Adobe Acrobat vs. Atlassian Confluence

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Adobe Acrobat
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Adobe Acrobat DC is the current version of the well-established document / PDF management solution, part of the Adobe Document Cloud (the other part being Adobe's eSign services based on technology acquired with EchoSign in 2011).
$12.99
per month
Confluence
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Confluence is a collaboration and content sharing platform used primarily by customers who are already using Atlassian's Jira project tracking product. The product appeals particularly to IT users.
$6.40
per month per user
Pricing
Adobe AcrobatAtlassian Confluence
Editions & Modules
Acrobat Standard for Individuals
$12.99
per month
Acrobat Standard for teams
$14.99
per month per user
Acrobat Pro for Individuals
$19.99
per month
Acrobat Pro for Teams
$22.19
per month per user
Acrobat for Enterprise
Contact sales team
Free
$0
Free for 10 Users
Standard
$6.40
per month per user
Premium
$12.30
per month per user
Data Center
220,000.00
40,001+ Users - Annually
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Adobe AcrobatConfluence
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices shown here reflect prices for deployments with 100 users or less. The prices decrease wien the user base surpasses 100.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Adobe AcrobatAtlassian Confluence
Considered Both Products
Adobe Acrobat
Chose Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat allows licenses to stretch across one account rather than just one device, and works across both Mac and Windows, as opposed to some of the other options.
Chose Adobe Acrobat
While more expensive than the competition, Adobe Acrobat DC is far superior than anything else we've considered.
Confluence
Chose Atlassian Confluence
Atlassian Confluence integrates completely with Jira, which is what we use as a company, so it made sense to use Atlassian Confluence as well.
Chose Atlassian Confluence
Overall, Atlassian Confluence is a user-friendly tool and offers such a vast array of capabilities for project and knowledge management purposes and beyond. Other tools listed above have much more limited capabilities, although they are great tools for very specific needs and …
Chose Atlassian Confluence
It's a more robust solution with a lot of features, yet with that comes more complexity.
Features
Adobe AcrobatAtlassian Confluence
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Acrobat
-
Ratings
Atlassian Confluence
7.0
157 Ratings
9% below category average
Task Management00 Ratings7.1125 Ratings
Gantt Charts00 Ratings7.912 Ratings
Scheduling00 Ratings7.221 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings6.289 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings6.8116 Ratings
Search00 Ratings6.8155 Ratings
Visual planning tools00 Ratings7.2126 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Acrobat
-
Ratings
Atlassian Confluence
7.9
157 Ratings
0% below category average
Chat00 Ratings6.415 Ratings
Notifications00 Ratings8.2154 Ratings
Discussions00 Ratings7.6147 Ratings
Surveys00 Ratings7.015 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase00 Ratings9.0148 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting00 Ratings6.03 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts00 Ratings9.37 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook00 Ratings9.610 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Adobe Acrobat
-
Ratings
Atlassian Confluence
7.7
156 Ratings
3% below category average
Versioning00 Ratings8.1135 Ratings
Video files00 Ratings6.8104 Ratings
Audio files00 Ratings6.896 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings8.3151 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings8.6146 Ratings
Advanced security features00 Ratings8.3113 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive00 Ratings5.947 Ratings
Device sync00 Ratings8.384 Ratings
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User Ratings
Adobe AcrobatAtlassian Confluence
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(550 ratings)
8.2
(174 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.6
(28 ratings)
9.0
(21 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(238 ratings)
8.0
(61 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(3 ratings)
Performance
6.9
(9 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(57 ratings)
5.4
(25 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.3
(10 ratings)
8.8
(4 ratings)
Configurability
8.5
(2 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
6.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(8 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.8
(3 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.0
(3 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
5.5
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Adobe AcrobatAtlassian Confluence
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe
I don't want to ignore copy. Rather than send copy for approval as Word docs or as raw copy in email or, god forbid, a Teams message, Slack and other communication tools where it can be changed, deleted, mangled beyond recognition and face stresses and tortures the written word never should, you can print those documents as a PDF. It's not like a recipient can't change a word, but in our experience, non-creatives generally don't know what they've have to hit in order to commit such heresy. Also as you route PDFs of copy or design for approval, it's simple to see who has already weighed in and what they said. No need for crazy direction like "On paragraph 2 on the right side of the page, about a fourth down, rephrase those last 4 words" — that's near-DaVinci Code stuff to unpuzzle! Each person who needs to approve can simply drop their comment on the exact place they're talking about. That encourages others to view those comments and "talk it out" through the comments thread, rather than leave another comment giving similar direction.
