Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Notion VS CakePHP

Compare Notion VS CakePHP and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Notion logo Notion

All-in-one workspace. One tool for your whole team. Write, plan, and get organized.

CakePHP logo CakePHP

The Rapid Development Framework for PHP
  • Notion Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-12
  • CakePHP Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

Notion features and specs

  • All-in-One Workspace
    Notion combines note-taking, task management, databases, calendars, and collaboration features in a single platform, reducing the need for multiple tools.
  • Highly Customizable
    Users can tailor Notion to fit their specific workflow with customizable templates, pages, and databases, making it versatile for various use cases.
  • Collaboration Features
    Notion offers seamless collaboration with real-time editing, comments, mentions, and shared workspaces, enhancing teamwork and productivity.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    Notion is available on multiple platforms, including web, desktop, and mobile, providing flexibility and accessibility from anywhere.
  • Integration Capability
    Notion supports integrations with various third-party applications like Google Drive, Slack, and Trello, allowing for a more interconnected workflow.

Possible disadvantages of Notion

  • Learning Curve
    Due to its extensive features and customization options, new users might find Notion challenging to learn and navigate initially.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report that Notion can become slow or experience lag, especially with large databases and complex pages.
  • Offline Limitations
    While Notion offers some offline capabilities, its functionality is significantly reduced without an internet connection, which can be inconvenient for some users.
  • Pricing for Teams
    Though Notion offers a free version, its premium plans can be expensive for larger teams, which may be a constraint for startups or small businesses.
  • Privacy Concerns
    As with any cloud-based service, there are potential privacy and data security concerns, especially for users handling sensitive information.

CakePHP features and specs

  • Structured MVC Framework
    CakePHP follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, which provides a clear separation of concerns, making the application more organized and maintainable.
  • Built-in ORM
    CakePHP includes a powerful Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) system which simplifies database interactions and promotes the use of PHP objects instead of writing raw SQL queries.
  • Convention Over Configuration
    CakePHP follows the 'convention over configuration' philosophy, which reduces the need for extensive configuration and allows developers to quickly set up new projects.
  • Security Features
    The framework comes with built-in security features like input validation, SQL injection prevention, and CSRF protection, which help in building safer applications.
  • Active Community
    CakePHP has an active and supportive community, which provides a wealth of plugins, tutorials, and help through forums and other online resources.

Possible disadvantages of CakePHP

  • Learning Curve
    For developers who are new to MVC frameworks or the conventions used by CakePHP, there can be a steep learning curve initially.
  • Performance Overhead
    Due to its extensive features and abstractions, CakePHP can sometimes have a higher performance overhead compared to lightweight frameworks, especially in high-traffic applications.
  • Limited Flexibility
    While conventions can be beneficial, they may also limit flexibility for developers who prefer to structure their projects differently or need to implement custom solutions.
  • Updates and Compatibility
    Major updates to the framework might introduce breaking changes, requiring existing projects to undergo significant modifications to stay up-to-date.

Notion videos

The Most Powerful Productivity App I Use - Notion

More videos:

  • Review - I switched to Notion for a week... Here's what happened!
  • Review - Notion is Truly an All-in-One Productivity Tool (App Review)

CakePHP videos

CakePHP 3.7 Standards and MySQL Database Review

More videos:

  • Tutorial - CakePHP 3 Tutorial - part 1: Introduction & Installation

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Notion and CakePHP)
Productivity
100 100%
0% 0
Web Frameworks
0 0%
100% 100
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Notion and CakePHP. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Notion and CakePHP

Notion Reviews

  1. jk22
    · consultant at GFI ·
    Notion has helped in documenting our business

    It's been very very helpful to streamline different people on our team, especially remote workers to help them understand what's going on in our business without 100s of meetings.

    👍 Pros:    Ui is very attractive|Easy to use|Great for collaboration|Good customer service|Free to use
    👎 Cons:    Steep learning curve
  2. Ramesh Kumar
    · Product Manager at Aerial ·
    Extremely helpful- made life easier

    My remote-first start-up has eliminated more than 200+ hours of meetings and 1000s of mismanaged documents because our entire communication happens through Notion.

    👍 Pros:    Clean ui|File sharing|Modular
    👎 Cons:    Learning curve
  3. Boyd Richardson
    · Writer at SE ·

    As someone who's always on the lookout for the perfect productivity app, I was excited to try out Notion. It promises to be an all-in-one tool for everything from note-taking to project management to personal wikis.

    From the moment you open Notion, you can tell that it's different from other productivity apps. The interface is sleek and modern, and it's easy to navigate. The app is divided into pages, which can be customized with different templates to fit your needs. You can create to-do lists, databases, wikis, calendars, and more.

    One of the things I love about Notion is the ability to create relationships between pages. For example, you can create a database of your favorite books and then link to a page with your book reviews. Or you can create a to-do list and link to a page with notes about the task. This feature makes it easy to keep all of your information in one place and to connect related items.

