Coda Review

Best Features, Pricing, Alternatives & Verdict

Coda is one of the more advanced no-code tools for managing your team knowledge, projects and processes, all in one place, but is it worth it to check out for your team?

What is Coda?

Coda is a no-code tool for teams to manage projects, knowledge & workflows.

What does Coda do?

Coda is advanced and it allows teams to build workspaces to their liking. With Coda, much like Notion, you can craft whatever experience you like thanks to the no-code, building block layout with templates to help newbies to Coda too.

For a team this allows you to build anything from a place to manage content, to a Kanban board for upcoming projects, and even a team wiki for knowledge stored to avoid it being trapped in silos like Slack.

Coda's Best Features

Here's the best bits about Coda we enjoyed in our review:

1. Google Docs Style

Coda is approachable at first because it looks like documents with the feel of Google Documents on steroids. Under the hood, all the features like formulas, blocks, packs and more allow you to go beyond the normal and build workspaces to your liking.

You can connect up databases within Coda to bridge relationships between things. For example, say you have a weekly company standup and need to log the notes in meeting notes, you can have two pages that have a relationship setup.

This means it is perfect for building an interconnected web of all your documents, databases and relationships between work that matter. Coda also serves well for project management and team knowledge meaning you can build complex project management workspaces (even with templates) and team brains for storing all the ideas for later.

This makes it great for company employee checklists, new onboards and even form collaboration to automate processes.

2. Coda Packs & Templates

Coda packs and templates save time.

Templates (see above) are available within each page and pop up at the bottom when you want to create something new. You can use these or even build your own, to save them for later, but largely the templates do save time and help to get the ball rolling.

One of the nice things is that Coda still have their gallery of use cases from a range of companies like Uber and many more, this is a community based gallery for you to pinch things that people have built to build the right workspace for them. You can copy them over and then basically save time, optimize them yourself too, and build your layout.

Packs are designed to save time and trigger events but they also serve as updated knowledge using the power of the Coda API.

For those even more advanced users, you can make packs if you want to build connection between apps you use and maybe your own API or software.

3. Advanced Automations & Features

Automations help save time by bridging the gap between apps.

Packs help do this but you'll need more advanced access to Coda with their Pro, Team & Enterprise plans that have the Coda Packs unlocked further for apps like Jira, Slack, Google Calendar, Twilio, Figma, Github and many more.

Once you have these, you can use these packs to help save you time and connect databases you create to connect with apps, so that actions like completing a piece of content triggers a series of actions.

Other aspects of Coda are much more advanced like formulas which are built to help enhance those relationships.

Coda's Cons

Here's some the bits we didn't like about Coda:

1. Complex Systems

Coda isn't for the faint hearted, but with power comes responsibility.

The powers of Coda are huge, you can build whatever, with the tools at your fingertips. Arguably this system is more powerful than Notion and comes with more intense training and setup, so this won't be perfect for a team wanted to avoid learning a software.

What it will be is great for those who want a totally customizable experience and build documents into apps that the team can scale with, here's a great course to learn Coda.

2. Confusing Pricing

Pricing is one of the odd ones on the market.

If you have someone within your team who is proficient and ready to adopt Coda, then that will be someone called a "Doc Maker" - designed to take control of the account and manage the building of your workspace. You can have as many members and doc makers.

Here's the document (above) explaining the concept.

How much does Coda cost?

Coda is free, with pricing per doc maker depending on how many seats you have.

For example: Coda's team plan with 10 team members and 1 doc maker will cost $36 per month, averaging at $3.60 per team member. Doc makers are builders of the structure of documents within your team and you can increase the amount per account.

This is the monthly pricing, annual pricing at Coda is discounted.

Verdict: Is Coda worth it for your team?

For your team, think of Coda as Google Docs, Excel, and Notion on steroids.

Coda has a lot going for it as a workspace that you can craft, build and design to your team's liking. Whilst it doesn't have desktop apps and yes, the pricing is confusing - largely the experience is hideously powerful for managing your projects, team brain and building connections between apps to save your team time automating basic day-to-day steps.

More recently Coda has introduced AI chat that enhances things and they have been on of the first movers in the world of OpenAI which is exciting to see.

Should I get Coda then?

For a team wanting that perfect workspace and you have a team member or members who wants to learn and lead that pursuit, Coda is a brilliant option.

Best Coda Alternatives

Notion, Airtable & Smartsuite are all Coda competitors and serve as good alternatives.