How to install Trilium Notes on Saplo (a personal notebook with a knowledge tree)

Notion Plus works well for teams, but as a personal notebook, you'll be overpaying for sharing features, comments, and team databases that you'll never use alone. Trilium Notes is an open-source personal notebook built around one idea: a note tree with unlimited nesting, where each note can have any number of sub-notes, and you can full-text search the entire thing in a fraction of a second. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set up Trilium Notes on Saplo.

Why Trilium Notes instead of Notion Plus

Notion makes sense as a team tool, but for private notes, its billing model and architecture have two drawbacks:

• the price increases regardless of how many notes you actually take - you pay for a plan with team collaboration features, comments, and permissions that you, as a single user, don't need,
• your notes are stored on someone else's server - your archive of personal notes, passwords for encrypted notes, or private plans are in the hands of an external company, not yours.

Trilium Notes runs as a single Docker container on your Box, with its own SQLite database in the data volume, so your entire note archive remains on your infrastructure, with no limit on the number of notes and no monthly fee beyond the cost of the Box itself.

Trilium Notes vs. Wiki.js and BookStack: A Different Niche in the Saplo Catalog

Wiki.js and BookStack are already in the Saplo catalog, so it's worth distinguishing when to choose which tool:

• Wiki.js and BookStack build shared team documentation - procedures, instructions, a company knowledge base accessible to many people simultaneously.
• Trilium Notes is a single-user notebook - a tree of private notes, plans, ideas, and knowledge snippets, with encryption for selected branches of the tree when a note contains something sensitive.

If you're looking for a team knowledge base, check out Wiki.js or BookStack. If you need a private notebook with a note tree and encryption, Trilium Notes is a better fit.

Requirements

To set up Trilium Notes on Saplo, you need:

• A Box with Docker running (the engine automatically enables it during installation from the catalog; container nesting is required, which Saplo provides by default),
• A minimum of 512 MB of free RAM on the Box and 2 GB of disk space, meaning a Box S plan is sufficient,
• A domain or subdomain *.saploapp.pl included with every plan, where the notebook will be hosted,
• You DO NOT need a separate database; Trilium Notes stores the entire note tree in its own SQLite database within the Docker volume.

Step-by-step installation

1. In the Saplo panel, go to Application Catalog and select Trilium Notes (category "Business").
2. Select a Box with a minimum of 512 MB of free RAM, where the notebook will be installed, and a domain or subdomain under which it will operate.
3. Confirm the installation. The engine creates a container from the triliumnext/trilium image, pinned to a specific version, not "latest", because the project documentation explicitly advises against automatic version upgrades, which can disrupt the synchronization format with desktop and mobile applications. The container is exposed only on the Box's loopback and connected to nginx, which serves it under the specified domain with free SSL. Only port 443 is exposed externally, not the raw container port.
4. After docker compose up, the engine also checks whether the Trilium panel actually responds via HTTP, because the "container running" status alone does not mean that the process inside did not fall into a restart loop a moment later.
5. After the installation is complete, the Trilium Notes panel is available under the specified domain and awaits password setup in the first-run wizard.

First-time setup

Trilium Notes doesn't automatically create an admin account. Instead, it prompts you to set a password on your first visit.

1. Go to your domain address, for example, notatki.saploapp.pl, and set a password for accessing your notebook using the first-run wizard.
2. You create your first note in the tree on the left side. Each subsequent note can have any number of sub-notes, with no limit to nesting depth.
3. You can switch the editor between WYSIWYG and Markdown mode depending on the note; both versions hold the same content.
4. You can mark notes with sensitive data (passwords, numbers, private plans) as protected, which encrypts their content with a separate protection password, independent of the panel password.
5. You configure synchronization with the Trilium desktop or mobile application in the synchronization settings, pointing to your Box's address as the server. This makes your notes available offline and updates them when connected to the network.

Trilium Notes on Saplo vs. Notion Plus

Frequently asked questions

Does Trilium Notes need a separate database? No, it stores the entire note tree in its own SQLite database within the Docker volume. The Saplo engine doesn't set up any additional database containers for it.

Why is the image pinned to a specific version instead of "latest"? Because the project's documentation directly advises against automatic version upgrades for notes. It can disrupt the synchronization format with desktop and mobile applications, which the user updates separately.

How does Trilium Notes differ from Wiki.js and BookStack, since they are all in the Saplo catalog? Wiki.js and BookStack build shared team documentation with multi-user access, while Trilium Notes is a personal notebook for one person, featuring a private note tree and encryption for selected branches.

Can I sync notes with the phone app? Yes, in the synchronization settings of the Trilium desktop or mobile app, you specify your Box address as the synchronization server.

If you keep a lot of private notes and are looking for a knowledge tree without a Notion subscription, write to us. We'll help you choose the right Box for your notebook.