How to Use Notion as a Website Your Complete Guide

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how-to-use-notion-as-a-website

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Learn how to use Notion as a website with this complete guide. Transform your Notion pages into fast, professional sites with a custom domain and design.

The magic of turning a Notion page into a website is surprisingly simple: you just need a third-party tool like Sotion to bridge your public Notion page with a custom domain. This neat trick lets you skip traditional website builders altogether, using Notion's editor—which you probably already know and love—to create and manage your site's content with almost no technical headaches.

Why Use Notion as Your Website Builder?

The idea of building a website inside a productivity app might sound a bit unconventional at first, but it’s a game-changer for how we create online. For years, launching a site meant wrestling with clunky platforms, steep learning curves, or hiring expensive developers. Notion completely flips that script.

It all boils down to two things: simplicity and speed.

If you can create a document in Notion, you can build a website. The block-based editor is basically a super-intuitive visual builder. You just drag and drop text, images, databases, and columns to design your layout without ever touching a line of code.

A No-Code Solution on the Rise

This isn't just some niche hack; it’s a full-blown movement. Notion’s explosive growth to over 30 million users proves its incredible versatility. It’s become the central nervous system for countless tech firms (20% market share), educational institutions (17%), and marketing agencies (12%). This widespread adoption is all thanks to its knack for structuring content—from simple text to complex databases—which makes its pages behave just like websites. You can find more insights in this deep dive into Notion's productivity statistics.

The real power here is turning your internal knowledge base, project roadmap, or personal portfolio directly into a public-facing website. You eliminate the tedious step of transferring content from one system to another, which slashes your maintenance time.

Who Is This Approach For?

While anyone can spin up a website with Notion, some groups find it especially powerful. The low barrier to entry and minimal cost make it a perfect fit for a few key use cases.

Creators and Freelancers: You can quickly launch a portfolio, blog, or simple landing page to show off your work without getting stuck in the technical weeds.

Startups: It's ideal for validating an idea with a clean, professional-looking marketing site that you can update on the fly as your business evolves.

Educators and Coaches: Create resource hubs or even member-only course portals using Notion's structure, then use a tool like Sotion to put content behind a login.

At its core, using Notion for your website is all about efficiency. You're building on a platform designed for organization and clarity, and that translates directly into a clean, easy-to-manage online presence. Your content and your website live in the same place, creating a perfectly seamless workflow from idea to launch.

Notion Website vs Traditional Website Builder

Deciding between Notion and a traditional builder like Squarespace or Wix? This table breaks down the key differences to help you choose the right path for your project.

Feature	Notion with Sotion	Traditional Website Builder (e.g., Squarespace, Wix)
Setup & Learning Curve	Minimal. If you know Notion, you're ready to go.	Can be moderate to high, with proprietary editors and features to learn.
Content Management	Extremely fast. Edit your Notion doc, and the site updates instantly.	Requires logging into a separate dashboard and using a specific content editor.
Initial & Ongoing Cost	Very affordable. Requires a Notion plan (free or paid) plus a Sotion subscription.	Typically involves a monthly subscription that can become costly with added features.
Design & Customization	Limited to Notion's block structure, but can be enhanced with custom CSS/JS.	Highly customizable with pre-made templates and advanced design tools.
Best For	Portfolios, blogs, MVPs, knowledge bases, and simple marketing sites.	E-commerce stores, complex business sites, and highly stylized brand websites.

As you can see, the "best" option really depends on your goals. For speed, simplicity, and content-heavy sites, Notion is a clear winner. For complex e-commerce or highly visual brands, a traditional builder might offer more firepower.

Designing Your Notion Page for a Public Audience

Before you even touch a tool like Sotion, we need to talk about the most important first step: your mindset. When you decide to turn a Notion page into a public website, you're no longer just creating a document. You're designing an experience for a visitor.

A public-facing Notion page needs to be built with the same care you'd give a traditional website. The goal is to guide visitors, present information clearly, and look completely professional.

