Self-hosted alternatives to Confluence and Notion: Docmost, Outline and BookStack compared

The short answer

Coming from Notion, pick Docmost: it imported our Notion export best, nests pages as deep as you like, and has live co-editing and diagrams in the free version, but no Swedish interface and no single sign-on without a paid licence. Pick Outline if your team writes together all day, wants a fast editor in Swedish and signs in through Google, Microsoft or your own sign-in server. Pick BookStack for documentation that a few people write and many read, especially coming from Confluence Server or Data Center: it is the smallest, has LDAP, SAML, PDF export and every feature for free under the MIT licence, but no live co-editing and no importer for Confluence or Notion.

None of the three imported our Confluence export for free.

What we tested

We installed all three on the same fresh Melonslab VC-P Alloy (2 vCPU, 8 GB) with Debian 13, one after the other, by following our guides Docmost with rootless Podman, Outline with rootless Podman and BookStack with rootless Podman step by step. Each ran under a user of its own, behind the same Caddy. Every step worked as written.

Then we built the same wiki in all three:

• a section called Example with 20 pages under Handbook, IT and Sales, with headings, three tables, two images, two code blocks, a Mermaid diagram, an attached PDF and a to-do list. Seven of the pages were in Swedish, such as Friskvårdsbidrag, Sjukanmälan and Lösenordspolicy;
• a hidden section, Management, with a budget and a salary page;
• an admin, Anna, and an editor, Erik, who could edit everything in Example and could not see Management at all;
• a comment from Anna on one page, with a reply from Erik.

We then had Anna and Erik edit the same page in two browsers, ran the same 43 searches as both, restored an older version of a page, imported a Notion and a Confluence export, exported pages and whole sections, published a page on the web, rebooted the server, measured memory at rest and while two people worked, and ran each guide's backup and restore.

Confluence and Notion themselves were not tested. We did not sign up for either. What this page says about them comes from Atlassian's and Notion's own pages, linked where we use them and read on 14 October 2026.

The numbers

Memory is the sum of each app's containers, measured with podman stats four and a half minutes after a reboot, with each wiki opened once. The peak is the highest reading while Anna and Erik searched, read and edited pages through each app's API for three minutes, about five requests a second. Times are how long the guide's commands took to run, mostly downloading images, not the time you need to read and type them. Most of the data on disk is the databases themselves: our pages, images and the PDF take well under a megabyte.

Setup

All three are a few containers behind Caddy, and all three guides worked as written. The differences are in the first account and in email.

• Docmost shows a setup page to the first visitor, so our guide creates the workspace over an SSH tunnel before the wiki goes online. It works without email: you copy an invite link and send it yourself.
• Outline creates its workspace with one curl command, and has no passwords: people sign in with a link sent by email or through a sign-in provider. Without working email, or Google, Microsoft or your own sign-in server, nobody new can get in. Outline also limits how many sign-in emails it sends: when we asked for many in a row, it answered Rate limit exceeded for this operation for the rest of the hour.
• BookStack starts with a default admin, admin@admin.com with password, which our guide replaces before the wiki is online. It works without email: you set people's passwords yourself.

Writing and live co-editing

Docmost and Outline have the same kind of editor: / on an empty line lists the blocks, Markdown shortcuts work as you type, and changes save by themselves. We opened the same page as Anna and Erik in two browsers and had Anna type a sentence. In both, it showed up in Erik's window within three seconds, with a flag carrying Anna's name at her cursor.

BookStack works like a classic wiki: you choose Edit, write in a word-processor editor or in Markdown, and Save Page. There is no co-editing. When Erik had started editing a page and Anna opened it, BookStack warned her: "Erik Lund has started editing this page in the last 60 minutes. Take care not to overwrite each other's updates!"

Other differences we saw:

• Diagrams. Docmost drew our Mermaid diagram and also has Excalidraw and draw.io in its / menu; draw.io loads from diagrams.net in the user's browser. Outline drew the Mermaid diagram too. BookStack showed it as plain code: its only diagram tool is draw.io, which our guide switches off so that browsers do not load it from diagrams.net, and which you can run yourself as its guide describes.
• Attachments. All three took our PDF. Docmost and Outline show it as a file block in the page; BookStack lists it next to the page and links to it.
• Structure. Docmost has spaces and Outline collections, and in both a page can hold other pages as deep as you like. BookStack has four fixed levels, shelves, books, chapters and pages, and a page cannot hold another page. Our Handbook, IT and Sales became chapters in a book.
• Comments. All three have comment threads with replies. In BookStack, the default Editor role had no permission to comment on a fresh install: Erik's reply was refused until we gave the role Comments permissions under Settings > Roles. Resolving comments in Docmost needs a paid licence.

