The Outline alternative with a Swiss contract.
Outline is fast and handsome. It is published under the Business Source License, which allows internal self-hosting and forbids offering it as a service to third parties; purchasing has to review it. Run yourself, Outline needs an outside login service for the very first sign-in, plus Postgres and Redis. ThurWiki takes the Markdown export and spares you the licence review.
What Outline users run into. And what ThurWiki changes about it.
Voices from public forums and reviews, some of them shortened. More reasons for switching stand on the migration page.
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The licence makes work for procurement.
«We wouldn't have to seek legal counsel if less ambiguous licence was used.» – Outline GitHub Discussions #3301, March 2023
ThurWiki: A contract with a Swiss company, data processing under Swiss data protection law, one price per company.
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Run yourself, it does not work without an outside login service.
«Must configure OIDC or OAuth before first login.» – dev.to, comparison of Wiki.js and Outline
ThurWiki: A user name and password, two-factor authentication, security keys, and SSO in the Enterprise package if you want it. Not because you have to.
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The search lags behind, and after saving the Markdown is gone from view.
New pages appear in the search only after a delay, and the raw Markdown cannot be looked at again once saved. – in substance, from user reports
ThurWiki: Search by sound and by meaning, right into attachments. The import wizard reads Markdown, and through the API every page goes in and out as Markdown.
How the move out of Outline works.
- Route
- Export collections as a Markdown archive, then import. Attachments come along.
- Comes across
- Page tree, text, tables, images, task lists, links.
- Check afterwards
- Rights and groups; diagrams anew as a draw.io drawing.
Pages that quietly go stale no longer exist.
The most common ailment of a wiki is not the missing page but the wrong one: an instruction that has not been right for two years, and nobody notices. A review date turns that into an appointment.
- A name, a date, a rhythm. Per page a responsible person, a date and, if you want, a repetition: every 30 days, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly.
- The notice stands on the page, not only in a mailbox. Once the date is reached, everyone who opens the page sees it – including the engineer who needs the instruction right now. A reminder only one person gets does not help the reader.
- Confirming is one click. The responsible person is reminded and confirms right in the notice. With a repetition the next date counts from today – anyone confirming three months late is not immediately due again.
- Two overviews. “My reviews due” for the individual, and in the wiki administration all the reviews due across the wiki. The responsible person is an organisational note and not a right: they get no access they do not have anyway.
And back out again: as one PDF.
A wiki you cannot get out of is a trap – you know that, moving out of Outline right now. That is why the exit lies open.
- One document out of many pages. Tick across spaces, up to 300 pages per export; each begins in the PDF on a new sheet, in the order of the page tree. You choose how large it prints: 45 to 100 per cent, for type and content at once.
- Just as the page looks. What is printed is the real view, not a second rendering: macros, charts, draw.io drawings and tables stand in the PDF as they do in the browser.
- With your rights, not with everybody’s. A page you are not allowed to read stops the export rather than quietly going missing. An export that drops pages would be worse than one that never arrives.
- And by machine. Through the API every page as Markdown, with attachments – for an archive or for the move to the next system.
ThurWiki and Outline side by side.
| ThurWiki | Outline | |
|---|---|---|
| A page tree as deep as you like | yes, as deep as you like | yes |
| Search inside PDF, Word and Excel attachments, tolerant of typing mistakes | attachments yes, including scans and archives; typing mistakes yes, and by meaning | attachments no, typing mistakes no; new pages with a delay |
| An editor without markup | yes, a ribbon like Word’s | yes |
| Simultaneous editing | yes | yes |
| Four-eyes approvals | yes, without an add-on | no |
| Invoices, tickets, issues and files from other systems on the page | yes, 41 connectors, from bexio, Odoo and Jira to Zabbix and Proxmox | individual services such as Slack and Linear |
| SSO (OIDC, SAML) without a price per user | yes, included | run yourself: an outside service is mandatory |
| An AI assistant | yes, with your rights, without credits | optional, outside |
| Operation, backup and updates by the provider, data in Switzerland | yes, ThurData in Switzerland | cloud at the maker or yourself |
| Run it yourself (open source) | no, run by ThurData | yes, under the BSL, not open source in the strict sense |
| Export chosen pages and whole branches as PDF | yes, chosen pages and whole branches as one PDF; every page as Markdown through the API | yes, Markdown or HTML as an archive |
| A review date per page with a reminder | yes, a responsible person, a date, a repetition, a notice on the page | no |
| Price | per wiki, from CHF 4.90 a month | free if you run it (BSL); cloud is paid for |
As of September 2026, based on the makers’ public statements and on user reports, without warranty. We also write down where we are not ahead.
Questions from Outline users
What do we gain over Outline?
A contract with a Swiss company instead of a licence purchasing has to review, operation in Switzerland, sign-in without being forced to use an outside service, approvals, search into attachments, 41 connectors, AI that works with your rights.
How do the pages come across?
Through the Outline Markdown export as an archive, with a preview in ThurWiki, repeatable.
How do we stop pages going stale?
With a review date per page: a responsible person, a date and, if you want, a repetition (30 days up to yearly). Once the date is reached, a notice stands at the top of the page – visible to everyone who opens it, not only to the responsible person – and that person is notified. Confirming is one click in the notice; with a repetition the next date counts from today. Whoever administers the wiki sees all the reviews due in one place, and each person sees their own in the user menu.
How do we get back out of ThurWiki?
In the interface as PDF: you tick in the page tree what should come along – per row either the page alone or the page with all its sub-pages – across spaces, up to 300 pages in one document. What is printed is the view you see, so with macros, charts and drawings. Through the API, additionally every page as Markdown, with attachments. There is no bulk export of the whole wiki as an archive today; we would rather say so beforehand.
More alternatives pages: Confluence · MediaWiki · DokuWiki · XWiki · BookStack · Wiki.js · Docmost · Notion · SharePoint
ThurWiki is an Outline alternative for companies that do not want to review a Business Source License, do not want to run an outside login service and want their data in Switzerland. Outline migration through the Markdown export, with a preview.
Anyone wanting to replace Outline or move from Outline to a managed company wiki finds the route and the comparison here.
Twenty of your Outline pages in ThurWiki, before you decide.
We set up a demo wiki and import a slice of your collection, with a preview. You see search, macros and the editor working on your own content.