Think of it this way: you want to create a clean, intuitive layout that feels intentional, not like a random brain dump. The easiest way to start is by moving beyond a single, endless scroll of text. Instead, think in terms of sections and navigation. Use Notion’s built-in columns to create more dynamic layouts, placing key information side-by-side instead of stacking everything vertically. A simple two or three-column layout can instantly make your page feel less like a doc and more like a real homepage.

It also helps to be clear on your page's main job. Is it a simple portfolio? A blog? Maybe something more specific? Taking a moment to learn about the different types of landing pages can help you match your page's structure to its goal, making sure it gives visitors exactly what they're looking for.

A website without clear navigation is like a store without aisles. In Notion, you can build your own navigation bar by creating a series of linked pages right at the top of your main page.

Create a "Navigation" Section: I like to use a callout block at the very top of the page. This makes it stand out and feel like a dedicated menu.

Link to Sub-Pages: Inside that callout block, create plain text links to your other key pages (e.g., "About," "Blog," "Contact"). This creates a consistent navigation menu that visitors will see on every page.

Use Databases for Content Hubs: If you're building a blog or portfolio, don't just list everything on one page. Create a separate Notion database for your posts or projects. You can then embed that database on your main page using a linked view, filtering it to show just your most recent work.

A huge mistake I see people make is treating their Notion site as one giant, sprawling page. By breaking content into dedicated sub-pages and linking them together, you create a much more organized and navigable site that actually encourages people to stick around and explore.

This structured approach does more than just look good; it leads to way better engagement. Just look at Notion's own website as a model. It logged around 155.6 million visits, with people viewing an average of 10.67 pages per session. That's proof that a well-organized site built on Notion's own principles gets people to dig deeper into the content. You can check out more of Notion's user engagement metrics on Similarweb.

Enhancing Visual Appeal and Clarity

Once your structure is solid, it's time to focus on the visual details. This is what lifts your page from a simple document to a polished website, and Notion's blocks are your best friends here.

Use callout blocks with custom icons to highlight important info, create distinct section headers, or frame testimonials. Mix up your text formatting with bolding, italics, and code snippets to draw the eye to key terms and ideas.

Remember, using Notion as a website is as much about visual hierarchy as it is about the words themselves. A page that's easy to scan is a page that's easy to use.

Connecting Notion to Your Custom Domain

This is where the real magic happens. You’ve put in the work to create a great-looking Notion page, and now it’s time to give it a proper home with its own custom domain. This might sound a bit technical, but with a tool like Sotion, it's something you can knock out in just a few minutes—no coding required.

The whole point is to skip the complicated server setups and just connect your public Notion page to your domain. The first and most critical step is actually inside Notion itself: you have to make your page public. Just navigate to the page you want to use, click the "Share" button in the top-right corner, and flip the "Share to web" toggle on. This creates a unique public link, which is what Sotion needs to pull in your content.

With that public link copied, the rest is handled inside your publishing tool.

From Notion Page to Live Website

The process is designed to be as straightforward as possible. After signing up with Sotion, you’ll be prompted to create your first site. All you have to do here is paste that public Notion URL you just copied.

Instantly, the platform spins up a live preview of your page, showing you exactly what it will look like as a real website. It’s a pretty cool moment—that first glimpse of your Notion workspace dressed up for the public. You can see how your columns, callouts, and databases translate into a clean, professional layout.

The key takeaway here is that you're not rebuilding anything. You are simply giving your existing Notion page a new, professional address. All your content remains in Notion, making updates as simple as editing a document.

For a more detailed walkthrough, you can also check out our guide on how to add a custom domain for your Notion page. It’s packed with extra tips to make sure everything goes smoothly.

This handy infographic breaks down the core workflow, visualizing the three main steps to get your Notion page live.

As you can see, the journey from a private document to a live website is a short one, focused on sharing, connecting, and publishing.

Finalizing Your Domain Connection

The final piece of the puzzle is telling your domain registrar—the place where you bought your domain, like GoDaddy, Namecheap, or Google Domains—where to point your domain. Sotion gives you two simple DNS records. You just need to copy these values and paste them into your domain's DNS settings.