Permissions

All three kept Erik out of Management: its pages were not found by his searches, and opening one gave him an error. The difference is how fine you can go.

• Docmost sets access per space, with groups: Full access, Can edit or Can view. When we set Erik to Can view, Docmost refused his edits, new pages and comments. Permissions on a single page need a paid licence.
• Outline sets access per collection, for everyone or for people and groups, and a single document can also be shared with one person. Guest users, for people outside the company, are in its paid edition only.
• BookStack sets permissions per role, on a shelf, book, chapter or single page, separately for view, create, edit and delete, all in the free version. There are no permissions for one person, so an exception needs a role of its own. Images are the exception to the login: anyone with an image's address can open it without signing in, which we confirmed again here. In Docmost and Outline, images need a sign-in.

Search, in English and Swedish

We ran the same 43 searches as Anna and as Erik in all three, 31 of them with Swedish words. All three found words in text, tables and code, and kept Erik's results to what he may see. None forgave a typo: bakup found nothing anywhere. And none of them found the words inside our attached PDF; in Docmost that is a paid feature.

For Swedish, all three behaved much the same, because all three match the start of words:

• They found friskvård in Friskvårdsbidrag, förmån in "Förmåner", lön in Lönerevision, sjuk in Sjukanmälan and sommarsemester in "Sommarsemestern".
• None of them understood Swedish word forms or the end of compound words. semestern, fakturan, läkarintyget, nyckel, barnen and bidrag found nothing in any of them, although the pages say "semester", "faktura", "läkarintyg", "Nycklar", "barn" and "friskvårdsbidrag".
• Without å, ä and ö, goteborg and losenord found Kontoret i Göteborg and Lösenordspolicy in Docmost and BookStack, but nothing in Outline.

In English, Docmost and Outline understand word forms: salary also found the budget page, which says "Salaries"; BookStack did not. With several words, Docmost and Outline look for pages with all of them, while BookStack lists pages with any of them: floor plan gave one page in Docmost and Outline and three in BookStack, and Vård av barn gave five in BookStack, because of the word "av". Quotes, as in "guest network", made BookStack look for the phrase.

Page history

All three keep earlier versions and can go back to one. We changed a page, then restored the version before.

• Docmost saves a version about five minutes after the last change. Page history in the page menu lists them, and Restore asks "Are you sure you want to restore this version? Any changes not versioned will be lost."
• Outline saves a version when everyone has closed the document, or five minutes after the last change, and restores one from History.
• BookStack makes a revision at every save, keeps the last 100 per page, and restores one from Revisions.

Import from Confluence and Notion

We did not use a real Confluence or Notion account. We built both exports by hand, small and in the formats Atlassian and Notion describe, and said plainly: these are constructed exports, not exports from the real services:

• a Notion export in its "Markdown & CSV" format: a ZIP file with a top page, three pages under it in a folder, with Notion's IDs in the file names, a callout, a to-do list, a table, an image, a PDF, a Mermaid diagram, a link between pages, and a small database as a CSV file with a page per row;
• a Confluence HTML space export: a ZIP file with an index.html, one HTML file per page with Confluence's breadcrumbs and page layout, an info box, a table, and the image and PDF under attachments/ in a folder per page.

What came out:

• Docmost imported the Notion export through Import pages > Notion. The pages kept their tree and lost the IDs from their names, and the table, to-do list, image, PDF, Mermaid diagram and the link between pages came through. The callout became an ordinary line with its emoji, the page properties became plain text, and the database became an empty page with its rows as pages under it: the table itself was lost. Confluence is in the same menu, but the import failed with "This feature requires a valid license."
• Outline 1.11 imports from Notion only through Notion's API, as a connection you set up with a Notion integration of your own. We did not test that, since it needs a Notion account. Its Markdown import, meant for Outline's own exports, took our Notion ZIP file almost as well as Docmost: tree, table, tasks, image, PDF, diagram and links came through, but the callout showed as raw <aside> tags and the top page's own text was lost, as it became the collection. Outline's Confluence import is in its paid edition only.
• BookStack imports only its own ZIP format, and refused both: "Could not find and decode ZIP data.json content."

Importing the Confluence export as plain HTML files instead, which Docmost and Outline both allow for free, gave pages named after the files, such as Onboarding_65538, with Confluence's breadcrumbs in the text and broken image links. For a real move from Confluence, plan on a paid Docmost or Outline licence, or on a script against the API.

