A private notebook, not an HR platform.
Lattice is an org-wide HR performance platform you roll out to the company: reviews, calibration, goals, engagement surveys. Notivo is a private notebook for one manager: per-person timelines for 1:1s and reviews, plus an AI recap over your own notes. Here is how they differ and which fits.
Lattice is the company system. Notivo is your personal layer.
The short answer is that Lattice and Notivo are not competitors, because they aim at different jobs. Lattice is an HR performance platform that covers performance reviews, calibration, goals and OKRs, engagement surveys, and the admin rollout that ties them together. HR buys it for the whole company, prices it per employee at roughly $11 to $22 per user per month, and runs it as the system of record.
Notivo sits at the opposite end. It is a personal, private notebook for one manager: the place you jot a quick line about a person the day it happens, so that months later you remember it. It is the personal layer you actually keep, not the company system you are assigned.
An honest, side-by-side comparison.
This is not feature parity. It is a comparison of two tools built for different jobs. For company-wide performance management, Lattice is the right tool and does far more than Notivo ever will. For one manager’s private memory, Notivo is the right tool.
| The job | Notivo | Lattice |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | One manager’s private memory of their people | Company-wide HR performance management |
| Who buys it | An individual manager, on their own | HR / People team, for the whole company |
| Reviews, calibration, OKRs, surveys | No, not an HR system of record | Yes, this is its core |
| Setup & admin rollout | None. Type one note | Company-wide configuration by an admin |
| Per-person timelines | Automatic, from @mentions | Notes & feedback within the review platform |
| Private to one manager | Yes, scoped to your account | It is the company’s shared system |
| AI from your own notes | Yes, on Plus (14-day free trial) | AI features within the HR platform |
| Capture | Web, iOS app, WhatsApp (Plus), ChatGPT & Claude connectors | Web + mobile apps |
| Pricing | Personal plan; AI on Plus, 14-day trial | Roughly $11-$22 / user / mo, sold per employee |
| Best when | You want a private memory for your own 1:1s & reviews | Your company needs a performance system of record |
What Lattice does that Notivo does not.
Here is the plain version. If your company needs to run formal performance management, Lattice is the right tool and Notivo is not even in the same category. Lattice gives an organization a structured review cycle, calibration across managers so ratings stay consistent, goals and OKRs that ladder up to company objectives, engagement surveys, and the analytics and admin controls an HR team needs to run all of that at scale.
Notivo has none of that, on purpose. It is not a system of record, it does not store ratings, it does not roll out to a company, and it does not replace your HR platform. If you came here looking for a way to run reviews for the whole org, Lattice (or a peer like 15Five) is what you want, and you should choose it without hesitation.
The everyday memory the platform doesn’t capture.
A performance platform is built around cycles. It is where the formal review lives twice a year. But the things you actually need at review time happen on ordinary Tuesdays, and they rarely make it into the system the day they occur. Someone quietly unblocks a stuck project. Someone handles a hard customer call well. Someone has a rough month for reasons that matter. Three weeks later you have already half-forgotten, and at review time recency bias does the rest: the last two weeks loom large and the strong spring disappears.
Notivo is the layer for exactly that. You write a quick line the moment it happens, from the web, WhatsApp, or the ChatGPT and Claude connectors, tag the person with an @mention and the topic with a #tag, and it files itself into that person’s dated timeline. There is no cycle to wait for and no admin to ask. It is yours.
“Taking notes may seem unnecessary for a 30-minute check-in, but without them, action items get missed, behavioral patterns go unnoticed, and managers miss progress and performance signals.”
— Lattice’s own guide to one-on-ones
@Maya · Mar 9 Caught a data bug in the export job before it shipped. Stayed calm under a tight deadline. #reliability
A five-second note. Months later it is the line that makes your review fair.
A timeline you can trust at review time.
Say it is review season and you open Maya’s timeline. You see “Mar 9: caught a data bug before the export shipped,” “May 14: mentored the new hire to solo on-call,” and an honest “Sep 30: slow stretch, scope kept shifting.” That is a fairer picture than memory alone, because memory would have handed you whatever happened last week. The platform has the formal rating; Notivo has the evidence behind it, in your own words, dated when it actually happened.
When you are ready, the AI assistant drafts a recap or answers a question, such as “what stood out from Maya this quarter?”, strictly from the notes you wrote. It works from your own notes only and never trains on your data; it surfaces what you recorded and leaves the judgment to you. It informs your call; it does not make the employment decision and is not HR or legal advice.
Private by default, separate from the company system.
This is the difference managers feel most. A performance platform is, by design, the company’s shared system, configured by HR, visible to the org under its own rules. Notivo is the opposite: your notes are private by default and scoped to your account, stored on secured infrastructure. It is a private notebook, not a shared HR system, and you decide what, if anything, you ever carry over into a formal review.
If a note is genuinely sensitive, the Black Box vault is PIN-locked and end-to-end encrypted. Trigger it with @bb or #bb. To be precise: only the Black Box is end-to-end encrypted. Regular notes are private by default and stored on secured infrastructure, which is not the same as end-to-end encryption, and we will never describe them that way.
- You want a private memory of your own people, just for you.
- You want to capture the small moments the review cycle misses.
- You don’t want an HR rollout or admin to get started.
- You want to walk into 1:1s and reviews already prepared.
- Your company needs a performance system of record.
- You need reviews, calibration, goals/OKRs and surveys.
- HR is rolling out one platform across the whole org.
- You need org-wide analytics and admin controls.
Plenty of managers use both: Lattice for the company’s formal cycle, Notivo for the private memory they keep all year and bring into it.
Notivo vs Lattice, answered.
Is Notivo a Lattice alternative?
Not really; they solve different problems. Lattice is an org-wide HR performance platform that the company rolls out to everyone: reviews, calibration, goals and OKRs, engagement surveys. Notivo is a private notebook for a single manager who wants to remember what each person did between formal cycles. If your company needs a system of record for performance, Lattice is built for that. If you personally want a private memory that survives recency bias, Notivo is built for that. Many managers have both.
Can I just use Lattice for my own manager notes?
You can keep notes in Lattice, but it is the company’s platform, configured and administered by HR, and your notes live inside that shared system of record. Some managers want a space that is theirs alone, outside the review tool, where they can jot a quick honest line the day it happens. That is what Notivo is: notes private by default and scoped to your account, filed into per-person timelines automatically, with nothing to set up.
Is Lattice expensive for a single manager?
Lattice is priced and sold per employee for the whole company, typically in the range of roughly $11 to $22 per user per month depending on the modules, and it is bought by HR rather than by an individual manager. That makes sense for a company-wide rollout, but it is not something one manager signs up for alone. Notivo is a personal tool one manager can start on their own; the AI recap is part of the Plus plan, and every new account gets a 14-day free trial.
Are my Notivo notes private from my employer?
Notes are private by default and scoped to your account, stored on secured infrastructure. Notivo is a private notebook, not a shared HR system. You decide what, if anything, you ever carry over into a formal review. It informs your judgment; it does not make employment decisions and is not HR or legal advice.
Keep your own memory of your team.
No admin, no cycle, no setup. Type one private line about someone today and let it file itself.