I know "DNS" can sound intimidating, but it's really just a copy-and-paste job. Here's what that usually looks like:

Find Your DNS Settings: First, log in to your domain registrar and navigate to the DNS management section for your domain.

Add the New Records: You'll be adding the two specific records provided by Sotion, which are typically a CNAME or an A record.

Wait for It to Go Live: It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours for these changes to spread across the internet. This is called propagation.

Once it's all done, visiting your custom domain will load up your beautiful Notion-powered website, ready for visitors. And just like that, you've successfully learned how to use Notion as a website, bridging the gap between a powerhouse productivity tool and a real online presence.

Customizing Your Notion Website's Look and Feel

Let’s be honest, a public Notion page is a fantastic starting point, but it still looks… well, like a Notion page. To really use Notion as a website, you have to break free from the default styling and inject your own brand’s personality. This is where a publishing tool like Sotion becomes absolutely essential, giving you the power to turn a functional document into a unique online presence.

The first big leap is adding a professional navigation bar and footer. These are critical website elements that a standard shared Notion page just doesn't have, leaving visitors with no clear way to explore your site. With a service like Sotion, you can easily build a sticky header with links to your key pages (like About, Services, or your Blog) and a footer with contact details and social links. It’s a simple change that immediately elevates the user experience.

Applying Your Brand Identity

Beyond the basic structure, branding is all about visual consistency. You need your fonts, colors, and overall aesthetic to feel like you. While Notion offers a few font choices, a dedicated publishing tool unlocks a world of customization. You can easily select from a huge library of Google Fonts or even upload your own custom font files. This ensures every single heading and paragraph aligns perfectly with your brand guide.

It's this ability to control the details that separates a professional site from a simple shared page. If you want a head start with a pre-designed structure, checking out a comprehensive Notion website suite can give you a fantastic foundation to build on.

It also helps to know you're building on solid ground. Notion Labs has a strong track record, including a significant Series C funding round that has seriously boosted its development. This gives you confidence that the core platform is stable, well-funded, and constantly getting better. You can dig into more details on Notion's growth and financial backing on Toolfinder.

Pro Tip: Don't just stop at fonts. Use your brand's primary color for link text and button backgrounds. It’s a small tweak, but it creates a massive visual impact and reinforces your brand identity with every click.

Gaining Granular Control with Custom CSS

For those of us who want to fine-tune every last pixel, custom CSS is your best friend. This is a more advanced feature offered by platforms like Sotion that gives you complete stylistic control over your site. And you don't need to be a coding wizard to make powerful changes; often, simple code snippets can dramatically alter your site's appearance.

Here are a few practical examples of what you can do with just a few lines of CSS:

Change Button Styles: Modify the color, shape, and hover effects of buttons to match your brand's call-to-action style.

Adjust Spacing: Tweak the space between sections, paragraphs, or images to create a cleaner, more readable layout.

Customize Blockquotes: Style your blockquotes with unique borders, background colors, or font styles to make key takeaways really pop.

Modify Font Sizes: Fine-tune the size of your H1, H2, and body text to create the perfect visual hierarchy.

Using custom code might sound intimidating, but it's often just a copy-and-paste job. This level of control is the final step in learning how to use Notion as a website that is truly, uniquely yours.

Integrating Advanced Features and Analytics

Okay, your branded site is live. It looks great, but now the real fun begins. It's time to add the kind of features that drive real growth and engagement, transforming your static page into a dynamic, data-driven platform. This is where we move beyond just publishing and start understanding—and serving—your audience on a deeper level.

First things first: analytics. Without data, you're just guessing. Integrating a tool like Google Analytics or the more privacy-focused Plausible is incredibly straightforward with Sotion. Just drop a tracking ID into your site settings, and you're good to go.

You’ll immediately start gathering insights into how people interact with your site. Which pages are getting all the attention? Where is your traffic coming from? How long are people sticking around? This information is pure gold for refining your content strategy.

