ilolink vs Notion public pages
Notion is where the document lives while you write it. Publishing to the web is a switch on the side of that — useful, and deliberately not the product. ilolink is the other half: it takes a finished document, gives it a link, and reports how the people you sent it to actually read it. Most teams end up using both.
What Notion gives you when you publish
A public URL on notion.site, no account needed to read it, and a page that keeps mirroring the document as you edit. For a living wiki, a public roadmap or an always-current handbook, that live mirror is exactly right, and nothing here beats it.
What its analytics can and cannot tell you
Notion's own analytics guide is clear about the boundary. Page analytics lists viewers, but “this list won't include anonymous viewers who aren't members or guests, but have seen your page online” — while those online views are still counted. So for a page you published to the world, you get a number and no more: the people you most want to know about are precisely the ones not in the list. The fuller workspace-level analytics is an Enterprise feature, and Notion documents no scroll depth, no heatmaps and no referrers at any tier.
That is a reasonable place for a workspace tool to stop. It is also the exact gap ilolink is built in:
- Read-through, not just a view count — a 0/25/50/75/100% scroll funnel and average time on page, so a twelve-section proposal tells you where attention ended.
- Heatmaps — click and scroll maps split by device.
- Referrers, countries and device class — how the link travelled after you sent it.
- Anchored feedback from anonymous readers — reactions, private notes and threaded comments pinned to a point, region or line. The reader needs no account and joins no workspace, which is the whole reason a client will actually leave one.
- Cookieless — no cookie, no fingerprint, no visitor profile, and uniques are approximate by design.
Publishing model: live mirror versus published version
This is the difference that decides which tool you want, and neither answer is better in general. A published Notion page tracks the document — fix a typo and the world sees the fix. An ilolink document is a published version: what you sent is what they see until you update it deliberately. If you are sending a proposal, a report or anything a client might quote back at you, that stability is the point. If you are maintaining a page that should always be current, the live mirror is.
Where Notion is clearly the better tool
- Writing and collaborating — ilolink has no editor. It publishes what you already wrote, wherever you wrote it.
- Structure — databases, relations, views, nested pages and a whole public site of them. ilolink is one document per link.
- A living document — anything whose value is being up-to-date rather than being a fixed record.
- Internal readers you can name — inside a workspace, Notion knows exactly who opened what, and ilolink deliberately never identifies an anonymous reader.
| Notion public page | ilolink | |
|---|---|---|
| Best at | Writing and maintaining the document | Sending a finished document and measuring it |
| Reader needs an account | No | No |
| Anonymous public readers in analytics | Counted, but not listed | Counted, and never identified by design |
| Scroll depth / read-through | Not documented | 0/25/50/75/100% funnel + time on page |
| Heatmaps | Not documented | Click + scroll, by device |
| Referrers and countries | Not documented | Both, plus device class |
| Feedback from a reader with no account | Not the model — commenting belongs to the workspace | Reactions, notes, anchored threaded comments |
| Published page updates | Live mirror of the document | A published version you update deliberately |
| Formats | Notion pages | Markdown, HTML, PDF, .docx, CSV rendered as a page |
| Access control | Published or not; workspace permissions | Public, unlisted, password, or expiring |
Questions
- Can I see who read my published Notion page?
- Not for anonymous readers. Notion's analytics guide states the viewer list won't include anonymous viewers who aren't members or guests, though their online views are still counted — so a publicly shared page gives you a number without names.
- Does ilolink tell me who read my document?
- No, and that is deliberate. Analytics are aggregate and cookieless — views, approximate uniques, scroll depth, referrers, countries, device class — with no visitor profile and no identity. What it adds over a view count is how far people read and where they clicked.
- Does Notion offer heatmaps or scroll depth?
- Its analytics documentation describes viewers and view counts, and does not document scroll depth, heatmaps or referrers. Check Notion's current help pages before treating that as fixed.
- Can I keep writing in Notion and still use ilolink?
- Yes, that is the common pattern. Export the page or paste its content as Markdown into ilolink when you want a stable, measurable link to send outside your workspace. Notion stays the place you write.
- Is ilolink free?
- Publishing is free for one person, up to 3 published documents. You need a free account to publish; readers never need one. Inviting teammates takes a paid plan: a one-time $9 for 5 people or $19 for 10, paid once and kept forever.
Try it on your own doc
Send the finished document and see how it read.