Documize Community vs Gollum
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted wikis & documentation options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Documize Community | Gollum |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 68 · Good | 51 · Fair |
| Category | Wikis & Documentation | Wikis & Documentation |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Ruby |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, bare-metal | binary, docker, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,417 | ★ 14,330 |
| First released | 2016 | 2010 |
| Replaces | Confluence, Notion | Confluence, Notion |
What are Documize Community and Gollum?
Documize Community
Documize Community is an open-source knowledge management platform that blends a wiki with document workflow. It organizes content into spaces and supports templates, sections, and approval flows.
- Spaces for organizing content
- Section-based documents
- Approval workflows
- SSO integration
Gollum
Gollum is an open-source wiki system built on top of Git, where every page is a file in a Git repository. It powers the wikis found on GitHub and supports many markup languages.
- Git-backed page storage
- Multiple markup languages
- Powers GitHub wikis
- Full history via Git
Documize Community vs Gollum: key differences
Documize Community is written in Go, while Gollum is built with Ruby. Licensing differs — AGPL-3.0 for Documize Community versus MIT for Gollum. Gollum is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Documize Community. Gollum is the more established project (first released 2010), while Documize Community arrived in 2016. Gollum has the considerably larger community, at 14,330 GitHub stars versus 2,417.
Why pick each one
Choose Documize Community if…
- Document workflow built in
- Single Go binary
Watch out for
- Smaller community
- Some features in commercial edition
Choose Gollum if…
- Pages are plain files in Git
- Easy version control
Watch out for
- No fine-grained ACLs
- Ruby toolchain required
Frequently asked questions
Is Documize Community or Gollum better?
Neither is universally better. Gollum has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Documize Community and Gollum free and open-source?
Yes. Documize Community is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Gollum under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Documize Community and Gollum with Docker?
Documize Community: yes. Gollum: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Documize Community or Gollum?
Gollum has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Documize Community. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.