Notion is a document tool with databases inside it, and for a two-person studio that already writes everything there — supplier notes, finishes, the process for packing a chair — putting orders in it is the obvious move. It works, up to a point that arrives quietly. A table can hold a deposit; what it cannot do is insist that every order has one, warn you that a balance is three weeks late, or hand your customer a page of their own. Including the cases where the workspace should keep the job.
Notion · checked 9 September 2026
We make Ordamo, so we are an interested party. What we can be is checkable: written by the people who built it for their own furniture studio in Buenos Aires, every price taken from the other side’s own page with the date we read it, and their wins listed above ours.
| Notion | Ordamo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | Documents, with databases as views inside them | Orders, deposits and production batches |
| Deposit and balance on one order | Two properties and a formula, once you have built them | Both, with dates, on the order itself |
| An order without a deposit recorded | Possible, and nothing says so | Visible — unpaid and overdue sort to the top |
| What a production run cost per piece | A rollup you write, and re-check when the model changes | A received batch writes what the run really cost onto its products |
| A page the customer can open | Publish a page and it stays live — but it is a page you make and keep | One link per order, generated from the order, no login |
| What another person costs | $10 a seat a month on Plus, $20 on Business | Nothing — one plan, per business |
| Free plan | 5 MB per file, 7 days of history, 10 external guests | A sample workspace with no card, then $29/mo |
| Who maintains the model | You | Nobody |
| The rest of the business — notes, process, wiki | Yes, and it is the reason to keep it | No |
| An order from a chat screenshot | No | Yes — the assistant reads the screenshot into an order you confirm before it saves |
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver, start in a message and get paid in parts.
Add a customer and their order
Deposit taken, balance still owed, and the date you promised.
Send your customer their order page
One link that updates itself, instead of twenty messages.
Record what the batch cost
What a run really cost, over the pieces it produced. One button puts that on the products it made.
See what you actually made
Revenue, cost and margin per order. Money in, money out, cash on hand.
Notion's tables are lovely to read and indifferent about arithmetic across rows. That is the right trade for a wiki and the wrong one for money: the numbers you need are sums across many orders — what is outstanding, what is overdue, what a month earned — and each of them is a rollup you build, then maintain, then eventually stop trusting because you cannot remember which cases it covers.
An order page can sit there for a month with a balance unpaid and look exactly like an order page that is fine, because a document has no opinion about its own state. This is the failure people describe as forgetting to chase: it is not a memory problem, it is that the tool has no way to raise its hand. Here the orders screen sorts by what is unpaid and what is late, which is a small thing that removes a recurring one.
A published Notion page stays live as you edit it, and that is genuinely useful. What it will not do is exist per order without you: you make the page, decide what goes on it, and keep it honest as the piece moves. One link per order that shows what is paid, what is owed and when it will be ready — built from the order, not maintained beside it — is the difference on a build that takes three months.
$10 a seat is fair pricing for a workspace and awkward for an order process, because the people who need to see an order are exactly the ones you would rather not buy seats for: a partner, an assistant two days a week, the bookkeeper in January. Ordamo is priced per business so that question never comes up.
$0, then $10/seat/mo
The Free plan uploads files up to 5 MB, keeps 7 days of page history and allows 10 external guests. Plus is $10 per seat a month with unlimited uploads and 30 days of history, Business $20 with 90 days; up to 20% comes off with yearly billing, and Enterprise is quoted by sales. Notion's custom agents are an add-on at $10 per 1,000 monthly credits.
$29/mo
One plan, per business, everything included — however many of you there are. $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click. 14-day money-back on the first month. Nothing is metered.
What is in the planWe are not the only answer, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon.
A database you design yourself. Free to 1,000 records a base, then $20 per user a month billed annually.
TrelloA card per order and the stages on a wall. Free, then $5 a user a month billed annually.
Google SheetsThe incumbent: free, endlessly flexible, and the arithmetic is yours to keep right.
The whole categorySix families of tool, what each one answers, and the three questions that pick between them.
Yes, and for a handful of open orders it is a reasonable place to do it: a database with a client, a total, a deposit, a balance formula and a delivery date gets you a long way in an afternoon. What it will not do is hold you to that shape — an order can exist with no deposit recorded and nothing anywhere says so.
The Free plan uploads files up to 5 MB, keeps 7 days of page history and allows 10 external guests. Plus is $10 per seat a month and Business $20, with up to 20% off yearly billing, and Enterprise is quoted by sales. Ordamo is $29 a month for the business, whoever needs to log in. Confirm the current position on notion.com before deciding on the strength of a number here.
For the order process, yes. For Notion, no — and it is not trying to be. There are no documents here, no wiki and nowhere to write down how a finish is applied, so if the orders leave, the rest of the workspace stays exactly where it is and keeps earning its seat.
Airtable if the orders are the point: it is a real database, the formulas and rollups are stronger, and the interfaces make a usable screen. Notion if the orders are one part of a workspace you already live in and the writing matters more than the arithmetic. Both put you in charge of the model, which is the actual decision.
You can publish a page to the web with no account needed at the other end, and it stays live as you edit it. The work is that the page is yours to make and keep: one per customer, with whatever you remembered to put on it. Here there is one link per order, generated from the order itself, showing what is paid, what is owed and when the piece is due.
For made-to-order work with deposits, a purpose-built order tool is the honest answer, and this is one at $29 a month. Airtable is the better self-built option if you want to keep building. For stocked products, Craftybase — now Stocksmith — starts at $49 and Inventora at $19. None of them replaces a workspace.
A spreadsheet, and Notion's own free plan, which is genuinely usable for a small studio. Among purpose-built tools Inventora publishes the cheapest entry at $19 a month with a free Hobby tier its pricing page references but does not spell out. Ordamo has no free plan: a sample workspace opens with no card, and your own orders need the trial.
That is the usual outcome. The orders move, the workspace keeps the notes and the process, and the two do not need to talk to each other. Most studios that do this delete three databases and keep forty pages.
Export the database as CSV and import the file as it comes — there is no template, the columns are read for you, and you confirm what was found before anything saves. Then add the deposits with their dates and the batches currently in production. Start new orders here and let the open ones finish in Notion, so there is no cutover day.
Not in the way a Notion database does, and this is the honest limit of the trade. Products carry an attribute library for variants, and an order has the fields an order needs — what was agreed, what is paid, what is owed, when it is due, what it cost. If your process needs a property nobody else needs, Notion is right and this is not.
Plan prices, the file-upload and page-history limits, the guest allowance and the custom-agents add-on read from notion.com/pricing on 9 September 2026, which shows the per-seat figures with up to 20% off yearly billing. Software pricing moves; confirm with the vendor before deciding on the strength of a figure here.
$0 today · first charge after 7 days · cancel in one click
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver