CanvasWiki vs. TWiki vs. MediaWiki vs. ProntoWiki vs. XWiki vs. Instiki

General Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Version
1.2.101
TWiki-6.1.0
1.32.2
1.0.1
16.2.0
0.30.0
Last Release Date
2006-06-14 (17 years ago)
2018-07-15 (5 years ago)
2019-06-05 (4 years ago)
2024-04-24 (1 day ago)
2024-03-24 (1 month ago)
2019-02-28 (5 years ago)
Last Update here
2008-09-01 (15 years ago)
2019-07-19 (4 years ago)
2019-06-21 (4 years ago)
2006-08-23 (17 years ago)
2024-03-25 (1 month ago)
2019-03-04 (5 years ago)
Author
Raymond Camden
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
Magnus Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik Möller, and others.
Clay Alberty
XWiki Development Team
David Heinemeier Hansson, Jacques Distler, Matthias Tarasiewicz
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
License
Apache
GPL
GPL
BSD
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Ruby's
Programming Language
ColdFusion
Perl, JavaScript
PHP
C#
Java
Ruby on Rails
Data Storage
Database
Files, RCS
Database
Database
Database, RCS
Database
License Cost/ Fee
0
N/A
0
Free
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Mildly technical
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
End Users/Desktop, Education
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
general, education
Hosting Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Storage Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
N/A
Own Domain
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
Yes
N/A
Ads allowed
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
No
N/A
System Requirements CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Operating System
Windows, Linux, Solaris
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
*nix, Windows, Mac OS X
Windows
Any platform supporting Java 11 or greater
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X
Root Access
No
No
No
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Any with PHP support
IIS 5+
Servlet 3.1+
Thin (included), or Apache/NGinx (via Passenger)
Other Requirements
ColdFusion MX
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
none
.NET framework v2.0 or higher
Java 11, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Ruby 2.0-2.6
Datastorage CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Text Files
Unknown
Yes
No
Unknown
No
No
MySQL
Yes
No
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
PostgreSQL
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Oracle
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
SQLite
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
No
Yes
BerkeleyDB
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
No
No
RCS
Unknown
Yes
No
Unknown
Plugin
No
Other
Access, SQL Server
RcsLite Perl library for version control without external RCS; backend API for other storage
No
SQLExpress or SQL 2000 or SQL 2005
JDBC Databases and in general any database supported by Hibernate; any custom implementation, as the storage is pluggable. Attachments can be saved on the filesystem
Any Rails-compatible back-end datastore can be used.
Security/Anti-Spam CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Page Permissions
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
No
Yes
No
No
Yes
No
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Yes
.NET Membership platform
XWiki, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Host Blocking
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
No
Yes
Mail Encryption
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
Unknown
nofollow
Unknown
Plugin
Optional
No
No
Unknown
Blacklist
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Plugin
Yes
CAPTCHA
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Unknown
Delayed Indexing
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Yes
Unknown
Development/Support CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
478 ⭐
Common Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Preview
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Minor Changes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Special Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Unicode Support
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
Unknown
No
Yes
Unknown
No
Yes
Interface Languages
0
19
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
140
Afar, Abkhazian, Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Assamese, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Bihari, Bislama, Bengali; Bangla, Tibetan, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Bhutani, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Estonian, Basque, Persian, Finnish, Fiji, Faroese, French, Frisian, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Galician, Guarani, Gujarati, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Armenian, Interlingua, Indonesian, Interlingue, Inupiak, Icelandic, Italian, Inuktitut, Japanese, Georgian, Kazakh, Greenlandic, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Kashmiri, Kurdish, Kirghiz, Latin, Lingala, Laothian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Malagasy, Maori, Macedonian, Malayalam, Mongolian, Moldavian, Marathi, Malay, Maltese, Burmese, Nauru, Nepali, Dutch, Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Oriya, Punjabi, Polish, Pashto, Pushto, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romance, Kirundi, Romanian, Russian, Kinyarwanda, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Sangho, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Samoan, Shona, Somali, Albanian, Serbian, Siswati, Sesotho, Sundanese, Swedish, Swahili, Tamil, Telugu, Tajik, Thai, Tigrinya, Turkmen, Tagalog, Setswana, Tonga, Turkish, Tsonga, Tatar, Twi, Uighur, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Volapuk, Wolof, Xhosa, Yiddish, Yoruba, Zhuang, Chinese, Chinese Traditional, Zulu
1
English
40
Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Persian, French, Galician, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Marathi, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
1
English
Email notification
Unknown
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
No
Comments
Threaded
Discussion Pages
No
Threaded
No
Categories
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Unknown
Optional
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
No
Links CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Optional
Freelinks
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Yes
No
Image Links
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Yes
No
Page Redirects
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Syntax Features CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
HTML Tags
All
Some
Some
All
All
Math formulas
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
none
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
Yes
No
Markdown Support
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Textile Support
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
No
Yes
BBCode Support
Unknown
No
No
Unknown
No
No
Emoticon Images
Unknown
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
No
Syntax Highlighting
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
Yes
Footnotes
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Optional
Yes
Yes
Quoting
Unknown
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Unknown
Yes
No
No
Plugin
No
Scripting
TWiki Markup Language, TWiki variables, JavaScript, extensive API
Optional
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
None
Content Includes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Usability CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Section Editing
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
No
Page Templates
No
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Double-Click Edit
Unknown
Plugin
Optional
No
No
No
Toolbar
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
WYSIWYG Editing
Unknown
Yes
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Access Keys
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
No
Yes
Statistics CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Recent Changes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Unknown
No
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Optional
Yes
No
Recent Visitors
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Analysis
Unknown
Yes
Optional
No
Yes
No
Output CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
RSS Feeds
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
ATOM Feeds
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Abbreviations
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Yes
Auto-TOC
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Optional
Yes
Raw Export
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
XML export
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
No
Yes
No
PDF Export
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Yes
No
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Media and Files CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
File Attachments
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Unknown
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
No
Embedded Flash
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
No
Embedded Video
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Yes
Image Editing
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
No
SVG Editing
Unknown
Plugin
No
No
Plugin
Yes
MindMap Editing
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
No
Plugin
No
Media Search
Contents
Keywords
Contents
No
Extras CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Calendar
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
No
Image Galleries
Unknown
Plugin
Yes
Unknown
Yes
No
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Forums
Unknown
Plugin
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
No
Blogs
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
Plugin
No
Ticket System
Unknown
Plugin
No
Unknown
Plugin
No
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Syntax Examples CanvasWiki TWiki MediaWiki ProntoWiki XWiki Instiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[[a link]]
[[a link|with title]]
[pagename]
XWiki supports 16+ input syntaxes (e.g. confluence, twiki, docbook, mediawiki, xwiki, markdown, etc), see http://rendering.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome#HSupportedSyntaxes for details.

