Tools we run our business on Notion for Small Business: A Second Brain You Can Actually Search
We're Another Monday, a marketing agency in Baltimore, MD, and Notion is where our whole operation lives: client projects, notes, content calendars, SOPs, the lot. This is the owner-to-owner version of what it does, what it costs, and how to set it up without losing a weekend to it.
Affiliate disclosure: some links on this page, including the Notion buttons, are affiliate links. If you sign up through one, Notion pays us a commission at no extra cost to you. We recommend it because we run our own business on it, and we'd tell you to use it either way.
What is the Notion app?
Notion is an all-in-one workspace app that folds note taking, docs, task management, and databases into one place. Notion Labs Inc. makes it, and the people using it run from solo owners to students to engineering teams.
The easiest way to picture it: everything in Notion is a block. Text is a block, and so is a checkbox, an image, a table, an embedded file, or a whole database.
Stack blocks and you have a page. Link a few pages together and you have a workspace your team can search and edit and share from any device.
- What it is. One workspace holding your notes and documents and tasks and databases, all of it searchable from one bar.
- Who it fits. A small business whose information is scattered across a notes app, a spreadsheet, and somebody's inbox.
- What it costs. There's a real free plan that does not expire. Paid plans bill per member, by tier.
- What it is bad at. Invoicing, email, and heavy spreadsheet math. Keep dedicated tools for those three.
- The catch. The blank page. Total freedom means you decide the structure, and that decision is where most people stall.
Because the pieces are that simple, people use Notion for wildly different jobs. One person tracks a reading list, another runs a client portal, a developer documents a codebase.
If your information lives in eight places, this is the app that gathers it up.
How we run a marketing agency on Notion.
Running a Baltimore marketing agency means a dozen client campaigns moving at once, and we learned the expensive way that memory is not a system. I set up our first workspace the month the sticky notes stopped scaling.
Notion doesn't do everything for us.
Invoicing, contracts, and scheduling run through HoneyBook, and I wrote up my HoneyBook review after five businesses if you want the honest version before switching. Our email and file storage live in Google Workspace for small business. Notion holds the information those two tools act on.
Your business already knows everything it needs. It just can't find any of it.
What a small business builds with it.
Blocks and pages are raw material, and what you build out of them is where the value shows up. Notion's databases are powerful enough to behave like lightweight software, and a shared page lets your whole team create and edit at once.
The blocks are free. The system is the value.
How do you use Notion for project management?
Project management in Notion starts with one database, not one page.
Every task becomes a row, and the columns are the questions you'd otherwise ask out loud: who owns this, when is it due, what stage is it at, and which project does it belong to.
That's the whole trick, and it sounds too simple until you see what it buys you. One database can show itself a dozen different ways, so the same tasks become a board for your designer, a calendar for you, and a filtered list for the client.
One task database, not one per project
Every task in the business lives in the same table. Split them with a project column instead of splitting the database, or you lose the one view that shows you everything.
Four columns earn their keep
Owner, due date, status, project. Add a fifth only when you have felt the pain the fifth one solves, because every extra field is a field somebody forgets to fill.
The management system is the review
A task database nobody looks at is a graveyard. We open the master view every Monday, and the tasks with no owner or no due date get one before the meeting ends.
We use Notion to manage every website build this way.
One card per job, moving from scoped to in progress to review to shipped, and nothing important living in anyone's head.
Notion will not chase anybody for you the way a dedicated project management tool with notifications does. What it gives you instead is one place where the plan, the notes, the files, and the tasks are the same object.
A task with no owner and no date is a wish.
What are database views, and which one should you use?
A view is a saved way of looking at one database.
The data underneath never moves, so changing the view changes nothing except what you can see and how it's sorted.
| View | Reach for it when |
|---|---|
| Table | You want the spreadsheet feeling, with every field visible and sortable and easy to scan in bulk |
| Board | Work moves through stages and you want to drag a card from one column to the next |
| Calendar view | The date is the point, which is why a content calendar and a shoot schedule both live here |
| Timeline | Two jobs overlap and you need to see the collision before the week it happens |
| Gallery | The thumbnail carries the meaning, so photo work and social posts read faster this way |
| List | You want the fewest possible pixels between you and the next thing to do |
The mistake almost everyone makes in a Notion setup is building a second database when they wanted a second view.
Once you have two, they drift, and the same piece of information gives you two different answers.
My rule is one database per kind of thing.
Tasks. Clients. Content. SOPs. Everything after those four is a view with a filter on it.