Read full review
Atlassian
I would recommend Atlassian Confluence for companies that want to have internal documentation and minimum governance processes to ensure documentation is useful and doesn't have a lot of duplicated and non-updated content. I wouldn't recommend Atlassian Confluence for companies with a low budget since this product might be a little costly (especially with add-ons).
Read full review
Pros
Adobe
  • Organizing large documents and saving individual document from them.
  • Editing or updating existing documents within the organization to keep up with most current versions.
  • Collecting signatures internally and externally for the organization.
  • Drafting policies and procedures that require multiple collaborators and contributors.
  • Protecting documents from being edited or modified without permission or by ill intent.
  • Great for sending multiple photos in one document!
  • Great for document progress, for example, keeping record of who makes edits, when the edits are made, and what edit was done to the document.
Read full review
Atlassian
  • Cross product linking - If you use other Atlassian products then Atlassian Confluence is a no-brainer for your source of documentation, knowledge management etc. You can show previews of the linked asset natively E.g. showing a preview of a JIRA ticket in a Atlassian Confluence page.
  • Simple editing - Though the features available may not be super complex right now, this does come with the benefit of making it easy to edit and create documents. Some documentation editors can be overwhelming, Atlassian Confluence is simple and intuitive.
  • Native marketplace - If you want to install add-ons to your Atlassian Confluence space it's really easy. Admins can explore the Atlassian marketplace natively and install them to your instance in a few clicks. You can customise your Atlassian Confluence instance in many different ways using add-ons.
Read full review
Cons
Adobe
  • When editing text, it can sometimes get a little tricky getting paragraphs to line back up if too much is added
  • Paragraph grouping needs to be a little better when editing. Often times sentences with be split into two separate text blocks
Read full review
Atlassian
  • UI Design is very simplistic and basic could make use of more visually interesting colour choices, layout choices, etc.
  • Under the 'Content' menu, it defaults to having a landing page for all L1 and L2 category pages. Meaning as long as the broader content category has a sub-category, it still creates a separate landing page. In my team's case, this often creates blank pages, as we only fill out the page at the lowest sub-category (L3).
  • Hyperlinks are traditionally shown as blue, however, this results into very monotonously blue pages in cases where a lot of information is being linked.
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Likelihood to Renew
Adobe
I bought a perpetual license to Acrobat some time ago, but if the software ever stopped being supported in my version of windows or other solution that makes me need to buy another license I would not hesitate to do so since it saves me a lot of headaches. There are workarounds to merge files and edit pdfs with an online interface but I dont think those are a good usage of time when Acrobat exists.
Read full review
Atlassian
I am confident that Atlassian can come with additional and innovative macros and functions to add value to Confluence. In 6 months, Atlassian transformed a good collaborative tools into a more comprehensive system that can help manage projects and processes, as well as "talk" with other Atlassian products like Jira. We are in fact learning more about Jira to evaluate a possible fit to complement our tool box.
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Usability
Adobe
My overall experience with Adobe is great because because the it has almost all of the tools in one place and it can be used it for most of my work without going anywhere else. Because the tools are available right there in the main interface, it makes it very easy to use.
Read full review
Atlassian
Great for organizing knowledge in a hierarchical format. Seamless for engineering and product teams managing software development. Helps in formatting pages effectively, reducing manual work. Tracks changes well and allows for easy rollbacks. Granular controls for who can view/edit pages. Search function is not great which needs improvement. Hire some google engineers
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Reliability and Availability
Adobe
The software is readily available and rarely has application errors.
