BookStack

BookStack is a free and open-source documentation platform focused on providing a simple, easy-to-use experience for creating and organizing knowledge, suitable for mixed-technical-skill teams. It structures content in an intuitive hierarchy of books, chapters, and pages, making it approachable for anyone to write and find documentation without a steep learning curve.

Written in PHP with a MySQL or MariaDB database, BookStack is designed to be self-hosted, giving organizations full control of their documentation data. It includes a WYSIWYG editor, powerful search, page revisions, roles and permissions, enterprise authentication options, and a simple, clean interface that keeps documentation organized and accessible.

BookStack is 100 percent free under the MIT license, with no paid tiers, open-core dual licensing, or enterprise upsells - it costs nothing to download and run. The only costs are self-hosting infrastructure and the labor of patching, backups, and upgrades, which some estimate at a few thousand dollars per year in staff time; managed hosting is available from third parties for those who prefer it. Aimed at teams that can self-host, it competes with Docmost, Outline, Confluence, GitBook, and Notion.