BookStack Hosting: A Wiki for Your Docs and Team

BookStack is an open-source (MIT) wiki platform for storing and organising information: internal documentation, how-tos, policies, runbooks or a personal knowledge base. Choose it with a plan, pay, and we build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) and install it in about three minutes after boot. You get:

• BookStack v26.09.2 with its own MariaDB database.
• An HTTPS address like yourname-x7k2.devoster.app with a Let's Encrypt certificate.
• The default admin replaced before go-live. A fresh BookStack starts with a well-known login (admin@admin.com). Ours is replaced, before the app is reachable, by an admin with your account email and a generated password shown in the Devoster dashboard, where you can also reset it.
• Registration off, so only people you add can sign in.
• Dashboard controls to open the app, restart, stop or start it, read its logs, run an update and connect your own domain.

The app is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, a dedicated IPv4 and DDoS protection. Already have a Devoster VPS? You can install BookStack on it from VPS Control, after the panel checks the OS, free ports 80/443 and disk, or reinstall the server with it, at no charge. Other apps that install this way are on the One-Click Apps page.

BookStack's structure is its main difference from a free-form wiki. Everything sits in a simple hierarchy, which keeps a growing knowledge base findable:

• Shelves group related books, for example "Engineering" or "HR".
• Books hold one subject, such as "Server setup" or "Onboarding".
• Chapters are optional sections inside a book.
• Pages are where the writing goes.

On top of that you get:

• Two editors: a WYSIWYG editor for people who don't want to learn syntax, and a Markdown editor with a live preview for those who do.
• Page history: every save is a revision you can compare and restore.
• Search across everything you have permission to see, with tags and filters to narrow it down.
• Attachments, images, page templates and comments, and export of a page, chapter or book to formats such as PDF, HTML and Markdown.

BookStack has a role system: built-in roles such as Admin, Editor and Viewer, and your own roles with fine-grained permissions. You can also set permissions on a single shelf, book, chapter or page, so a private HR book can sit next to public engineering docs.

There is no email on this install. Outbound mail ports are blocked by default on Devoster VPS plans, so BookStack's emails (invitations, "forgot password" links and notifications) don't send. In practice:

• Add users yourself in Settings → Users, set an initial password for each and tell them it; leave the invitation-email option off.
• If someone forgets their password, an admin sets a new one in Settings → Users. For your own admin account, reset it from the Devoster dashboard.
• Two-factor: BookStack supports authenticator-app MFA with backup codes. A password reset from the dashboard does not remove MFA, so keep the backup codes safe.

BookStack is a PHP app with a MariaDB database, and it is light. Text pages take very little space; images and attachments are what grow the disk.

You can upgrade to a larger plan from the panel later; plans are not shrunk in place.

A wiki is something people bookmark and link to, so it is worth giving it its final address early, such as docs.example.com. Connect it from the Devoster dashboard (a CNAME to your devoster.app name, or an A record to the server's IP) and a certificate is issued for it.

BookStack stores absolute links inside page content, which usually breaks when a wiki moves to a new address. Here, when you connect a custom domain, the stored links are updated for you, and the old devoster.app address redirects to the new one, so existing bookmarks keep working. Logins happen on the main address only.

Backups: nightly backups (kept 3 days) and your snapshot slot cover the whole VPS, the database and uploads included. For documentation you can't lose, also export important books now and then, or copy a database dump off the server.

Updates: we check new BookStack versions and apply them in a maintenance hour you choose, or when you press Update now. A snapshot of the VPS is taken first, database migrations run as part of the update, and if BookStack doesn't come back healthy the server is rolled back automatically.

The server is unmanaged: you have full root, and its security and content are your responsibility. Our VPS hardening checklist covers SSH keys and the firewall. If you'd rather keep code and docs together, Forgejo has a wiki per repository; for quick personal notes, Memos is lighter.