Read full review
Atlassian
I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.
Read full review
Performance
Adobe
One of the best features of Adobe Acrobat is its speed and stability. When dealing with massive multi-page files, having to reload a crashed program over and over again would slow down progress unnecessarily. And expanding on that, having the table of contents generated allows me to skip to different pages with ease, a necessary feature with exceptionally long files. word searches are even more helpful with text recognition.
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Atlassian
We never worked against the tide while using Confluence. Everything loads considerably fast, even media components like videos (hosted on the platform or embed external videos from Youtube, for example). We are not using heavy media components a lot, but in the rare occasion we happen to use one we have no problems whatsoever.
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Support Rating
Adobe
Because I don't need it. Used it years ago for account management/billing issues but they have changed the user experience so more of that can be managed online. If I have a question the knowledge base or a video that Adobe has posted answers
Read full review
Atlassian
This rating is specifically for Atlassian's self-help documentation on their website. Often times, it is not robust enough to cover a complex usage of one of their features. Frequently, you can find an answer on the web, but not from Atlassian. Instead, it is usually at a power user group elsewhere on the net.
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Online Training
Adobe
Easy to follow and understand
Read full review
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Adobe
Works well with JamF and SmartDeploy. These are our Enterprise imaging solutions for Mac's and PC's. The Enterprise installer is required when pushing out this app.
Read full review
Atlassian
Overall, I am very satisfied with the initial implementation (and the subsequent upgrades and implementations made over the years).
This product has never rose to the level of being an major issue at an executive level. It has quietly and valiantly done it's job for our company!
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Alternatives Considered
Adobe
I just don't feel as comfortable using other PDF editors. They just don't have the same name and look as Adobe Acrobat and I worry about the security of using other software to work on our company's documents. They may have similar features as Adobe Acrobat but I don't see any overall improvement to the features that Acrobat offers
Read full review
Atlassian
We chose Atlassian Confluence over SharePoint because it's much more user-friendly and intuitive. Atlassian Confluence makes collaboration and knowledge sharing easier with its simpler interface and better search. While SharePoint can be powerful, it often feels clunky and complex, making it harder for our team to actually use it.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Adobe
The only thing I can think of that may be helpful would be a more flexible tiered pricing options based on usage or document volume.
Read full review
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Adobe
I find that many users aren't aware of many features of the software they use, nor may they be comfortable with learning multiple-step processes. For the simplest of PDF purposes (scanning, downloading, exporting), it gets a thumbs-up. For anything involving electronic signatures, meh--causes eyes to glaze over, or forgetting what all is involved.
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Atlassian
This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.
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Return on Investment
Adobe
  • Savings of time trying to format documents correctly; PDFs hold their format.
  • Ease of transfer for print-ready or larger file types.
  • It has empowered multiple "non-designer" users to manipulate PDFs in minor ways, saving our design team time and allowing them to use their resources/time on other, more complex projects.
Read full review
Atlassian
  • The AI feature which lets me find relevant documents while reading one document is really beneficial.
  • Centralising of knowledge systems is one of the key differentiators for large organisations.
  • As long as folks keep using Google Docs and Atlassian Confluence, there is going to be a challenge in building a continuum.
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ScreenShots

Adobe Acrobat Screenshots

Screenshot of Create, edit, convert, and share PDF files all from within Microsoft Teams – as part of Acrobat integrations with Microsoft 365 apps.Screenshot of With Liquid Mode in Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile app, users can read PDFs on phones and tablets without having to pinch and zoom. Navigate lengthy documents with intelligent outline and search tools, while maximizing readability and comfort with font size and line spacing that are adjustable.Screenshot of Fill and sign PDF forms from anywhere and on any device.  Collect signatures, digitally track progress, and automatically archive the signed document.Screenshot of With Adobe Scan mobile app, capture and convert documents into high-quality, interactive PDF documents that can be filled out, signed, and shared.  Eliminates the hassle of finding a printer, filling a form by hand, and scanning it again.