If you need a knowledge base or company wiki, Notion is the clear pick. It's built for documentation and excels at organizing team processes and notes, especially if you're willing to put in the setup work. Most teams find it overwhelming when they try to use Notion for everything, but as a knowledge base, that's where it shines.

Salesforce isn't even in the conversation for this use case. It's not designed for documentation or internal knowledge sharing at all. Unless you're an enterprise team with massive, complex business processes and a budget for consultants, Salesforce brings nothing to the table here.

For knowledge bases and documentation, just use Notion. Salesforce isn't a contender.

Salesforce Editor's Verdict

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is the 800lb gorilla—and if you're considering using it, we're hoping you have a myriad of reasons for it.

If you're a startup—you should not be using it.

If you're trying to stay lean and don't already know your business processes inside-and-out—you should not be using it.

If you're being pressured by your investors or others to get on Salesforce "because that's what successful businesses do"—you still, most likely should not be using it.

You should be using it if... you have highly complex business processes and have set aside a couple hundred thousand dollars to invest in a proper Salesforce consultant to help map these processes to it.

Most teams can actually just get away with HubSpot (when they are considering Salesforce).

And of those same teams, most can actually scale Copper + Pipedrive to be just as powerful, with a better UI/UX (that your team prefers), and all at a lower cost.

Notion Editor's Verdict

What is Notion?

‍Notion positions itself as an "all-in-one" workspace tool, but that doesn't mean it's ideal for "everything."

At its core, Notion is a knowledge base or wiki, designed for documenting company processes and notes. Over time, Notion has expanded its capabilities, allowing users to link notes, create databases with formulas, and more.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Good for knowledge bases and documentation.
Strong ecosystem of templates, integrations, and third-party tools built around Notion.
Good API and database structure, which makes it appealing for more technical teams.
Free tier makes it easy to experiment and test ideas.

Cons

Steep learning curve. Most teams underestimate how much setup is required.
Requires building systems from scratch, which takes significant time and ongoing maintenance.
Poor team adoption in many cases because the structure only makes sense to the person who built it.
Easy to turn into a productivity distraction, where teams spend more time designing workflows than doing work.

Key Features

All-in-One

Notion's versatility allows you to customize it into almost anything you need. This flexibility has led teams to use Notion as a CRM, project management tool, task manager, knowledge base, and more.

However, just because Notion can be adapted for various purposes doesn't always mean it should be. We often receive feedback from teams who've tried using "Notion for everything", only to find it becoming overwhelming and messy.

We regularly get emails like this.

If you want to use Notion, use it as a knowledge base/company wiki. For specific business functions like project and task management or CRM, it's usually better to opt for dedicated tools built for the job. You can find what we've listed as the best project management software and best CRM software instead.

Notion Mail & Calendar

Notion is expanding into these core parts of your workflow, but the reality is they didn’t actually build either of these products from scratch. Notion Calendar comes from Cron, and Notion Mail an email client originally called Skiff, so instead of being deeply integrated into one system, they are more so separate tools with light Notion integrations.

On the other hand, Notion Calendar is our top pick for the best calendar apps category since they've maintained a lot of the integrity from Cron, which was a calendar we loved (just don't use it as a daily planner app).

Pricing

Free: $0 per user per month. Best for individuals organizing personal projects and life.
Plus: $10/mo per user ($96/yr with annual billing). Best for small teams and professionals who want unlimited blocks, file uploads, and collaboration features.
Business: $20/mo per user ($192/yr with annual billing). Best for growing teams that need advanced collaboration, permissions, and AI-powered workspace tools.
Enterprise: Custom pricing. Includes advanced security, compliance, admin controls, and dedicated support for large organizations.