Comparison
Dossiers vs Outline
A fast, Markdown-friendly team wiki — versus Git-native specs. Closer cousins than you’d think.
Outline is probably the nicest team wiki you can run yourself: fast, keyboard-driven, Markdown at its heart, with real-time collaboration and a clean reading experience. Of all the wikis, it’s philosophically closest to Dossiers — both believe documentation should be plain and portable.
The difference is where truth lives. Outline stores documents in its own Postgres database; Markdown is an import/export format, revisions live in the app, and review means comments on a live page. Dossiers has no database at all — the Git repository is the wiki, pull requests are the review system, and the site is a stateless render you can host as static files.
At a glance
| Dossiers | Outline | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | CLI: free (MIT). Hosted service: TBD — free tier planned | Cloud tiers from ~$10/mo (up to 10 users); self-hosted free (BSL 1.1 license) |
| Open source | Yes — MIT | Source-available — BSL 1.1, converts to open source over time |
| Where content lives | Markdown files in your Git repository | Outline's Postgres database; Markdown import/export |
| Authoring | Any editor or IDE; plain Markdown with YAML frontmatter | Markdown-friendly editor with real-time collaboration |
| Review & approval | Pull requests — drafts appear automatically next to published specs | Drafts and comments; publishing is not gated by review |
| Version history | Full Git history of every document | Revision history per document, stored in the app |
| Full-text search | Full-text search in the hosted service; static builds use browser search | Yes — built in |
| Access control | Google Workspace domain or GitHub org (hosted); static sites can sit behind your own auth | Collections, groups, and sharing controls; SSO support |
| Self-hosting | Yes — static output hosts anywhere, or run the CLI server | Yes — Node.js server with Postgres and Redis |
| Lock-in | None — plain Markdown files stay in your repo | Low — solid Markdown export, though history stays behind |
Prices are rounded list prices as of July 2026 and change often — always check the vendor’s pricing page. Dossiers hosted-service pricing will be announced at launch.
Which one is for you?
Choose Outline if…
- You want a wiki UX: instant editing, real-time cursors, quick notes
- Authors shouldn’t need Git or pull requests
- Slack-style integrations and in-app search matter day to day
- A self-hosted server with a database is fine with you
Choose Dossiers if…
- The repository should be the single source of truth — no sync, no database
- Changes should ship through reviewed pull requests
- You want static hosting with nothing to operate or back up
- MIT licensing matters to you
The bottom line
Outline and Dossiers share values — plain content, self-hosting, no bloat — and differ on architecture. If you want a live wiki, run Outline. If you want documents that move at the speed of code review and can be hosted as static files, Dossiers is the simpler machine.
Frequently asked questions
Which is easier to self-host?
Dossiers, by a wide margin: dossiers build emits static files any web server can host, and dossiers serve is a single binary. Outline needs its Node.js app plus Postgres and Redis, with backups to manage.
Can I move from Outline to Dossiers?
Yes — Outline exports collections as Markdown, which Dossiers reads directly. Revision history stays in Outline; from the switch onward, Git records every change.
See it with your own specs
Point Dossiers at a folder of Markdown files — you'll have a site before the kettle boils.