Atlassian Confluence vs. Nitro Productivity Suite vs. Spindle Document Distribution

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).

Incentivized

I run a professional services business from home. I need to edit documents quickly and easily and with minimal subscriptions to minimize overheads. I love that Nitro is a one-off payment to get a license to the software, and you can simply upgrade to the latest version if that's what you want, but you're not obligated to. I've been using the same version of Nitro for 7-8 years now. Despite the fact the upgraded versions have a lot of great, nice-to-have features, the version I'm on still does the job.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Ability to combine files SEAMLESSLY and order them around as necessary (so underrated)
• Signing not only for yourself but for others. Helpful for those who have been granted the authority to sign for VPs and directors
• Much easier to use than some other PDF viewing services

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Converting from PDF to Microsoft Word can be complicated at times. Some parts of a document such as tables are not converted properly.
• Sometimes it appears to be easier to save MS Word documents to PDF rather than using NPS to convert. It can be a bit slow to convert at times.
• In my view, it wasn't user friendly at the beginning.

Incentivized

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.

We will definitely be renewing the Nitro Productivity Suite. Saves the company a lot of money for something we use everyday

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

For the most part, the entire software is extremely easy to navigate and use. You won't need to follow tutorials or anything for the bulk of the core features, as it's all pretty seamlessly designed.

Incentivized

I do not recall having outages or applications error so far, very reliable and available.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It works as advertised.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Nitro checks all the boxes for what we need. It is fairly priced, it allows us to read and edit PDF documents, convert PDF to MS Word and convert MS Word to PDF. It allows us to combine multiple files and do all the post processing like adding page numbers and adding headers and footers

Incentivized

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!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Every 1-2 years will do a check on current PDF options to include trialing the software. Have tried Foxit and several that seem to have failed in the marketplace. Over the last 4 years, I have always stuck with Nitro. Unfortunately, we still need to keep Adobe Acrobat (free version) installed to view a small percentage of some PDFs we receive.

Incentivized

This tool is very adaptable. So much so we use it for three completely separate projects, in three very different ways.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• ROI was very quick as the license costs were so low. We purchased 8 licenses versus the initial 2 we were planning on for Adobe.
• More people were able to use the product than we initially thought due to low purchase costs.
• We haven't had any further costs to own the product after the initial purchase. We would need to purchase new licenses if we wanted to upgrade.

Incentivized