Export

An export is a copy to read without the app, not a backup: users, permissions and history are not in it.

Public sharing

• Docmost has Share to web on every page, with its subpages if you like. A visitor without an account read our shared page, image included. Anyone who can edit a page can share it, and switching sharing off for the whole wiki needs a paid licence.
• Outline has a public link on every document, which a visitor without an account could read, image included. Admins can switch public sharing off under Security.
• BookStack has no link per page. Allow public access under Settings opens what its Public role may see, which you limit per book, chapter or page. With it on, a visitor read a page without signing in.

Sign-in, single sign-on and API

We tested what each guide sets up: passwords in Docmost and BookStack, the email link in Outline. We did not test any single sign-on.

• Docmost has passwords. SAML, OpenID Connect, LDAP and two-factor sign-in all need its paid Business licence, which Docmost's pricing page puts at 6 US dollars per user a month, billed yearly, for at least 10 users. So do API keys: Docmost's documentation says "The API is an enterprise feature." We built Docmost's test wiki through the internal API its own web pages use, which is not meant for scripts.
• Outline has no passwords. Sign-in through Google, Microsoft, Slack, Discord or any OpenID Connect server, such as authentik, is free; SAML is in its paid edition. Its API is complete and free, with a key each user can make.
• BookStack has passwords with two-factor codes, and LDAP, SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect, Google, Microsoft and more, all free. Its REST API is free and documented on the wiki itself at /api/docs.

Swedish

• Docmost has no Swedish. Each user can pick one of 12 languages, among them English, German and French.
• Outline comes in Swedish: Svenska (Swedish) under Preferences, and its guide shows how to make it the default. We switched Erik to it and saw menus such as "Hem", "Sök" and "Samlingar".
• BookStack comes in Swedish: Svenska under My Account, and its guide shows how to make it the default. There, Erik saw menus such as "Hyllor", "Böcker" and "Revisioner".

In all three, the content stays in the language you write it in.

Resources

All three are small next to an 8 GB server, and all three ran on our test server at once, with room to spare.

• BookStack is a PHP app. Most of its 154 MB was MariaDB, and it barely moved under use, to 168 MB.
• Outline is a Node.js app at about 260 MB at rest, which grew to 414 MB under use and fell back to 271 MB afterwards.
• Docmost is a Node.js app at about 290 MB at rest that grew the most under use: to 764 MB at the peak of our three minutes. It dropped back to 337 MB a few minutes later. Its guide measured about 520 MB after an hour of ordinary use.

Updates and backups

Docmost's guide follows the 0.96 tag and Outline's the 1.11 tag, so patch releases install by themselves, and you move to the next version, every month or two for both, by changing the tag after reading the release notes. Docmost is still before its version 1.0. BookStack's guide follows latest of an image made by LinuxServer.io, since BookStack publishes none of its own. That image empties BookStack's sessions every time it starts, so everyone has to sign in again after an update or a reboot; Docmost and Outline kept people signed in.

Each backup is a database dump, a volume with the uploads and the keys from the setup: 740 KB for Docmost, 804 KB for Outline and 648 KB for BookStack in our test. We restored all three into empty volumes, and the pages, images, comments, users and permissions came back. All three also came back by themselves after a reboot.

Licence and cost

We read the licence texts and pricing pages on 14 October 2026.

• Docmost is made by Docmost, Inc. in the United States. Its core is open source under the AGPL 3.0; the paid features are in the same image under Docmost's own enterprise licence and unlock with a key. Business is 6 US dollars per user a month, billed yearly, for at least 10 users, and adds single sign-on, two-factor sign-in, API keys, page permissions, the Confluence, Word and PDF imports, search in attachments, AI and the switch for public sharing. Audit logs and SCIM are in Enterprise, at a price you ask for.
• Outline is made by General Outline, Inc. in the United States, under the Business Source License 1.1, which its licence text says "is not an Open Source license". You may run it for your own organisation, not sell it to others as a "Document Service", and each version becomes open source under Apache 2.0 four years after release: 12 October 2030 for 1.11.0. Its self-hosted Business edition, 4 US dollars per user a month billed yearly for at least 10 users, adds guest users, SAML, the audit log, the Confluence import and AI answers.
• BookStack is open source under the MIT licence, made by Dan Brown in the United Kingdom with its community. There is no paid edition. HTTP Functions Ltd sells support for 450 pounds a year, or 4,500 pounds for its enterprise plan.

For a company running a wiki for its own staff, all three licences allow it at no cost, and on your own server the documents stay in Sweden.

