Macro vs Notion

The biggest difference between Macro and Notion (we used to use Notion before we used Macro) is that Macro is built as a set of best-in-class submodules: email, messaging, notes, docs, tasks, CRM.

Notion, on the other hand, is built as an unopinionated set of markdown files and databases. Of course that allows you to build, to some extent, a CRM or a task management system or to organize your email. And in our last company we used Notion and scaled with it until we were about 15 people. The problem is that as you start getting to your own teams or really start needing sophisticated things for your business, Notion starts to break down. It's trying too hard to be a note-taking app and in that respect it is losing to Obsidian or Apple Notes. It's trying too hard to compete in so many verticals with just markdown and it turns out that domain-specific software, yes even in an AI world, is still better than a bunch of markdown docs.

Why we admire Notion, and where we think a notes-first product runs out of room.

At a glance

Dedicated blocks, not just markdown

Notion's entire pitch is unopinionated primitives. You get markdown documents and databases, and if you want a CRM or a task manager or a project tracker, here are some blocks and a template, go build it. That flexibility is real, and for a while it was the whole appeal. But a workspace you assemble by hand is a workspace you maintain by hand, and most teams end up with a beautiful Notion setup that has quietly become its own part-time job.

Macro does the opposite. We ship dedicated, purpose-built blocks for the things you actually do: a real editor, a real email client, channels, tasks, calls and a CRM, each one built to stand next to the best dedicated tool in its category, and all of them designed together as a single system. This is not a philosophical nicety. It is the reason we moved our own company off Notion and onto Linear before we ever built Macro. Purpose-built software that knows why it exists and who it is for beats DIY blocks every time.

The abstraction argument has only gotten stronger with AI. Markdown plus databases was always a compromise level of customization. Now it is the wrong one. When you want to bend a tool to your workflow, you should be able to tell your agent to write the code, because code is the right level of abstraction. No-code is no-more.

Much more than docs: email, chat, calls, and a CRM

This is not a comparison of two note apps. Underneath everything, Notion is docs and databases. It is not an email client, it is not a chat app, it does not do calls, and it is not a CRM, and Notion Mail is a layer on top of Gmail rather than a replacement for your stack.

Macro has all of it, for real, and none of it is a bolt-on. The email client is Superhuman-fast and backed by your own database instead of being throttled by Gmail's API. The channels are quieter than Slack and have a real inbox, so messages wait for you instead of scrolling away. Calls record, transcribe and feed your team's memory by default. The CRM updates itself and lives one block away instead of in a separate tool nobody opens. So when you put Macro next to Notion, you are not comparing two editors. You are comparing one editor to your entire stack.

Built for speed. Notion wasn't.

Notion is widely complained about for being slow. To be fair, it has gotten meaningfully faster over the last couple of years. But speed was never its design goal. It is ours. The backend is Rust, the frontend is SolidJS, and the whole app is keyboard-first. These are not choices you make unless you care a lot about speed, reliability and performance, and you feel the difference the moment your workspace gets large.

Open source vs. a closed box

Macro is open source, end to end: github.com/macro-inc/macro. That matters for two reasons. Your data is yours, in the open and portable, not trapped in someone's proprietary format. And the thing is extensible, so you can read the code, build on it, and self-host the parts that matter to you.

People already love Obsidian for half of this, your notes as local markdown files you own. But Obsidian itself is closed source, so the openness stops at the file. Macro gives you that data openness and is fully open source on top, so it goes all the way down. Notion is the opposite end of the spectrum: closed source, your data in their box. For technical teams that care about control and longevity, this is usually the line that decides it.

A real editor: CRDTs, offline, and an agent with a live cursor

Macro's editor brings together three things that normally do not coexist: Notion's @-mentioning, the local-first simplicity of Obsidian, and real agentic editing on top of plain markdown. As far as we know, nothing else gives you all three, which is why we think it is the best editor in this category.

Collaboration is where the architecture shows. Notion resolves edits last-write-wins on a per-block basis, where a block is roughly a paragraph. Macro treats the whole document as one cohesive object backed by a CRDT, with sync running on Cloudflare durable objects. The practical effect is live collaboration and offline editing that does not conflict and stays fast no matter where in the world you and your collaborator are. Editing a doc with someone really feels like you are sitting at the same computer.

Offline is a first-class case here, not an afterthought. Go offline, keep editing, come back, and your changes reconcile with the database and with your peers automatically, because the CRDT does the conflict resolution for you.

Then there is the agent. Most products that claim AI editing just rewrite the markdown and hand you a diff or a new version, which falls apart the moment more than one person is in the document. Macro gives the agent a live cursor into the doc, the same way a human collaborator has one. We do not know of another product that does this, and it is the only approach that actually holds up in a live, multiplayer environment.

Everything links to everything

In Notion you can @-mention another markdown doc. In Macro you can @-mention anything in your company: a doc, a task, a file, a customer email, a support ticket, a channel message, a recorded call. The links are bidirectional, so the doc and the message both know about each other, and your workspace becomes a web of context you can navigate in either direction.

That web is also how permissions work, which removes a whole category of friction. Anything you @-mention in a channel is automatically shared with the people in it. Join a channel and you gain access to its context; leave and you lose it. There is no permission-request dance, because membership is the permission.

Shared memory across your whole team

This is the thing Notion, and frankly every tool built before this era, simply does not have. ChatGPT and Claude build memory from your chats. Macro builds memory from everything: your docs, your email, your tasks, your channels, your calls, and the deals moving through your CRM, and it does it across your whole team, not just you. It refreshes nightly.

Because the memory spans the company, the agents can do things a single-app tool structurally cannot. It can route a customer report to the right person, assign a task to whoever actually owns that area, or tell you who to ask about something. None of that is technically impossible for a standalone app to attempt, it just cannot be done well, because no single tool has the right to see across all of your work. A unified workspace does.

Where Notion still wins

Notion is genuinely better at several things, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Its databases are deep and endlessly configurable, and if your work is fundamentally about structured, related records and custom views, nothing matches that depth yet, including us. Its template ecosystem is enormous, so almost any workflow has a community starting point. And after years in market it integrates with a very long list of outside tools. If a powerful, customizable wiki and database system is the single most important thing to you, Notion is the right call and you should keep using it.

Who should switch to Macro

The switch makes sense when your setup is Notion plus Slack plus a separate mail client plus a CRM: four tools that do not share context, four interfaces to check, four bills that grow with headcount. That is exactly the stack Macro is built to collapse, into one fast app, linked together, with one memory across all of it. The low-risk way in is to run Macro alongside Notion for a week, move your active docs over, point your mail and chat at Macro, and keep Notion open for the long-tail database stuff while you decide what actually needs to come across.

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