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History: Alternatives

Preview of version: 68

Margaret Mead wrote:
Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.


Picking a project will impact you over the long term, and it will impact many future decisions. If you are reading this, it's that you're comparing with other solutions, and this page is there to help. It is a wiki page, so if something is inaccurate, unfair or incomplete, please fix it :-)

Each project is unique. And enterprise suites have so many features, and they evolve, so it's risky to compare just the feature set. As projects tend to be good at reaching their set goals, it's useful to understand the deep drive of each project. If you are working on or thinking of starting an alternative, please see advice for alternatives

All projects are unique but some are more unique than others

This is a play on the quote in Animal Farm by George Orwell:

All animals are equal,
but some animals are more equal than others

. This being said, WikiSuite is pretty special as it's the most comprehensive and integrated Free / Libre / Open Source enterprise software suite ever developed.


We assume that you are not interested in proprietary solutions, so we'll focus just on the ones that are at least partially Free / Libre / Open Source.

In general, the differences between WikiSuite an other solutions are:

Other solutions WikiSuite
Some are personal self-hosting platforms and not designed for teams. Ex.: Cozy, FreedomBox WikiSuite is designed for teams (and you can be a team of one!)
Some are focused on a more narrow use case (typically around file sync or web apps) WikiSuite offers most (80%+) of the data and information management features all organizations need: OS and Network, Web and Intranet, Email and Calendar, Files and Sync, BPM and Analytics, Commerce, Chat and Video Conference and Security.
Some are focused on facilitating self-hosting of many apps, including apps with identical functionality. Ex.: Cloudron, YunoHost, Sandstorm WikiSuite is self-hosted as well but it's an enterprise suite that is very opinionated about the apps that compose it. We believe supporting more than one application for the same need adds unnecessary complexity and fragmentation. Please see: http://pluginproblems.com/ and Constructive Cost Model COCOMO.
For some, beyond ease of installation, there is little effort to provide interoperability between the apps In WikiSuite, we are actively focusing on making all the features work well together. Ex.: A unified user experience with Bootstrap or single sign on between Openfire and Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware
Some are file-centric. Thus, a lot of functionality is added to manage file metadata, version history, file sync, add workflows around files, etc. and they let desktop software edit the actual file. Ex.: Nextcloud In WikiSuite, we want to move away from files. Everything should be editable via the web interface, everything should be stored in a database. See Spreadsheet, Word Processor (Wiki), Slideshow, Diagram and Files vs web pages. Given all the legacy content in files, we also have an extensive feature set: https://doc.tiki.org/File-Gallery
Some are inbox (mail)-centric. Ex.: OpenPaaS We need to move away from this model. We should be task and project-centric, and email is just one of many data formats we need to deal with. Ex: Customer Relationship Management. This being said, we are working to improve the email experience via JMAP. Also mail-centric solutions tend to also be file-centric and they add tools to manage email attachments but don't focus on making files a thing of the past.
Partly Free/Libre/Open Source (FLOSS). Ex.: There is a FLOSS community edition, but as soon as you start using seriously, you are missing features that are only in the proprietary "enterprise" edition. Or there is some odd licensing scheme that makes your wonder: "why do they even call themselves Open Source"? This vastly limits collaboration, as the project leaders will want to limit contributions that could cannibalize the sales of the enterprise edition. See more about this here and here. Ex.: ONLYOFFICE, Open-Xchange, Odoo WikiSuite has one edition, is fully Free/Libre/Open Source, and everyone collaborates to improve it. This is the true power of collaboration. Please see: Constructive Cost Model COCOMO
Not readily available for downloading and self-hosting. The software can technically be FLOSS, but there is no download link or obvious instructions to self host. Ex.: Adaxa, Open365, CommonsCloud How to install WikiSuite


Some of the others listed here are not really ready or feature complete, but are added here because they share a similar vision of a unified platform to manage most of the information of your organization, using FLOSS. As of 2019-02-04, the two most solid alternatives to WikiSuite are OpenPaaS and Nextcloud. All three solutions are fully FLOSS, focused on team work and managed by experienced software development teams. Interestingly, each app has a different core strength:

  • OpenPaas is mail-centric
  • Nextcloud is file-centric
  • WikiSuite is web page-centric.

WikiSuite is actively working to become a solid solution for mail-centric and file-centric use cases. It is expected that OpenPaas and Nextcloud will similarly address any weaknesses they have.

Alternatives with a dedicated page to compare

Other self-hosting tools

Other lists and comparisons

Not FLOSS



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Marc Laporte We are waiting for Dovecot because that is what is in Virtualmin: https://jmap.io/software.html 102
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Marc Laporte Link was broken 82
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gary.cunningham-lee Minor text edits. Replaced "=>" with icon. 81
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Marc Laporte Now part of !! Alternatives with a dedicated page for comparison 80
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Marc Laporte I don't like the word commercial in this context. It's OK to do commerce on FLOSS code. 78
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Marc Laporte mouseover Plugin modified by editor. 76
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Marc Laporte Adding GoFAST 73
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gary.cunningham-lee Some edits for general readability, etc. 72
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Marc Laporte Thank you OSI! 69
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Marc Laporte Moving Sandstorm to own page 61
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