Overview
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.
Atlassian Confluence - single point of collaboration
Exploring Atlassian Confluence: A Brief Review of Features and Benefits
Conflicted on Atlassian Confluence
You should really use Confluence when you need a great compilation of documents to keep the trainning up to date!
Best knowledge management tool for IT industries
Confluence is our go-to tool for documentation
Use Atlassian Confluence to scale your work, team, and organization
Always have options, But Continuos Improvement is the only successor of Atlasstian Confluence
Confluence: The Easiest Corporate Wiki!
Confluence for the Cloud not so hot
Confluence at a glance
Confluence! Great Choice:)
Confluence on info
Confluence is a tool for companies that are growing and require good administration of their knowledge
Confluence - Good value, simple to use
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Document collaboration (104)9.090%
- Access control (102)8.787%
- Notifications (107)8.282%
- Search (107)6.868%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Free
$0
Standard
$5
Premium
$10
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $10 per month
Product Demos
Confluence-Demo: Unterseiten bis in beliebige Tiefe anlegen
Atlassian Confluence 101 - Delete and Restore a Page
Atlassian Confluence 101 - Organize Pages
Sibling Tabs User Macro for Atlassian Confluence
Features
Project Management
Project management software provides capabilities to streamline management of complex projects through task management, team collaboration and workflow automation
- 7Task Management(87) Ratings
This includes the ability to plan, track, collaborate and report on tasks.
- 7.9Gantt Charts(12) Ratings
Gantt charts are charts that show tasks or events along the y-axis displayed against time along the x-axis.
- 7.2Scheduling(21) Ratings
Scheduling capabilities allow users to set schedules on tasks, and create timelines and milestones.
- 7Workflow Automation(58) Ratings
Workflow automation is the ability to route work requests along an approval process automatically.
- 6.8Mobile Access(82) Ratings
Mobile access is the ability to access the software from a smartphone or tablet.
- 6.8Search(107) Ratings
Users can search for related materials across files, discussions threads, schedules, etc. using project keywords or tags.
- 7.5Visual planning tools(86) Ratings
Includes visual tools such as pinboards, mind-maps, or charts for collaborative brainstorming and/or workflow planning.
Communication
Features that allow team members to communicate about collaborative projects and keep each other informed of their opinions and progress.
- 6.4Chat(15) Ratings
Instant messaging tool allows users to communicate with select other users in real-time threads.
- 8.2Notifications(107) Ratings
Users can follow other users and/or join specific projects, electing to receive notifications when there are changes and updates.
- 7.9Discussions(101) Ratings
Users can join groups or message boards for forum-style collaboration.
- 7Surveys(15) Ratings
Users can create and participate in surveys to get input from other collaborators.
- 8.5Internal knowledgebase(101) Ratings
Users can author or access “How-to” help and reference tips about internal processes.
- 6Integrates with GoToMeeting(3) Ratings
Integrates with GoToMeeting for web conferencing.
- 9.3Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts(7) Ratings
Integrates with Gmail and Google Hangouts.
- 9.6Integrates with Outlook(10) Ratings
Integrates with Microsoft Outlook to tie in email threads.
File Sharing & Management
Features that allow collaborators to view, work on, and organize files.
- 8Versioning(92) Ratings
Users can access the most up-to-date version of a document, track changes, and revert to older versions if needed.
- 7.8Video files(69) Ratings
Supports video file types
- 7.7Audio files(63) Ratings
Supports audio file types, such as .mp3, .mp4, and .wav
- 9Document collaboration(104) Ratings
Users can edit files and attach comments to files.
- 8.7Access control(102) Ratings
Users can control access to (shared) files, including different levels of access such as view-only or permission to edit.
- 8.1Advanced security features(78) Ratings
Includes advanced security features such as file encryption or remote data wipe.
- 7.1Integrates with Google Drive(48) Ratings
Integrates with Google's cloud storage platform, Google Drive.
- 6.7Device sync(48) Ratings
Device syncing that updates files connected to the cloud, keeping all files up to date regardless of where they are edited or viewed.
Product Details
- About
- Integrations
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Confluence?
Share PDFs, Office docs, images, and more in Confluence. Automatic versioning, instant previews, full-text search, and pinned comments make it easy to manage your files.
