Why I even compared these two tools
The funny thing is I did not set out to compare Microsoft Loop and Notion at all. I just had a document problem one morning. Someone on my team dropped a file in Teams, another person tagged me in a Notion page, and then I realized half the info existed only inside screenshots floating across Slack. I wanted one place that people could actually work in together without me copying and pasting text like a robot. Originally I leaned toward Notion because I had been using it off and on for years, but the promise of Loop being built directly into Microsoft 365 made me curious. So I opened both side by side.
Notion felt like an old messy desk where everything sort of worked if you knew where to click, while Loop looked clean but weirdly empty. My initial impression was that Loop wanted me to start fresh with their little building blocks while Notion already had integrations, shortcuts, and importantly, search that worked decently well. The problem was Loop behaved strangely at random times — sometimes a page refused to refresh unless I manually reloaded the whole browser tab. And that was enough to start this comparison journey 🙂
Creating and sharing docs in Loop
When I created my first Loop workspace the UI asked if I wanted to add members. That part actually worked fine, but what got me was the sharing pane. I hit copy link and sent it to a teammate who was also inside the Microsoft 365 environment. They could not open it without me toggling a small slider buried under an “Advanced link settings” menu. It felt like Microsoft forgot most of us just want a single clear button that says “yes anyone you add to this workspace can see this block.” Instead, I bounced between two tabs trying to fix permissions.
Another odd moment was the way Loop syncs into Teams chats. The idea is nice: you paste a component inside Teams and people edit live. In practice, sometimes the update lagged a few seconds, sometimes more than half a minute, which is long enough for someone to assume their typing did not work and redo it. That left me with duplicated lines of notes. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I do however like the way Loop handles very small sections as independent little blocks. If all you need is a checklist, it is faster than opening a whole new Notion page. That saved me once when I just needed a tiny decision table during a meeting. Speaking of tables, Loop tables are snappier than Notion’s database, but you lose filtering and sorting, which I did miss badly.
Notion for messy multipurpose work
Notion feels like a tool made specifically with chaos in mind, and I mean that in the best way. If I want a page with images, embedded tweets, random math formulas, and nested folders pretending to be a knowledge base, it just lets me do it. The permission controls are easier to grasp too — when I share a link, the text actually tells me “can view” or “can edit.” No hunting for hidden toggles.
I did hit annoying slowdowns though. Notion pages that are very long (like meeting notes stretching back months) just stutter while scrolling. Sometimes the search button at the top refuses to surface the latest content until after refreshing. Once I thought a whole page disappeared when in fact it was there but hidden behind a collapsed toggle I forgot making. That led to 20 minutes of panic, which I still remember clearly because my heart rate spiked 😛
One useful trick with Notion is combining databases for project docs. For example, I set up one database for all draft articles, another for automation tests, and a relation field between them. That way I could track which automations had been tested against which published posts. Loop does not have anything this close to relational databases right now.
Real time collaboration behavior
This was the part I cared about most because nothing kills momentum like two people writing in slightly different versions of the same doc and then arguing whose version is newer. In Loop, every keystroke shows up for the other person fast when it works, but when it does not it is awkward. I have experienced cases where I was typing a sentence and my coworker’s cursor just froze. A few seconds later their edits appeared all at once. So the live aspect sometimes feels like sending small text messages instead of actually co editing line by line.
Notion on the other hand shows little avatars floating exactly where people type. That gives peace of mind. Even if sync is not perfect, at least I can see they are moving around. The issue though is when editing a database — the page part updates in real time, but property updates can feel slightly delayed.
How each tool handles exporting
I under estimated how often I need to export docs until I tried doing it across Loop and Notion. In Loop, exporting is not obvious. There is no big button clearly labeled export. You basically end up copying content into Word or OneNote if you want it to survive outside Loop. A bit ironic since it is meant to sit inside the Microsoft ecosystem.
Notion makes exporting more transparent. You can download pages into PDF or Markdown. The PDF sometimes clips wide tables, which feels sloppy, but at least it is possible. For a teammate who insisted on keeping their files backed up offline, that feature was a lifesaver.
When integrations stop working suddenly
My breaking point happened while building a Zap that was supposed to trigger from new Notion pages and push them into a database table. It worked for weeks, then one morning the Zap just stopped. Nothing in the logs explained why. I later found a thread on the Notion API mentioning random failures with rate limits. Meanwhile my Loop to Teams sync had been breaking every once in a while too, except instead of failing quietly it duplicated components. That left me cleaning up long lists with multiple iterations of the same bullet points.
I mention this because neither tool is totally solid. You think you can rely on them until Tuesday at 9 am when you are trying to run out the door for a meeting and suddenly nothing syncs. This is the point where you learn patience, or at least learn to keep a backup in simple text files.
Pricing and practical costs involved
Loop currently comes bundled inside Microsoft 365 subscriptions. That means if your company already pays for Office, you are effectively paying for Loop though maybe nobody on your team noticed it. Notion is freemium style. You can get pretty far on the free plan, but heavy team use or lots of databases make you hit the cap. A paid Notion plan costs somewhere in the range of the price of a few coffees per person monthly. So cost wise, if you are already on Microsoft you might as well try Loop. But for individuals starting from scratch, Notion feels like less of a leap.
The problem of teaching new teammates
One thing I overlooked was how confusing it is to onboard new folks, especially remote contractors. Loop scared them off right away. They saw the blank white blocks and asked me “where is the doc.” Notion pages, even messy ones, at least look like a traditional page. People know what to do with a page. So training is easier there.
That said, when a teammate actually got comfortable with Loop, the small blocks worked nicely for focused conversations. For example someone posted a single Loop task list with five items into our Teams chat and we finished those tasks much quicker because the scope was constrained. That would have been lost inside a giant Notion database unless I carefully filtered everything.
Which tool I actually kept using
Honestly I still open both. When I need structured project tracking with linked databases, I default to Notion. When the need is a small throwaway decision doc inside a chat, I reach for Loop. I did not expect to split my workflow, but the bugs and quirks forced me into this arrangement. At least I know where to look when something fails. For anyone wondering, yes I still have too many tabs open at once and half the time I forget which of the apps I pasted the meeting agenda into