Can I keep my Notion docs/wiki and only move the CRM/tasks part?

Yes — many agencies do this. Move client/contact/task databases to Phloz; keep wiki, docs, brainstorming, and meeting notes in Notion standalone (free tier handles small wikis). The two tools each do what they're best at; the friction is acceptable because docs and operational data have different access patterns.

Notion uses linked databases. How do those translate to Phloz?

Notion's opaque page IDs don't map to Phloz UUIDs. The migration creates fresh Phloz IDs and you re-link relations during import. For a typical 5-database setup (Clients, Contacts, Tasks, Projects, Notes), the relinking is 1-2 hours of CSV editing. The structural rethink takes longer than the data move.

What about Notion's flexibility — can I still customise Phloz?

Less than Notion. Phloz is opinionated about agency shape — clients, contacts, departments, tasks, tracking nodes, messages. You CAN add custom fields per client/task, but you can't redefine the schema. For most agencies the trade is good: you lose flexibility you weren't actually using, and gain integrity guarantees you didn't have.

Alternative to Notion

The Notion alternative for digital marketing agencies

Stop maintaining the agency CRM you built in Notion. Phloz ships it pre-assembled with real data integrity.

What you're probably tired of

A blank canvas that takes weeks to shape into a functional agency CRM
Database relationships that flatten — no real referential integrity, no deal-stage automation, no audit log
No native client portal — you build one from public pages and pray
No native tracking-infrastructure concept; agencies build the same Notion template 50 times

What changes on Phloz

Pre-assembled agency CRM with real relational data, not a flattened database
Native client portal with magic-link auth (no public-page workaround)
Native typed tracking infrastructure — the thing every Notion-based agency wishes Notion had
Audit log + role-based access on every destructive action

Should you actually switch?

A switch is real cost — a few days of structural mapping, a parallel-running week, training time, and the friction of breaking habits your team has built. Worth it when the new tool meaningfully changes how you work; not worth it when the gain is incremental.

The five signals that you're ready to leave Notion: (1) you're paying for seats or contacts you don't use, (2) you're running the tracking stack in a separate Sheet because the CRM has nowhere for it, (3) onboarding a new team member takes more than a day because the configuration is tribal knowledge, (4) clients ask "where do I see progress?" and you don't have a clean answer, (5) you're duplicating client data across two or three tools because no single tool fits.

If three of those five describe your agency, the structural upgrade pays back inside a quarter. If only one or two, stay where you are and revisit at the next pricing renewal — switching for marginal gain is usually a worse decision than the marginal gain.

When Notion is still the right choice

The honest counter-positioning. Notionisn't wrong for everyone — these are the cases where staying makes more sense than switching. If any of them describe you, weigh the trade carefully before migrating.

You're a 1-3 person agency with 1-5 clients. Notion is genuinely sufficient at that scale; Phloz starts paying off around the 5th retainer.
Your knowledge base + client work + internal docs all live in one Notion workspace and the integration value is real. Splitting them across tools costs more than the structural upgrade buys.
Your team includes Notion power users who've built genuine craft — formula columns, relation chains, embedded views. Switching erases that craftsmanship.
You sell Notion templates or Notion implementation services. Eat your own dog food.

Migration: what to plan for

Notion exports to Markdown + CSV per database. Map Notion databases to Phloz schemas: Clients DB → clients, Tasks DB → tasks, Contacts DB → client_contacts. Notion linked-database relationships need manual ID mapping (Notion uses opaque IDs that won't match Phloz UUIDs). Allow 2-3 days for a 5+ database setup; pure structural work, no engineering.

The structural rethink — mapping Notion's shape to Phloz's opinionated agency model — takes longer than the data move. Read the marketing agency CRM buyer's guide for the six capabilities that should drive the decision, and the pricing page to run the per-active-client math at your client count.

Notion migration FAQ

The three questions agency owners ask before signing the switch decision. Honest answers — same data we'd give a friend evaluating the move.

Can I keep my Notion docs/wiki and only move the CRM/tasks part?: Yes — many agencies do this. Move client/contact/task databases to Phloz; keep wiki, docs, brainstorming, and meeting notes in Notion standalone (free tier handles small wikis). The two tools each do what they're best at; the friction is acceptable because docs and operational data have different access patterns.
Notion uses linked databases. How do those translate to Phloz?: Notion's opaque page IDs don't map to Phloz UUIDs. The migration creates fresh Phloz IDs and you re-link relations during import. For a typical 5-database setup (Clients, Contacts, Tasks, Projects, Notes), the relinking is 1-2 hours of CSV editing. The structural rethink takes longer than the data move.
What about Notion's flexibility — can I still customise Phloz?: Less than Notion. Phloz is opinionated about agency shape — clients, contacts, departments, tasks, tracking nodes, messages. You CAN add custom fields per client/task, but you can't redefine the schema. For most agencies the trade is good: you lose flexibility you weren't actually using, and gain integrity guarantees you didn't have.

What you keep when you migrate

The honest list of what survives the move from Notion. Your client list and contact records (CSV import). Your active tasks and their assignees, statuses, due dates (CSV import). Your custom fields, on clients and tasks (mapped to Phloz custom fields during import). Your inbound email addresses if you set up forwarding (re-pointed at the per-client Phloz inbound addresses).

What doesn't survive: historical activity logs older than what you'd realistically reference (most agencies discover they don't open activity from before the last quarter). Bespoke automation rules built on Notion's specific automation engine — these need to be re-expressed in Phloz's patterns (recurring tasks, status hooks, inbound thread routing) or offloaded to Inngest / Zapier. Time entries stay in your time-tracking tool of record (Phloz integrates rather than re-imports).

The trade is a lighter, more opinionated tool that runs your agency's shape natively — at the cost of some per-tool customisation that, in retrospect, was usually a workaround for a missing primitive. See agency project management software for the broader buyer's guide on what to evaluate alongside this switch decision.

Want the head-to-head, not the switch story?

The Phloz vs Notion comparison covers what each tool does, what each doesn't, and when Notionis the right choice — for the cases where you're evaluating rather than already unhappy.

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