    🏁 Competitors: Microsoft Loop
    👍 Pros:    Highly customizable|All in one|Collaboration|Cross platform
    👎 Cons:    Steep learning curve

Top 10 Notion Alternatives for 2025 and Why Teams Are Choosing Ledger
If you're looking for a Notion alternative that supports real, scalable teamwork, you're not alone. Whether you’ve outgrown Notion or are just exploring more robust, team-friendly platforms, here’s a breakdown of the top 10 alternatives in 2025—and why Ledger is becoming the go-to choice for modern teams.
How Tight-Knit Teams Get More Done with Innovative Project Management Tools
Notion: More than a task manager, it acts as a knowledge base. You can store guidelines, references, wikis, and to-do lists all under one roof.
Source: medium.com
11 Popular Knowledge Management Tools to Consider in 2025 
Notion AI (Optional Add-on) – $8 per user/month (billed annually). Available for all plans (including the free plan)
Source: knowmax.ai
11 Best Google Keeps Alternatives for 2024
Unlike other note-taking apps, Notion stands out for its endless customization. It’s like an all-in-one workspace structured by pages and blocks.
Source: upbase.io
20 Obsidian Alternatives: Top Note-Taking Tools to Consider
Notion is a popular alternative to Obsidian for its simplicity, minimalistic interface, and large community. On top of note-taking, you can use Notion as a task management tool to create simple to-dos or build a personal knowledge base. You can also embed links, images, videos, code snippets, etc. Notion also has bi-directional functionalities enabling you to interconnect...
Source: clickup.com

CakePHP Reviews

CakePHP vs CodeIgniter: Which PHP Framework is Best for Development?
CakePHP: CakePHP was released in April 2005 by Larry Masters. It is influenced by the concepts of Ruby on Rails and emphasizes convention over configuration, aiming to make web development fast and easy. CakePHP has undergone significant evolution, with the latest versions providing advanced features while maintaining backward compatibility.
Top 5 Laravel Alternatives
CakePHP is less complicated to work with than Laravel. CakePHP’s stated goal is to streamline the processes of developing, deploying, and maintaining Web Apps. The clean MVC layout makes it easy to pick up and use.
Top 10 Phoenix Framework Alternatives
CakePHP offers multiple features like code generation and app scaffolding that accelerates production speeds and saves development costs.
The Most Popular PHP Frameworks to Use in 2021
For example, the CakePHP framework has the Bake command-line tool which can quickly create any skeleton code that you need in your application.
Source: kinsta.com
Top 9 PHP Frameworks For Web Development In 2021
CakePHP is an open-source web development PHP framework. It’s ranked 6th in PHP Benchmarks, just above the Laravel web development framework. The newly released v4.0 comes with a renovated skeleton design and provides APIs to enable developers for rapid application development. On GitHub, it has 8.3k+ stars and 555 contributors. For commercial support, you have cakeDC....

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Notion seems to be a lot more popular than CakePHP. While we know about 441 links to Notion, we've tracked only 10 mentions of CakePHP. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Notion mentions (441)

  • Cool SHIT you can do with docker
    Two of the most popular open source note taking app are affine (basically notion but open source) and obsidian (which stores notes in markdown). - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2024)
    Notion | https://notion.so | Android Engineer | SF | hybrid (in office 2x a week) | Full time
      Level: Mid/Mid+ (4-6yrs experience).
    - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Karyam: Simples everyday writing app
    Advanced Notion and Google Doc writing editor. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • My blog post workflow
    I manage my non-work and work-adjacent tasks in Notion. Whenever I have an idea, regardless of how big or small or silly or achievable it is, I'll add it to Notion, and use labels to categorise it by type of output (e.g. blog, silly project, website update). Today I wanted to write a short post for my site. I clicked on the filtered blog post view, and selected this one (because I hoped it would be a quick one!). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • 6 AI tools that feels illegal to know🤖
    Notion.so redefines workspaces. With its intelligent organization and collaboration features, it's more than a productivity tool—it's a digital haven. Discover the art of streamlined and efficient teamwork. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

CakePHP mentions (10)

  • How to Use ServBay to Create and Run a CakePHP Project
    CakePHP is an open-source PHP web framework designed to help developers build web applications quickly. It is based on the MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture and provides a powerful toolkit to simplify common development tasks such as database interactions, form handling, authentication, and session management. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Top 12 PHP Frameworks For Web Development in 2024
    CakePHP is an open-source PHP framework for web development with 8.7k stars and 3.5k forks on GitHub. It offers APIs that enable developers to develop applications quickly. It allows you to create highly secure and scalable web applications, including social networks, eCommerce, and online collaboration platforms. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Any suggestions for lighter frameworks than Laravel?
    Give https://cakephp.org/ a try. It also is one of the oldest ones out there, so quite mature and stable while being rather lightweight. Serving JSON API seems like a good fit. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Which PHP Framework Should You Use in 2023?
    You can download it and review the documentation here: https://cakephp.org/. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • My Workflow
    As the name of the service says it will work best with Laravel but it is not a problem to modify code from other frameworks to make it work the same way. I have several applications created this way in CakePHP. I have this set to manual after clicking the deploy button, but if you want you can turn on quick deploy and then it will publish the application after a push to the main branch (or another one, depending... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Notion and CakePHP, you can also consider the following products

Trello - Infinitely flexible. Incredibly easy to use. Great mobile apps. It's free. Trello keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute details.

Laravel - A PHP Framework For Web Artisans

Asana - Asana project management is an effort to re-imagine how we work together, through modern productivity software. Fast and versatile, Asana helps individuals and groups get more done.

CodeIgniter - A Fully Baked PHP Framework

Evernote - Bring your life's work together in one digital workspace. Evernote is the place to collect inspirational ideas, write meaningful words, and move your important projects forward.

Django - The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines