Starting with the same blank page but different brains
If you’re toggling between Heptabase and Notion trying to figure out which one gives you more room to think clearly (and not just make fancier to-do lists), I’ve been stuck in that loop too. I’ve used Notion on and off for years — mostly when I needed quick templates, collaborative notes, or lightweight databases. It’s sleek, and the public page sharing is the easiest way I’ve ever sent clients meeting notes without requiring them to log in. That said, it becomes a mess real quick when you’re trying to go deeper than just listing stuff.
Heptabase hit differently the first time I opened it. A giant whiteboard with cards that you can move anywhere? I actually whispered “finally” when I realized I could connect concepts across space without overthinking the traditional note hierarchy. It kind of reminds me of the first time I used Miro but with a purpose — I wasn’t collaborating freestyle, I was actually thinking through an idea visually.
With Notion, I often end up organizing before even thinking. Like, I’ll spend twenty minutes fiddling with toggles and sub-pages trying to get a second-brain system in place, then never actually put ideas in there. Meanwhile Heptabase just lets you throw messy notes on a board and connect them later, which feels a lot more like how my brain actually processes a new topic.
Working with note structure versus visual structure
Notion chooses structure first — databases, pages, markdown blocks. You know the drill: text blocks, headers, bullet lists, callouts, maybe a Kanban view for flair. It looks clean, especially when shared. But everything is nested, linear, and expects you to know what category a note belongs to before you’ve even written it. If you’re working on something open-ended like a new theory or concept you haven’t fully defined yet, that’s frustrating.
Heptabase does structure later. Which might sound chaotic, but actually helps if you’re in research or idea development mode. You start with cards. Each card is a self-contained thought (like a note), and you place them visually on a board. Then you draw lines between them or group them without worrying where they belong permanently. It’s kind of like skimming sticky notes across a desk, except ones you can open, tag, and link at will.
There’s one week I clearly remember where I had to prep for a UX research presentation. In Notion, it was tidy but flat — a database with research goals, quotes, diagrams, and tags. Looked okay but I didn’t *feel* the connections. So I moved it to Heptabase and within twenty minutes I had quotes clustered near each pain point, follow-ups mapped in sequence, and a quick timeline arc drawn across the board. Suddenly the story made sense.
Notion never crashed, but I also never felt like it helped me *think the thing through*. Heptabase actually gave me insight — because I could spatially see contradictions.
Syncing issues that made me stop trusting one
Back in October, I set up a whole Notion database for a nonfiction book project. Chapters as pages. Themes as tags. Character arcs as property filters. Maybe I overbuilt it, but it looked kind of gorgeous. Then one week some pages just didn’t sync across devices — edits I made on my phone disappeared when I opened it on desktop. I didn’t notice till two voice notes I typed up during a subway ride were missing entirely. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I tried force-refreshing. Logged out and back in. Eventually found that the mobile app had cached a different version and silently refused to overwrite anything because of… I still don’t know what. That was the moment I stopped using Notion for anything personal or idea-related. I like pretty pages, but I like not losing my thinking more.
Heptabase doesn’t feel flawless either — it’s desktop-only unless you count the awkward mobile reader. But that’s the thing: it never pretends to sync what it can’t. It literally won’t let me open it on mobile in fully editable form, so I have zero false expectations. I work on my laptop, I know where the truth lives. It’s not ideal, but it’s honest. And that’s weirdly comforting.
Trying to teach someone else how to use each
I once tried teaching a teammate Notion in less than an hour. Bad idea. I ended up writing three separate Looms, each explaining a specific feature set: databases, linked views, and sharing permissions. Because Notion lets you do everything but makes it all slightly complicated. If someone doesn’t *get* that databases can look like pages but work like spreadsheets, they’ll treat the system like a mess of disconnected files.
Now contrast that with me trying to show Heptabase to my freelance writing buddy who hates structure (his Google Docs folder is named “stuff maybe”). Heptabase clicked for him in under 10 minutes. I showed him a blank board, added a card for a concept, dragged another one for a source quote, then connected them. Boom. Idea management. From there he just kept going — no tabs, no property settings. He got addicted to the simple act of looking at his thinking on a big virtual table.
