Notion is withholding my company data, what can I do?

I'm not a Notion customer, but frankly with a response like this I would never, ever be one.

It's one thing to make a new feature request and have the response be "sorry, we'll get to it when we get to it." It's quite another to have a bug in an advertised, previously working feature, with no workaround, and say "sorry, our engineers have a big backlog."

Imagine if a bank said "sorry, we know the withdrawal feature to get your money is broken, but our engineers have a big backlog." Unbelievable!

Up next: Someone will read this post, write an exporter, immediately find that Notion's system is handling authentication but not authorization, and dump tens of thousand private notion datasets.

Here's what Notion.so says about this on their website.

https://www.notion.so/Back-up-your-data-1a8eb5bdfce34d19a636...

- *I tried clicking the `Export all workspace content` button but received an error message.*

    Oof, so sorry about this  For particularly large workspaces, the `Export all workspace content` function may have some trouble completing the export. We're investigating this issue and hope to have a resolution soon.

    As a temporary workaround for this issue, you can export in smaller batches:

    1. Navigate to a top-level page in your workspace
    2. Click the `•••` button at the top right of the page, then click `Export` (you may not see this option if you're not an admin in the workspace)
    3. Choose `Markdown & CSV` or `HTML` as the export format, and turn on the `Include subpages` toggle
    4. Repeat for any other important top-level pages in the workspace that you'd like to have a backup of

    Please note that we keep per-minute backups on our servers, and can help with data recovery at any time at team@makenotion.com. Thanks for your patience while we work on fixing this issue!

T-10 before founder shows up here and says something like, “I’m sorry that you feel this way, I’m going to personally fix this”. That will not go well. After about, say 5/6 hours of “reflection”, “soul searching”, “meditation” - they’ll offer a better non apology. Finally a day later, “we screwed up, we broke your trust and we own it”.

> Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help with in the meantime.

This is the part where you ask for them to generate the export on their end and send you a link manually.

It’s “normal” for a feature to stop working, but their support must be able to provide a workaround even if it takes them hours of manually zipping things. If they don’t, you should at the very least receive a refund.

This is truly awful, and honestly shouldn't surprise anyone given the modern cloud approach to software.

I've been thinking a lot lately about ownership. If I have a book, I can interact with it the way the publisher expects (I can read it). But being a physical object, I can also do lots of other things with my book. I can burn it. I can give it to a friend. I can sell it. I can draw in it. I can rip it up and use it as wallpaper. I can get the author to sign the front cover and donate it.

Software used to work this way too. If I have a Word document, I can interact with it the way Word expects - open it, edit it, save it and so on. And I can also do things microsoft doesn't expect. I can put it on my website. I can email it. I can back it up. I can delete it. I can reverse engineer the file format and edit it using other programs. I can archive it for 30 years, and know it will still work when I open it using the version of microsoft Word which created it. And so on.

But the new software model with smartphone apps and data in the cloud takes all this away. You can only do with your data what the publisher expects. If Notion doesn't have a working export API, tough luck. If GMail is missing an API for searching by regular expression, tough luck. If Adobe shuts down their activation servers, or a startup fails, or Google kills a product, tough luck. You've lost all your data. There is no backdoor. There are no other ways, by default, for you to have any agency over your own data that a product manager hasn't approved of. Amazon can delete books that they've already sold you. And they have. You can't sell a game you bought on steam. Or get it signed by the author. Or reverse engineer the raw database entries which store a google doc.

And this sucks. Its disempowering. I love the security on my phone, and the operational simplicity of not needing to manage my own backups. But this? I hate this. I hate that there's a good chance Notion will aquihired by a big tech company and shut down. I'm not ok with my own creations being at the whim of market forces like this.

I reject the idea that word and google docs are the only options. Git + Github is the model I want, where the cloud is a convenience but everything is stored locally as well. We need to start fighting for that.

A threat of legal action will probably go a long way. I might be wrong, but I think it is actually illegal to withhold people's data upon request, especially if you claim to offer the feature. Also false advertising.

I can see how they would try to skirt around it though, they'd probably say that it is a temporary glitch but the functionality is available. That way it wouldn't be them withholding your data or false advertising per se, but rather a temporary incapacitation.

Another option would be to find other Notion customers who have the same issue or who can reproduce the same issue. That is, find other customers who you can ask to try to download their own data as well. If the issue is not isolated to you, then you can take class action against them and they would either have to take the feature down or issue a customer wide notice of of service/feature downtime. Either of these can be deemed a violation of the SLA on their part and give you a legal path for recourse.

