Best Self Hosted Alternatives to IT Glue

Outline is a team knowledge base and wiki that helps organizations capture, organize, and share information. It offers a markdown-friendly editor, real-time collaboration, AI-powered search, and Slack integration. It can be hosted in the cloud or self-hosted on your own infrastructure. (getoutline.com)

Key Features

• Real-time collaborative editing with a markdown editor, slash commands, and embeddable content
• Fast full-text search with AI-powered answers across documents
• Slack integration to search docs and post updates within channels
• Public sharing with private access controls, custom branding and domains
• Open source with self-hosted deployment and a public API
• Multi-language translations and RTL support
• 20+ integrations with other tools
• Regular open-source development with an active changelog
• API access for programmatic docs management (getoutline.com)

Use Cases

• Build a centralized internal knowledge base and wiki for teams with real-time collaboration
• Publish public or private documentation portals under your brand and domain
• Integrate with Slack and other tools to surface docs in workflows

Outline combines collaborative editing, powerful search, and flexible hosting to help teams organize knowledge efficiently. With cloud hosted or self-hosted options and extensive integrations, it's suitable for teams of any size. (getoutline.com)

Passbolt is an open-source password and secret management platform designed for teams that need secure sharing, governance, and traceability. It is API-centric and uses a public/private key cryptography model so users keep control of their keys while collaborating.

Key Features

• End-to-end encryption based on OpenPGP with user-owned key pairs
• Granular sharing permissions for passwords and other secrets
• Organization features for groups, folders, tags, comments, and descriptions
• Auditing capabilities and cryptographically-backed traceability of access and changes
• Phishing protections such as URL matching and verification indicators
• Account recovery workflows with admin approval and organization policies
• Multiple clients including browser extensions and mobile apps, plus CLI/SDK access via JSON API

Use Cases

• Share infrastructure and service credentials across IT and DevOps teams with controlled permissions
• Centralize business-critical secrets for departments while keeping an audit trail for compliance
• Enable secure credential access for distributed teams, including air-gapped or restricted environments

Limitations and Considerations

• Full functionality typically depends on using official clients (for example, browser extensions) for key management and seamless autofill
• Some advanced capabilities may differ between Community Edition and paid offerings

Passbolt is a strong fit for organizations that need a security-first approach to shared credentials, with interoperable cryptography and an API-driven design. It balances team collaboration with controls like permissioning, auditing, and recovery policies.

DokuWiki is an open source wiki engine designed for creating and maintaining documentation and knowledge bases. It stores content in plain text files rather than a database, making it straightforward to deploy, back up, and migrate.

Key Features

• File-based storage (no database required) using plain text pages
• Access control lists (ACL) for fine-grained permissions
• Built-in revision history and page diffs for change tracking
• Full-text search across wiki pages
• Media manager for uploading and organizing files
• Extensible through plugins and templates for customization and integrations

Use Cases

• Team or project documentation portals and internal knowledge bases
• Product manuals and technical documentation with change history
• Lightweight intranet wiki with role-based access control

Limitations and Considerations

• Not designed for real-time collaborative editing in the same way as office-suite style editors
• Large installations may require careful caching and tuning for best search and performance

DokuWiki is a solid choice when you want a dependable wiki with strong permissions and simple operations. Its file-based approach and mature ecosystem make it suitable for both small teams and larger documentation sites.

Gitit is a wiki program written in Haskell. It uses Happstack for the web server and pandoc for markup processing. Pages and uploaded files are stored in a git, darcs, or mercurial repository and may be modified either by using the VCS's command-line tools or through the wiki's web interface.

Key Features

• Written in Haskell; uses Happstack for the web server and pandoc for markup processing.
• Pages and uploaded files stored in a git, darcs, or mercurial repository and editable via VCS or web UI.
• Default markup is Pandoc's extended Markdown; supports reStructuredText, LaTeX, HTML, DocBook, and Org-mode.
• TeX math support via texmath and syntax highlighting via highlighting-kate.
• Plugins enabling dynamic page transformations written in Haskell.
• Categories and Atom feeds.
• Caching for performance.
• A library Network.Gitit to embed a wiki in Happstack apps.

Use Cases

• Host private or public wikis for team documentation with Git-backed storage.
• Create educational wikis or course notes with math and code highlighting.
• Publish lightweight project docs or knowledge bases with a web interface.

Conclusion: Gitit provides a compact, version-controlled wiki workflow with Pandoc-based authoring and pluggable extensions. It is well-suited for personal, team, or small-scale documentation needs.

Many Notes is a Markdown note-taking web application focused on a simple writing experience while keeping your content portable. Notes are stored in a database for features and also saved to the filesystem, giving you direct control over your vault structure.

