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categories = ["News"]
tags = ["News"]
title = "A Decade of BookStack"
image = "/images/blog-cover-images/woodland_path_dan_brown.webp"
author = "Dan Brown"
slug = "decade-of-bookstack"
draft = true
date = 2025-07-12T09:22:00Z
+++
TODO - Update header image and credits
TODO - Update draft/time
BookStack is now over 10 years old! The [initial commit](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/commit/eaa1765c7a68cd671bcb37a666203210bf05d217) for the project was made on the 12th of July 2015, and here we are a decade later.
A massive thanks to all those which have contributed to the project. Whether that's via providing code, reporting issues, providing translations, sponsoring, purchasing support, creating content, interacting with the community, or even just mentioning BookStack to others; This all helps drive the project forward and build motivation to keep the platform evolving.
When I started the project I was just building something to suit a need at work, I didn't envision I'd still be developing this "simple little documentation tool" 10 years down the road for a much bigger audience.
I'm so happy that the project has been able to provide value to so many during this time, and I believe there are [many things to be proud of](/blog/things-proud-of-in-bookstack/) in this decade-old open source project.
I look forward to seeing how the project evolves over the next 10 years!
### Financials
TODO - Update below
Below is the general high level financial monthly breakdown of my BookStack revenue sources (excluding costs, fees, taxes etc...)
ranging from the start of 2022 until now:
[![Monthly breakdown of project finances across Kofi, Support Services & GitHub sponsors. Shows a general trend upwards, with some spikes from support services in 2024](/images/2024/07/finances.png)](/images/2024/07/finances.png)
As you can see, this year's finances have gotten off to quite a good comparable start, with March and June reflecting large
income spikes from support services. This is mainly thanks to a couple of businesses purchasing our enterprise support option
which is priced at £4,500 per year. Upon that, the renewals and sign-ups for our professional support plan (£450/y) have
helped continue to establish a nice recurring base income via support services.
Donations and sponsorships across KoFi & GitHub sponsors has grown slightly when looking at the past 12 months,
averaging about £1,328/m compared to the £1,211/m for the 12 months before that.
In addition to some one-off donations, many of these are recurring yearly or monthly, which serves as a
very welcome stable base of income.
Overall, these increases mean that at 6 months into 2024, I've almost reached the level of income received for the
whole of 2023.
Thank you so much to all donators, sponsors, and those who support by purchasing the BookStack support offerings.
The kind support from such folks has helped to assure a stable income source for me as I continue to work on BookStack.
Currently I donate to open source services & libraries I use to help build BookStack, but this is rather minimal (~£100 per month)
since I somewhat put it on pause a few years ago when leaving my last job to work on BookStack full time.
Now that I'm due to more than cover my living costs, later this year I plan to re-assess this element to scale this up again to help
support & sustain the other projects we rely upon.
### BookStack, In Numbers
Following our BookStack birthday tradition, we'll again dive into the numbers to see how BookStack has grown over the past year.
The below figures were collected at the time of writing *(10th July 2025)*, with changes in <strong style="color:red;">red</strong>/<strong style="color:green;">green</strong> reflecting change upon last year's numbers.
#### GitHub Figures
- [16,926 GitHub stars](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/stargazers) <strong style="color: green;">+2,616</strong>
- [2,140 forks on GitHub](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/network/members) <strong style="color: green;">+330</strong>
- 5,704 GitHub issues and PRs opened <strong style="color: green;">+598</strong>
- 4,047 GitHub issues closed (<strong style="color: green;">+378</strong>), 653 currently open (<strong style="color: green;">+113</strong>)
- [207 releases published](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/releases) <strong style="color: green;">+17</strong>
#### Code Repository Stats
- [5,079 commits](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack/commits/development) <strong style="color: green;">+485</strong>
- 186 direct git contributors <strong style="color: green;">+11</strong>
#### Social
- [3,895 Discord members](https://www.bookstackapp.com/links/discord) <strong style="color: green;">+342</strong>
- [2,281 Subreddit members](https://www.reddit.com/r/BookStack/) <strong style="color: green;">+719</strong>
- [2,810 YouTube channel subscribers](https://www.youtube.com/c/BookStackApp) <strong style="color: green;">+622</strong>
- [55 PeerTube channel followers](https://foss.video/c/bookstack/videos) <strong style="color: green;">+11</strong>
- [843 Mastodon Followers](https://www.bookstackapp.com/links/mastodon) <strong style="color: green;">+287</strong>
- [598 Twitter Followers](https://twitter.com/bookstack_app) <strong style="color: red;">-22</strong>
#### Website Analytics
Main bookstackapp.com site only, Averaged over last 90 days:
- 1,790 unique users per day <strong style="color: green;">+373</strong>
- 4,064 page views per day <strong style="color: green;">+522</strong>
- Operating system breakdown:
- 55% Windows
- 19% Mac <strong style="color: green;">+1%</strong>
- 9% Android
- 9% Linux
- 8% iOS/iPadOS
[Our full website analytics can be found here.](https://analytics.bookstackapp.com/bookstackapp.com)
#### CrowdIn (Project Translations) Numbers
- 52 languages <strong style="color: green;">+6</strong>
- 8,679 words to translate <strong style="color: green;">+620</strong>
- 443 project members <strong style="color: green;">+106</strong>
#### Thoughts on the Numbers
Once again I'm surprised to see continued visitor growth on the website, with about a 20% year-on-year
increase, since I've done little additional marketing. Not something I'll complain about though!
Just confirms that we don't need to worry that much about extra marketing as natural growth seems to be enough.
Twitter followers are down, which makes sense since I stopped posting updates there from January,
with Twitter links being removed from the BookStack site a while before.
Our Mastodon follower count has continued to climb though, growing far above what we ever had on Twitter. It's nice to see that we can have more success on a friendlier, open, decentralised, albeit more niche, platform.
The rate of project releases has slowed in comparison to last year, but there's also been more commits, reflecting a slower release cycle but with just as much development effort, if not more, put into them overall.
### Further Reading
Here are the non-release/update posts that you may have missed over the last year:
- [Nine Years of BookStack](/blog/9-years-of-bookstack/)
- [BookStack Project Update for September 2024](/blog/project-update-september-24/)
- [BookStack in 2024](/blog/bookstack-in-2024/)
- [Testing Better Dependency Management](/blog/php-dependency-improvements/)
- [Using BookStack as a Linux File System](/blog/bookstack-filesystem/)
- [Things I'm Proud of in the BookStack Project](/blog/things-proud-of-in-bookstack/)
---
<span style="font-size: 0.8em;opacity:0.8;">Header Image Credits: &nbsp;<span>Photo by <a href="https://danb.me">Dan Brown</a></span></span>