is outline the best open source personal wiki for selfhosting?
This title is a question and my answer is yes. Though selfhositing it is not easy, but what is provides is really amazing.
| app name | collaboration | cross platform | self-hosted server | browser app | knowledge management | selfhost score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Silverbullet | N | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| StandardNotes | N | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐ |
| Siyuan | N | Y | N | N | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐ |
| Bookstack | N | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Obsidian | N (Y with relay plugin) | Y | N | N | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| LogSeq | N | Y | N | N | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Trilium | N | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Joplin | N | Y | Y | N | ⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| UseMemos | N | Y | Y | Y | ⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Wiki.js | N | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Appflowy | Y | Y | Y | N | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐ |
| Affine | Y | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐ |
| AnyType | Y | Y | Y | N | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐ |
| Docmost | Y | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Outline | Y (N for selfhosted) | Y | Y | Y | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ | ⭐⭐ |
I tested each self-hosted tool at a basic level to see if it met my needs. Two must-have features for me are collaboration and a lightweight browser-based interface. Lastly, I’m looking at how easy it is to self-host and how truly they are self-hosted. Here’s my shortlist:
- Affine – I ruled this out because it doesn’t feel truly open source or self-hosted. There are ongoing GitHub discussions about this point.
- Docmost – It seems promising, but the community is still at an early stage.
- Outline – I ended up selecting Outline because it provides all the features I need and has a strong community. However, hosting it wasn’t straightforward—it enforces a specific authentication process, which took me a couple of days to figure out. Another downside is it doesn't support multi workspaces in selfhosted version which means it is not true collaboration.
I also tried Appflowy and AnyType, both of which came close to meeting my requirements. However, Appflowy imposes many limitations on self-hosting, and AnyType is resource-heavy, requiring MongoDB, Minio, and multiple sync nodes. By contrast, Outline can simply use a local filesystem, which has worked very well for me so far.
Based on what I learned so far, I think a selfhosted knowledge management tool supporting collaboration prob doesn't exist.
Please let me know if i miss anything in the table and I can make it right.
Any my experience to host it using Authenlia for auth is posted in my blog here Life Wiki Selfhosted on Your NAS.