Notion and Softr are two essential tools for modern professionals, and now they’ve integrated to create a powerful duo—the easiest way to build and manage web apps for any purpose. This integration helps Softr address some of Notion’s biggest limitations, particularly around sharing and customizing published content.
You’re likely familiar with Notion, a highly versatile platform that lets you create a custom system to manage all your information in one place using powerful building blocks.
If Softr is new to you, it’s a web app builder that stands out by integrating seamlessly with databases like Airtable and Google Sheets. These databases become the backend content management system, while Softr provides a rich, fully customizable interface for navigating and displaying the information.
Softr also makes managing user accounts simple, allowing you to control who sees what content with ease.
With Softr’s new integration, you can now connect Notion as one of your database apps to manage web app content.
Let’s explore three practical examples of how pairing Notion with Softr can overcome some of Notion’s key limitations: a membership site, a client portal, and an interactive directory of product recommendations.
All of these examples are available as templates in Notion A-to-Z, complete with Softr setups and custom themes, along with sample Notion databases.
For these use cases, I’ve aggregated the relevant Notion databases into a single Notion page. Most of these databases are used by only one web app, though a few—like the user database—are shared across apps.
One standout feature is Softr’s ability to sync app users with a Notion database, which brings several advantages:
While Notion allows you to manage user groups, Softr takes it a step further by letting you assign users to groups automatically based on conditions like purchases. Additionally, Softr provides block-level permission control, whereas Notion is limited to page-level permissions.
Our first example is a membership site, demonstrated by Notion A-to-Z.
With Softr, we’ve integrated Stripe into the Notion Users database.
The membership site’s content is drawn from three Notion databases: Lessons, Templates, and Tools. When users log in to the Softr app, they see a clean, gallery-style homepage where they can browse these resources.
Lessons are presented as filterable horizontal cards, with each lesson’s content displayed on a dedicated “lesson details” page. Templates and Tools follow a similar structure, with guidance and links to the external resources on their details pages.
Two of Notion’s biggest limitations are:
The Softr integration solves both issues.
You can create a simple, user-friendly interface for clients and partners that shows only the content relevant to them, drawn from your Notion databases. They can even make updates in a much more intuitive way than Notion allows.
Instead of logging in to Notion, clients log in to your web app. Softr generates a magic link for one-click access when you designate them as users in the Notion Users database.
The client portal uses several Notion databases:
Each company is linked to an email domain, so anyone with that domain sees the related content. When a client clicks their magic link, they’re greeted by name and can view cards for their core content types. Tasks assigned to them are prominently displayed, and each card can be expanded to show additional details like notes.
Finally, our third example is a public directory of recommended products and services. This use case draws from the newsletter Rambull, which shares six recommendations from a different individual each week.
In Notion, we have three connected databases: Recommendations, Recommenders, and City Guides (the latter curated by the publisher from recommendations).
The Softr app’s homepage prominently features a call-to-action to subscribe to the newsletter, followed by a filterable collection of recommendations. Visitors can filter by category, recommender, or guide.
On the Recommenders page, a gallery of recommenders is displayed. Clicking a recommender opens a details page that shows their profile and filtered recommendations. The Guides work similarly, linking to their related recommendations.
Grab the templates from Notion A-to-Z, and start exploring what you can build with this powerful Notion-Softr integration!