BookStack vs Foswiki
BookStack
bookstackapp.comFoswiki
foswiki.orgSide by side
| Figure | BookStack | Foswiki |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | £37.50/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 1 |
| Spec score · Knowledge Management Software | 9.0 (#2) | 8.8 (#6) |
| Spec score · Knowledge base software | 8.9 (#8) | 8.5 (#38) |
| Spec score · Wiki Software | 9.0 (#3) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| License | BookStack is fully free and open, MIT licensed, and has no cost to download and install your own instance. | Foswiki is developed as Free Software under the GNU/GPL. |
| Product | BookStack is a simple, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information. | Foswiki is an open source collaboration platform where teams can edit pages in a web browser. |
| Security | BookStack supports CSP headers to increase protection against malicious content and stores MFA secrets encrypted in the database. | The feature page identifies protection against Cross-Site Request Forgery as a security feature. |
| 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 feature page points users to IRC for help and lists community consultants who can help install and customize Foswiki. |
| Version history | Yes | Yes |
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.
Foswiki
Foswiki is a free, open-source collaboration platform for teams to share knowledge and edit pages in a browser. It can serve as a document repository, authoring space, content or project management tool, blog, or tracking system. Teams can build applications such as status boards, to-do lists, inventory systems, employee handbooks, and bug trackers. Pages can hold structured data for advanced search, and users can edit them with a WYSIWYG editor, topic markup, or HTML. Foswiki keeps revision history for pages and attachments, with flexible access controls to protect pages. It supports enterprise LDAP and can connect to web APIs such as Google Maps. Its plugin architecture offers hundreds of extensions for added features and third-party application integration. The feature list identifies Cross-Site Request Forgery protection and localized interfaces in 20 languages. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and can also run from a USB stick or as a VMware or VirtualBox appliance. Installation is manual, assumes basic server administration knowledge, and requires Perl and required Perl modules; external extension dependencies may need manual installation.