BookStack

BookStack is an open-source, self-hosted wiki and documentation platform that organizes content into a Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages hierarchy, with a built-in WYSIWYG editor and a Markdown editor for people who’d rather type it by hand. It’s one of the most recommended self-hosted wikis for homelabs and small teams, alongside Wiki.js and DokuWiki.

BookStack’s own home has changed too, though not through a fork or a buyout. The project now runs primarily on Codeberg, and its GitHub repository is kept only as a mirror, labeled plainly “NOW MANAGED ON CODEBERG.” The license hasn’t changed; it’s still MIT throughout, and Dan Brown, who started the project in 2015, remains its only lead maintainer, funded through donations and support contracts rather than investors.

What BookStack actually does: Shelves, Books, Chapters, Pages

BookStack organizes information the way a library organizes physical books, and that hierarchy is the whole reason to pick it over a flat note-taking app. A Book is the top-level unit for one topic: a homelab, a client, a department. Inside a book you write Pages directly, or split it into Chapters first once it’s getting long; chapters are optional and exist only to keep large books navigable. Once several books pile up, a Bookshelf groups them together, and the same book can sit on more than one shelf. Only pages hold actual content, written in BookStack’s default WYSIWYG editor or a Markdown editor, according to BookStack’s own content overview docs.

Installing BookStack with Docker

BookStack has no official, first-party Docker image. Its own installation docs point to two community-maintained ones instead. LinuxServer.io’s image is listed first and gets updated the most, so that’s what the setup below uses. Both options need a MySQL or MariaDB database running next to BookStack; there’s no bundled or SQLite fallback.

services:
  bookstack_db:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/mariadb:latest
    container_name: bookstack_db
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=changeme_root
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=bookstackapp
      - MYSQL_USER=bookstack
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=changeme_db
    volumes:
      - ./bookstack_db:/config
    restart: unless-stopped

  bookstack:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest
    container_name: bookstack
    depends_on:
      - bookstack_db
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Etc/UTC
      - APP_URL=http://your-server-ip:6875
      - APP_KEY=base64:changeme_generated_key
      - DB_HOST=bookstack_db
      - DB_PORT=3306
      - DB_USERNAME=bookstack
      - DB_PASSWORD=changeme_db
      - DB_DATABASE=bookstackapp
    volumes:
      - ./bookstack:/config
    ports:
      - "6875:80"
    restart: unless-stopped

1. Generate an APP_KEY before the first start: run docker run -it --rm --entrypoint /bin/bash lscr.io/linuxserver/bookstack:latest appkey and paste the output into the compose file above.
2. Save the file as docker-compose.yml, match PUID and PGID to whoever should own the ./bookstack_db and ./bookstack folders, and run docker compose up -d.
3. Give the database container a minute to finish initializing before BookStack’s first request; the app container may need a restart if it tries to connect too early.
4. Open http://your-server-ip:6875 and log in with the default and password, then change both immediately from Settings > Users.

docker compose up -d
docker compose logs -f bookstack

BookStack vs Wiki.js vs Confluence

All three organize written knowledge into pages with some kind of hierarchy, but they differ in stack, license, and who’s expected to host them.

	BookStack	Wiki.js	Confluence
Hosting	Self-hosted only	Self-hosted only	Atlassian Cloud or self-managed Data Center
License	MIT	AGPL-3.0	Proprietary, paid
Stack	PHP/Laravel + MySQL or MariaDB	Node.js, choice of SQL database	Proprietary
Editor	WYSIWYG and Markdown	Markdown and WYSIWYG, with an optional Git-backed storage mode	Rich text
Structure	Shelves > Books > Chapters > Pages	Flat pages with tree navigation	Spaces > Pages
Cost	Free, no enterprise tier	Free	Paid per user

• MIT-licensed with no feature paywall and no separate enterprise tier; what you self-host is the whole product
• The Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages hierarchy scales from a one-person homelab wiki to a multi-team knowledge base without forcing a restructure later
• The built-in WYSIWYG editor is genuinely easy for non-technical contributors, and a Markdown editor is there for people who prefer it
• Development is active and steady, with feature releases roughly every couple of months and fast security patches

• No official Docker image, so day to day you’re trusting a third-party image (LinuxServer.io or solidnerd) to track upstream releases
• Needs a standalone MySQL or MariaDB database, one more moving part than SQLite-based alternatives
• No plugin system by design; BookStack stays deliberately simple rather than extensible, so unusual feature requests are often turned down outright
• No official managed hosting from the project itself, only third-party providers like PikaPods or Cloudron

Reaching BookStack from outside your network works like any other homelab service: a reverse proxy for a real HTTPS domain, or a private network tool if you’d rather not expose it publicly at all. Our Nginx Proxy Manager and Caddy fiches cover the reverse-proxy route, and Tailscale covers skipping public exposure entirely. If what you actually need is scanning and archiving paperwork rather than writing new pages, our Paperless-ngx fiche covers that different, OCR-focused job.

FAQ

Is BookStack free to use?

Yes. It’s MIT-licensed and free for any use, including commercial, with no feature paywall. BookStack doesn’t sell a separate paid or enterprise edition; the self-hosted version is the only version that exists. The project does sell optional support plans, but nothing about running the software depends on them.

What do you use BookStack for?

Documentation that would otherwise live in scattered text files or a paid wiki tool: homelab and infrastructure notes, internal team knowledge bases, client-facing help docs, personal reference material. The project’s own goal is a platform mixed-skill teams can use without anyone needing to learn Markdown or Git first.

Does BookStack need a database, or can it run on SQLite?

It needs a real database, MySQL 8.0 or newer or MariaDB 10.6 or newer. There’s no SQLite mode. That’s a deliberate design choice, not a missing feature, and it’s worth planning for before picking a Docker image.

BookStack or Wiki.js for a self-hosted wiki?

Both are solid and actively maintained. BookStack’s fixed Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages structure and WYSIWYG-first editing tend to win with non-technical contributors and teams who’d rather have the structure decided for them. Wiki.js’s Git-backed storage option and wider choice of databases tend to win with people who want more control over how content is stored. Neither is a wrong choice for a homelab.

A homelab that already has scattered setup notes, docker-compose snippets, and passwords for services nobody remembers configuring is exactly what BookStack is good at fixing. The database requirement and the missing official Docker image are the only real friction points, and neither matters much once the compose file above is written.