The kanban board gets all the attention and the calendar view does more work. If your business runs on dates, build that one first and let the board come second.
Is Notion AI worth it for a small business?
Notion AI does two different jobs and they are worth wildly different amounts to you.
One is drafting, where it writes a first pass of a page, a summary, or a set of action items out of your meeting notes.
The other is answering, where you ask a question in plain English and it searches across everything in your workspace to answer it. That second job is the one that matters, and its value scales directly with how much you've put in.
The order that makes it worth buying. Fill the workspace first, then turn on the AI. Everyone I've watched do it the other way round decided the AI was disappointing, and the AI was not the problem.
On an empty workspace it has no information to read, so it behaves like a generic chatbot you're paying extra for.
On a workspace holding two years of client notes and SOPs, asking what did we agree with this client about scope beats scrolling for ten minutes.
Fill the workspace first. Then buy the AI that reads it.
I use Notion to log every work session, which is exactly the condition that makes an AI over your own pages useful rather than decorative. The tooling wiki and the client dashboards get the same treatment.
Whether Notion AI is included on your plan or costs extra depends on the tier, and Notion's pricing page is the only place that number stays right.
Notion vs Asana, Trello, and Excel.
Tools like Trello and Asana and Excel come up in every conversation about this.
The honest answer is that Notion is worse than each of them at the one thing each of them was built for. People still use Notion instead, because the one thing is rarely the whole job.
Where Notion wins is the space between them. A Trello card cannot hold the SOP, and an Excel sheet cannot hold the meeting notes, so most small businesses end up running all three and re-typing things between them.
| Tool | Better than Notion at | Where Notion wins |
|---|---|---|
| Trello | Being understood in thirty seconds by anyone you hand it to | The card can hold the whole project, not just a title and a checklist |
| Asana | Chasing people, with real notifications and workload views | The tasks sit beside the documents and the client notes they came from |
| Excel | Math, formulas, and any analysis with more than two steps in it | A row can open into a full page carrying its files, its notes and its whole history |
Canva comes up too, and it is not a competitor at all.
Canva makes the graphic, and Notion holds the plan the graphic belongs to.
If your work is genuinely one job, buy the tool built for that job. If your problem is that the job has notes and files and dates and people attached to it, that's the shape Notion fits.
Every tool you add is another place to look first.
Is the Notion app free?
The free version of Notion is a real tool, well past a seven-day teaser. One person can run their notes, their whole task list and a personal dashboard on it without hitting a wall, and nobody asks for a card to get started.
Paid plans add the team features: full collaboration, longer version history, bigger file uploads, admin controls, billed per member and priced by tier. Check Notion's current pricing for the live figures. Put one Notion subscription next to the pile of single-purpose apps it can replace and the monthly math usually lands in your favor.
Our upgrade rule: stay free while it's just you, and pay the day a teammate needs to edit alongside you.
Start free. Upgrade when the team outgrows it, not before.
Does the Notion app work on every device?
The Notion app is fully cross-platform. There's a desktop app for Mac and Windows, mobile apps for iPhone and Android, and an iPad version that turns a tablet into a solid note taking machine. Skip the download if you'd rather: the whole thing runs in a browser, and signing in gets you your workspace from any computer.
Sync is the part you'll use most. Draft a proposal on the office laptop and continue it from your phone in the school pickup line, mid-sentence. The iOS and Android apps put a widget on your home screen, so capturing a thought takes one tap. If you keep thirty browser tabs open all day, the desktop download gives Notion its own window.
Set up Notion in three steps.
Getting started is easier than the tool's reputation suggests. The hard part is deciding how to organize everything, and a template makes that decision for you.
Your email and one button gets you in. The free plan includes everything one person needs.
Open the gallery, pick a home base that fits how you work, and edit it until it feels like yours.
For one week put everything in it: ideas, tasks, photos of receipts, links. Searching for something and finding it is what makes the habit stick.
Fifteen minutes of setup beats a year of searching.
The case for fewer tools.
Each app in your stack is fine on its own. Together they're a scavenger hunt, because every extra place you store information is one more place to forget you stored it.
Bad systems don't announce themselves. They just quietly eat your Tuesday.
| The usual setup | Inside Notion |
|---|---|
| Meeting notes split between a notes app, a legal pad, and someone's inbox | One meeting database, searchable by client or date |
| To-dos on a whiteboard plus two competing task apps | Task lists attached to the project they belong to |
| SOPs buried in Google Docs nobody can locate | A team wiki with one search bar |
| Client details scattered across spreadsheets and email threads | A client database with a page per account |
| Content plans in Excel, ideas on sticky notes | One calendar, from rough idea to published |
The tools that survive the cull keep their place, because Notion integrates with the usual suspects. Slack messages can file themselves into a database.
