I Broke Notion

Summary

In this video, the creator tests the limits of Notion's claim of 'unlimited' pages on their free plan. They attempt to create thousands of database pages to see if Notion's performance degrades or if there's a practical limit. The experiment involves duplicating pages, importing large numbers of pages from Excel, and observing Notion's response. The creator encounters issues with Notion freezing and inconsistencies in page counts, ultimately finding that Notion's functionality becomes unreliable with around 450,000 pages, suggesting a practical limit despite the advertised 'unlimited' feature.

Takeaways

• 🔍 The video aims to test the limits of Notion's claim of 'unlimited' pages and blocks in the free plan.
• 📊 The creator chooses to use database pages for the test due to their ease of counting and tracking.
• 😵 The process of manually creating pages becomes tedious, leading to the search for a quicker method.
• 🔄 The video demonstrates duplicating pages in bulk as a faster alternative to manual creation.
• 📈 The creator observes a significant increase in the number of pages as the test progresses.
• 🚫 Notion eventually becomes unresponsive when attempting to duplicate a large number of pages, suggesting a limit to the 'unlimited' claim.
• 💡 The video highlights the practical need to test such limits for users managing large databases over time.
• 📊 The creator uses Excel to generate and import large numbers of pages into Notion to expedite the test.
• 🚨 Notion's performance degrades with the import of hundreds of thousands of pages, indicating a potential limit.
• 🔢 The video ends with the creator unable to reach a million pages due to Notion's limitations and inconsistencies in page counting.

Q & A

What was the main objective of the video?

The main objective of the video was to test the limits of Notion's claim of having 'unlimited pages and blocks' on its free plan by creating and counting a large number of database pages.

Why did the creator choose to use database pages instead of normal pages?

The creator chose to use database pages because they believed it would be easier to count and keep track of the pages in a database compared to a normal page.

What method did the creator initially use to create pages in Notion?

Initially, the creator manually created pages by pressing enter to add new pages one at a time.

Why did the creator switch to duplicating pages instead of creating them manually?

The creator switched to duplicating pages because it was a quicker way to increase the number of pages in the database as opposed to creating them one by one.

What was the creator's first indication that they might have reached Notion's limit?

The creator's first indication was when Notion froze and they were unable to click or scroll, suggesting that they might have reached the limit of what Notion could handle.

How did the creator attempt to bypass the limitation they encountered?

The creator attempted to bypass the limitation by using Excel to create a large number of pages and then importing them into Notion.

What error message did the creator receive when trying to import a large number of pages?

The creator received an error message stating 'that request was too large,' suggesting that the number of pages they were trying to import exceeded Notion's limit.

What was the highest number of pages the creator was able to import into Notion before encountering issues?

The highest number of pages the creator was able to import before encountering issues was around 449,000 pages.

What was the creator's goal before they decided to stop the test?

The creator's goal was to reach 1 million pages in Notion to test the limits of the platform's 'unlimited' claim.

What conclusion did the creator draw about Notion's free plan after conducting the test?

The creator concluded that although Notion claims to offer 'unlimited' pages, there is a practical limit somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 pages, after which the platform starts to struggle or fail to function properly.