I’m a former Notion user who’s been tinkering with the Fibery app for a while now, but when I try to set up similar systems from Notion in Fibery, I just get frustrated trying to understand how to make the program work.
I am likely in the minority of user types being that I would use this as an individual (no teams) college student, which I have done in Notion for several years. Although though it’s not meant to be geared towards students either, I just kind of meshed together my own system.
I love the interface of Fibery and the fact that it runs so smoothly and doesn’t have a noose around my data. I’ve read through many of the comments on the board here and tried the options they suggest to explain the differences, but I’m still confused.
Am I just not understanding the difference in the concept or is there something else I’m missing?
I wonder if maybe the key lies in this.
Sometimes, when helping people to get to grips with Fibery I ask them to imagine what they want to see and do before even thinking about a specific tool.
Fibery is both similar and different to Notion, and starting by attempting to mimic Notion may not be the most productive tactic.
We can of course discuss how Fibery works, but maybe you’re able to flesh out what you hope to achieve as a starting point first.
It’s definitely true that this personal, Notion-like use case is not one the team is focused on right now. So that likely explains at least some of what is confusing you: the resources, examples, templates, documentation, etc. currently available are not oriented toward your needs, whereas in Notion that’s a lot of what you find out there. The community is also much smaller and so there are far fewer people making videos to show workspace setups, sharing templates to get started, etc.
I personally have a significant interest in Fibery being more usable for personal-type (PKM/task management/quantified self) systems because I use it heavily in this way myself. I also see it as a potential growth area for Fibery that could lead to a lot of conversions, just as it did for Notion.
In a general sense there is very little I can think of that Notion is capable of that Fibery is not now also capable of (to be clear some of these things like Embeds are very recent additions). And there is quite a lot Fibery can do that Notion either can’t do (automations, whiteboard), or does not do as well (relations, views, etc.). So I’m very curious what kinds of issues you are running into.
Would you be willing to share some specific examples? Or maybe even record a video of you trying to set up something you want to have in Fibery? Or an example of something you have/had in Notion that you want to translate to Fibery? Given my interest here, if you were up for it, I’d even be open to doing a video chat and screen share to try to see if we could work through some of these issues in real time. But I know that’d be a bit much for most people to try. Ideally someone from the Fibery team would be able to do that with you, but as I said their focus is not on the individual use case so they may not be able to justify the time to do so. And that’s not a knock on them, as a small team they understandably have to prioritize and focus.
Hi Oshyan, I’ve been using Fibery for the last couple of months and it was quite a surprise not having discovered this powerful platform before. Fibery has many many points where overcome Notion, mostly related to team-related tools and workflows. But, with the new incorporations in Notion the last couple of weeks, now I am not sure about the difference gap between both platforms. Did you have the chance to make a new comparison about them? Also, Coda has done a couple of new feature launches recently. Thanks!
There are a few features that Fibery has that Notion does not:
Including multiple types/databases within a view
View semantically similar entities
Use GPT4
View entities and their properties inline, and edit them
Notion has a much better mobile experience. Also many more resources for the PKM use case.
As far as Coda goes. They have inline formulas, a random function (important for me) and I find their formula language and implementation to be more mature and flexible. But they don’t have semantically similar entities, inline properties, easily adding new entities inline, backlinks, can’t query multiple types in a view.
The above is not exhaustive, but some of the main points I’ve noticed. I prefer the general aesthetic of Coda and Notion vs Fibery.
None of the above support unlinked mentions or quickly adding a new type like Obsidian and Tana do.
@Oshyan I’m really curious how many people are or are trying to use Fibery for PKM. I still maintain that there’s a bigger opportunity here than is being realized. It seems you do too.
I haven’t had a chance yet, unfortunately! I did just see they added Automations, finally. I need to take a look a what they have released lately. Oddly I don’t see anything for “Automations” on their releases page, but maybe it’s in beta or something: Neue Funktionen – Notion
I generally don’t consider Coda to be ideal for a direct comparison because it is both more powerful and more limited than both Fibery and Notion, hah. It’s hard to explain, but Coda does not work well for me as a single place to do everything in (project management connected to documents and databases feeding info to dashboards, collecting and connecting ideas and features and bugs, etc.), which Fibery and Notion do very well. And at the same time Coda’s in-line field functions and more powerful and intuitive formulas, etc. make it better than Fibery and Notion for creating “functional documents”/pages/interfaces, “dashboards”, etc. But I should take another look at Coda some time to make sure it hasn’t become better at the things I thought it lacked last time I experimented.
Yes, that’s an important point for many. Occasionally also for me. I do think an Obsidian integration could create opportunities for mobile interaction that Fibery team will probably not get to implementing for quite a long time, if ever. But I’ll try not to beat the Obsidian integration drum too much. I know you’re already onboard.
Oh very, very much so. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem though because I’m sure Fibery team has surveys, user demographics, etc, etc. that likely show the PKM user base and interest level is small. There is of course a difference between how well a tool can work for a given use/user, and how much it actually is used for that. It’s an unknown and a gamble for Fibery to try to focus on PKM users, and they don’t have a pricing model that would benefit much from it, at least not directly (though I maintain that a Notion-like approach of continuing to offer solo use for free would result in potentially good conversion as those users introduce it to their “day jobs” and other business contexts organically).
I will say that as a small way of hopefully helping this cause, I hope to share some PKM templates and record some simple videos showing Fibery’s use/ease of use and advantages (while acknowledging disadvantages, like if someone really needs mobile, then it’s a no-go). I think this is one thing that Fibery lacks overall, not just for PKM purposes. So if a few of us Fibery nerds could record some demos/how-tos from a user perspective, that could be helpful.
Ideally someone from the Fibery team would be able to do that with you, but as I said their focus is not on the individual use case so they may not be able to justify the time to do so. And that’s not a knock on them, as a small team they understandably have to prioritize and focus.
