| Functionality | 9 <p>Jira delivers nearly all the functionality that SMBs—and even enterprises—will need.</p><p>Its task and project management capabilities are incredibly powerful and flexible. You can customize Jira to fit virtually any project, even those with complex structures like five layers of sub-tasks, each with their own custom fields.</p><p>That said, Jira does have some gaps. It doesn’t natively offer features like invoicing, billing, or expense tracking, which other tools sometimes include. Plus, for built-in docs or wikis, you’ll need to use its sister product, Confluence.</p> | 6 <p>Notion offers almost all of the functionality most companies will need. It Offers best-in-class inbuilt documentation, and added a lot of AI features in the past year that allows you to query your entire Notion workspace. It has also been rolling out many new features e.g. Notion calendar, forms, and Notion mail (coming soon).</p><p>That said, it’s still missing some features larger teams with many active projects might require, like advanced analytics, robust workflow automation, and time tracking. There’s room for improvement, but it’s evolving fast.</p> |
| Ease of Use | 4 <p>Compared to other project management tools, we find Jira complex to navigate. The interface is packed with features and options, which can make it overwhelming and unintuitive—especially for new users. The learning curve is steep, and it can take weeks for team members to get fully comfortable.</p><p>For example, even for simple projects, there are multiple configuration pages to manage: settings for the entire project, specific project views, built-in fields, custom fields—you name it. It’s powerful, but all these layers can quickly become confusing.</p> | 6 <p>For those new to Notion, its blank canvas, endless customization options, and sheer number of templates can feel a bit overwhelming at first. Setting up a project management system from scratch might take a few days to figure out—but once you get past that initial learning curve, Notion becomes incredibly intuitive and user-friendly.</p><p>Creating new projects, documents, and tasks is lightning-fast, and there are quick keyboard shortcuts for almost everything, from adding new blocks to navigating between pages. Once you’re up to speed, Notion feels like second nature.</p> |
| Look and feel | 5 <p>While Jira has made strides in design and usability with recent updates, it still feels a bit dated compared to more modern Project Management tools like Linear. Customizing the UI is pretty limited, so you’re mostly stuck with the default look and feel.</p><p>Our main gripe, though, is page load times. At 2–3+ seconds per page, things can feel sluggish—and this gets gets compounded as your projects and teams grow. It's a frustration that can niggle you every day.</p> | 7 <p>Out of the box - Notion has a clean, modern, uncluttered interface. But you have the power to completely customise the look and feel of Notion to make it look visually stunning.</p><p>The main drawback is that Notion suffers from slow load times, especially as your workspace grows. Pages can take 3–4 seconds to load, especially if you have a lot of data and files stored in Notion. It’s something to keep in mind if you plan on using Notion as your all-in-one company operating system, or as your usage scales.</p> |
| Customisability | 10 <p>We find Jira to be impressively, and overwhelmingly, customisable.</p><p>You can customise almost anything you can think of - custom task types, workflows, specialized screens, validation rules, and more. For ultimate flexibility, there’s even Jira’s own query language (JQL), which lets you search and filter issues with incredible precision.</p> | 9 <p>Notion gives you endless customization options to shape it exactly how you want.</p><p>You can mix and match blocks—pages, databases, calendars, and project views—and even connect them with third-party tools to create a setup that fits your workflow, system, or use case perfectly. You’re in control of everything: how tasks and projects are organized, the structure of your internal docs and wikis, the platform’s overall look and feel, and even the layout of individual pages.</p><p>That said, Notion isn’t without its limits. It falls short on advanced reporting features and can’t handle workflows that require complex automation, like branching or conditional logic.</p> |
| Ease of Setup | 4 <p>Jira offers a self-serve free trial and lets you purchase without dealing with sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks or subtasks takes about 30–40 minutes, which can feel a bit more confusing compared to other tools. That said, its rich library of templates helps streamline the process.</p><p>Be prepared, though—a full setup will likely take at least a few days, especially if you’re customizing it for more complex workflows.</p> | 7 <p>Notion offers a self-serve free trial and lets you purchase without needing to talk to sales. Getting started and setting up a few tasks and subtasks should take 20-30 minutes, helped by very extensive library of templates. A full setup shouldn’t take more than a day or two, even for more complex use cases.</p> |
| Customer Support | 4 <p>We find that Jira's support leaves a lot to be desired. Atlassian (the maker of Jira) nudge users toward self-service options like documentation and community forums, which can be frustrating when you need quick, direct help. Even when you reach out for support, the experience can be hit-or-miss—especially if you’re a smaller customer without a premium support plan.</p> | 5 <p>Notion's support team can only be contacted via email, and this option is very hidden away on their site. From our experience, responses take about a full business day—not the fastest—but the agents are friendly and genuinely helpful. On the bright side, Notion’s help center is top-notch, with detailed, high-quality documentation that can often solve your questions without needing to wait for support.</p> |
| Integratability | 9 <p>Jira, powered by Atlassian, has a thriving app marketplace with thousands of plugins. If there’s a feature you need that Jira doesn’t offer natively, chances are there’s a third-party app for it. Plus, Jira provides an API, giving you the flexibility to build custom integrations when needed.</p> | 6 <p>Notion offers 110 integrations with a decent range of third-party tools, covering areas like automation, analytics, and collaboration. However, it’s missing some key integrations in commonly needed categories—there’s no native support for customer support tools, calendars, or email platforms.</p><p>That said, Notion does provide an API, so you can build custom integrations if you have specific needs.</p> |
| Ease of Migration | 5 <p>Migrating away from Jira can be a bit of a headache. Exporting data isn’t exactly seamless, and you’ll likely need to spend time cleaning and reformatting it before it’s usable in another tool. Custom fields, workflows, and issue types often don’t have direct equivalents elsewhere, which can lead to data loss or tricky mapping processes. It’s definitely something to plan for if you’re considering switching.</p> | 8 <p>Notion makes exporting easy with a self-serve option—there’s an export button on every page, so you can quickly grab what you need. For more advanced needs, you can also export data using their API.</p> |
