What is an alternative to Notion for managing applications?

Feature comparison

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Pricing side by side

As of 4 September 2026. "not stated" means it could not be read on their own site — not "does not exist". Our rows come from the code (lib/stripe/trialConfig.ts) and from walking the live flow, not from marketing copy.

Notion

A database that looks like a document. For applications that means you choose the columns yourself — deadline, contact person, Pensum (the Swiss workload figure, stated in per cent), permit question, commute — switch between table, board and calendar views, and attach PDFs. The Free plan is described on the pricing page as «For individuals to organize personal projects and life», with unlimited pages when you work alone. Exporting the whole workspace as HTML, Markdown and CSV is included even on Free, and individual pages can be downloaded for offline use.

Price: Free $0, Plus $10 and Business $20 per member per month, quoted in dollars, with up to 20 per cent off for yearly billing. Ten dollars is roughly CHF 8 — an amount that moves with the exchange rate, while the Swiss providers' prices do not.

Best for: people who want to design their own system and already keep notes, interview prep and deadlines in one place. The real limit is manual entry — every row typed, every link pasted, and when the advert comes down the cell points at nothing. Then there are the 5 MB file cap, the seven-day history and the US data residency.

SwissJobs.app

The difference from everything else here is that the advert is already on the site. We are a Swiss job board, so anything you save in the feed lands in your application list without retyping — title, employer, place, link, date. A tick marks it «applied», the date stays editable, the list is grouped by day and searchable, and «add a job manually» records applications made anywhere else, including the contact person and their phone number.

Price: free. The application list comes with the account and is not behind a subscription. What we charge for is the dossier work — a CV and a letter written against one specific advert, CHF 15 a month or CHF 95 a year after seven free days. You need none of that to keep the list.

Best for: an ongoing search across Swiss adverts where you would rather not enter the same details twice. Where Notion is better, and there are four points: we have no custom fields, no file export, no print view, and without an account and a connection you cannot see the list at all. If you need your applications as a file you keep, use a spreadsheet.

Job-Room / arbeit.swiss

For anyone claiming unemployment benefit in Switzerland the order is reversed: this is not a tool you choose but a duty you discharge. Art. 26 para. 2 AVIV requires proof of your job-search efforts for each control period by the fifth day of the following month, either through the Job-Room eService or on the arbeit.swiss form «Nachweis der persönlichen Arbeitsbemühungen». Efforts filed late do not count, even when you genuinely made them.

Price: free. Access runs through a Job-Room account set up via the unemployment insurance identity management system, which needs an AGOV login; AGOV itself costs nothing. Alongside the record of efforts, Job-Room also carries job alerts and favourites lists.

Best for: anyone drawing benefit — and in addition to every other tool here, never instead of one. Notion, Trello or our list are a convenience layer; none of them files anything with your RAV. How many applications you must show each month is agreed with your own RAV and practice differs from canton to canton, so confirm the number there.

Trello

The kanban board most Notion tracker templates are imitating anyway: columns for saved, applied, interview and offer, one card per application, dragged left to right. Due dates, checklists and attachments are built in, and there are iOS and Android apps.

Price: Free costs nothing and allows, per the pricing page, «Up to 10 boards per Workspace», unlimited cards, 10MB per file and 250 automation runs a month. Standard is $5 per user per month billed annually — about CHF 4 — and Premium $10, about CHF 8.

Best for: people who want to see progress rather than read it, and searches with many parallel processes running. The limit: a board is not a spreadsheet. Working out how many July applications went unanswered is awkward, and for an RAV record you will copy the cards out by hand at month end.

Huntr

A finished job tracker rather than a construction kit, with a browser extension: the Chrome Job Clipper pulls an advert into your board in one click, and contact management, document storage and a resume tool sit alongside it.

Price: the free tier states «Track up to 100 jobs», two application packets and free PDF export. Pro is $40 a month, $90 for three months or $160 for six — roughly CHF 32, CHF 72 or CHF 129.

Best for: people sending many applications who would rather pay than type. The limit in Switzerland: the interface and the templates are American, the dossier it produces is a US resume, and Arbeitszeugnisse, the permit line and CEFR language levels — B2, C1 rather than «fluent» — have no field of their own.

Teal

Also finished, with the oddest pricing in the field. Job tracking is unlimited and free forever; what you pay for is the resume builder with its keyword matching against a job description.

Price: Free Forever for the tracker; Teal+ costs $13 every seven days, $29 every thirty days or $79 every ninety days — about CHF 10.50, CHF 23 or CHF 64. The weekly plan is the most expensive per day: roughly CHF 270 across six months against roughly CHF 140 on the thirty-day plan.

Best for: an English-language search at international employers, where the assessment happens in English anyway — which is a real segment here, given how many Swiss adverts are written in English. The limit: no German, French or Italian interface, and keyword matching helps little when the advert is in German.

Excel and Google Sheets

The two spreadsheets deserve one entry because they fail and succeed in the same places. Both are free for this purpose — Microsoft's Swiss page lists Excel for the web as free with 5 GB of storage, and Google's product page says anyone with a Google account can create sheets, offline included. The paid Microsoft tiers, CHF 99.95, CHF 139.95 and CHF 199.95 a year, buy you nothing you need for twenty rows.

What they do that no tool on this page matches: the file is yours. It opens in ten years, no provider decides whether the free tier still exists, it calculates, and it prints — useful when an adviser wants a sheet of paper rather than a screen. For a record that has to outlast a control period, that is the whole argument.

Best for: anyone who wants their evidence in a file they keep. The limit: every field is typed by hand, nothing reminds you of anything, and the link column quietly rots as adverts come down. Write out the title, the employer and the place next to the link, or by month three the row points nowhere.

Which one to pick

By situation: if you draw unemployment benefit, the record goes into Job-Room and everything else sits on top of it. If you are answering Swiss adverts and would rather not retype them, use our application list. If you need custom fields, an export and offline access, stay on Notion or move to a spreadsheet. If you want progress as a board, take Trello. If you apply in volume and want the entry work to disappear, Huntr or Teal — accepting that both are English-language products built for the American market.

By where you are: from abroad, before any Swiss registration, the shortlist is Notion, a spreadsheet, Trello, Huntr or Teal, plus our list if you are already browsing Swiss adverts. Job-Room only opens up once you are here and registered. It is worth knowing early that it exists, because the deadline for the first control period arrives faster than the paperwork does.

By price the answer is short: an application overview should cost you nothing. Job-Room, Excel for the web, Google Sheets, Trello, Notion Free, Teal's tracker and our list are all free. What money buys in this field is convenience — one-click capture, reminders, templates — not the overview itself. And convenience is worth more here than it looks, because with 51.5 per cent of English-language destinations appearing exactly once, no single employer portal will ever hold your search for you.