You shouldn't need two Notion databases, four Zapier flows, and a Slack chat to run client work. Workhouse is a project management tool with the client portal built in — one database, two audiences, no duct tape.
Free during beta · Migration help included · 30-second setup
Notion is brilliant when one team uses one workspace. The cracks show up the moment you bring clients in. Workspace-level guest access is too coarse — invite a client and they see the whole database, internal columns and all. The workaround everyone ends up at is the same: an internal tasks database for your team and a client-facing tasks database for each client, held together with Zapier or Make to keep them in sync.
From there it spirals. Every task exists twice — once with the real conversation, once with the polite version. Versions drift. When a client comments, someone has to copy the comment into the team Slack to discuss before replying. Notifications fire twice. The status update is written from scratch every Friday because no one tool knows what actually happened that week.
We spent more time keeping the two databases in lockstep than doing the work clients were paying us for. So we built the database that already knew the difference.
The dimensions that matter when an agency is the audience.
| Notion | Workhouse | |
|---|---|---|
| Per-comment visibility | No — workspace-level guest access only | Yes — flag on every task and comment, enforced in SQL |
| Client portal | Build your own with shared databases | Scoped per-client, branded as yours |
| Approvals workflow | Manual, or DIY with formulas + Zapier | Native — on the deliverable, tracked in the activity feed |
| Audit log | Partial, enterprise plan only | Immutable, included on every workspace |
| Weekly status reports | Write from scratch in a doc page | AI-drafted from the week's actual activity |
| Internal vs. client tasks | Two databases + sync automations | One task, one visibility flag |
| Setup time (one client) | Hours to model the data, days to wire automations | 30 seconds |
| Pricing model | Per-user, plus per-guest on advanced tiers | Free during beta — client contacts are not seats |
We're built for agencies. Notion is excellent for everything else.
Beta migration is hands-on. We do the first one for you.
Notion's native CSV export covers tasks, status, assignees, due dates, and any custom columns.
Send to migrate@workhouse.app. We'll review your visibility setup (every Notion-agency has a version of this) and write the mapping.
Your internal/client visibility property becomes Workhouse's visibility flag. Status, due dates, assignees come over. Comments where the export format supports it.
Each client contact gets a portal invite. Their tasks light up; your internal chatter stays where it should.
“We ran Conversion Factory in Notion for years. Two databases, hundreds of dollars a month in Zapier glue, copy-pasting client comments into Slack to discuss them. At some point we realized we were building a whole new app on top of Notion — badly, with duct tape. So we built the app instead.”
Notion is a flexible workspace; visibility is a workspace-level setting. Workhouse is a project management tool where visibility is a flag on every task and comment, enforced at the database layer. Agencies running Notion typically maintain two parallel databases (internal + client-facing) and sync them with Zapier or Make. Workhouse collapses both into one database with two filtered views — the dashboard for your team, the portal for each client.
Yes. Export your Notion task databases as CSV, email it to us, and we'll do your first migration for you during beta. We map your existing visibility column (most Notion-agency setups have one) to Workhouse's visibility flag, preserve task status and assignees, and bring over comments where the CSV format supports it.
Workhouse is free during the public beta — no credit card, invite your whole team in 30 seconds. Paid pricing comes later; existing beta workspaces will have a clear path forward.
Keep using Notion for docs. Workhouse replaces the project-management part of your stack — the task databases, the client-facing duplicate boards, the Zapier glue between them. Notion is great for knowledge bases; we're not trying to replace that.
No. The visibility model is the foundation, not an add-on. Approvals, AI-drafted status reports, an immutable audit log, per-client portals, action items assigned to client contacts — these all assume the visibility model exists. Bolting them onto Notion would be possible in principle but would take years and would not change Notion's underlying workspace-level guest model.
Each client gets a portal scoped to their own work. They see tasks marked client-visible, can comment on them, approve deliverables, and submit requests. They cannot see anything marked internal — the visibility check is a WHERE clause in the database, not a CSS hide.