Build or Bill

Writing and content

Polylogue 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 full assessment →

The projects

ether/etherpad18,495Apache-2.0Real-time collaborative rich-text document editor with multi-user concurrency and plugins.Open on GitHub ONLYOFFICE/CommunityServer3,155Apache-2.0Self-hosted office and collaboration suite with document management, user/role administration, and integrations.Open on GitHub

What you give up either way

  • Polish and UX of the production TipTap-based editor and built-in interactions
  • Hosted billing, account management, trials and vendor support
  • Prebuilt, documented agent UX (agent creation flow, polished webhooks examples)
  • Any proprietary operational hardening, analytics, and uptime guarantees

An open-source project doing the core job proves a replacement is possible. It does not prove it matches Polylogue, and it does not prove anyone has run it for a month. How we decide.