Atlassian Confluence vs. GitHub

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Confluence
Score 8.1 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
GitHub
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
GitHub is a platform that hosts public and private code and provides software development and collaboration tools. Features include version control, issue tracking, code review, team management, syntax highlighting, etc. Personal plans ($0-50), Organizational plans ($0-200), and Enterprise plans are available.
$4
per month per user
Pricing
Atlassian ConfluenceGitHub
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
Team
$40
per year per user
Enterprise
$210
per year per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ConfluenceGitHub
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
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 ConfluenceGitHub
Considered Both Products
Confluence
Chose Atlassian Confluence
It's good if you're using Atlassian products, the other ones provide different connections and better UX for documentation in different ways.
Chose Atlassian Confluence
Atlassian Confluence is more user friendly. Is a bit slower to use than Nuclino, but Atlassian Confluence is generally better suited for our use.
GitHub
Chose GitHub
Comparing between GitHub, GitLab and Mercurial, I felt real hard to work with Mercurial, since the application interface was really bad. Bug GitHub and GitLab windows applications were too great compared to Mercurial. If I have to compare between GitLab and GitHub, Most of the …
Chose GitHub
GitHub comes handy in terms of usage and capabilities, it is easy to use and quite a user friendly tools when it comes to user experience, with limited UI/UX and it has vast exposure when it comes to third party integration and being quite mature and yet evolving and popular …
Chose GitHub
Over my career I've used a variety of other platforms but always find myself coming back to GitHub which has always had the most forward thinking features, evolving faster than other platforms, staying on the cutting edge of AI and other tools as they are released. AI …
Chose GitHub
GitLab has strong code review and project management capabilities, but it has a smaller community. Better for cross-functional collaboration but less intuitive for nontechnical users.
Chose GitHub
GitHub has best in class UI, massive open source base. GitHub actions are very flexible and pricing is very competitive.
Chose GitHub
GitHub is the king in this department. If you need a place to share, store, manage, contribute and review code then GitHub is easy your choice. You can make a public or private project and the free version should cover most of your needs. I recommend it for your developers and …
Chose GitHub
Others not listed above, CVS, Microsoft SourceSafe. GitHub offers the most comprehensive offering, including Code Review, Open API, Wiki (just to mention a few) in a single package. GitHub is likely the most used repository in the world. It's fast, even with high user volume. …
Chose GitHub
I prefer GitHub on a personal level because it is free for personal use. It allows me to work on things with friends, or have easy access to open source software because of this.
Chose GitHub
We haven't ever investigated alternatives to GitHub because it solves all of our needs and does it so well. I don't know how any alternative could replace GitHub in value to ours or any SaaS company. It does everything so well, and it's so ingrained with our internal tools that …
Chose GitHub
Bitbucket supports Mercurial VCS in addition to Git. Since it is an Atlassian product, Bitbucket is very well integrated with the company's other tools, like JIRA (which is widely used in the development industry), Jenkins, and Bamboo. It offers many of the same features as …
Chose GitHub
Microsoft Team Foundation Server was too heavy and too complex for fast dvelopment. The integration with opensource build solutions (i.e jenkins) was not explored but the main feedback on this tool was its complexity.
CVS and SVN used to be standards in past years and fit …
Chose GitHub
Github is far superior to Svn source control. The speed is a big plus for large projects.
Chose GitHub
We picked GitHub because it's what I was most familiar with when we started. We're testing out self-hosted Gitlab because it not only handles all the features we're using on GitHub, but it also has a continuous integration service which is currently implemented by a third party …
Chose GitHub
The most direct competitor to GitHub that I can think of would be BitBucket from Atlassian. The biggest advantage that I know of for BitBucket would be that they support both git and Mercurial. If you have at least one team or project using Mercurial, then BitBucket would be …
Chose GitHub
Atlassian's Bitbucket and SourceTree products are Git compatible and in our opinion offer a more intelligible and well-organized UI. These products integrate with JIRA for project management, but these features come at a higher monetary cost than GitHub.
Chose GitHub
Bitbucket actually allows you to integrate with GitHub which is a nice feature. But if you are into the Atlassian suite (JIRA, Confluence, etc.) then Bitbucket might be a no brainer as they work together better. GitHub allows you to have a free wiki whereas with Bitbucket that …
Chose GitHub
In my opinion, GitHub beats all of the competition.

The other services offer some things that could be considered benefits in some scenarios: Bitbucket has good integration with other Atlassian products, Gitlab is self-hosted and completely free, Beanstalk integrates with some …
Chose GitHub
I haven't used any other competing products but I understand our engineering team is pretty happy with Github.
