Choosing a platform

Users often ask what the differences are between Read the Docs Community and Read the Docs for Business.

While many of our features are available on both of these platforms, there are some key differences between our two platforms.

Read the Docs Community

Read the Docs Community is exclusively for hosting open source documentation. We support open source communities by providing free documentation building and hosting services, for projects of all sizes.

Important points:

Open source project hosting is always free
All documentation sites include advertising
Only supports public VCS repositories
All documentation is publicly accessible to the world
Less build time and fewer build resources (memory & CPU)
Email support included only for issues with our platform
Documentation is organized by projects

You can sign up for an account at https://readthedocs.org.

Read the Docs for Business

Read the Docs for Business is meant for companies and users who have more complex requirements for their documentation project. This can include commercial projects with private source code, projects that can only be viewed with authentication, and even large scale projects that are publicly available.

Important points:

Hosting plans require a paid subscription plan
There is no advertising on documentation sites
Allows importing private and public repositories from VCS
Supports private versions that require authentication to view
Supports team authentication, including SSO with Google, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket
More build time and more build resources (memory & CPU)
Includes 24x5 email support, with 24x7 SLA support available
Documentation is organized by organization, giving more control over permissions

You can sign up for an account at https://readthedocs.com.

Questions?

If you have a question about which platform would be best, email us at support@readthedocs.org.