Why a doc isn't enough
Docs paired with AI mean everyone generates faster, but you lose the big picture. The brief lives in Notion, but the visual work scatters. Over time, the two drift apart until everyone is working from a different version of the truth. ALLO keeps the brief, the work, and the decisions on one visual canvas.
What you get that a doc can't give you
You see the actual work, not a link to it. You take in many options at once instead of scrolling a doc section by section. The description and the work stay together, eliminating the coordination chaos of hunting for the latest file.
Notion is the right tool for some things.
Notion is excellent at text. Wikis, knowledge bases, structured docs, internal handbooks, meeting notes, project briefs that are mostly written, lightweight databases, Notion is hard to beat for any of these. If your team's primary work is reading and writing, stay with Notion.
What Notion is less suited for: visual work. Files-heavy projects. Mood boards and reference walls. Real-time canvas collaboration. Showing the work to non-technical stakeholders. Anything where "the picture" matters more than "the document."
ALLO treats files as the substance, not as embeds.
In Notion, files are embedded inside pages of text. You drop an image into a page and it sits in the reading order, between paragraphs. That works for documentation. It doesn't work for projects where the references, the mockups, and the work-in-progress need to be seen together, side by side, spatially.
In ALLO, files are first-class. Drop in 50 reference images and they spread across the canvas. Add a video and it plays inline. Pin a brief next to the work it describes. The references aren't decorations between paragraphs, they're the substance the project is built around.
Honest comparison.
Where teams switch from Notion to ALLO.
Design teams running campaigns
A campaign brief in Notion is fine for the text part. But the references, hero shots, copy variants, brand approval, and final assets all want to live somewhere visual. Teams build the brief in Notion, then realize the rest of the campaign doesn't belong there. ALLO becomes the project room while Notion stays the doc tool.
Pre-production for video, game, or product
Mood boards in a Notion page are flat, images stacked vertically with text in between. The whole point of a mood board is spatial relationships, color juxtaposition, side-by-side reference. ALLO does this natively.
Client-facing project work
Sending a Notion page to a client requires either inviting them as a guest (and explaining how Notion works) or rebuilding the project as a deck. With ALLO, the client opens a shared link and reads the canvas. No tutorial.
Cross-functional projects with non-technical stakeholders
Notion works well for teams that live in docs and databases. ALLO is built for stakeholders who need to review visual work with less setup and more context.
Already using Notion? You can keep it.
Most ALLO customers don't replace Notion entirely. They add ALLO for the visual work. Notion stays for the wiki, the docs, the structured databases. ALLO becomes the project room for everything visual.
We don't yet have a one-click Notion importer; manual migration is straightforward for the kinds of pages teams move (project briefs, mood boards). Business plan workspaces get help during onboarding.
Frequently asked.
The honest version
Keep Notion for your docs and wikis. Bring the creative work to ALLO.