Confluence and Notion today

What follows is from Atlassian's and Notion's own pages, read on 14 October 2026, not from our tests.

Confluence Server is gone: "As of February 15, 2024 PT, Server products are no longer supported" (Atlassian).

Confluence Data Center, the edition you run yourself, is being retired too. According to Atlassian's end-of-life page, which names Confluence Data Center among the products:

• new customers could no longer buy it after 30 March 2026;
• existing customers can buy new subscriptions and expand until 30 March 2028;
• on 28 March 2029 the subscriptions expire, and the products become read-only.

Atlassian publishes no Data Center price on Confluence's pricing page; it asks you to contact them.

Confluence Cloud, according to the pricing page, is free for up to 10 users with 2 GB of files, but "The Free plan doesn't allow permission settings for spaces or pages." Standard is listed at 7.15 US dollars per user a month and Premium at 14.10, billed monthly, for up to 100 users. Single sign-on needs a separate Atlassian Guard subscription below Enterprise. Atlassian can keep the data in the EU, in Frankfurt and Dublin, from the Standard plan up, according to its data residency page. Confluence Cloud can import a Notion export, and a space can be exported as PDF, CSV, HTML or XML.

Notion is a hosted service only. Its pricing page lists Free, Plus, Business and Enterprise plans and no edition to run yourself, and its security page says "Notion is hosted by AWS". We found no Notion page that says in so many words that it cannot be self-hosted. By default "your data will continue to reside in the United States", and keeping it in the EU is part of the Enterprise plan, according to its data residency page. The pricing page showed us Plus at 9.50 euros and Business at 19.50 euros per member a month, billed yearly; page history is kept 7 days on Free, 30 on Plus and 90 on Business; and SAML single sign-on starts at Business. Notion exports pages as PDF, HTML or Markdown and CSV, as its help page describes.

What you give up compared with Confluence and Notion

Moving to your own server keeps your documents in Sweden, costs a fixed server price instead of a price per user, and nobody can retire your wiki for you. But be honest about what you leave behind:

• The migration. None of the three moved our Confluence export for free. Docmost brought our Notion export across well, but expect to tidy callouts, page properties and databases by hand.
• Databases. Notion exports a database as a CSV file, and in our import it became a list of pages. Docmost's own Bases and Kanban boards are in its paid editions; Outline and BookStack have nothing like them.
• AI. Confluence's paid plans include Rovo AI credits, and Notion includes its AI agent from Business, according to their pricing pages. Docmost and Outline have AI only in their paid editions; BookStack has none.
• Running it. Updates, backups and the server are yours. Our guides make that a few commands, but someone has to own it, and you need a working email account for invites, and for Outline, for every sign-in.
• Search. None of the three understood Swedish word forms in our test; semestern found nothing when the page said "semester".

Which one to pick

Coming from Notion: Docmost. It imported our Notion export with its tree, images and diagram, and has live co-editing, Mermaid, Excalidraw and draw.io, comments and public pages in the free version. Its weak points are no Swedish interface, single sign-on, API keys and page permissions only with a paid licence, the most memory under use of the three, and a project still before version 1.0. Follow the Docmost guide, on a VC-P Alloy.

Coming from Confluence: BookStack, or Docmost with a licence. For a team that ran Confluence on its own servers, BookStack gives you LDAP or SAML against your existing directory, page-level permissions, PDF export, a Swedish interface and an MIT licence with nothing held back. Its weak points are no Confluence import, no live co-editing, the fixed four levels, images that open without a login for anyone with the address, everyone signed out after each update, and search that lists pages with any of your words. If a migration tool and live co-editing matter more, Docmost Business at 6 US dollars per user a month brings the Confluence import and single sign-on. Follow the BookStack guide; it runs comfortably on a VC-P Alloy, next to other apps.

A wiki for documentation: BookStack. Routines, server notes and manuals that change now and then, written by a few and read by many, suit its structure, permissions and PDF export, in about 150 MB.

A team knowledge base people write in every day: Outline or Docmost. Both have the fast editor and live co-editing. Pick Outline if you want Swedish, free sign-in through Google, Microsoft or your own OpenID Connect server, and a full free API; accept sign-in that depends on email or a provider, no PDF export, a licence that is not open source and no Notion import from a file. Follow the Outline guide, on a VC-P Alloy. Pick Docmost for diagrams and the Notion import, with an AGPL licence.

Even their three peaks added together came to about 1.35 GB, so one VC-P Alloy runs any of them, or all three, as on our test server.