Notion vs. Outline: Why Your Team Should Own Its Wiki

Notion is the default wiki for teams that want something that feels good to use. It is fast, collaborative, and visually polished. It also stores every document your team has ever written on Notion's servers, in Notion's database, under Notion's terms of service. Outline provides the same experience on your own server. Here is the comparison.

What Notion Gets Right

Notion's interface is exceptional. The block-based editor, the drag-and-drop organisation, the database views, and the real-time collaboration set a high bar. For a team that values a beautiful writing experience, Notion is genuinely hard to beat. It is the gold standard for team wikis.

Notion's free plan is generous for small teams. The plus plan at 10 US dollars per user per month adds unlimited file uploads and 30-day version history. For a 15-person team, that is 150 dollars per month. For a large knowledge base with years of accumulated documentation, that cost becomes permanent. Cancelling Notion means losing the interface, but also needing to export and migrate years of documentation.

What Outline Gets Right

Outline is the open-source alternative to Notion. It has the same real-time collaborative editor, the same nested document structure, and the same slash-command interface. The difference is that Outline runs on your server, stores documents in your database, and costs nothing per user.

Outline supports markdown, which means your documents are portable. Export them, import them into another system, or version-control them in Git. Notion documents are stored in a proprietary format that is not easily portable. Migration from Notion to anything else is a multi-hour export-and-reformat project. Migration from Outline to another markdown-based system is a file copy.

Outline integrates with OIDC for single sign-on, so your team logs in with the same credentials they use for everything else. Notion has its own authentication system, separate from your SSO. For a business that manages access through Authelia or Authentik, Outline is a natural fit. Notion is an island.

The Cost Comparison

For a team of 15, the five-year saving from self-hosting Outline is 9,000 dollars. That pays for the server and leaves substantial savings. And the team gets a wiki that integrates with their existing authentication, stores documents in a portable format, and keeps company knowledge on company hardware.

When to Stay with Notion

If your team is under five people and you use Notion's free plan, there is no cost pressure to switch. If your team relies heavily on Notion's database features (kanban boards, calendars, linked databases), Outline does not replicate those. Notion is a wiki plus a lightweight database. Outline is a wiki. For pure documentation, Outline is the better choice. For a hybrid wiki-database, Notion is unique.

VPS1 deploys Outline with SSO integration and helps migrate your existing Notion documents to markdown. Your team will not notice the difference. Your budget will.