Super 3.0

I’m reviewing this on the day of the launch of Super 3.0! Excited to see the changes. I stopped using this in 2021 due to some struggles with monthly costs. I’m excited to see what changes have been made.

Starting off with the landing page - Personally, this is beat by

Simple.ink for me, but still a pretty simple/solid page.

If you’ve read my other reviews, you know that pushing the user straight into an account setup flow is a small pet peeve of mine, but Super might be able to do this because of their reputation. They make a great choice to signal (social proof) on the right bottom of this screen.

Interestingly here, it brings me to the dashboard. I have to click again to get to ‘create’ my site. I would prefer if it pops me straight into the first site creation since I just created my account.

Site creation comes up as a modal with some nice background blurring. After pressing ‘create’ it took about 5 seconds to load.

And we’re live at: https://notion-competition-2023.super.site/

Clicking around, it functions well, but uses the Super Favicon. I would love if it grabbed page icons after seeing other tools take this approach.

On the dashboard, it really enjoy the design on the left, but there’s a slight loading lag when clicking to different tabs. (Takes a second to ‘fade’ in.) I’m on a maxed M2 machine with fast WiFi, so not on my side.

(If you notice at the end…SEO indexing is paywalled at $12/month….🥶)

Before we head to the audits, there are some things on the sidebar that are confusing for me. One of the big bonuses I seem to associate with Super.so is a strong theming community.

In fact, in 2022, I purchased a gorgeous theme called Cosmos from Josh. He even replied to my emails, and helped a bit with setup.

I say all of this because I’m a bit confused of the direction of theming with Super. If you note in the screenshot above, ‘You don’t have any themes’…so let’s head to the dashboard.

Here, I tried searching, refreshing…and even finding the old theme page from my last purchased theme: https://super.so/templates/cosmos , not loading 😭

I really hope that community theming will continue on Super. It felt like a really powerful feature, but based on what I could find, it doesn’t look promising.

I mean…just look how epic this looks:

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I want to take a quick sidebar and do some feature analysis here. (You’ll see why at the end of the review.)

Despite my frustration at the paywall for SEO, this social preview is nice to see.

The ability to customize is REALLY impressive. Each item under site design has sliders and plenty of room for customization. My only small note on this is that I struggled to see the slider when in dark mode. I didn’t even realize it was a slider.

Last 2 - Under Options:

Some unique options I hadn’t seen before. I appreciate the addition of these, it doesn’t seem easy to implement. Big kudos to the dev team! 🔥

On features - these were all I found. I found myself looking for a bit of ‘extra delight’ in the mindset of Replit.

Anyway…onto the audit:

This is expected behavior, given the SEO is only unlocked after paying the monthly fee. All of the other audit features can be ignored due to this.

Onto pagespeed! The giant slayer.

Honestly, I couldn’t believe this.

NotionLayer does better on SEO, and

Bullet.so does 20 points better on Performance, and 10 points better on SEO.

This is really shocking to see, given the price point. NotionLayer is less than half the price, and Bullet is $3 less each month.

I would be really concerned for a more complex page, my test page (

🧪

Notion Competition 2023 is fairly standard for a landing/company page with a few links. It only has about 5 images total.

This concludes my review. I’m still a bit surprised by the page speeds, but perhaps that’s not a concern for some. The sidebar redesign is stunning and fast.

I think this is a great tool for established and long lasting Notion sites. This is probably not the best choice for new creators, new Notion sites, or project pages. ($12/mo stacks up quickly.)

I’m curious about which features stand out from the competitors for the additional price. In the past, for me, the clear value proposition was the theming community. Without access to that, I struggle to personally justify this price. However, my unique use case is lifetime and project sites.

Additionally, after reviewing 5+ other tools, I couldn’t identify any stand-out features here. I think Super.so is marketed as one of the most stable/long term platforms, but they certainly have some competition on their hands.

I would recommend this for any established team that has a website they need to be stable + long term. I would guess that Super has the longest runway and most established brand in the Notion domain space. 📈