Notion (Productivity and workspace)
Created by: Ivan Zhao, Simon Last and team

Notion uses a generous personal-free tier as the viral acquisition channel, then ladders teams up through workspace and AI tiers.

TL;DR: Notion's pricing structure is built around a personal-free tier that is good enough for indie use but creates friction at the team-collaboration boundary. The Team tier (~$10/seat/mo) is the trigger; Business and Enterprise climb from there. AI is priced as an add-on rather than a tier, which lets Notion add new revenue without disturbing the seat ladder. The lesson: personal-free can drive team-paid if the friction sits at the right boundary.

What they sell: A workspace product combining notes, docs, wikis, databases, and project management in one canvas.
Who it's for: Individuals, small teams, and growing companies who want a flexible workspace instead of separate tools per use case.
Pricing model: Per-seat tiered subscription with personal-free entry and AI add-on
Payment frequency: Monthly or annual, with annual discount
Free trial behavior: No trial on paid tiers — the Free tier IS the trial. Users self-upgrade when collaboration friction emerges.
Number of tiers: 5

Anchor pattern: Business tier as anchor
Business at approximately $18/seat/mo anchors the page. Plus at approximately $10/seat/mo reads as the reasonable team starting point by comparison. Enterprise is the conversation-starter for anyone who recoils at the published Business price. The anchor is doing two jobs: making Plus look affordable AND making Enterprise feel like a custom call.

Upgrade trigger: Team-collaboration boundary
Free tier supports individuals plus limited guest sharing. The trigger fires when the team grows past the guest limit or when a coworker needs full editing rights, not just view access. The trigger is structural to how teams form, not feature-based — which is why the conversion rate from personal-free to team-paid is the strongest part of Notion's funnel.

What's working:
Personal-free tier is good enough for real individual use, which seeds viral adoption inside companies.|Team-collaboration boundary as upgrade trigger captures conversion at the moment a personal tool becomes a team tool.|AI priced as add-on rather than tier lets Notion add revenue without disturbing seat-ladder psychology.|Business tier anchors page; Plus reads as reasonable by comparison; Enterprise sits ready for procurement.|Annual discount captures price-sensitive small teams; monthly option captures hesitant teams.|Custom Enterprise tier handles the largest deals without exposing the price to seat-counting competitors.

What to adapt:
If you can place the upgrade trigger at a structural boundary (team formation, new use case, scale threshold), the trigger fires without you having to engineer it.|Price new feature categories as add-ons rather than new tiers when they cut across your existing seat structure.|Use a custom Enterprise tier to handle deals that would otherwise force you to publish a price you do not want competitors to see.

What to avoid:
Do not launch a personal-free tier if your unit economics do not support it. Notion has venture funding and a long horizon.|Do not adopt seat-based pricing if your product is used by individuals on a team where each seat does not get clear individual value.|Do not bury the upgrade trigger in feature gates. Structural triggers (team formation) convert better than feature gates (limit hit).

Brunson lens:
Stack: Tiered stack with progressive feature additions per rung; Business tier is the visual anchor.
Value ladder: Four-rung ladder (Free → Plus → Business → Enterprise) plus add-on (AI) — full Value Ladder shape.
Decoy/anchor: Business tier as anchor; Plus as the reasonable middle; Enterprise as the procurement door.
Payment mechanics: Per-seat monthly or annual with annual discount; add-ons priced per-seat orthogonally to tier.

Pricing last verified: 2026-05-17