In the mean time, you should probably reply to that email telling them to do it manually. Tell them that it is the feature you even got the subscription for. So if they said at the time of contract it is doable, then they ought to be able to do it manually if not via the feature.

Their backlog is none of your concern, they took your money and should deliver otherwise refund you.

Hope that helps.

As a product manager, I understand this spiel, but that kind of answer should always be reserved for features that don’t exist yet.

This tells me their marketing dept is writing checks their product team can’t make good on. Not good.

Hi, Ivan here. I am the CEO of Notion.

I'm really, really sorry about this experience!

Our in-product export feature exports to a single file, and for very large workspaces this doesn't scale very well. (I know this is not an excuse for this experience. We'll do better and prioritize fixing this!)

Could you email me at ivan at makenotion.com? We'll work to fix this for you immediately.

Apologies, and really appreciate you for understanding!

Ivan

This is an "old" thread now, but something that stands out to me here is how damaging things like this must be for Notion's ability and opportunities to recruit developers.

I interviewed with them years ago after sharing a lot of feedback and bug reports in their early years. I was PUMPED about this space and really wanted to help make something like Notion awesome. I wanted it to work for me, I wanted it to work for others, and I knew there would be tons to learn in the space. But my impression of Notion (not their devs specifically) left me feeling like it wouldn't happen there, and I just abandoned the process. This happened with Slite, too.

But it's stuff like this which lead me to believe I shouldn't work on those teams. As a dev, I probably can't fix that the company overwhelmingly doesn't care enough about making an important feature work.

I noticed a keen interest in my ideas about which features me or my team needed, or how existing features could expand to meet our needs, but not much interest in fixing bugs or limitations. Now we're here, and the export feature doesn't work while the company continues to move forward with other things.

I can't help but think this sort of outward appearance has a negative affect on how easily they can hire, and who they can hire. This sort of things is a nail in the coffin for me - I don't want to work somewhere where we deploy day after day after day knowing that things are effectively broken.

You could ask for them to make the service free for you until it’s resolved. You’re still locked in, but at least you’re not paying for it.

We got tricked by the spreadsheet-like behavior of Notion too.

If you use any of the relational features in tables, they are exported only as URLs. There is no alternate export, and you can’t Copy&Paste the cells either.

Our CFO is unable to use this fancy relational table tool that we spent a lot of time and effort to build. Similar response from support.

A few things come to mind, all under the theme of "lighting a fire under their ass".

First, I'd contact your state attorney general's office. See this link to usa.gov for a contact database: https://www.usa.gov/state-attorney-general || https://www.naag.org/find-my-ag/

Next, contact your representative in the House and both your Senators: https://www.house.gov/representatives && https://www.senate.gov/states/statesmap.htm

Then I'd reach out to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) with a formal complaint: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov

Filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau might prompt some movement, even though AFAIK they have no real power over anything, but reputation damage may be threat enough to get them to play ball: https://www.bbb.org/file-a-complaint

And for "the big one": reach out to journalists in the tech industry. Posting here at HN is a good first step, but I'd tell every tech journalist who's got ears (or eyes) what's going on and see how many of them pick it up. Hopefully enough to cause some real damage (because, sadly, they've made it clear that's what it'll take to get them to stop holding you hostage).

Finally, contacting an attorney for at least an initial consult can't hurt. See americanbar.org for a list of attorneys admitted to the bar for your state: https://www.americanbar.org/directories/bar-associations/

I don't envy you, and I'll very likely never use Notion now that I've heard about this. How can anyone trust them when they literally hold their own customers hostage, ally the while lying about why they're doing it?

Congratulations, front page of HN = front page of backlog

I started using Notion last year and became increasingly uneasy about how little control I had over the notes and data I was entering into it. I switched over to Obsidian since then, which keeps my markdown files in folders on my local machine which I can then sync myself using OneDrive or something similar. You can also pay like $4/month for Obsidian to sync it for you, but you still retain copies locally.

Depending on what you need, they have an API and a pseudo exporter could likely be built: https://developers.notion.com/reference/intro.

Not great, but better than being stuck.

Something tells me that the fix is about to skyrocket to the top of their priority list.

No data export feature is pretty damning. Many organizations, especially government, have strict record-keeping requirements (e.g. for US federal agencies/departments, it's required by law). Data export isn't nice-to-have, it's critical functionality.

You’re not the only one, here’s someone who commented last month about having exactly the same problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27149433

> Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their "Export" feature. Basically, you request to export all your data on Notion, and you're supposed to receive a link to download it. But the link never arrives.

Was it ever working? “Having issues” seems to imply the functionality disappeared.

Worst comes to worst, you could export using a library like this one: https://github.com/kjk/notionapi

That being said, definitely not ideal and is always a risk when storing your data with a SaaS service (disclaimer: I'm the founder of dendron.so - a fast open source notion competitor made for developers)

Well this makes the "should I start using Notion" question easy. 3 months of captive data and stonewalling from support -- wouldn't touch it with ___ foot pole.

Stands to show a critical problem with relying on SaaS products. "Oh that critical function that we broke? Yeah were not fixing that."

Solution, if it's not built here, we don't rely on it. A lot more work up front, a lot more stable in the long run.

And that is why we need to keep using, and creating, free as in freedom alternatives...

"there is no cloud just other people's computers"

As far as I can tell you have two option. Try to write something to pull your data out yourself or get your lawyer to send a more formal sounding request on their letterhead.

Probably the letter will be cheaper but also risks them going "oh shit legal threat" and slamming your account closed meaning you no longer have access to your data at all not just no export.

From a technical perspective, why can't they manually create an export? How many man hours are needed to do this?

Or, does this mean their backend development breaks their export code, so heavy rewrite the export code is required to make export work again?

Some here have advocated taking legal action, although I wonder if they bothered to read Notion's terms and conditions beforehand (https://www.notion.so/Terms-Conditions-4e1c5dd3e3de45dfa4a8e...). There's a lot in there that a lawyer might find... troublesome. Like most software service agreements, it's pretty one-sided in favor of the vendor with the usual kitchen sink disclaimers and arbitration provisions.

I think you've actually made a good start by posting here on HN. As someone else wrote, going on other social media could also help. You could also file a complaint with the California Department of Consumer Affairs (whose contact info is helpfully provided in the terms). If you're a US resident you might also reach out to your local member of Congress. Many Congressional constituent services people can work wonders in cases like this.

Of course those are all the hammer. Another approach, if you've got the technical skills or willing to pay for them, is to look into writing something to leverage their API to extract your data -- although their terms prohibit spidering or scraping that's technically not the same as invoking an API. Depending on the real value of the data involved, it would probably be worth consulting a lawyer who does IP work _before_ you do any serious queries.

Did I mention that you should probably talk to a lawyer?

I fucking hate the excuses that people who work in agile/scrum give. It's called agile development but sorry I can't fix your issue until a story is created and groomed then sized then we might put it into a Sprint and work on it and then maybe we will put it into a release.

"We have a large backlog". How about you take it out of the backlog and work on fixing it or explain to me why it's complicated so I can empathize

This is something that has been worrying me for quite some time. Considering how many folks use Notion as a knowledge base for their personal and professional lives, I'm sure others feel the same.

Since their API is in public beta, I'm building a tool to back up and restore your Notion data to a storage provider of your choice:

https://notionbackups.com

Fwiw, this has been an issue from last year. My wife has been having the same problem with her notebooks. This is the same for both her company data and her personal data. I'm sorry you and others have to go through with this, just wanted to highlight this isn't a new issue.

She has now migrated all her personal notebooks to emacs orgmode and her company notebooks to gcloud/docs and MD files.

While it’s definitely not ideal it looks like they have a beta API... can you use it to extract your data? Or at least extract the most important data? If you still have the founders’ contact info in your email somewhere another option is to contact them directly and ask for help. Any good founder would quickly task someone with making a miffed but loyal paying customer happy again.

I was recently looking at self-hostable Notion alternatives for my team, and I was impressed with Outline. [0]

I ended up going with Notion because it was overall more user-friendly and handled image embeds easier, but Outline would be a nice option if you want to control your own data.

https://www.getoutline.com/

Much like you posted your story on HN, make a twitter/linkedIn post and let it go viral. More viral it goes, more chances that the features will be requested by others and more chances of it getting due love by the engineering team. I am not a fan of social shaming, but sometimes that is the last resort and that's what you are doing.

Are you in the EU or California?

This is why I use Obsidian[0]. I'm a shameless shill for self-hosted solutions, and Obsidian is just the client-portion of the notes app. You provide the syncing backend, it provides the first-class markdown experience.

[0] https://obsidian.md/

First rule of SaaS evaluation: the tool MUST have an export feature that works.

Notion grew massively with a targeted campaign "move from Evernote to Notion". Evernote's export feature works perfectly and you are free to go anytime. That's what honest SaaS companies do.

Notion seems to be a SaaS that wants to own your data. Their API was a promise for years until they had to give up. They wanted to be your walled "one stop shop": eyeballs and data 100% in their tool (like Google Workspace).

BTW, second rule of SaaS selection: choose a SaaS that do not make money selling your data to the big adtech players. Read the privacy policy!

> Around 3 months ago, I started having issues with their "Export" feature

I'm surprised you continued relying on them even after you realized this feature isn't working 3 months ago.

> I even exchanged emails with the founders giving detailed feedback

It also seems like you've been an early adopter so didn't you half expect this product might have major flaws and probably not the best idea to rely on it so heavily?

There seems to be an unofficial exporter you can use here: https://github.com/kjk/notionapi

Notion founders clearly aimed at keeping the product useage / arr up by locking you in without exports. I stopped using notion when I saw how the they treat people and talk to them even on their own team...

If you don't host yourself, you don't own anything.

I've had this idea in my head to make a notion-like editor which uses Git/GH as it's store of data. When you save, it makes a commit.

Everything is saved as flat json files and image/data blobs.

Seeing this comment, is further solidifying the idea. Notion is a great editor, but having little control over data isn't great.

User should be able to control where the data lives. And when they want it gone, it should be gone. Poof!

Can you ask for a manual export of some sort? I realize that's annoying, but it seems like it would at least help you out.

If you want to roll your own self-hosted wiki: Vimwiki [1] on command line + Obsidian [2] on mobile works great!

[1]: https://vimwiki.github.io/ [2]: https://obsidian.md/

You should not only point out that withholding your data is not a nice to have feature, but also that it is illegal.

A lot of gates open up once companies smell the power of the law, and anyone from their support likely _has to_ escalate any issue where a lawyer is plausibly mentioned.

One thing that always works well for these kinds of things is to post on Hacker News.

Report them to your state's Attorney General. Have a lawyer send them a letter reminding them that you paid for a service that wasn't provided and that it's costing your business money.

You need to get tech blogs and YouTube channels to cover this. Everybody loves a good story about the little guy getting screwed by the big guy. Public pressure goes a long way.

You're already halfway there!

I back up my notion data to sqlite or postgresql using a Python package I wrote (that in turn uses notionpy). It's pretty easy to run. I can share my code with you if you want, let me know.

Every time a thread like this pops up that gains attention I wonder how many other customers are in the same spot but haven't had the same exposure so their issues remain unresolved.

I don’t see where you asked them to manually generate you a link.

I guess I can add Notion to my list of companies that ignore its customers unless shamed on social media. One to avoid.

Damn. I recently started using notion but this is crap customer service. Sorry this happened.

When people get fed up with Notion, I urge them to check out minimal.app. (In some regions it’s in beta at minimal.app/#beta.)

Minimal has fewer features than notion, but it is faster, more reliable, simpler, and more beautiful/delightful. And it is feature packed.

I love designing and building Minimal, and thousands of people love writing in Minimal.

If you are an EU citizen, you can request a copy of your data as a part of GDPR[0].

0: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-topic/data-protection/refo...

Unrelated, but you might be able to download all your data with their new api

My suggestion would be to stop using Notion. It's a novel approach, but 90% of what you want is achievable with Google Docs/Drive, Office 365, etc. My suggestion might be different if the business side was in a healthier shape.

They have an API now; you could use that to export the data ...

wow, this sounds scary if you don't own your data

It sounds like a potential GDPR violation, maybe you can open a case with the EU?

Joplin is a great note taking app with complete authority over your data and has a good subset of the features that Notion provides.

If you happen to be in the EU or if you qualify somehow, you could try submitting a GDPR request for all your data, which they are legally forced to respond or face steep fines.

You know what we should do? Sign up for Notion, add some data, and then ask to export it.

If so many people on Hackernews do that, it would be like hitting them with a GDPR denial of service attack and they’ll be forced to push out this feature ASAP.

Empathy. A lot of these suggestions here don't show it. Sure, Notion should fix this feature. If your backlog is completely free of features that are no brainers, raise your hand.

Anybody with your hand raised should be ashamed of yourself because I bet it's not true :)

Sure they should fix this -- but is this something they should be fined for? Or be DDOS-ed by Hacker News readers? Or GDPR reported for?

It's just not a great way to get help from up and coming businesses to force major financial pain on them and it's certainly not empathetic to what's likely a hard working, reasonable set of people on the other end of this service.