Host BookStack without installing anything
A knowledge base arranged into shelves, books, chapters and pages: the structure is imposed, and that is exactly why things are still findable six months later.
Starting at €8.99/month
Introduction
BookStack installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. A knowledge base organised into shelves, books and chapters, made for a team's internal documentation: easy to write, pleasant to read, easy to find again. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Confort at €8.99/month incl. VAT — 4 GB of memory, against a theoretical minimum of 1 GB. BookStack is a Laravel application backed by MariaDB: pages, revisions and the full-text search index all live in the database, and exporting a whole book to PDF makes the server work in one burst. The headroom is for those peaks, and for the image manager building a thumbnail of every screenshot you paste.
Coming from Confluence or a folder of Word files, the route is copy and paste: the visual editor keeps the formatting and picks up images on the way, dropping them into the image library. For serious volume, the REST API creates books, chapters and pages from a script. In the other direction, any page, chapter or book exports as PDF, self-contained HTML, Markdown or plain text.
What managed hosting changes
Four levels, and not one more
Shelf, book, chapter, page. You cannot nest indefinitely, and that is the point: the documentation stays navigable instead of becoming a tree nobody has ever reached the bottom of.
Full-text search with operators
Search digs into page content, not just titles. Quotes force an exact phrase, tags filter by topic, and filters such as {created_by:me} or a date range narrow the list once the base has grown.
Permissions down to a single page
Roles set the general rule, and any shelf, book, chapter or page can contradict it. The HR book stays invisible to the rest of the team. Authentication plugs into an LDAP directory, SAML 2 or OpenID Connect.
Revisions, drafts and comparison
Every save creates a revision. You compare two versions line by line, restore the earlier one, and drafts are kept automatically — which saves the page that would otherwise vanish with a closed tab.
Why hand it over rather than install it
A support team writing down its procedures
One book per product, one chapter per kind of incident, one page per procedure. A new joiner reads in order instead of asking the same question three times.
An accountancy firm with per-client working notes
One book per client, with permissions following the team assigned to the file. Staff see their own clients, not the ones handled at the next desk.
An association preparing a handover
What the outgoing treasurer knew ends up in a book rather than in a ring binder and two mailboxes. The next committee inherits documentation, not oral legend.
An IT department leaving Confluence
Pages are recreated through the API, permissions are rebuilt by role, and the per-user cost disappears. Internal search becomes a settled question again.
A trainer who has to deliver course material
A whole book exports to PDF with its table of contents, or to self-contained HTML to attach to a project handover, without going back through a word processor.
Company documentation that stays in France
The instance runs in our own datacentre in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and the automatic backup kept for 14 days restores from the client area.
Frequently asked questions
Copy and paste for the everyday cases: the visual editor keeps headings, lists and tables, and uploads pasted images into the library. For serious volume, BookStack's REST API creates books, chapters and pages from a script, which lets you work through a Confluence export page by page. There is no one-click Confluence importer, and it is better to know that before planning the switch.
Yes, and this is where BookStack is strong. Roles set the rule, then any shelf, book, chapter or page can define its own permissions, down to a named user. An internal book, a shelf open to the whole company and a public page all coexist in the same instance.
The hierarchy is fixed: four levels, and no chapter inside a chapter. If your documentation needs a tree of arbitrary depth, DokuWiki or Wiki.js will be more comfortable. The other point: editing is not simultaneous — two people on the same page at the same moment get a conflict warning, not four-handed writing as in Etherpad or Docmost.
Nothing. You choose the application, fill in the two or three fields it asks for, and it goes online; the address and credentials arrive by email. The recommended plan for BookStack is App Confort, at €8.99/month incl. VAT with 4 GB of memory, and it can be changed later without reinstalling.
Yes, they are part of the service. A self-hosted application left un-updated is a security risk, not a saving. Version upgrades are applied and checked by us, with a backup kept for 14 days so you can roll back from the client area.