BookStack vs Ferndesk
BookStack
bookstackapp.comFerndesk
ferndesk.comSide by side
| Figure | BookStack | Ferndesk |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | £37.50/mo | $75/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 4 | 3 |
| Spec score · Knowledge base software | 8.9 (#8) | 8.4 (#47) |
| Publishing audience | both | both |
| Custom domain | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Product | BookStack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information. | Ferndesk is a customer-facing help center with an AI agent that checks articles against a product, drafts updates, and keeps documentation current. |
| Security | BookStack supports CSP headers to increase protection against malicious content and stores MFA secrets encrypted in the database. | Ferndesk says data is encrypted in transit, integration credentials are encrypted before storage, and customer content is not used to train Ferndesk or third-party foundation models. |
| SSO support | Yes | Yes |
| Support | Official paid support services are provided by HTTP Functions Ltd., while community support is available through discussions, Codeberg, Reddit, documentation and YouTube. | The Enterprise plan includes priority support and white-glove onboarding; its page also lists security questionnaire support. |
Plans
BookStack
- BookStack self-hostedFree
- Community SupportFree
- Professional Support Plan£450 a year
- Enterprise Support Plan£4,500 a year
In their own words
BookStack
BookStack is a free, open-source platform for organizing and storing information on a self-hosted instance. It organizes content into Books, Chapters and Pages, with a WYSIWYG editor and an optional Markdown editor with live preview. Search works within a book or across books, chapters and pages, and users can link directly to paragraphs. The editor includes diagrams.net drawing capability. Authentication supports OIDC, SAML2 and LDAP, as well as social-based secondary authentication options. Built-in multi-factor authentication can be enforced by role and uses TOTP and static backup codes. Content exports include contained HTML, PDF, plain text, Markdown and Portable ZIP. The project describes a growing REST API for automation and importing content. The MIT-licensed software has no cost to download and install. Setup requires PHP 8.2 or newer, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.6 or newer, Git, Composer 2.2 or newer and a PHP-compatible web server. BookStack does not currently support shared PHP hosting. Community support is free but does not assure a response, support or resolution; paid support plans are also listed.