Confluence

Score8.1 out of 10

2,534 Reviews and Ratings

What is Confluence?

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.

Categories & Use Cases

Integrates with Outlook
Integrates with Microsoft Outlook to tie in email threads.
Category average: 8.8
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts.
Category average: 6.2
Internal knowledgebase
Users can author or access “How-to” help and reference tips about internal processes.
Category average: 8.2

Workflow Automation
Workflow automation is the ability to route work requests along an approval process automatically.
Category average: 7.8
Integrates with GoToMeeting
Integrates with GoToMeeting for web conferencing.
Category average: 8.1
Integrates with Google Drive
Integrates with Google's cloud storage platform, Google Drive.
Category average: 7.1

Brandon Stokes View profile

Global Revenue Enablement Manager in Sales at Proximus Global (1001-5000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Atlassian Confluence is used pretty piecemeal at my organization. Many of the more technical teams store all of their processes, policies, and even some code in Atlassian Confluence and use Jira for project management as well. On the other hand, less technical teams use other programs that are more tailored to their niche (i.e. Customer Success, People, Finance).

Pros

Space organization
Permissions management
Document collaboration

Cons

Browser extension for quicker access to content
Live collaboration

Return on Investment

Efficient to use in conjunction with Jira
Needed to be replaced for Sales/Marketing/CS teams because of tedious nature of updating and finding content
We now have somewhat redundant programs because of needs not met by Atlassian Confluence (i.e. embedded content in Salesforce)

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Coda, Microsoft SharePoint, Spekit, Highspot and Asana

Other Software Used

Microsoft Planner, LinkedIn Learning (Lynda.com), Motivosity, Seismic Learning, WorkRamp, Microsoft Project

Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology (201-500 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our org uses Atlassian Confluence for document storage and company wide announcements. We used to have only some teams on Atlassian Confluence but found that this tool is much better than others on the market so decided to move the entire org over about a year ago. Since then, we have upgraded to the premium version as well and integrated Smart courses along with it. So far it's been good for having 1 centralized place to store all of the company's items. We are also looking into opening the space up for external guest use as well as we are a SaaS organization.

Pros

Able to integrate with JSM
Can customize user permissions
Is able to allow guest access without exposing other spaces within our org

Cons

Integrations with Atlassian Confluence can sometimes be slow, such as Smart Courses
Limited formating structuring
Limited customizations

Return on Investment

Saved us about $20k usd a year as we migrated from Simpplr to Atlassian Confluence for company wide document collaboration storage
Saved us about another $6k usd a year from migration one of our teams from Notion to this
Able to not have to purchase extra platforms for allowing guest access such as onboarding clients

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Notion, Asana and Miro

Other Software Used

Jira Service Management

Verified User

Employee in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Atlassian Confluence for maintaining documentation across all the projects in our organization. Every project has documentation created in Atlassian Confluence which follows a hierarchical structure. Any additional information can be uploaded in the form of attachments. Atlassian Confluence is very easy to use for all people including business team, developers, testers, support to name a few.

Pros

Project based hierarchical documentation
Include related links and attachments
Support for various snippets ensuring creation of good quality documentation
Vast number of macros

Cons

Storage limit is very low for free plan
Searching can be better (common words are ignored in search)
PDF export quality can be improved
Compatibility issues with other software

Return on Investment

Project and resource management has improved using Atlassian Confluence
Page restriction is easy to implement based on users/groups
Good support for external links and content formatting

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Google Drive and Microsoft SharePoint

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (10,001+ employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am using Atlassian Confluence for our shared technical team knowledge space and supporting projects with relevant documents in an organized way. It helps address problems of supporting internal knowledge transfer and supporting the intake and development of business initiatives.

Pros

Knowledge management. Storage and maintenance of documents in a shared secure space.
Permissions management. Controlling permissions and access of internal users who need custom access.
Help and support. Supporting onboarding new users and visual guidance of how to use the tool.

Cons

Interface customization. Building a custom interface and custom menu options would help for some of our teams looking for custom modules to use within the tool.
Supporting multi lingual. Allowing for multiple languages to be used in the same workspace would help support global users.
Tool integrations. Integrating directly with other visualization tools has been challenging and doesn't work smoothly from the get go.

Return on Investment

Positive impact on folder management. This helps to separate and organize documents within a workspace that multiple teams are sharing, and has helped to streamline the internal process.
Positive impact on task management. Aligns very well with how we manage projects and allows our team to collaborate and updates notes on tasks.
Positive impact on vendor collaboration. It has suited our needs on collaborating and sharing documents with external vendors, which has helped us consolidate our tools and manage internal costs.

Usability

Alternatives Considered

Asana

Other Software Used

Asana

Amit Kumar Sharma View profile

CTO in Engineering at Hubble Connected (51-200 employees employees)

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Atlassian Confluence as our central knowledge management and collaboration platform, supporting various cross culture teams of our company. It serves as a single source of important documentation, project management, and cross-functional collaboration. It also helps us to maintain a historical record of decisions, changes, and processes. It also enables all our real-time collaboration with inline comments, notifications, and @mentions.

Pros

Its integration with Jira for tracking development and the bugs and work linked to detailed Confluence documentation.
We use it extensively for writing Software Product Requirement Documents, feature specs, architecture designs, and retrospectives.
Our company follows compliance very seriously, so it helps in streamlining all documentation for ISO27001/27017 compliance and security-related information.
Its integration with various tools allows us to create flow diagrams which are often required to make client and customer understand the overall flow of interactions across various modules of the design architecture

Cons

Search function can be better like how google search engine delivers the most relevant content first
Add Excel-like formulas, sorting, and filtering directly in Confluence tables.
Auto archiving of old stale pages should be there as a function to free up of space
Things can be hidden from administrator where members can create private pages

Return on Investment

We totally rely on this tool since a decade now and despite being so much transition in our company it has served us well in those transitions
Many times, during security audits we are asked to showcase our readiness for various compliance points and confluence helps us a lot in maintaining that
Talking about Confluence in front of clients and customers gives us an upper hand that we are up to date with latest trend and technologies and tools for our RnD planning and management