Who is Fre?
Notion template maker. Known for University Hub and Task List Hub.
This page recognises Fre for what they have contributed to the Notion community. It is written independently, it is not an endorsement, and it does not mean they use thePlus.so.
“I want to know whether Fre's free Notion templates are worth duplicating, and whether a free template from a small maker gets maintained or quietly abandoned.”
Two of the four templates cost nothing and account for over ten thousand downloads between them. Both carry free updates and lifetime access, both answer "yes, just duplicate it" to the question of whether they run on a free Notion plan, and University Hub has been rebuilt at least once since release. The paid templates are the bigger builds, though the free pair is where most people start.
University Hub costs nothing on Gumroad and has been downloaded more than eight thousand times. Its pitch is a single line: designed by a student for other students. On 4 January 2022, Fre posted to the store to celebrate the same template passing 150 downloads, which puts the whole of that growth after the point where most free templates stop being touched.
Four templates sit at frenotion.gumroad.com, two of them free. Across all four, people have left 128 ratings averaging 4.6. The store bio runs to one sentence: "Notion certified Creator."
Fre works under a first name and the handle @fre_notion. Every product page closes with the same signature block, which asks for a rating and sends readers to Twitter "to discover tips, tutorials, resources and more about Notion and productivity". The same block leaves an open door for questions about any of the templates.
The first template was one student's own coursework, cleaned up for everyone else
University Hub is built out of the parts a degree actually generates: databases for Courses, Lessons, Chapters and Modules, Exams, Tasks, and Professors, plus a Job Search page that ships with a free Canva resume template. It has since been rebuilt, adding a Notice Board, a University page, a reworked lectures system and a redesigned Course page. Eighty-eight people have rated it, averaging 4.6, and 84 percent of those ratings are five stars. It remains free.
Watch List Hub is where Fre started wiring Notion to tools outside Notion
The 9 dollar film and television tracker runs on databases for Movies, TV Shows, Genres, Platforms, Actors, Directors and Statistics, with seventeen genres and nine streaming services each given their own cover art, and more than fifty properties in total. Entries go in through the Save to Notion browser extension. An automatic version cuts even that out: add a page, type the show title followed by a semicolon, and the details fill themselves in. That automation is not Fre's own. It runs on a free integration built by Emad Ahmad, who is credited by name in the product FAQ with a link to the integration itself. Five short videos are bundled in to show how the input actually works.
The free half of the store is the half that travelled
Task List Hub is also free, has passed 2,270 downloads, and holds the highest rating in the store at 4.8 across 36 ratings. Inside are a Tasks Hub with recurring and reschedulable items, an Events Hub, a Goals and Milestones page, and a productivity statistics page, with recurring tasks handled through a step by step Bardeen integration and the productivity graph drawn by Notion2Charts. There is a minimal black and white version for people who want less colour. Between Task List Hub and University Hub, the two free templates account for over ten thousand downloads, several times what the paid pair have moved.
Creator Hub went up on Product Hunt on 18 September 2022
The most recent and by far the largest build is Creator Hub, at 15 dollars and currently on v1.2. Twenty interconnected databases feed 14 pages, organised into four sections: Daily Actions, Consistency, Resources, and Results. Fre wrote a two-clicks navigation bar for it, one click to open a section and one for a page inside, and a Creator Phone Hub companion for capturing ideas away from a desk. Buyers get a public Updates page hosted on a notion.site, so the changelog is readable without owning the template, and Fre committed to monthly surveys asking buyers what should be built next. It launched on Product Hunt under the tagline "Become the creator you could be", hunted by Ben Lang, and finished with 42 points. Two weeks later Fre posted an update titled "Creator Hub gets better!".
Why Fre is on this list
Fre put two working Notion systems into the Notion community for nothing, a university workspace and a task manager, and between them they have been duplicated more than ten thousand times by students and people who wanted a task system that runs on a free Notion plan. Both were maintained well past the point of release, both were documented, and when someone else's integration did the hard part, Fre credited them by name and linked to their work.
We wrote this from public sources and we would rather get it right than get it first. If you are Fre and something here is wrong, missing, or you would prefer this page did not exist, tell us and we will fix or remove it.
Building something with Notion?
thePlus.so makes the widgets that go inside the page. Free plan, no card.