Zapier’s latest news email lists Notion alternatives, but Fibery is not there!
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Wow, that’s kind of a terrible list. I mean I’d sooner put ClickUp on there than Obsidian, which is almost nothing like Notion (no databases, no visual layouts, zero collaboration features, etc.). Not that Obsidian is a bad tool, I just wouldn’t put it on a list of Notion replacements (especially since it doesn’t have Zapier support 
). And two of the tools listed there are in beta, not even (anywhere near) final products! (Anytype and MS Loop) So yeah, what a strange list.
Unfortunately Fibery’s visibility problem is a deeper, more long-term, and systemic thing, not confined to this list. I honestly don’t fully understand why it is so invisible, but it really has proven to be that way time and time again, sadly. I see new examples all the time, where Fibery isn’t mentioned (or barely mentioned) in lengthy discussions of these kinds of tools, even reaching to tools that are from my perspective far more obscure, and certainly less capable. I can’t quite tell whether it’s a fundamental challenge of the “build it yourself” system and the complexity of options, or a messaging problem, or what. I have some ideas, to be sure, but I know the Fibery team is obviously tired of this obscurity and trying to solve it, yet it defeats many of their efforts in the grand scheme of things. And I still don’t get it.
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Have to say I was kind of amazed to see AnyType pop up there. Re: invisibility … Fibery missed the “notetaking/productivity” hype that Notion et al caught. Notion specifically has a 1000000 influencers making videos and selling templates, and looks very unthreatening at first glance. (When you actually try to use it you discover all the rough edges and obscure UI choices, but I think the very simple-looking UI gets many people over the threshold.)
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Yes, exactly. 100% agree. Notion is easy to get into at first, it’s almost “fun” to use for a while, but then almost everyone runs into issues and limitations. This is true of basically any tool, but the issues in Notion were IMO a bit more inexcusable for me, often times. And yet it remains super popular. It’s like Instagram-oriented food: looks pretty, so there are still lines out the door, but it doesn’t have to taste good. 
Maybe Fibery just needs a layer of frosting and sprinkles on top? 
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Agree!
I really think this helps. And also simplify the UI even more. Because ‘If u confuse, you lose’.
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I’ll spill the beans guys, we’re working on Stories in Fibery 
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I have to take issue with this. One of Notion’s fundamental failings is the senseless separation between “pages” and “databases”. A “database” should just be a view over all pages that match the view filter criteria, no matter where they reside. Obsidian supports exactly this with dataviews.
However the UI is complex and nothing like a table or spreadsheet.
On this, Zsolt’s excalidraw and excalibrain plugins need to be acknowledged. A lot of power, but again, high barrier to entry.
Re: the separation between “pages” and “databases” — Fibery has a similar issue due to the implementation of the type system.
I have at least glanced at, verified and evaluated all of the usual suspects in terms of note-taking and automation, workflow, data-management etc. fibery users all know how limited and undeveloped, probably even philosophically “mislead” all of the alternatives are. one of the reasons for non-inclusive lists et. al. is simply fear, I think. I wouldn’t “advertise” a potential or especially threatening competitor either: possibly not even if it made partners or larger customers unhappy.
notion is extremely limited under the hood, and that’s quite a structural/ideological problem imho, anytype is in alpha/beta and aside from flowery positivity and “goals” I didn’t feel like it would be anywhere close anytime soon, at least from data-management, purely technical/structural pov. however their main goal is commendable and not necessarily comparable with fibery’s main goals and ideology: it’s more like “DI”, i.e. dependency injection/reversion from a social, distributive maybe even oss standpoint.
they could actually become quite synergetic and complementary.
there is currently nothing comparable and as developed as fibery.
imagine if it’s hard for tech people to “evaluate”, test, research and find innovative/new solutions in a rather chaotic sea of offers and superficial marketing: obviously more administrative etc. users will - give them some time to the point where they are barely able to realize, make the shift, and maybe… export their actual data and structures. 
on a sidenote for notekeeping I use and recommend joplin, small team and not exactly “fast” datasync to mobile. not been too compelled of the other notekeeper/md apps. it’s great and rather straight-forward for “selfhosted”, “selfclouded” or on-premise as well. folder-structure/trees/notebooks are it’s main focus: I’ve never been a fan of “tags”, as they are simply a band-aid for lack of indexing and meta-/full-text-search. completely unnecessary and actual overhead and hindrance.
integration/api against/with fibery is possible as well and has been tested. i.e. webclipper ► joplin ◄ ► fibery.
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Would you mind elaborating a bit on what Notion issues you found inexcusable? Asking for a friend’s potential marketing campaign 
Yes, but it’s a plugin. Granted a free one, but none of the other tools being mentioned on that page are discussed with a reliance on 3rd party add-ons for the basic functionality that makes them worth considering.
Which makes it worthless for “the masses”, which is part of my point. Sure, Obsidian is capable of a lot of things, but it can be very clunky to actually use many of them, so while it could be included on such a list, it should probably come after a number of other tools.
Honestly I’ve forgotten most of it at this point, I barely use Notion anymore 
And to be fair some things have been fixed in Notion (some after a long, long time, such as the default edit-on-click for links rather than open-on-click). I do think one thing that remains an issue is that all Properties are at the top, vs. Fibery’s much better sort of column layout with Right Text and Views on the left, wider, and Fields on the right. Notion’s layout makes it pretty miserable to try to use Database pages as Documents IMHO (Page Customization and hiding fields is not an adequate solution to me). I also ran into significant performance issues with somewhat large amounts of Comments on a given Page, though that may have been fixed by now too. Sorry I can’t be of more help!
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When it comes to comparisons on Zapier - which they do supremely well for their own benefit - they do it as a means to target users of more apps. I saw that list this year and agree with everyone that it is a weird and ridiculous list. But for the mechanics of their digital marketing efforts (which are historically great), it has a reason to exist.
That said, you have stumbled upon the thorn in Fibery’s side: it is comparatively nowhere. G2, Product Hunt, Capterra, etc. And while Obsidian may not be strong in those areas, it more than makes up for it with their enormous developer community.
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Yeah, I realise that you meant primarily the UI and I was being contrarian; however the actual functionality that is possible (your entire workspace as a database that can be queried in any way) is so far beyond what Notion offers that I couldn’t resist 