Can this REPLACE Notion as a Note-taking App? | Capacities vs. Notion Review (2024)

when we first heard about capacities we thought it looked a lot like notion capacities launched in 2022 and it's still a relatively new app with a small team behind it we're impressed after trying it out and it's actually quite different from notion and excels as a note-taking app in this video we wanted to do a comparison and share our thoughts on the differences between notion and capacity so you can decide which could work better for you if you find this video useful be sure to like subscribe and turn on the notification Bell the first aspect we wanted to compare between notion and capacities was its basic structure so notion and capacities both operate on a very different structure so if we go to notion and if we just simply create a page here you'll notice that this is a page and then inside that page we could now put another page so like this slash page and second page so then when we go to the sidebar you can easily see that this page contains a second page so in that sense this can be kind of like a folder and you can kind of imagine it sort of in a folder system like this and then you have a page inside of this folder so you can then continuously put more pages inside like this and the other way that you can store information is through databases so if we type slash database and let's say we put a table view database in here plus new database then now we also have a sample datab base inside this folder and if we open it up you can see that this sample database exists here like this so inside here we have the database in that sense we can now put another page inside here and this has carries the databases properties so if we go to the sidebar and now we go down we'll see that this one has a table View and inside we have these pages so in that sense the structure in inside notion is quite simple in that they have sort of a folder structure then you can put Pages inside as well as put databases inside which can also carry pages with its specified format capacities on the other hand is a bit different because each thing is an object so for example we were just experimenting by creating a book object and each of these are objects and then when you click them open you can see that you could put your reading notes inside here as a page but on a whole it's kind of a lack of hierarchy so if there's a page here inside of books you still see it inside of your objects like this so you have your reading notes Here the point of capacities is to sort of connect your objects together but it's not like you're trying to store your information the way that notion does with databases so inside capacities everything everything is connected to a date so you can easily see every day what happened and that's sort of why it's excels as a note taking app so you can really see your daily notes and then connect them across the days so in that sense when you're using capacities it might be better to think of it with less structure at first and then slowly build it as you go to fit your own note taking but with notion on the other hand it's kind of important to create the structure first at times so for example we have here our note taking bundle and in here we basically just add new notes inside of a database and then you can see them categorized by different topics and in that sense we built the system at the start and then we use it so if we were using capacities we might recommend that you just simply start typing your notes and then gradually sort of tag them or add the properties you need as you go instead of trying to sort of build a system from the beginning so the next thing we wanted to mention was the visuals and in that sense capacities has a lot of similarities to notion in the way that it looks so if we for example open up this page here you can see that there's an icon and you can update it by clicking on it and looks very similar to Notions so if we go to notion if we add a cover you can kind of see that it's quite similar so if we put like an office image here then we have a folder icon where we can change the icon like this and in capacities it's kind of similar in that sense so the visuals are pretty similar even this sort of uh quote thing here is pretty similar to notion you can do slash quote and have this bar like this and also the highlights so if we go here like this and then color even the color scheme is quite light so there are more colors here but if we had for example this red color this red color is pretty similar to Notions red color like this there's a lot that seems like capacities was inspired by notion but it is in an object based structure the one thing that we think is quite cool about capacity is that you can change the layout of your object so if you're in this Pages for example and you click these three dots and you go to open object settings you have all of these options from standard index card profile to encyclopedia so if you're tracking people the profile is really nice because you can actually get a circle for the picture or sometimes you want to see these things as index cards or these other options so in that sense notion is quite static in the sense that you can only have this layout and the only thing you can really change is the fonts like this in three font types and small text or full width like this so other than that you can't suddenly put your people database and have their profile pictures appear really big automatically and things like that it's not really possible with notion but in capacities it's built in to have these kinds of page layout structures so that's quite cool so the next thing we wanted to talk about is ease of use in general we feel like capacities could be really easy to use if you're just simply going for a note taking system so for example you just click plus new content and you're going to add a new page you just click page new entry and you can just start typing inside here so this is quite