Managed Outline hosting

Collaboration and identityOn-prem or your region

A fast, well-structured team wiki and knowledge base, on a server you choose, signed in through your own identity provider. Pilae runs it on your own servers, or in Zurich, Switzerland, and eleven other Pilae Cloud regions.

Talk to us about Outline

Licence: BSL 1.1
Runs on: Your own hardware, or any of 10+ Pilae regions — six of them in Switzerland and the EU
Upgrades: Pinned, tested against your configuration, applied in your window
Upstream: www.getoutline.com

Running Outline in production: what it takes

Pin and deploy
An Outline release we have tested, with PostgreSQL, Redis and file storage on dedicated machines or your own hardware.
Connect sign-in
Outline trusts your identity provider for every login. We connect it to Keycloak or Entra ID and map groups to collections.
Back up and restore
Database and file bucket backed up daily, encrypted and stored at a second site in the same jurisdiction. Once a month we restore both into a scratch instance and open documents against the restored copy.
Watch and alert
Probes every 60 seconds on the web endpoint and the collaboration service, plus machine metrics. Alerts reach a Pilae engineer around the clock.
Upgrade in your window
Outline releases frequently. Each upgrade runs against a copy of your data first, then the Pilae Agent applies it in your window after you approve the plan.

What Outline is, and who runs it

Self-hosted Outline wiki, operated for you

Outline is a team knowledge base: documents organised in collections, edited together in real time, with comments, revision history, templates and fast full-text search. It writes in Markdown underneath and feels closer to Notion than to a classic wiki, which is why teams adopt it without a training session.

We operate it on a dedicated machine in any of 10+ Pilae Cloud regions, six of them in Switzerland and the EU, or on your own hardware, on premises or air-gapped. Outline answers on your private network, signs people in through your identity provider, and keeps its documents in a database whose backups we restore every month. You receive deployment, monitoring, upgrades and support under one contract.

A Notion and Confluence alternative in your jurisdiction

Teams move their documentation to Outline when it must stay in Switzerland or the EU, when per-seat pricing grows faster than the team, or when a wiki has to sit behind the same sign-in as everything else. The move from Notion is covered above and on the Notion alternative page. Our migration service runs it at a fixed price, with Notion kept read-only until you close it.

Outline single sign-on with Keycloak or Entra ID

Outline has no local passwords. Every login goes through Keycloak, Entra ID or another OpenID Connect provider, so a leaver disabled in your directory loses the wiki with everything else. Our identity service sets up the connection and the group mapping.

Licence and upgrades

What Outline’s licence allows is set out below. The Pilae Agent plans each upgrade, takes a verified backup, waits for your approval and applies it in your window, and every step is recorded in the audit log. Managed operations include a monthly availability commitment with service credits from the Business plan. See pricing, or talk to us about your wiki.

Outline is published by General Outline, Inc. under the Business Source License 1.1, which is source-available rather than open source. The licence allows use in production, with one exception: Outline may not be used for a Document Service, which the licence defines as a commercial offering that lets third parties other than your employees and contractors create teams and documents they control. Each release converts to Apache-2.0 on the change date its licence states (2030-09-09 for current releases). Before we deploy Outline for you, the proposal sets out how the licence applies to your contract, including any agreement with General Outline, Inc. that it requires.

Outline system requirements

Before anything is deployed, this is what has to exist. We size it with you in the first session, and we say so when your own hardware is already enough.

CPU and memory: 2 vCPU · 4 GBOutline is a Node.js application. This carries a few hundred active editors; collaborative editing sessions are what use the memory.
Database: PostgreSQLDocuments, revisions, collections and permissions live here.
Cache: RedisQueues background jobs and carries real-time collaboration between editors on the same page.
File storage: S3-compatible bucketImages and attachments, kept apart from the database and backed up with it.
Identity provider: OpenID ConnectOutline has no local passwords. People sign in through Keycloak, Entra ID, Google, Slack or an emailed link.
Mail: SMTP relayFor sign-in links, invitations and notifications of mentions and comments.

Migrating from Notion to Outline

Leaving Notion works best when the workspace is treated as documents, not databases. Outline imports a Notion export directly: pages, nesting, headings, lists, code blocks, images and attachments come across, and the page tree becomes Outline collections. Notion databases are the part to plan. A database used as a list of pages imports as those pages. A database used as a table of records, with formulas, relations and filtered views, has no direct equivalent in a wiki, and belongs in NocoDB or stays a table in a document. We sort your workspace into those two groups before the move, so nobody discovers a missing view after cutover. After the import we check internal links between pages and repoint any that still lead to Notion.

