"I am also in the same boat. I'm not knocking WetPaint at all- they have been so generous over the past couple years to educators. I understand their "Freemium" model and the need to generate income. I, too, have trained thousands of educators in my own district as well as regional, state, and national conferences encouraging the use of WetPaint. $20/month is way too expensive in education. In my district alone, let's say 100 teachers wanted to use and set up a WetPaint wiki. That's $2,000/month = $48,000/yr. That's the equivalent of removing one teacher from the classroom.

We will be searching for viable alternatives as well- though none seem to be as good and simple as WetPaint."