Building a Community with Memberships

Analytics tells you what your visitors are doing, but memberships let you build a direct relationship with them. For creators and businesses looking to monetize their expertise, this is one of the most powerful ways to use Notion as a website. With Sotion, you can easily gate access to specific Notion pages, turning them into exclusive, members-only hubs.

Just imagine the possibilities:

A Paid Resource Library: A designer could sell access to a Notion database packed with premium templates, mockups, and practical guides.

A Private Client Portal: A freelancer could give each client their own secure, password-protected Notion page with project updates, invoices, and deliverables all in one place.

A Members-Only Newsletter Archive: A writer could cultivate a loyal following by offering paid subscribers a searchable archive of every newsletter they've ever sent.

Creating gated content isn't just about making money; it's about delivering focused value. When you offer exclusive resources, you build a dedicated audience that is genuinely invested in your work, turning casual visitors into loyal members.

If you want to go deeper on managing members, our guide on https://sotion.so/blog/notion-membership-management is packed with more advanced strategies and tips.

Maximizing Your Content's Reach

Once you've filled your Notion site with valuable articles, tutorials, or resources, you need to make sure that content works as hard as you did. A smart way to extend your reach is through content repurposing.

For example, that detailed blog post you wrote can be sliced and diced into a series of social media updates, a video script, or even a lead magnet to grow your email list. To get started, you can learn how to repurpose content effectively and apply those same principles to the content you're already managing right inside Notion.

This combination of analytics, memberships, and smart content strategy is what truly unlocks the potential of a Notion-powered website. You're no longer just a publisher; you're a community builder and a savvy marketer, all from the comfort of your favorite workspace.

Still Have Questions? Let's Clear Them Up

When you start thinking about using Notion as the backbone for your website, it's natural for a few key questions to pop up. I've been there myself. Here are some straightforward answers to the most common things people ask.

Can My Notion Website Have Good SEO?

Absolutely, but you have to be intentional about it. A plain, public Notion page on its own isn't really built for search engines. This is exactly where a tool like Sotion comes into play.

Sotion is designed to bridge that gap by giving you all the SEO elements Google and other search engines need to understand and rank your content. This includes things like:

Custom Meta Titles & Descriptions: You get to write the inviting snippets that show up in search results, which is huge for getting people to actually click on your link.

Pretty URLs: Instead of a long, clunky Notion link, you get a clean, readable URL like yourdomain.com/about-my-service.

Sitemap Generation: It automatically builds and updates a sitemap, making it super easy for Google to find every single page you publish.

So, while Notion provides the content editor, a publishing tool like Sotion adds the critical SEO layer needed to get noticed.

How Fast Will My Notion Website Load?

Performance is a totally valid concern—nobody wants a slow site. The good news is that websites built with Notion and a solid publisher like Sotion are surprisingly quick.

The secret sauce is a global Content Delivery Network (CDN). Your content isn't being loaded directly from Notion's servers every time. Instead, it’s cached on servers all over the world, so it loads lightning-fast for visitors, whether they're in New York or New Zealand. These platforms also handle image and code optimization behind the scenes to keep things zippy.

What Are the Main Limitations?

Using Notion as a website is a game-changer, but it's not a silver bullet for every project. It's smart to know the trade-offs.

The biggest constraint is design flexibility. You're working within Notion's block-based world. That means you can’t achieve the kind of pixel-perfect, complex layouts you might build on a platform like Webflow. You get a clean, beautiful site, but you have to embrace the structure Notion provides.

You're also relying on a third-party service. Your website's performance is tied to the uptime of both Notion and your chosen publisher (like Sotion). While these services are incredibly reliable, it's a dependency to keep in mind.

For most blogs, portfolios, and content-driven sites, these trade-offs are a tiny price to pay for the incredible ease of use. But if you're building a massive e-commerce store or a complex web app, a traditional builder might still be a better fit.

Ready to turn your Notion pages into a professional website? With Sotion, you can launch a fast, branded, and feature-rich site in minutes. Start building your Notion website today.