencies

Why not just cut out the middleman and utilize Knack yourself? Because this is a custom app development tool. The fact that I can make this report based on back-end information—I can make multiple views within this.

As you can see here, there are so many different options to choose from. I have a pie chart here. I have a bar chart here. And I can expand on this as much as I’d like. It’s a much better option for businesses that need tailored solutions to address specific challenges within their systems.

Advanced Customization Options

Whether it’s with the API and code in the back end making higher-level customizations or even with JavaScript built in, you can make a myriad of different automations and actually hard-code some things into your Knack system that you just merely can’t do with Notion.

It’s pretty much what you have is what you get regarding the ability to make adjustments here. And something very important to note—if you are a business that’s looking for a solution for project task management or any type of customer relationship management and you’re in the healthcare industry…

HIPAA Compliance and Security Features

We have to point out that this is a HIPAA-compliant application we’re looking at with Knack. Whereas Notion—not necessarily on the high level of security in comparison.

With its role-based access control, this is a HIPAA-compliant system, and you can actually check out our website for the entire HIPAA compliance package that we have. Because Knack does provide options for encrypting sensitive data fields, adding an extra layer of security to protect confidential information, which is great for people who need that.

So simply put, in Knack, you can do completely custom-built apps with a lot of the third-party things you’ll find need to be utilized for Notion just built right into the web app builder.

Complex Data Relationships in Knack

And it comes pre-built with a bunch of different automations, workflows, and the ability to hard-code things like CSS, JavaScript, and work with the API in the backend.

Knack really allows users to establish complex relationships between sets of data and handle more complex data relationships than Notion can. And with a higher level of role-based access and field-based access, it’s much more secure than Notion as a platform—especially when creating apps for sharing with customers and with other team members.

Conclusion and Recommendations

So if you’re looking for a tool like this, I would definitely recommend switching from Notion to Knack. Because personal use doesn’t necessarily cover off on what you can get from something that works well with the business in a secure format.

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