Should You Host Your Own Company Wiki? Pros & Cons Of Self-Hosting

Knowledge sharing only works if people can find the answer faster in the company wiki than by pinging a teammate. A company business wiki centralizes the policies, project notes, codes of conduct, and workflows that would otherwise live scattered across someone's inbox or a shared drive.

The decision that actually determines whether people use it is wiki hosting: whether you run the software on your own servers or hand that job to a cloud provider. Setting up a company wiki means picking the knowledge management platform that fits your team's size and IT capacity, not just the one with the longest feature list.

What is a Company Wiki Software?

A company wiki software is an interactive platform that you can use to design, write, edit or publish content for your internal wiki. You can securely access the necessary features to store information curated by employees across the different departments. 

As you build and manage the company wiki, you may need to determine whether to self-host locally or outsource to a cloud-based SaaS provider. 

Self-hosted Company Wiki Vs Cloud-based Company Wiki

A self-hosted wiki means that the information databases are held and maintained in a private server. You may need a dedicated in-house IT team that continually updates and manages the local servers. 

Cloud-based company wiki uses software as a Service(SaaS) hosting providers that provide a dedicated team to manage your company's wiki databases. You can host your data in cloud-serves with 24/7 remote access.

Advantages of Setting up a Self-hosted Company Wiki

1. Absolute Control Over Data Use 

A self-hosted wiki for your company may place you as the boss over data creation and storage. You can decide how and where to store your organization’s critical data. As a result, you can curate everything according to your specifications and needs. Additionally, you do not have to worry about third-party vendor limits on usage. 

2. Enhanced Security Levels

The best self-hosted wiki platforms provide absolute control over the security measures and firewalls you install to protect your data. Only authorized personnel can supervise entries added to the database, limit users, and boot out unwanted guests. 

Disadvantages of Self-hosting Your Company Wiki

Despite the advantages that come with self-hosting, there are disadvantages also. The following are some of them. 

1. Limited Support

The greatest challenge with self-hosting wiki is that you are responsible for maintaining and updating your database. If you aren’t tech-savvy, it can be challenging to identify and rectify issues on your server. 

Open source self-hosting programs may have you sifting through hundreds of forum pages trying to identify the problems on your set. 

2. Expensive and Time Consuming to Set Up and Maintain

You may have to buy an independent server to hold your wiki databases. As your company expands and the information generated quadruples, you will be forced to invest in larger off-grid servers to meet the new demands. 

You also have to staff an IT team to maintain and update the server yourself. A SaaS hosting provider, by contrast, already has a dedicated support team, which is why cloud wiki hosting is usually faster to get running.

The right choice comes down to whether your team wants to support the software itself or pay someone else to do it. Below are strong options for each path.

Best self-hosted Company Knowledge Base Software

1. Wiki.js

Wiki.js is a free, open-source wiki tool running under the Node.js engine. It has an intuitive, sleek interface, and a bundle of features that can help you customize your wiki’s appearance. You can enjoy multiple editing options: HTML editor, WYSIWYG, and WIkiText. It is available in over 40 languages, and you can have your company wiki page appearing in multiple languages. 

2. MediaWiki

MediaWiki is arguably the most popular open-source wiki software, with well-known sites such as Wikipedia and Wiktionary. You can enjoy easy writing and editing of your content pieces. 

MediaWiki provides multilingual support, allowing you to translate your company’s wiki pages into multiple languages for your diverse workforce. The software is easily customizable, with some users using custom CSS to create the wiki from scratch. 

3. DocuWiki

DocuWiki is a PHP-based wiki tool famous for its simple and easy-to-read syntax. The free, open-source software does not require a database. It is easy to maintain, integrate, and backup.

You can enjoy a wide range of extensions and plugins for more functionality beyond the traditional wiki. Additionally, you do not have a cap limit on the number of pages you can create on your company’s wiki. 

Best Hosted/Cloud-based Company Knowledge Base Software

If you do not have a dedicated team to set up and maintain your self-hosted wiki, you can opt for a hosted SaaS solution. Here is a list of the best cloud-based wiki tools. 

1. Kipwise 

Kipwise is a knowledge management platform that helps companies build up their internal knowledge base easily. It offers powerful Slack integration, browser extensions and is integrated with Google Drive, Airtable, Trello and more, so you can save and retrieve team knowledge easily, wherever you need them. 

Using its real-time collaborative editor with rich embedding options, your team can edit the same doc at the same time and create visually appealing documentation easily. It also runs built-in workflows that keep the knowledge base from going stale. For example, you can set designated reviewers for your collections, and Kipwise will remind them to review the content regularly to ensure your knowledge base is always up-to-date and accurate.

For common apps including Gmail, Zendesk and Intercom, the Kipwise Chrome Extension can even suggest relevant knowledge in your knowledge base automatically based on what you are looking at without needing you to search manually.

Key Features: 

• Real-time collaborative editor
• Built-in Workflows such as content review flow, internal Q&A flow 
• Powerful Integrations with tools such as Slack, Google Drive and more
• AI knowledge suggestions to deliver knowledge to your teammates without needing them to search

2. Confluence

Confluence is a wiki software platform that creates a collaborative edge by bringing content, people, and ideas together. The tool is flexible and customizable, with ready-made templates for use. Your team can co-edit in real-time, with in-line mentions, comments and likes. A personalized feed ensures everyone stays updated with the article stages. 

3. Tettra

Tettra is a simple wiki tool that can help document your business policies, protocols, and other critical information in a centralized location. The inbuilt workflows can help new employees to find answers to repetitive questions within your workplace. Take advantage of the ready-to-use templates and easy referencing to create the perfect wiki platform for your company. 

Choosing Your Company Wiki Hosting

The self-hosted versus cloud decision comes down to headcount more than features. If nobody on your team already owns server patching and backups as part of their job, that maintenance becomes a part-time burden that usually costs more in engineer hours than a cloud subscription costs in license fees. If you already run infrastructure for other internal tools, adding one more service can be cheap, and keeping data fully in-house may matter for compliance.

If you are not ready to manage a self-hosted wiki, you can opt for a hosted knowledge base software provider such as Kipwise.