A Notion alternative for notes, when Notion is too much

Notion can be almost anything: a wiki, a project board, a database of books, a company handbook. That flexibility is the reason people love it. It is also the reason some people start looking for a Notion alternative, because all they wanted was somewhere to write a list.

What Notion is built for

Notion describes itself as an AI workspace. On its own site it talks about docs, projects, a central knowledge base, search across your work, automation, and AI built for teams. It is designed so a group of people can shape pages, databases and templates around the way they work.

If that is what you do, Notion is a strong fit. A team wiki, a content calendar, a personal database with views and filters: those are things a plain notes app will never do, and should not try to.

The cost of flexibility for plain notes

Flexibility is paid for in setup. Before you write, you decide where the page lives, what it is inside, which template it uses, whether it should be a database. Each decision is small. Together they turn a two second note into a small design project.

You may recognise some of these:

• Building before writing. You spent an evening on a perfect system and then did not use it.
• Pages inside pages. You know the note exists, but not which page it is under.
• Slow capture on the phone. By the time the right page is open, the thought is gone.
• Maintenance. Tidying the workspace has become a task of its own.

None of that means Notion is bad. It means a workspace is a heavier tool than a shopping list needs.

When to stay with Notion

• You work with other people in shared pages.
• Your notes are really documents, with structure you use.
• You rely on databases, views and relations.
• Your projects and your notes need to link to each other.

If that is you, keep Notion. You might still want a quick place for small notes next to it, and that is a fine combination.

When a simple notes app fits better

• Most of what you write is short: lists, reminders to self, ideas, a recipe.
• You write on your phone, often in a hurry.
• You never use databases, and you have stopped using the templates.
• You want to find notes with search, not by remembering where you filed them.

In that case a Notion alternative built for notes gives you the part you use and drops the rest. Very Simple Notes, for example, is one list of notes with search, a star for what matters and an archive. Bold, lists and checklists come from one floating bar, and you never see markup. There are no pages inside pages, no databases, no templates and no shared workspaces. It is an iPhone app today, with no web or Android version yet.

What a note actually needs

Strip a note down and very little is left: a title you can search for, some text, maybe a checklist, and a way to mark the few that matter right now. Everything beyond that is useful only when you use it. A good test is to look at your ten most recent pages in Notion. If they are plain text and lists, the workspace around them is doing nothing for those notes. If they are full of linked databases and properties, you are using Notion for what it is good at, and you should keep doing that.

The AI part

Notion has AI built into the workspace. A simple notes app can take a different route: instead of adding AI inside the app, it lets the AI agent you already use connect to your notes. In Claude you add Very Simple Notes as a connector by pasting https://verysimplenotes.com/mcp and signing in. Then Claude can read, write and update your notes from any chat, and the app itself stays plain.

How to move without losing a weekend

1. Keep Notion for what it does well. Leave documents, databases and shared pages where they are.
2. Pick the living notes. The lists and short notes you open every week.
3. Copy them over by hand. Paste the text and rebuild checklists with the checklist button.
4. Give each note a clear title. That is your whole filing system now.
5. Try it for two weeks. If you reach for the new app first when you need to write something down, it is working.

The idea behind this is simple: write first, organise only when it pays. Minimalist note taking goes into that in more detail.

If you want notes without the workspace, Very Simple Notes is a simple notes app that does exactly that: rich notes and checklists without markup, search, a star, sync with Apple or Google sign-in, and a Claude connector so your agent can write notes for you. It costs $0.99 a month, the first month is free, and your notes are hosted in the EU with no ads.