Yes, Heptabase takes longer to master if you’re planning to structure ideas across multiple boards and research areas. But unlike Notion, the beginner entry point feels natural rather than overwhelming. And most importantly, you don’t have to memorize shortcut keys or specific view logic to start.
What actually happens when you paste stuff
Tiny thing but it matters: Notion does weird stuff when you paste from other apps. If I copy a bulleted list from Google Docs, half the time Notion converts it into `Text` blocks instead of usable bullets. If I paste code, it sometimes assumes I want a “code block” and changes the font to ugly monospaced even if I didn’t ask. Basically, it tries to be smart but ends up being a little too aggressive.
Heptabase doesn’t judge you when you paste. If you throw in raw text or copied content from elsewhere, it just leaves it as-is in the card. You can format if you want to—but it never assumes structure you didn’t intend. And when you’re in full research mode, flipping between PDFs, emails, and articles, that predictability is gold. I don’t want my browser-tab memory to also include “did Notion break my formatting again.” 🙂
Also this still bugs me: in Notion, if you accidentally highlight text and press backspace, it can delete the whole block. In Heptabase, text behaves closer to Google Docs—undo actually does what you expect. Why is that so rare?
Search does not mean the same thing in both
Notion’s search is built for published stuff. It works great if you remember the title of a page or a phrase inside it. That’s because it’s assuming you’ve already organized your content well and now you’re just retrieving information. Fine for SOPs or meeting notes. Not great if you’re typing up messy raw fragments and then trying to surface patterns later.
Heptabase’s search is way more relevant for raw thinkers. It doesn’t just find cards by title — it surfaces tags, links, board locations, and even partial matches inside a paragraph. You can also filter by tag type while you search, which is insane when you’re studying something like cognitive science and need to triangulate a concept across five sources.
Once I used search to trace how often I’d linked the term “identity collapse” across cards from three different authors. Notion literally couldn’t do that for me without custom rollups and database filtering gymnastics. In Heptabase, it was three clicks.
Also, if you need actual source references, Heptabase lets you *see where the idea is located*, not just that it exists. That spatial awareness makes me trust it more.
The one missing thing that keeps surprising me
So this shocked me at first: Heptabase doesn’t natively share public links to boards (yet). You can export, you can share individual cards, but not a full interactive whiteboard.
Coming from Notion — where generating public facing workspaces is as simple as toggling “Share to web” — that felt like a step backward.
It’s probably the biggest dealbreaker if you’re a content team that needs external viewers. We had a client ask for a shared planning board and I automatically opened Heptabase… then realized we couldn’t show them the actual thinking space without a screen share. 😕
It turned out fine — we exported the board into a structured PDF with annotations — but it wasn’t the same. I really missed the single sharing link. Until then, Heptabase feels more like a personal brain than a collaboration platform.
When visual layering genuinely saves the day
Here’s a weird little moment that sold me completely on Heptabase. I was figuring out a content strategy for a side project involving ADHD, design education, and habit loops. These were three totally different research zones that *shouldn’t* overlap, except I couldn’t stop seeing the same themes repeating.
In Notion, I had each topic on a separate subpage. No matter how I labeled or tagged them, I couldn’t *see* the overlap.
On Heptabase, I made three parallel clusters on a board: one for each topic. Then I noticed the same quote from a clinical psychology paper sitting under “ADHD” also perfectly described a teaching failure I noted under “design education.” I literally connected them with a line, opened both cards side-by-side, and wrote a new connection card between them.
That card — which only existed because of spatial thinking — became the intro paragraph of a blog post that performed better than anything else that quarter. I’d never have even *found* that connection in Notion.
Sometimes you’re not looking for organized notes. Sometimes you’re looking for the shape of your own brain. Heptabase actually helps you find it.
What I ended up using both for
Okay real talk. I didn’t fully abandon Notion. I just stopped pretending it was a thinking tool.
Now I use Notion like a publishing platform. Finished guides, procedures, templates, content calendars — stuff that’s shareable, repeatable, pretty. Things I wouldn’t mind a client clicking on.
Heptabase holds the mess. The ideas, the rough cards, the arguments, the doubts, the reread paragraphs that stayed stuck in my brain and turned into something else. It’s allowed to be broken, nonlinear, spatially weird. That’s where I go when I have to figure something *real* out.