The best free alternative to
Google Docs for meeting notes.
Not just a doc — Hugo helps you share agendas, organize meeting notes, and track tasks, all with the help of your calendar.
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If someone had a deliverable, it would live in that Google Doc silo. It wouldn't remind them of what tasks to complete. Pretty much the meeting would happen, everyone would disperse . . . and no one would view that doc again.
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Is Hugo a good Google Docs alternative for note-taking in meetings?
Compare notes app features side-by-side.
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Basic integrations
Unlimited users
Premium integrations
Team templates
User roles and groups
Live chat and customer success
Custom:
SSO and provisioning
Calendar reporting and analytics
Additional compliance and security
Create shared folders with your team
What are the top 3 differences between Hugo and Google Docs?
1 | Hugo is purpose-built for meeting notes and tasks.
With Google Docs, you get a generic type of document, with no specific features to help with meetings.
2 | Hugo uses your calendar to help you stay organized.
Hugo pulls in your meetings, making it fast and easy to set agendas and take notes. Everything is auto-organized based on your calendar event data, like who is at the meeting and what company they’re at.
Google Docs stores documents in folders. For a lot of people, this is tedious for meeting notes. Documents get cluttered or lost, and are never looked at again.
3 | Google Docs doesn’t help before and after the meeting. Hugo does.
Hugo helps you prepare for meetings with agenda templates and pre-meeting tasks. Then after the meeting, with integrations with 20+ CRMs and project tools, Hugo wants to sync your work with the tools you use everyday.
Instead, with Google Docs, you’ll have to copy and paste any info that you need to use somewhere else.
Yes, you can try all features with unlimited users for free.
Try the Pro plan with unlimited users for 30 days for free. After your trial, you can upgrade to keep your Pro features, or use the Basic plan for free.
Google Docs (and, by association, Google Drive) has a free plan, but it requires using your personal @gmail.com account. Or, if you’re already a G Suite customer, Google Docs comes with your other Google services.
Hugo’s free plan syncs with your work calendar regardless of whether you’re a G Suite or Microsoft 365 customer.
G Suite starts at $6/month per user. Hugo also starts at $6/user/month, but for teams of 11+.
All this said, the real cost of using Google Docs for your meeting notes and agendas comes in time, effort, and lost notes.
Maybe. Hugo ultimately is here to help your meetings. For setting agendas, taking notes, and tracking tasks related to meetings, Hugo is an excellent alternative to Google Docs.
However, Google Docs are still useful for a variety of other uses. Just about any non-meetings-related document still has a home in Google Docs. In fact, here at Hugo, we use Google Docs all the time, just not for our meetings.
Most people track tasks using bullet points in Google Docs, although you can also assign a comment to a person to track a task.
Hugo offers checkable boxes. This is quick and easy. While there is a way to check boxes in Google Docs, it’s tedious and most people aren’t aware of how to do it.
Hugo also has full-featured task tracking. For any meeting, you can create tasks, assign them, and apply a due date. You can set reminders about your tasks to go into your email, or in Slack.
This makes Hugo a great way to track meeting action items. You can also use tasks in Hugo to help prepare for meetings, like by assigning tasks to fill in parts of the agenda or read a document ahead of time.
Yes. Just like you can share a Google doc with anyone, Hugo does the same. Sharing with Hugo may actually be easier.
Since Hugo connects to your calendar, the app knows who is invited to every meeting. This lets us surface smart suggestions for who to share with, so you don’t even need to type someone’s email address, for example.
Absolutely. Hugo is the safest place for your meeting knowledge, with investments that support compliance with security protocols like Privacy Shield and SOC2. We also offer a variety of privacy controls, so, for example, you can even have a private meeting note and a shared note for the same meeting.
Learn more about our privacy terms and policies here.
You’re less than 2 minutes away
from more productive meetings
- Easy setup: your calendar(s) are automatically synced at sign up
- Connect your calendar(s) to meeting notes and tasks
- Streamline your meeting workflow
- Search and filter to find notes in seconds
- Integrate with 20+ tools including Slack and Salesforce
- Assign tasks through Asana, Trello, Todoist, Jira and more
- Use the Chrome extension for rapid meeting prep