Chose GitHub
GitHub holds up well against Gitlab and Bitbucket in terms of ease of use, documentation, support, and features for enterprise. However, it falls a bit flat on the pricing side with paid plans for private repos. It has been and remains the service of choice on which to post …
Chose GitHub
GitHub is the only Git Repository tool I have extensive experience with. As a free solution it's a powerful tool. And with minimal investment you are able to create private projects as well, which has an incredible return on investment.
Chose GitHub
It shows statistics of your Github commits and contribution. It also allows unlimited users on public as well as private repos.
Features
Atlassian ConfluenceGitHub
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
7.0
157 Ratings
10% below category average
GitHub
-
Ratings
Task Management7.1125 Ratings00 Ratings
Gantt Charts7.912 Ratings00 Ratings
Scheduling7.221 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow Automation6.389 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile Access6.7116 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
1% below category average
GitHub
-
Ratings
Chat6.415 Ratings00 Ratings
Notifications8.2154 Ratings00 Ratings
Discussions7.7147 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
4% below category average
GitHub
-
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
Version Control Software Features
Comparison of Version Control Software Features features of Product A and Product B
Atlassian Confluence
-
Ratings
GitHub
9.2
10 Ratings
6% above category average
Branching and Merging00 Ratings9.610 Ratings
Version History00 Ratings9.610 Ratings
Version Control Collaboration Tools00 Ratings9.59 Ratings
Pull Requests00 Ratings9.710 Ratings
Code Review Tools00 Ratings8.79 Ratings
Project Access Control00 Ratings8.910 Ratings
Automated Testing Integration00 Ratings8.710 Ratings
Issue Tracking Integration00 Ratings8.610 Ratings
Branch Protection00 Ratings9.79 Ratings
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User Ratings
Atlassian ConfluenceGitHub
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(173 ratings)
9.7
(131 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(21 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(61 ratings)
9.4
(10 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.4
(25 ratings)
8.8
(26 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.8
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Atlassian ConfluenceGitHub
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
GitHub
GitHub is an easy to go tool when it comes to Version Controlling, CI/CD workflows, Integration with third party softwares. It's effective for any level of CI/CD implementation you would like to. Also the the cost of product is also very competitive and affordable. As of now GitHub lacks capabilities when it comes to detailed project management in comparison to tools like Jira, but overall its value for money.
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
GitHub
  • Version control: GitHub provides a powerful and flexible Git-based version control system that allows teams to track changes to their code over time, collaborate on code with others, and maintain a history of their work.
  • Code review: GitHub's pull request system enables teams to review code changes, discuss suggestions and merge changes in a central location. This makes it easier to catch bugs and ensure that code quality remains high.
  • Collaboration: GitHub provides a variety of collaboration tools to help teams work together effectively, including issue tracking, project management, and wikis.
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
GitHub
  • Not an easy tool for beginners. Prior command-line experience is expected to get started with GitHub efficiently.
  • Unlike other source control platforms GitHub is a little confusing. With no proper GUI tool its hard to understand the source code version/history.
  • Working with larger files can be tricky. For file sizes above 100MB, GitHub expects the developer to use different commands (lfs).
  • While using the web version of GitHub, it has some restrictions on the number of files that can be uploaded at once. Recommended action is to use the command-line utility to add and push files into the repository.
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
GitHub
GitHub's ease of use and continued investment into the Developer Experience have made it the de facto tool for our engineers to manage software changes. With new features that continue to come out, we have been able to consolidate several other SaaS solutions and reduce the number of tools required for each engineer to perform their job responsibilities.
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
GitHub
GitHub is a clean and modern interface. The underlying integrations make it smooth to couple tasks, projects, pull requests and other business functions together. The insights and reporting is really strong and is getting better with every release. GitHub's PR tooling is strong for being web based, i do believe a better code editor would rival having to pull merge conflicts into local IDE.
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
GitHub
No answers on this topic
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
GitHub
No answers on this topic
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
GitHub
There are a ton of resources and tutorials for GitHub online. The sheer number of people who use GitHub ensures that someone has the exact answer you are looking for. The docs on GitHub itself are very thorough as well. You will often find an official doc along with the hundreds of independent tutorials that answers your question, which is unusual for most online services.
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
GitHub
No answers on this topic
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
GitHub
While I don't have very much experience with these 2 solutions, they're two of the most popular alternatives to GitHub. Bitbucket is from Atlassian, which may make sense for a team that is already using other Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello, as their integration will likely be much tighter. Gitlab on the other hand has a reputation as a very capable GitHub replacement with some features that are not available on GitHub like firewall tools.
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
GitHub
No answers on this topic
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
GitHub
  • Team collaboration significantly improved as everything is clearly logged and maintained.
  • Maintaining a good overview of items will be delivered wrt the roadmap for example.
  • Knowledge management and tracking. Over time a lot of tickets, issues and comments are logged. GitHub is a great asset to go back and review why x was y.
Read full review
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