Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Started/@comment-44493102-20191124054709/@comment-9605025-20191124205459

If you want a private wiki, use ShoutWiki. Note, however, that it appears ShoutWiki does not support HTTPS; only HTTP.

Assembling and maintaining a web site farm costs a lot of money and requires a decent amount of labor. Sites like Wikipedia and Miraheze (another option for private wikis) rely on donations and volunteers. That is great in that they can be offered for free but it also means support can be spotty. Farms with actual employees have to endure a certain amount of revenue. There are 3 general types of business models to accomplish this. That being said, I don't understand why ShoutWiki would allow private wikis. Whatever their reason, they are the only farm I could find that allows private wikis but does not charge for hosting, provides professional support, and does not have tiers.
 * 1) Make viewers pay for accounts to view the information
 * While this is an option, you have to make sure content is what viewers actually want. You can't ensure that if you allow just anyone to be a creator and/or allow creators to do whatever they want. That is probably why most/all farms that allow the general public to create sites don't use this model. It is typically used by large media groups who actually hire writers to create the content.
 * 1) Make site creators pay to create sites
 * This is what a fair amount of farms do. You mentioned WordPress and Medium. I will also through in Wix, Squarespace, and GoDaddy as examples. It is true that these types of farms typically offer a "free" option. However, the free option does not come with full service. It is kind of like in-app purchases.
 * 1) Insert advertisements and collect ad revenue
 * This is the model that Wikia (FANDOM, Gamepedia, wikia.org) and ShoutWiki use. With this model, private-viewing wikis are not very valuable as the viewership, and thus revenue, is likely to be low.