
BookStack
A platform to create documentation/wiki content built with PHP & Laravel
The Lens
BookStack organizes documentation into a hierarchy that actually makes sense: shelves hold books, books hold chapters, chapters hold pages. It is a wiki built for people who think in structure, not chaos. The WYSIWYG editor works out of the box - no markdown gatekeeping required. Role-based permissions let you lock down who sees what, which matters once your team grows past five people. Multi-factor auth, audit logging, LDAP and SAML support ship built in. Diagrams.net integration, API access, and full-text search round it out. If you have tried Notion or Confluence and wanted something you actually own, this is the answer. GitBook gives you hosted convenience but locks your docs behind their platform. Outline looks slicker but needs more infrastructure to run. Wiki.js is the other serious self-hosted option but feels more generic. The catch: it is PHP and Laravel, so you need a traditional LAMP-style server. No official hosted version exists - you run it or you do not use it.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeBookStack is MIT licensed with zero paid tiers, no premium features, and no official hosted offering. Every feature ships free - permissions, LDAP, SAML, API, audit logs, multi-factor auth. The project sustains itself through community donations and sponsorships. Third-party hosting providers like Stellar Hosted and CloudAbove offer managed BookStack instances if you want someone else to handle the server, but those are independent businesses, not BookStack itself. Self-hosting requires a Linux server with PHP, MySQL or MariaDB, and a web server. Minimum viable setup runs on a $5/month VPS. There is no free tier vs paid tier decision because there is only one tier: everything, for free.
Fully free and MIT licensed - every feature included, no paid tiers, no official cloud option.
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