Outline: The Open-Source Notion Alternative Your Team Actually Needs

Your team's knowledge is scattered everywhere. Meeting notes in Google Docs, project specs in Notion, onboarding guides in random Slack threads, and that critical process document... somewhere in someone's email?

This is the reality for most growing teams. And honestly? Notion and Confluence were supposed to fix this. But here's the thing nobody talks about: they come with trade-offs that matter more than you'd think.

The Problem with SaaS Knowledge Bases

Look, Notion is genuinely great software. So is Confluence. But let's be real about what you're signing up for:

Your data lives on someone else's servers. For some teams, that's fine. For others—especially those handling sensitive client information, internal policies, or proprietary processes—it's a non-starter. Once your company wiki contains salary structures, security protocols, or client contracts, "trust us, it's secure" stops being reassuring.

Pricing scales with your headcount. Notion charges per member. Confluence charges per user. That $8/month/person sounds reasonable until you're a 50-person company paying $400/month for a wiki. And you can't just give clients or contractors view-only access without adding more seats.

You're dependent on their uptime. When Notion goes down (and it does), your entire team loses access to critical documentation. No workaround, no local cache—just waiting.

Enter Outline: The Self-Hosted Alternative

Outline is an open-source knowledge base that looks and feels modern. It's fast, clean, and genuinely pleasant to use—which matters more than you'd think for adoption.

What makes it different:

It's yours. You control the data, the backups, the access. Run it in your own cloud or on-premise. When regulations require data residency, you're covered.

Flat pricing. No per-user fees. Whether you have 10 employees or 200, your infrastructure cost stays the same. On Elestio, you can run Outline starting at around $29/month on a 4 CPU / 8 GB RAM instance—regardless of how many team members use it.

Real collaboration features. Nested documents, markdown support, slash commands, @mentions, and a search that actually works across your entire knowledge base. Plus, you can invite external collaborators without worrying about seat licenses.

Who Should Consider Outline?

Outline isn't for everyone. If you're a three-person startup and Notion's free tier works, stick with it.

But Outline makes sense if you're:

• A growing team (20+ people) where per-seat pricing is starting to hurt
• A company handling sensitive data that needs control over where information lives
• An agency or consultancy that wants to share documentation with clients without adding seats
• A regulated industry (healthcare, finance, legal) where data residency matters
• A remote-first team that relies heavily on documentation and can't afford downtime

Real Use Cases

Internal Wiki: Company policies, benefits documentation, team directories—everything employees need in one searchable place.

Product Documentation: Feature specs, release notes, and product knowledge accessible to your entire team (and optionally, to customers).

Onboarding Hub: New hire guides, training materials, and FAQs that actually get maintained because they're easy to update.

Client Knowledge Bases: Share project documentation, processes, and deliverables with clients—each with their own access-controlled space.

The Cost Comparison

Let's do the math for a 50-person team:

That's not a typo. The savings compound every year, and you get full data ownership as a bonus.

What About Migration?

Already have documentation scattered across tools? Most teams do. The good news: Outline imports from Notion, Confluence, and Markdown files. You won't start from scratch.

For Notion users, export your workspace as Markdown and import directly into Outline. The folder structure transfers cleanly, and most formatting survives the move. It's not perfect—some embeds need manual attention—but it's straightforward enough that you won't need a weekend project to migrate.

Getting Started

The easiest path is a managed deployment. Elestio offers fully-managed Outline with automated backups, SSL, updates, and monitoring included. You pick your cloud provider (AWS, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, or others), and they handle the infrastructure.

Setup takes about five minutes:

1. Choose Outline from the service catalog
2. Select your provider and region
3. Click deploy

You'll have a running instance with your custom domain and SSL configured automatically. No Docker knowledge required, no server maintenance—just your knowledge base ready to use.

The Bottom Line

Notion and Confluence are fine products—but they're also businesses that need to grow revenue by charging more as you scale. Outline flips that model: your costs stay flat while your team grows.

If your company values data ownership, predictable pricing, or simply wants to stop bleeding money on per-seat licenses, Outline deserves a serious look.

Thanks for reading.