BookStack

BookStack is an open-source, self-hosted documentation and wiki platform designed to make creating, organizing, and maintaining technical documentation simple, intuitive, and visually pleasing. Built on the PHP Laravel framework and MySQL, BookStack organizes documentation into a real-world book metaphor consisting of Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages, providing a structured, hierarchical information architecture that avoids the chaotic, disorganized navigation typical of traditional wiki software. The platform offers a dual-editor experience, featuring a distraction-free WYSIWYG visual editor alongside a full Markdown editor with live preview, making it accessible to both non-technical business authors and developer documentation teams. BookStack provides robust administrative security features, including granular role-based permissions, page revision histories, automated content backups, and enterprise authentication protocols such as SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect (OIDC), LDAP, and social identity providers. The platform includes full-text search capabilities that instantly query across books and chapters, image upload management, and export options supporting PDF, HTML, and Markdown formats. By providing a clean, self-hosted, and free documentation ecosystem, BookStack enables development teams and IT departments to maintain complete ownership of their internal documentation without incurring recurring SaaS licensing fees.