I get this question often: "Why not just use Notion Sites to publish?"

It's fair. Notion is fantastic. But after years of experimenting with Notion as a publishing platform, I realized it solves a fundamentally different problem than what serious bloggers and writers need. That's why I built Jottings.

Notion is a Knowledge Management Tool (With Publishing Bolted On)

Let me be clear: Notion is incredible. I use it myself for research, note-taking, and keeping my life organized. It's the closest thing we have to a digital brain. The database features are powerful. Collaboration is seamless. It's the best all-in-one PKM system out there.

But here's the thing—Notion Sites feels like an afterthought.

Notion was built to be a workspace for organizing information. Publishing is a second-class feature added later. When you use Notion Sites, you're taking a collaboration-focused tool and trying to repurpose it for public-facing content. It works, but it's like using a truck as a sports car. It'll get you there, but it's not what the truck was built for.

The friction is real:

• Your published site looks like everyone else's Notion page
• Performance is tied to Notion's infrastructure, not optimized for reading
• SEO feels like an afterthought (no proper RSS feeds, limited control over meta tags)
• You're paying for features you don't need for publishing (real-time collaboration, permission management, etc.)

Jottings is a Publishing Tool (First and Only)

I built Jottings with a singular mission: make publishing effortless and fast.

Every design decision prioritizes one thing—getting your words to readers. Not managing databases. Not collaborating with teams. Publishing.

This changes everything about how the platform works.

Speed Matters More Than You Think

Jottings sites are static (HTML, CSS, images only). No database queries on page load. No waiting for client-side JavaScript to hydrate. Just pure HTML that renders instantly.

Notion's dynamic approach means every page load makes API calls. There's latency. There's overhead. For a reading experience, this friction adds up. Readers notice. Search engines notice.

SEO Isn't Bolted On

With Jottings, proper SEO is baked into the foundation:

• Auto-generated sitemaps and robots.txt - Search engines know how to crawl your site
• Full RSS feed support - Your readers can subscribe. Notion doesn't do this well
• Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata - Your links look great when shared
• Custom domain support - Own your publishing infrastructure
• Automatic canonical URLs - No duplicate content issues

Notion's approach to SEO feels aspirational. The tooling is there, but it's not optimized for discoverability. Jottings assumes you want people to find your writing.

Static Sites are Built for Reading

There's a reason static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Next.js) have thrived for over a decade. They're incredibly fast, incredibly stable, and incredibly user-friendly for readers.

Notion Sites load content dynamically. This means:

• Higher latency (users wait for API responses)
• More data consumption (especially on mobile)
• More opportunities for things to break
• Higher bandwidth costs for Notion (so they add limitations)

A static site served from a CDN (like Jottings does via Cloudflare) is faster, cheaper, and more reliable.

Microblogs, Not Databases

Notion is powerful because you can structure any kind of data. That's overkill for publishing.

Jottings keeps it simple:

• Write in plain text or markdown
• Add photos, links, or quotes
• Organize with tags
• That's it

No database configuration. No learning a new tool. No overhead. Just writing and publishing.

The Trade-off: Features vs. Focus

This is important: Jottings is not trying to replace Notion for PKM. It's not trying to be your workspace. It's not built for teams or complex information architecture.

If you need:

• A powerful database to organize work across teams
• Real-time collaboration
• Complex relational data structures
• An all-in-one workspace

Notion wins, hands down.

But if you need:

• Fast, SEO-friendly publishing
• RSS feeds for your readers
• A distraction-free writing experience
• Full control over your site's performance
• To own your publishing infrastructure

Jottings is built for you.

The Real Question

The choice isn't really "which tool is better." It's about what you're optimizing for.

Notion optimizes for comprehensiveness. It's building the digital operating system for knowledge work. Publishing is one module in a much larger platform.

Jottings optimizes for publishing. Everything—the architecture, the features, the user experience—is designed around one goal: help writers publish great content quickly, find readers, and own their platforms.

Many writers use both. They use Notion to organize their research, draft ideas, and manage their writing process. Then they copy their finished pieces to Jottings to publish them to the world.

That workflow works great. It respects what each tool does best.

Why This Matters

I started Jottings because I believe serious writers deserve a publishing platform built specifically for them. Not a workspace that publishes. Not a note-taking app with a publishing feature. A platform built from the ground up for the unique challenges of publishing: speed, discoverability, reader experience, and ownership.

Notion is a masterpiece of general-purpose software. But general-purpose software inevitably makes trade-offs. Jottings embraces its specificity. We do publishing well, and we're not trying to be everything else.

If that resonates with you, let's go.