similar to how notion operates and it's also very intuitive and once you have a page inside here then you can just simply click all your pages and see them here you can also click calendar and see that you have a page entry today like this so in that sense it's quite simple to use but after that it's a little bit difficult if you want to do more since we created this book object we were trying to add more properties and adding properties can be kind of unintuitive especially if you're coming from notion we probably are sort of of not used to thinking this way but if we click the three dots here and we go to object settings this is where you can change the object settings and for example not being able to add a cover image unless you add it as a property was not quite intuitive for us at first even the icon you have to add it as a property so all of this is kind of on this pop-up window so that can be a little bit jarring at first if you're coming from notion so notion on the other hand is pretty intuitive in the sense that you can just type slash and get started so if you want to make a page you just type slash page and if you want to make a database you type SL database and if you want to add more properties it's also quite simple so you can only add properties inside of a database but you can just click plus and then you just select what fits your needs but with capacities you have quite a lot of configur ation to do so let's say that if we just put like select here and we want to have a Select Property so this is like a tag so that's really easy to add inside here but if we're in capacities and we want to add a property we have to go to the object settings and then click plus add a property and then we might want to do a multi select and the multi select is automatically a tag object so if you wanted something else then you have to configure that as well using uh a new object for example so in that sense it's a little bit difficult and here you can see like the options you have and what kind of multi select you can choose so the next thing we wanted to cover is notes visualization so when you have in capacities all of these ways you can see it so you can see your objects by list by wall by Gallery by table and you you can also categorize it by adding it to collections so in that sense you can kind of group all of your objects by for example personal development authors like this and the neat thing is the fact that you can see this inside this kind of graph if you click this graph View and this is really unique because it kind of reminds us also of obsidian which has this property it's very cool that you can also see this kind of web layout like this and you could just click and open up the pages that it is associated with so if you want to see how your notes relate to each other this can be a great way to see that notion on the other hand as a note taking tool is quite Limited in the way that you can see your notes so you can't really see these kinds of connections between each of your nodes so you can for example do at and then mention a page inside another location but it's not like it's going to create this web type graph for you or anything but you can visualize by using these database layouts so if you wanted to see in board view timeline Gallery list or calendar you can do so but in terms of this kind of cool note taking structure notion might not be as strong so the next smaller aspects we wanted to talk about is that in notion there is not really a full offline support but with capacities we've tested turning off the internet and it still seems to work relatively okay but we don't know how much you can trust it but in that sense maybe capacity is slightly better in terms of offline mode and the other element is the collaborative element so capacity says themselves that this is for personal Knowledge Management it is more like a tool for your mind to keep track of everything but notion is more for collaboration working with teams and task management so although you can do the personal things as well it's also very strong in that kind of team elements so that's a very key difference so notion is primarily free if you're just using it for personal use but if you want to have unlimited blocks for teams file uploads and so on you might consider the plus plan and of course there's also business and Enterprise so capacities on the other hand is a very small company and they just got started so most things are free but if you want to use more icon sets or block based linking they do limit that to the Pro Plan and those are all things that you can kind of do in notion for free so it's kind of interesting that they decided to block those in capacities Pro but on the other hand since it is such a small company and they're just getting started it's also nice to be able to support them so that's why we think that they have this kind of pricing model they even have this capaity believer so you can get beta access to Major new features so now we just wanted to share our final thoughts and we think that capacities could be great for those who simply need a digital tool to keep a knowledge based and notes system it's also exciting to see how they develop as they're still a small app if you do more than note taking notion might be a better fit so you can do everything from notes habit tracking collaboration tasks and more we hope that this was interesting for you all have you all tried notion or capacities if you have any questions or comments feel free to let us know and we hope to see you in the next video

Channel: The Organized Notebook

Views: 4,639

Keywords: notion, notion alternative, capacities, note taking, app review, comparison, replace notion, notion app, notion note taking app, capacities.io, capacities note taking, capacities review, notion app review, capacities vs. notion, capacities and notion comparison video, comparing capacities with notion

Id: AsHSOu7Zz5w

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 11 2024