Atlassian Confluence vs. Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Cherwell Software was a full suite of service management tools competing with BMC Remedy, ServiceNow, and IBM SmartCloud. It was acquired by Ivanti, and has reached EOL.N/A
Pricing
Atlassian ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo 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
Atlassian ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Features
Atlassian ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.0
157 Ratings
9% below category average
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Task Management7.1125 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.912 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling7.221 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation6.289 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access6.8116 Ratings00 Ratings
Search6.8155 Ratings00 Ratings
Visual planning tools7.2126 Ratings00 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.9
157 Ratings
0% below category average
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Chat6.415 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications8.2154 Ratings00 Ratings
Discussions7.6147 Ratings00 Ratings
Surveys7.015 Ratings00 Ratings
Internal knowledgebase9.0148 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting6.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts9.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Outlook9.610 Ratings00 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.7
156 Ratings
2% below category average
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
-
Ratings
Versioning8.1135 Ratings00 Ratings
Video files6.8104 Ratings00 Ratings
Audio files6.896 Ratings00 Ratings
Document collaboration8.3151 Ratings00 Ratings
Access control8.6146 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced security features8.3113 Ratings00 Ratings
Integrates with Google Drive5.947 Ratings00 Ratings
Device sync8.384 Ratings00 Ratings
Incident and problem management
Comparison of Incident and problem management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
10.0
53 Ratings
20% above category average
Organize and prioritize service tickets00 Ratings10.052 Ratings
Expert directory00 Ratings10.041 Ratings
Service restoration00 Ratings10.035 Ratings
Self-service tools00 Ratings10.051 Ratings
Subscription-based notifications00 Ratings10.038 Ratings
ITSM collaboration and documentation00 Ratings10.048 Ratings
ITSM reports and dashboards00 Ratings10.051 Ratings
ITSM asset management
Comparison of ITSM asset management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
10.0
44 Ratings
20% above category average
Configuration mangement00 Ratings10.042 Ratings
Asset management dashboard00 Ratings10.041 Ratings
Policy and contract enforcement00 Ratings10.031 Ratings
Change management
Comparison of Change management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
Cherwell Service Management (discontinued)
10.0
50 Ratings
16% above category average
Change requests repository00 Ratings10.048 Ratings
Change calendar00 Ratings10.044 Ratings
Service-level management00 Ratings10.045 Ratings
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Atlassian ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Troop Messenger
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Score 9.8 out of 10
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Agiloft Service Desk (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Atlassian ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(174 ratings)
10.0
(57 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(21 ratings)
10.0
(13 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(61 ratings)
8.9
(5 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(3 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
5.4
(25 ratings)
7.6
(16 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(2 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(4 ratings)
9.1
(3 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(4 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Atlassian ConfluenceCherwell Service Management (discontinued)
Likelihood to Recommend
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
Discontinued Products
Well suited in an IT environment where you have limited staff. It can be managed by one administrator. Reliability of the SaaS environment has been excellent. Flexibility in developing automated workflows to open, manage, and close Incidents. Change Management due to ability to modify OOB to meet the needs of our staff. Contract Management allowing us to be notified when a contract or license is up for renewal and setting reminders. Integrations are not easy to create and manage.
Read full review
Pros
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
Discontinued Products
  • Cherwell's email handling automation works flawlessly. The only time that I have ever needed to reset the automation service that drives it is when my own server that houses the small connecting agent has some kind of problem and disconnects us from our hosted Cherwell instance. It just works. Emails to a certain address always result in a new ticket or update to an existing ticket.
  • Cherwell is literally 100% customization in so many ways that it would be pointless to try to enumerate them. There is a very sizable list of already-created customizations (called "mApps") that you can download and apply to your instance. If you don't like them you can roll them back in seconds. But you can add and configure entire modules using one of these pre-defined, completely free, add-on packages. It's so easy to add features this way that I check the list of available mApps every month or so just to see what functionality I can add.
Read full review
Cons
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • Cherwell lacks modern UI capabilities such as responsive forms and CSS styling for web portals.
  • Built-in reporting engine is hard to use and resource intensive to run.
  • No patching model for small platform fixes, must upgrade to receive platform code changes.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Cherwell is still the best tool for the job in the market. Even though Ivanti bought them and are trying to convince everyone to move over to Neurons for ITSM, they have stated Cherwell will remain supported indefinitely and have a roadmap for future Cherwell development. Unfortunately, ISM is not as flexible as Cherwell (and the UX is atrocious), hence why many people are sticking with Cherwell (and why many Cherwell customers never purchased ISM originally)
Read full review
Usability
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
Read full review
Discontinued Products
I enjoy the layout and configuration of our Cherwell Service Management instance. It did take me a bit to get used to, as with any new ticketing system, but now that I understand the system more, I thoroughly enjoy it! There are just so many options and the UI is very intuitive.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Atlassian
I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Almost always available, with exception for a handful of outages due to infrastructure related issues
Read full review
Performance
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
The browser client is mostly acceptable in terms of performance, but still lacks parity with the rich client. The rich client is not very performant at all. It's built on old architecture and relies heavily on a fast internet connection, good caching and database indexing. There are several unwritten rules with form design (and form arrangement) which most users are not aware of, but can severely impact performance in the rich client. This is where the flexibility of Cherwell can come back to bite you if you step outside the boundaries of these unwritten rules
Read full review
Support Rating
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
We generally have a good time with Cherwell support, however, there are the few niche cases where I have to explain how Cherwell works to the customer support agent on the other end. A little more product education for tier 1 support could go a long way in helping expedite support requests from SaaS customers.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
I didn't partake in the in-person training, but it was available. I preferred the online method instead, which was a great experience. It was nice to have someone available to bounce questions off of and demonstrate how certain functions worked.
Read full review
Online Training
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
The training was great! We got together to review the system, its UI, and how to perform basic functions. Then there was plenty of time to ask questions and test out the system while there was someone available to assist.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
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!
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Implementation is a breeze. Each time I've implemented it, we had an outsourced vendor overseeing it & assisting where needed. However, Cherwell OOTB is ready to go, and configuring it for LDAP/SAML, etc. for authentication and user-imports is really straight forward. The infrastructure needed for Cherwell is extremely simple too - and installing the server & database takes no more than 20 mins
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Alternatives Considered
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
Much more customizable than other products, especially when ran in a self-hosted environment. Cherwell [Service Management] allows for greater flexibility of custom development and integrations to allow for automating tasks that traditional ITSM apps are not well suited for. Cherwell [Service Management] gives you the freedom to develop your own objects with minimal licensing costs.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
We have had great contracts with Cherwell and love the concurrent licensing model
Read full review
Scalability
Atlassian
This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
We have never had any major show-stopper issues with Cherwell itself - more so with the infrastructure it sits on. Moving from in-house cloud (on Cherwell's side), to AWS then to Azure has caused multiple problems over the years (some still on-going), however the product has remained fairly stable
Read full review
Professional Services
Atlassian
No answers on this topic
Discontinued Products
As mentioned, they were always great to work with (minus the project management side). My only feedback would be to push back on requirements that don't make sense
Read full review
Return on Investment
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.
Read full review
Discontinued Products
  • As with any standard ticketing system, it helped decrease the time before first contact with clients.
  • Our department was always concerned with keeping a low budget, and it was cheaper than most.
  • My supervisor could easily tell how many resources were being put into each employee, so we had more visibility of our team's capabilities at a given time if we needed to take on something complex.
Read full review
ScreenShots