Confluence is hired to do one job: keep a team's written knowledge in pages people can find and edit. For a small company that job is often a few dozen pages that matter, which makes it a candidate for a lighter tool. Below: what to check before you decide, the open-source option we verified, and how to move without losing history or breaking links.
A wiki starts as a place for onboarding notes and becomes the company's memory. Years of pages, a few that everyone bookmarks, links pasted into tickets and emails: none of it is in the contract, and all of it makes leaving feel risky.
Seat counts also drift. People who joined for one project stay on the plan after they leave the project, and nobody owns the question of who still needs an account.
The pages themselves move easily. The work is deciding which pages still matter and finding every place that links to them, which is why we inventory before recommending anything. If the wiki is also tied to a ticket tracker, read the notes on Jira first, since the two are often renewed together.
Only alternatives we have checked. An open-source project is listed with the license its repository reports, on the date shown; one whose license could not be read as a single standard id is not offered as open source. Read the license guide before running any of them.
| Alternative | Kind | License | Read from |
|---|---|---|---|
| BookStack | Open source | MIT | BookStack repositoryChecked Oct 25, 2026 |
Each feature below is what the product's own page or README says, linked to where we read it on the date shown. Pros and cons are limited to what those pages state and to what the path itself changes. We do not rank products on quality.
Most small-company wikis are a few hundred pages, of which a few dozen are read regularly: onboarding, how-tos, policies, meeting notes. The decision starts with that short list, not with the whole archive.
If the daily use is reading and editing a modest set of pages, a plain wiki can take over the job. If the wiki is wired into other tools or carries approval workflows, count that work before you count the savings. The tools in Notion and Evernote cover related note-taking jobs and may already be on your books.
Samples are made up and are not Confluence's prices. Type in the figures from your own invoice or order form.
The honest yearly cost of running open-source software yourself, set against the bill it replaces, with the seat count where it stops paying.
Paid seats against seats in use: what the idle ones cost a year, and what you save by right-sizing at renewal.
Arithmetic only, not tax, accounting or legal advice. Check the figures against your own order form.
Moving a wiki is mostly a content-cleanup job with a copy step in the middle. In outline:
Export the page list with last-edited dates and authors. Count pages, attachments and total size. Mark every page nobody has opened in a year as a candidate to leave behind.
Write down the pages other systems link to by address: tickets, onboarding emails, help-center articles. Those need a redirect or a replacement link on cutover day.
Choose the destination and write down who can read and who can edit. Copy the permission rules across deliberately instead of assuming they carry over.
Move one team's space first. Open the pages the way the team really works, and check headings, tables, images and attachments render as they did.
Move the rest. Compare page counts and attachment counts on both sides, and spot-check ten pages chosen at random for missing images or broken links.
Set the old wiki to read-only, announce the date, and fix the inbound links you listed in step two. Keep a full export in storage you control.
Wait a full month with both available, then end the plan inside the notice window and keep the confirmation.
Run the vendor report for QuickBooks Online or Xero, then open the free audit.
General information, not legal advice. See cancelling without penalties. Last reviewed Oct 25, 2026. Product names belong to their owners and are used only to identify them.
Send us the export and see which lines are worth a second look. A connected version is planned. Confluence is one of the lines worth a look.
Worked example. Type over it.
Result
| Self-hosting, per year | Amount |
|---|---|
| Hosting, backups, tooling | 720.00 |
| Admin and restore-test time | 2,640.00 |
| Total | 3,360.00 |
| One-off set-up (not in the yearly total) | 1,200.00 |
The saving holds only if the time is real. Price the admin hours at what that person's time costs the company, not at zero.
Worked example. Type over it.
Result
“In use” is your call: last sign-in in the past 30 or 90 days from the vendor's admin report. A seat for someone on leave is not idle.