GitHub issues sync for your developer, and Google Calendar sits beside the content plan.
Stop renting five apps that don't talk to each other.
Notion for small business, common questions.
What is the Notion app used for?
The Notion app is used for note taking, docs, task management, project boards, and databases, all inside one shared workspace. Most small businesses run it as a company wiki plus a to-do system the whole team can see. We use it for client work, content calendars, and SOPs, and we get more out of it than any other tool in our stack.
Is the Notion app free?
The Notion app has a free plan, and it doesn't expire. One person gets plenty of room on it for notes, tasks, and projects. Paid plans mostly add team collaboration, longer page history, and admin controls, so start on the free plan and upgrade once your team bumps into the limits.
How much does Notion cost if you upgrade?
Notion's paid plans bill per member, so your total depends on the tier you pick and how many people share the workspace. Notion's pricing page carries the live numbers, and reading it takes about two minutes.
What is the Notion app good for?
The Notion app is best at keeping everything your business has to remember in one searchable place. Notes, projects, client details, SOPs and plans all stop hiding across six apps, so the information you need is where you look first. Notion is weakest at invoicing, email, and heavy spreadsheet math, so keep dedicated tools for those three jobs.
Is Notion overkill for personal use?
Notion isn't overkill for personal use. Plenty of people run it purely for their own life, on budgets and habit trackers and meal plans and reading lists. Start with a single page and add to it as you go, and skip the mission-control dashboard unless you want one.
Can you use the Notion app offline?
The Notion app works best with an internet connection, and its offline support is partial. Pages you've already opened, or marked for offline use, stay available and sync back up when you reconnect. If you write on planes every week, test that workflow before you commit to Notion.
Is there a Notion app for Mac and Windows?
Notion has a desktop app for Mac and Windows, mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android, and a full version that runs in any browser. Your workspace stays in sync across every device you sign in on, so the phone shows what the laptop shows.
Should I use the Notion desktop app or the website?
The Notion desktop app and the browser version are the same product with the same features. The desktop app feels snappier and keeps Notion one shortcut away, while the browser version needs no install. Most of our team runs the desktop app on a laptop and the mobile app on a phone.
Who is Notion's biggest competitor?
Notion's closest competitors depend on the job you're hiring it for. For notes, people compare it to Evernote and OneNote. For tasks and projects, Trello, Asana, and ClickUp. For docs, Google Docs. Notion's pitch is covering enough of each one that a small team can carry fewer tools, and in our shop that pitch held up.
What are the downsides of using Notion?
The biggest downside of Notion is the blank page. Total freedom means you decide how everything gets organized, and that decision stalls people in week one. Performance can also dip on very large databases, and offline support is limited. A ready-made template gets you past the first one.
Is Notion helpful for ADHD?
Many people with ADHD say Notion helps because everything lands in one trusted place instead of scattering across apps. The honest flip side is that endless customizing can become its own distraction. Grab a ready-made template, use it as-is for a month, and let the structure do the work.
Do you really run Another Monday on Notion?
We run Another Monday on Notion every single day. Client task lists, meeting notes, content pipelines, SOPs, and our master task database all live there. That's also why the Notion links on this page are affiliate links: we only recommend tools we run our own business on.
Where Notion fits in your marketing.
A tidy workspace speeds up the work that brings customers in. Getting found is a separate job, and it's the one we take off your plate.
Every client campaign we run is planned and shipped out of the same Notion setup this page walks through, right beside the marketing services we sell to local businesses.
The tool doesn't grow your business. The system does.
You can absolutely set all of this up on your own. When the organizing half is handled and the getting-found half still hurts, that's where we come in, from SEO to a custom AI chatbot that answers your website visitors while you're with a customer.
Notes from clients whose campaigns run out of that same workspace.
Whatever you did Willis stop it they're coming in crazyyy now lol I know the owner about to get gray hairs with the jobs coming in but hey more $$
Home services client
what ever you did to stop it lol
Client text message
Operation living in your head?
Describe how you track work now and I'll say whether switching is worth it.
One less thing to worry about.
Book a free strategy session and we'll talk through your marketing the way we run our own: honestly, with a plan you can see. Ask and we'll open up the Notion setup behind it. We like Mondays so you can hate them a little less.
¡También Hablamos Español!