Notion has no doubt taken note that a lot of people (myself included) use them as a quick and dirty wswyg web site builder. This new feature can be used for a lot of things, but it strikes me as particularly good for that use case. In fact, if I were a gambling man, I'd wager that their product roadmap is full of gems like this and are leading to them positioning themselves as a competitor to the likes of Squarespace and Wordpress.
I thoroughly enjoy writing "nice" internal articles for my company in Notion. It just works. Props to them for pulling this off so effectively. I look forward to seeing what they've got coming in the pipeline.
I'm using Notion as the DB for a simple jobs site with a static frontend and it's been really nice. Super easy to use CRUD interface out of the box and it's easy to rapidly iterate on data models.
Normally I approach these kinds of projects with a well planned out data structure and proper migrations but the velocity in getting something usable out the door and getting people to use it as been well worth the shortcut. I hope Notion leans into this use case.
Really cool to read about the source for the idea and how it developed over time. But it continues to be disappointing that notion’s “free for individual students and educators” plan only applies to colleges with a .edu domain.
I find myself really wishing that something like notion was being developed on a not for profit basis with more portability for data. I always feel the same way about Twitter; there’s so much utility being built here but the profit motive makes it hard to invest in long term because eventually it will be bought out or something else.
I mean I don’t have a solution here but it’s a shame that tools like these represent the digital public commons but they’re built and controlled by profit motivated provare entities.
Notion dropped block limits for free plan few years ago, so you should be able to use it for free. Though things like API and file upload limits are still there and ask for a personal paid plan.
I just signed up to the "free for individual students and educators" plan using an .ac.uk domain (the UK equivalent of the US' .edu). Perhaps your problem is more of an edge case? What is the TLD you are trying to use?
AFAIK .edu is used by pretty much all US universities, and very few outside the us. I went to a university that does have a .edu domain (ethz.ch is aliased as eth.edu), but that was a completely undocumented feature. You just had to be in-the-know.
It looks like I was wrong to assume that it was tied to the .edu domain name -- I thought notion was using that as a way to avoid pouring resources into verifying eligibility.
My wider point is that it's disingenuous to have a bold heading [0] "Free for individual students and educators", and then in the FAQ lower on the page state:
"You're not eligible if...you're a k-12 student or k-12 educator"[0]
Oh. I thought your point was that their inclusion criteria were too narrow (.edu only) and as such did not include all universities.
I remember this wording irritating me when I was a k-12 student myself. I would get excited at "Free for students!" headings and then be disappointed when the discounts were in fact for higher education only.
We did 1.5 years ago, and to be honest, it's been a mixed bag. Large workspaces become pretty slow, but it's nice to have everything in a single place (docs, onboarding, issues etc). The only thing I really miss is the jira auto issue closing feature when merging a PR. Besides that it's been decent, though the slowdowns and slow search can be a pain.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 43.6 ms ] threadNormally I approach these kinds of projects with a well planned out data structure and proper migrations but the velocity in getting something usable out the door and getting people to use it as been well worth the shortcut. I hope Notion leans into this use case.
Schema design is a process of discovery and code-first approaches become too sticky to change.
I think we need to head back to the ease of MS Access for data modeling and migrations should be automated.
I find myself really wishing that something like notion was being developed on a not for profit basis with more portability for data. I always feel the same way about Twitter; there’s so much utility being built here but the profit motive makes it hard to invest in long term because eventually it will be bought out or something else.
I mean I don’t have a solution here but it’s a shame that tools like these represent the digital public commons but they’re built and controlled by profit motivated provare entities.
[1] https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
AFAIK .edu is used by pretty much all US universities, and very few outside the us. I went to a university that does have a .edu domain (ethz.ch is aliased as eth.edu), but that was a completely undocumented feature. You just had to be in-the-know.
My wider point is that it's disingenuous to have a bold heading [0] "Free for individual students and educators", and then in the FAQ lower on the page state:
"You're not eligible if...you're a k-12 student or k-12 educator"[0]
[0]: https://www.notion.so/product/notion-for-education
I remember this wording irritating me when I was a k-12 student myself. I would get excited at "Free for students!" headings and then be disappointed when the discounts were in fact for higher education only.
It's misleading, really.