Synap vs SaaS Tools
Why move from Notion, Airtable, or Monday.com?
The SaaS Trap
Tools like Notion, Airtable, Monday.com, and Miro are powerful, but they all share the same fundamental flaw: The Silo.
- Data is Trapped: You can't query your Monday tasks from your Notion notes.
- Intelligence is Limited: AI only knows what's in that specific app.
- You Don't Own It: If they ban you or change pricing, you lose access.
- Linear History: "Undo" is limited. History is linear.
The Synap Architecture
Synap fundamentally inverts this model.
1. Data Sovereignty vs Data Renting
| Feature | SaaS (Notion/Airtable) | Synap (Data Pod) |
|---|---|---|
| Storage | Their Cloud | Your Private Pod |
| Access | API (Rate Limited) | Direct Database Access |
| Integrations | Webhooks (Limited) | Event Bus (Real-time) |
| Offline | Often limited | Local-First Capable |
2. Contagious Intelligence
In Notion AI, you can ask it to summarize a page. In Synap, you can create an "Analyst Agent" that watches everything you do.
- SaaS: AI is a feature inside the app.
- Synap: The App is a feature inside the AI.
Because Synap is an Event Sourcing System, AI agents can subscribe to the stream of your life. They aren't limited to a specific page or table.
3. The "Everything Store"
- Airtable is great for databases.
- Miro is great for whiteboards.
- Notion is great for docs.
Synap treats all of these as Views on the same Knowledge Graph. A "Task" in Synap can be viewed as:
- A row in a Table (Airtable view)
- A card on a Canvas (Miro view)
- A block in a Document (Notion view)
It is the same entity, just projected differently.
Migration Path
Synap is designed to coexist with these tools during transition using Spokes.
- Notion Spoke: Syncs Notion pages into Synap Graph.
- Linear Spoke: Syncs Linear issues into Synap Tasks.
You don't have to switch overnight. Start by using Synap as the Intelligence Layer on top of your existing SaaS tools.