A workspace and database tool
Thaw vs Notion
People who built a "Home admin" database in Notion with properties for expiry dates and an uploaded PDF per row.
A Notion database is a fine place to record what you have, and every row has to be typed by a person. Thaw fills the rows from the documents. If you love the Notion setup, keep it for the planning and let Thaw be where the paper actually lives.
Side by side
| Thaw | Notion | |
|---|---|---|
| How paper gets in | Email-in address per family or business, scanner-to-email, browser upload, folder import, Evernote and paperless-ngx imports. Dropbox and Drive folder watch next. | Upload to a page or a database property, by hand. |
| Structure | Category, type and facts read from the page; properties appear because the document has them. | Whatever properties you design, filled in by you. |
| Dates | Every renewal, expiry, due date and notice period becomes an item with what happens if missed and what to do, from the document itself. Resolved by the next document. | Date properties and reminders, entered manually. |
| Flexibility | Opinionated: twelve categories, a registry of types, people & things. | Unlimited. Build anything. |
| Security | Per-document keys wrapped by per-account keys wrapped by a KMS master key. Identifiers encrypted with a blind index and redacted from the search index. Hash-chained audit log. Crypto-shred on delete. | Workspace-level encryption; content indexed for search and AI features. |
Stay with Notion if
- You want a custom system and enjoy maintaining it.
- Documents are a small part of a larger personal wiki.
Move to Thaw if
- You stopped updating the database months ago.
- You want the checkup to tell you what the database would have, if you had kept it up.
Point it at the pile and walk away.
Early access is open to a small group of households and owner-run businesses. Tell us a little about your paper and we will send an invitation.