Managed Outline Hosting — production-ready from $15 a month
Team wiki and knowledge base. Deployed on your own dedicated instance in AWS, Azure, or GCP, kept patched, backed up, and monitored by ManageStacks — standard Outline, no lock-in.
Outline on ManageStacks is the open-source team wiki + knowledge base deployed to your own AWS, Azure, or GCP region — priced flat at $29 per instance per month regardless of user count, instead of the per-user pricing of Notion, Confluence, or Slab. Fast Markdown editor, SSO (Slack/Google/Microsoft/OIDC), full-text search, real-time collaboration, and Notion/Confluence import. Materially cheaper than Notion Teams or Confluence Data Center at scale, and your knowledge base stays in your cloud region.
What does Outline do, and why do teams deploy it?
Outline is a fast, opinionated team wiki designed as an open-source alternative to Notion, Confluence, and Slab. Its Markdown-compatible editor is faster than Notion (Outline was built by a team that specifically wanted the speed back), real-time collaboration is smooth, and the structured collection + document hierarchy is what teams actually want (versus Notion's free-form page tree that everyone eventually loses in).
Outline supports SSO via Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft, and any OIDC provider (Keycloak, Auth0, Okta). Full-text search across every document. API + webhooks for integrations. Embeds from Figma, Loom, Google Docs, GitHub, YouTube, and dozens of other services.
Self-hosting Outline means running Node.js + Postgres + Redis + S3-compatible storage + SMTP for email + SSO configuration. ManageStacks handles it all.
- Fast Markdown editor with real-time collaboration
- Collections and nested document hierarchy (structured, not free-form chaos)
- Full-text search with typo tolerance across all documents
- SSO with Slack, Google, Microsoft, and any OIDC provider (Keycloak, Auth0)
- API + webhooks for programmatic access and integrations
- Document versioning and revision history
Team wiki and knowledge base
What does managed Outline hosting cost?
Flat per-app pricing, in your chosen AWS, Azure, or GCP region. No per-user pricing — a busy deployment costs the same as a quiet one.
Starter
Staging and internal tools. Dedicated instance, TLS, daily backups, managed upgrades.
Standard
Production workloads. Adds monitoring, staging environment, region choice, priority support.
Business
High-traffic and compliance workloads. Adds a high-availability replica and same-day support.
24×7 SRE retainer
Round-the-clock on-call across every hosted application, for teams that need a pager answered at 3am.
Self-hosting Outline vs managed — what does it really cost?
The software is free. The engineer-hours are not.
Running it yourself
- Install Node.js, Postgres, Redis, and MinIO/S3 on a VM; configure Outline env vars
- Set up SMTP for invitation and notification emails
- Configure SSO (Slack/Google/Microsoft/OIDC) manually with certificates
- Set up Postgres backups + S3 attachment backups separately
- Track Outline releases + handle upgrades yourself
On ManageStacks
- Subscribe through your AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplace
- Outline comes up with Postgres, Redis, MinIO (or your S3), SMTP, and SSO wired
- Daily encrypted backups of Postgres + attachments run automatically
- Rolling version upgrades handled by us
- Pair with Keycloak (on same account) for fully self-hosted SSO
Outline on ManageStacks vs the alternatives
How Outline on ManageStacks compares to the dominant team-wiki SaaS platforms and self-hosted alternatives.
| Outline on ManageStacksUs | Notion | Confluence Cloud | Self-hosted BookStack / Wiki.js | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Managed on your AWS, Azure, or GCP | Vendor-hosted | Vendor-hosted | You provision + operate |
| Data residency | Your cloud region | Vendor infrastructure | Vendor infrastructure | Your cloud region |
| Pricing basis | Flat per instance | Per user ($10-24/user/mo) | Per user ($6-16/user/mo) | Your compute cost |
| Editor speed | Fast (Markdown-native) | Slows above ~10k word pages | Standard | Varies |
| Open source | BSL (self-host permitted) | No (proprietary) | No (proprietary) | Yes (MIT / AGPL) |
| Import from Notion | Yes | N/A | Yes | Partial |
Provisioning, upgrades, backups and monitoring on your team’s plate.
What does running Outline yourself involve?
ManageStacks deploys Outline with Postgres, Redis, S3-compatible storage, SMTP for email, and SSO pre-configured against your IdP or Keycloak on the same account. Your team gets a private knowledge base with a fast editor, real-time collaboration, and full-text search without managing the multi-service backend.
Outline key numbers
How long from subscribing to a live instance?
Subscribe
Subscribe to ManageStacks through your AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplace.
Provision
Outline spins up with Postgres, Redis, storage, SMTP, and SSO scaffolding — typically 3-5 minutes.
Configure SSO
Point Outline at your Slack/Google/Microsoft workspace, or your Keycloak instance for a fully self-hosted stack.
Import + write
Import from Notion or Confluence, or start fresh. Invite the team via SSO.
When is self-hosting Outline the right answer instead?
“Managed hosting is not always the correct call.”
Self-host when a platform team already runs the infrastructure and on-call rotation to operate Outline at genuinely low marginal cost. Self-host when compliance requires an air-gapped or on-premises deployment that no hosted option can satisfy. And self-host when the deployment depends on heavy customisation with a fast internal build-deploy loop, because an internal release process will beat any managed change process.
For everyone else — teams whose engineers have better things to do than shepherd upgrades — managed hosting is cheaper than the hours it replaces.
Which cloud should Outline run on — AWS, Azure or GCP?
For most workloads, the choice of cloud matters less than proximity: run Outline in the same cloud and region as the applications and data it talks to, because every request between them adds a round trip. The underlying compute performs equivalently across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
In practice, an existing cloud footprint decides it. All plans support all three clouds, and moving regions later is a scheduled migration, not a rebuild.
Deepest managed-service catalog, default when there's no existing footprint
Best fit for teams already on Microsoft 365 or Entra ID
Strongest for data/analytics-adjacent workloads
Every plan supports AWS, Azure, and GCP — region choice included.
Common questions about Outline on ManageStacks
How does this compare to Notion or Confluence?
Notion is $10-24/user/month for teams; Confluence is $6-16/user/month plus per-user Data Center add-ons at scale. ManageStacks Outline is a flat $29 per instance regardless of user count. For teams beyond ~10 users, self-hosted Outline is materially cheaper — often 10-50x by 50 users. Notion wins on databases, templates ecosystem, and design polish; Confluence on Jira integration and enterprise governance; Outline on flat cost + data ownership + editor speed.
Can I migrate from Notion or Confluence?
Yes. Outline supports importing from Notion (export your workspace as Markdown/HTML archive), Confluence (Space export), and plain Markdown files. Documents, hierarchy, and formatting migrate. Comments and databases don't map perfectly (Outline is structured docs, not free-form DBs). We help with the initial import.
How is SSO configured?
Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft, and any OIDC provider are supported. Configure through the Outline admin UI. Pair with Keycloak on the same ManageStacks account for a fully self-hosted identity stack.
Does ManageStacks back up Outline documents?
Yes. Daily encrypted backups of Postgres (documents + metadata) and S3-compatible storage (attachments + images). Point-in-time recovery within the retention window.
Does ManageStacks handle Outline version upgrades?
Yes. Rolling upgrades on HA setups. Database migrations tested on a staging clone first.
What if I want to move off?
Outline supports Markdown export of any document, collection, or the whole workspace. Import into any Markdown-friendly wiki (Notion, GitBook, Docusaurus, MkDocs). Outline is BSL-licensed but self-hosting is permitted. Migration off is a supported operation.
Run Outline without carrying the pager
Subscribe through your AWS, Azure, or GCP marketplace. We handle provisioning, SSL, monitoring, backups, updates, and security. From $15/mo.