Key Features

• Multi-user authentication to protect notes
• Multiple vaults per user, with flexible organization
• Vault sharing and collaboration with invited users
• Real-time, live-updating interface for changes
• Fast, typo-tolerant full-text search
• Tree view file explorer with context actions
• Advanced Markdown editor with automatic saving
• Templates plus links, backlinks, and tags for organization
• Import/export vaults for backup and restore
• Export Markdown notes to PDF
• Progressive Web App experience with light/dark themes

Use Cases

• Personal or team knowledge base with shared vaults and backlinks
• Lightweight documentation workspace for projects and runbooks
• A private Markdown “vault” alternative with filesystem-backed storage

Limitations and Considerations

• Some features (for example PWA capabilities) work best when served over HTTPS behind a reverse proxy

Many Notes is a practical option for users who want a clean Markdown workflow, collaborative vaults, and strong portability via filesystem-backed storage. It fits well as a personal notes system or a small-team knowledge base with real-time editing and fast search.

Wiki-Go is a modern, databaseless flat-file wiki platform built with Go. It stores content as Markdown in a flat-file structure and offers features for knowledge bases, documentation, and collaboration without requiring an external database.

Key Features

• Full Markdown editing with emoji, Mermaid diagrams, and LaTeX math
• Smart full-text search with highlighting and advanced filters
• Hierarchical page structure with version history
• User management, access control, and private wiki mode
• Comments with moderation and markdown support
• No external database; file-based storage, easy backups
• Instant setup via Docker or prebuilt binaries
• Custom logos, banners, shortcodes, and more
• Link management with automatic metadata fetching and categorization
• Interactive Kanban boards for project management

Use Cases

• Team documentation and internal wikis for product teams
• Public documentation portals and knowledge bases
• Personal knowledge bases and collaborative projects

Limitations and Considerations

• Non-SSL setups require allow_insecure_cookies: true; this reduces security and should only be used in trusted networks; TLS is recommended for production.
• Default admin credentials exist; change them immediately after first login to secure the wiki.

Conclusion

Wiki-Go provides a lightweight, self-contained wiki workflow with Markdown-centric content, easy deployment via Docker or binaries, and no external database dependencies, making it suitable for teams and individuals for knowledge management.

Mycorrhiza Wiki is a lightweight wiki engine that stores content as plain files and keeps history in Git. It is implemented in Go and uses a custom markup language called Mycomarkup, targeting personal wikis, digital gardens and small-team knowledge bases. (mycorrhiza.wiki)

Key Features

• Filesystem-backed content (no database) with Git-based history and web feeds (RSS/Atom/JSON). (mycorrhiza.wiki)
• Content model built around "hyphae": modular content units that can transclude and link each other.
• Mycomarkup as the primary, unambiguous markup format for authoring.
• Keyboard-driven navigation and shortcuts for power users.
• Optional authorization (username/password and Telegram login widget) and Open Graph meta support.
• Interwiki support and simple deployment: a one-liner initializes a Git repo, prepopulates config and runs a server (default :1737); repository contains Dockerfile and build artifacts. (github.com)

Use Cases

• Personal knowledge base, digital garden or commonplace book for individuals.
• Documentation or lightweight wiki for small teams and communities.
• Public or private instances where Git-based history and file-editability are desired.

Limitations and Considerations

• Uses a custom markup (Mycomarkup) rather than CommonMark/Markdown; this may require learning different syntax.
• Reliant on Git for history and workflows, which assumes users or administrators are comfortable with Git operations.

Mycorrhiza is a focused, minimal wiki engine that emphasizes plain-file content, Git provenance and a connective "hyphae" model for building hypermedia documents. It is well-suited where simple deployment, file-editability and Git history are priorities. (mycorrhiza.wiki)

Feather Wiki is a minimal wiki that runs entirely in the browser and stores all pages inside a single self-contained HTML file. It is designed to be extremely small while still supporting practical wiki authoring and navigation.

Key Features

• Single-file wiki (content and application embedded in one HTML document)
• In-browser editing with HTML and Markdown support
• Import/export and page cloning for moving or reusing content
• Search and full-search options for finding pages quickly
• Optional server-saving by uploading the updated HTML via HTTP PUT to compatible servers
• Extensible via add-ons such as table of contents, autolinking, word count, and more

Use Cases

• Personal knowledge base you can keep as a single file (local or synced via your own storage)
• Lightweight documentation for small projects or teams without running a full wiki server
• Portable offline wiki for notes, checklists, and reference material

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires a modern browser with ECMAScript 2015 (ES6) support
• Server-saving requires a specifically configured server that supports the expected OPTIONS/PUT behavior and authentication approach

Feather Wiki is a good fit when you want a straightforward wiki experience without a database or complex backend. Its single-file approach makes it easy to copy, back up, and publish while keeping the editing workflow browser-based.