Map the workspace
Every top-level page and database, who owns it, and whether it is documentation or structured data. The second list decides whether NocoDB joins the move.
Import into staging
The Notion export is imported into a staging copy of Outline. Owners open their sections and confirm structure, images and links.
Set permissions
Collections are created per team, with groups taken from your identity provider rather than rebuilt by hand.
Cut over and freeze
A final export and import, Notion set to read-only, and bookmarks and links in other tools repointed to Outline.

Outline configuration with Keycloak sign-in

URL=https://wiki.example.ch
DATABASE_URL=postgres://outline@db-01:5432/outline
REDIS_URL=redis://cache-01:6379

FILE_STORAGE=s3
AWS_S3_UPLOAD_BUCKET_URL=https://s3.zur1.example.net
AWS_S3_UPLOAD_BUCKET_NAME=outline-files
AWS_REGION=ch-zurich

OIDC_DISPLAY_NAME=Keycloak
OIDC_AUTH_URI=https://id.example.ch/realms/acme/protocol/openid-connect/auth
OIDC_TOKEN_URI=https://id.example.ch/realms/acme/protocol/openid-connect/token
OIDC_USERINFO_URI=https://id.example.ch/realms/acme/protocol/openid-connect/userinfo
OIDC_SCOPES=openid profile email

SMTP_HOST=smtp.example.ch
SMTP_FROM_EMAIL=wiki@example.ch

An excerpt of the environment file for an Outline deployment signing in through Keycloak and storing files in an S3-compatible bucket. Secrets are held in the control plane, not in the file.

What Pilae is responsible for

A pinned version

A version we have run, not whatever latest resolves to that day.

A runbook

What it depends on, how it fails, what to do about it. In your repository.

A restore drill

Backups restored on a schedule. A backup nobody has restored is a file.

A patch window

Security updates in a window you agreed, with a rollback ready.

Someone watching

Every endpoint probed on the minute. An alert reaches a person, not a dashboard nobody opens.

Where it runs: zur1, fra1, fal1, gra1, ams1, hel1, lon1, ash1, hil1, sin1, tok1, syd1, on-premZurich, Frankfurt, Falkenstein, Gravelines, Amsterdam, Helsinki, London, Ashburn, Hillsboro, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Your own hardware
Who holds the credentials: You do. Ours are separate, named, logged and revocable with one command. We ask before anything changes outside an agreed window.
If you leave: The machine, the data, the compose files and the runbook are already yours. Nothing stops when our access does.

What running Outline costs

On Starter, Outline runs in Pilae Cloud for CHF 449EUR 479USD 559 a month, hosting and onboarding included. On Business, it is one of up to three apps for CHF 1,590EUR 1,690USD 1,990 a month, on your own servers or in Pilae Cloud. Enterprise is quoted. The plans set what each includes; these are the inputs that move the price around them.

Instance size: The CPU, memory and, where a model runs, the GPUs the app needs for your users and your data.
High availability: One machine with tested restores, or a replicated setup that keeps serving when a node fails.
Storage and backups: How much data it holds, how long backups are kept, and point-in-time recovery for its database.
Plan and support: Starter, Business or Enterprise: support hours, response times in the contract and how often we review the service with you.
Region: Your own hardware, where the infrastructure is already yours, or a Pilae Cloud region, where machines are priced per month. On Starter, Pilae chooses the site.
Sign-on and integrations: Single sign-on, directory sync, mail relays and the other systems the app has to reach.

Outline: common questions

Can Outline import our Notion workspace?

Yes. Outline imports Notion exports, keeping the page tree, formatting, images and attachments. Notion databases used as structured tables do not map to a wiki, so we plan those separately, often into NocoDB.

Is Outline open source?

No. Outline is source-available under the Business Source License 1.1. You can read and run the code, and use it in production, but not to provide a document service to others. Each release converts to Apache-2.0 on the change date in its licence.

Can Outline replace Confluence?

For documentation and knowledge bases, yes: collections, nested pages, permissions, comments, revision history and full-text search. Confluence macros and Jira-specific integrations have no direct equivalent, and we list them during the inventory.

How do people sign in to Outline?

Through your identity provider. Outline supports OpenID Connect, which covers Keycloak and Microsoft Entra ID, and also Google, Slack and emailed sign-in links. It keeps no passwords of its own.

Where do our documents live?

In a PostgreSQL database and an object storage bucket on dedicated machines in the Pilae Cloud region you choose, from 10+ regions, six of them in Switzerland and the EU, or on your own hardware. Backups are encrypted and stored at a second site in the same jurisdiction.

Back to apps

Bring us your Outline. We will tell you what it takes.

Thirty minutes on the deployment you already have, or the one you are about to start.

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