The syntax documented below is XWiki Syntax 2.1 (http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/XWikiSyntax).

[[wiki syntax here>>Space.Page]]
[[Space.Page]]
(Space is optional and is the current space if not specified)
[[Some Page]]
[[Some Page|anchor text]]
[[Some Page#anchor]]
[[Some Page#anchor|anchor text]]
External Link
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.org/][label]]
[http://example.org The title]
{title|url}
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
[another site](http://example.com)
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
==Section==
===Subsection===
====Sub-subsection====
!, !!, !!!
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
#Level 1#
##Level 2##
###Level 3###
####Level 4####
#####Level 5#####
######Level 6######
Bold Format
*bold*
'''bold'''
**bold**
**bold**
**bold**
Italics Format
_italic_
''italic''
''italics''
//Italics//
_italic_, *italic*
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
<u>underlined</u>
__under__
__underline__
underlined
{: style='text-decoration:underlined'}
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
<tt>monospace</tt>
##monospace##
`monospace`
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
<s>strikethrough</s>
<<strike>> (using custom tags)
--Strike--
<del>strikethrough</del>
strikethrough
{: style='text-decoration:line-through'}
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
<sup>superscript</sup>
<<super>> (using custom tags)
^^superscript^^
<sup>superscript</sup>
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
<sub>subscript</sub>
<<sub>> (using custom tags)
,,subscript,,
<sub>subscript</sub>
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
[[Image:wiki.png]]
{guid} - this is displayed and can be inserted automatically for each image/page
image:img.png
image:Space.Page@img.png
[[image:img.png||width="25" height="25"]]
image:http://some/url/img.png

Starting with the xwiki/2.1 syntax, also:
image:icon:cancel
![alt text](http://ex.com/image.jpg),
[[image.jpg|alt text:pic]]
Aligning Text
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
<center>Centered</center>
available through custom tags
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
p{: style='text-align:left'}
p{: style='text-align:right'}
p{: style='text-align:center'}
p{: style='text-align:justify'}
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
: indented line
multiple spaces -> &nbsp;
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

(% style="... css here..." %)multi line text

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
p
{: style='margin-left:3em'}

> blockquote
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* Item 1
** Item 1.2
* Item 2
+
++
+++
++++
* List
** list
*** list
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# Item 1
## Item 1.2
# Item 2
#
##
###
####
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
1. Item 1
1. Item 1.1
2. Item 2
Definition Lists
$ Term: Definition
; term : definition
; term
: definition
term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
---
----
----
***
remove CanvasWiki remove TWiki remove MediaWiki remove ProntoWiki remove XWiki remove Instiki