Documents and notes
Docswrite alternatives
2 open-source projects that already do this job. Free to use - not free to run, which is what the numbers on the right are for.
The projects
ether/etherpad★18,484 GitHub starsApache-2.0 licenceReal-time collaborative web-based document editor with simultaneous multi-user editing.Open on GitHub ↗ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer★6,799 GitHub starsAGPL-3.0 licenceCollaborative online office suite with editors for text, spreadsheets, and presentations supporting OOXML and real-time co‑editing.Open on GitHub ↗
What you give up either way
- Hosted uptime, SLA and managed scaling
- Vendor support and paid onboarding
- Proprietary integrations or paid advanced features the vendor may offer
- Polished UI/UX and cross-platform polish delivered by a commercial team
- Built-in billing, usage metrics and enterprise SSO/compliance features
An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Docswrite, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.