BookStack

BookStack is a self-hosted wiki and documentation platform built on PHP and Laravel, organised around three content types: Books, Chapters, and Pages. Unlike Notion's freeform block editor, every page lives inside that hierarchy, which makes cross-page linking and navigation predictable. It ships with a WYSIWYG editor, an optional Markdown editor with live preview, and built-in diagrams.net support for inline drawings.

BookStack runs on PHP with a MySQL or MariaDB database and is light enough to run on a small VPS — the project cites a £2.50/month IONOS VPS as adequate. Authentication integrates with OIDC, SAML2, and LDAP for enterprise deployments, and TOTP-based multi-factor authentication can be enforced per role. The codebase is MIT-licensed and now developed primarily on Codeberg.

BookStack uses a role-based permission system where you can lock down books, chapters, and individual actions per role, with optional TOTP MFA enforcement. Instances can be configured as fully public, restricted to logged-in users, or gated entirely behind SSO via LDAP/SAML2/OIDC. There is no real-time multi-cursor editing — collaboration is asynchronous, with every page keeping a full revision history.

BookStack is MIT-licensed and free to use, including for commercial deployments. Every page keeps a revision history that can be restored from the web UI, and image management is built in. Content is stored in standard MySQL and can be exported via the REST API or directly from the database, so your data is never locked into a proprietary format.