Docmost

License	FOSS problems	Maintenance	SSO	Users	Tested
AGPLv3Copyleft license. If you modify it and run it as a service, you must publish your changes. Surrounding linked code must also be open.	Open Washing	Active	❌	Unlimited	✅

Evaluation

What it is

Docmost is a collaborative wiki and knowledge base — Notion-style nested pages, workspaces, comments, databases, and kanban boards. It's positioned as a modern alternative to Confluence or Notion, self-hostable via Docker.

Why it could be useful

Clean interface, reasonable feature set for basic documentation, and easy to self-host via Coolify. If you only need a small private wiki with no integration requirements, the free tier covers it.

Why not to go for it

The AGPLv3 label is misleading. The paywalled features fall into two categories.

Actual product features that make it useful as a knowledge base: databases, kanban boards, templates, and comment resolving are all locked. What the free tier gives you is a basic page editor. Most of what would make it worth adopting is not included.

Technical infrastructure you'd expect to be free: SSO, API access, MCP integration, disabling public sharing, and advanced search. SSO alone is a dealbreaker for any serious multi-user setup — it's a security and usability baseline, not a premium.

Self-hosting this restricted a tool carries the operational cost while the vendor retains control over the feature set. There are fully FOSS alternatives that don't pull this.

Setup

1. Add DNS records pointing docs.<domain> to the server:

   • A record: docs → <ipv4>
   • AAAA record: docs → <ipv6>

2. In Coolify, go to New Resource → Service and search for Docmost. Keep the auto-generated service name and deploy.

3. Open the service, click on the docmost container (not the service level — the domain field is hidden inside the container settings).

4. Set the domain to https://docs.<domain> and save. Coolify will issue an SSL cert automatically via the proxy.

5. Fill in the mail environment variables (everything else is auto-generated by Coolify):

   Variable	Value
   MAIL_DRIVER	smtp
   SMTP_HOST	{{team.DEFAULT_SMTP_HOST}}
   SMTP_PORT	{{team.DEFAULT_SMTP_PORT}}
   SMTP_USERNAME	{{team.DEFAULT_SMTP_USERNAME}}
   SMTP_PASSWORD	{{team.DEFAULT_SMTP_PASSWORD}}
   SMTP_SECURE	false (STARTTLS handles it)
   MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS	{{team.DEFAULT_SMTP_FROM}}
   MAIL_FROM_NAME	Docmost
   POSTMARK_TOKEN	leave blank

   MAIL_DRIVER is required — Docmost won't start without it.

6. Open https://docs.<domain> and create the initial workspace and admin account.