Confluence Features
Project Management Features
- Supported: Task Management
- Supported: Workflow Automation
- Supported: Mobile Access
- Supported: File tracking
- Supported: Tagging
- Supported: Search
- Supported: Integrates with other Project Management Tools
- Supported: Visual planning tools
Communication Features
- Supported: Status updates and activity feed
- Supported: Notifications
- Supported: Comments and feedback
- Supported: Discussions
- Supported: User directory and online status
- Supported: Sharing and privacy
- Supported: Internal knowledgebase
File Sharing & Management Features
- Supported: Versioning
- Supported: Document files
- Supported: Image files
- Supported: Video files
- Supported: Audio files
- Supported: Document collaboration
- Supported: Shared folders
- Supported: Access control
- Supported: Advanced security features
- Supported: Integrates with Google Drive
- Supported: Device sync
- Supported: Web interface
- Supported: File change notifications
- Supported: Simultaneous editing
Confluence Integrations
Confluence Competitors
- Microsoft Yammer
- Microsoft SharePoint
- OpenText Vibe
- Socialtext (discontinued)
- Traction TeamPage
- HCL Notes
- OpenText Enterprise Content Manamagement (ECM)
Confluence Technical Details
Deployment Types | On-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Windows, Linux, Mac |
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(2106)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
Atlassian Confluence is a versatile tool that organizations use to enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing. Users have found it to be an effective solution for various use cases across departments and teams. For example, Confluence serves as a central document system for product owners and product management, storing important project documents and related information. It is also used as an internal Wikipedia and knowledge base, providing how-to guides, descriptions, and tracking project status.
Confluence plays a crucial role in facilitating communication and coordination within organizations. It helps teams effectively share knowledge, onboard new employees, and provide assistance to other teams by finding configuration files and debugging information. Many users appreciate its ability to document procedures and information in an easily accessible way, creating a centralized repository for organizational documentation.
With its wide range of features, Confluence is utilized for collaboration, project management, process and quality management, and knowledge management. It enables teams to coordinate tasks more easily, ensuring everyone has access to the necessary information. The software is also valued by IT departments as a knowledge base and internal web space. Additionally, it serves as a valuable agile tool for custom development services, providing a centralized place for documentation and integration with other tools.
Overall, Atlassian Confluence offers a robust platform for enhancing teamwork and knowledge sharing within organizations. Its versatility makes it suitable for various industries and departments, improving communication, productivity, and information accessibility.
Users recommend using Confluence for creating, storing, and retrieving business-critical resources. They suggest using Confluence for documentation work, especially in an agile project management environment. Users find Confluence to be a great tool for remote teams to work together and increase efficiency. They also recommend it for team collaboration and seamless project work. Users suggest using Confluence to eliminate communication gaps and improve visibility and backtracking. They think Confluence is excellent for sharing information and integrating with other tools. Additionally, reviewers recommend Confluence for workplaces with flexible schedules and remote working. They suggest considering Confluence when using other Atlassian tools for excellent integration. Users recommend using Confluence for team development documentation and any type of organizational documentation needs. They find Confluence easy to use and believe it makes documentation fun and easier to record. Users suggest using Confluence along with Jira for the best experience. They also recommend establishing a system for creating neat Confluence pages. Users suggest considering Confluence if already using the Atlassian suite but mention the need for improvements in integrations and editing abilities. Additionally, users recommend Confluence only if using Jira, as it may save money compared to other options. However, they suggest considering other options if complicated needs are required.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(76-100 of 126)Confluence for a software company
- Macros! There are a lot of macros which give you creativity to how you want to make a page.
- Plugins: The JIRA macro/plug in lets us display stats for project in various ways.
- Formatting: I have trouble with formatting pages to look perfect. For example, I have issues with making a table.
- Searching: Sometimes the search results confuse me based on what I inputted.
A Good Collaboration and Information Management Tool
- Collaboration. Confluence allows our entire organization to collaborate together. Instead of storing files and documents in folders, Confluence stores the files including versions, allows comments and context to be added, assigns permissions, and tracks workflows all in one place.
- Organization. Confluence is great at keeping everything organized. Assuming you set up your structure properly, it is easy to find your place in Confluence. Furthermore, the search engine allows you to search the entire instance for information.
- Notification. Confluence sends email notifications when you are referenced by someone else, assigned a duty, or any change is made to a page or group that you are subscribed to.
- Search. The search functionality of Confluence is not that great. When typing a search there are often dozens or hundreds of irrelevant pages and you can't see enough in the search results to know which page you are looking for so it can sometimes be hard to find information you are looking for.
- Over-notification. If you subscribe to an active group, you will get a notification every time something changes. This means that if someone is actively updating during a meeting (taking minutes), you could receive several notification for the same set of changes.
The best thing for documentation.
- After getting comfortable with Confluence, it is very efficient and easy to do documentation.
- It allows to import and export the information stored in any format.
- It allows for the other team members to have joint access to the information.
- It helps in optimizing any work for a company.
- It is compatible with every Atlassian product.
- Apart from advantages, it has some cons as well. It sometimes faces performance lack.
- Some integration features are difficult to figure out and take time to get comfortable.
- Takes the huge amount of space, as a result, takes time to load as well.
- It allows to import and export the information stored in any format.
- It allows for the other team members to have joint access to the information.
- It helps in optimizing any work for a company.
- It is compatible with every Atlassian product.
- It sometimes faces performance lack.
- Takes the huge amount of space, as a result, takes time to load as well.
- Some integration features are difficult to figure out and take time to get comfortable.
- Organizing content so that people can find what they are looking for.
- Putting restrictions on certain pages so that it can be seen/edited by appropriate employees
- Letting people collaborate on documents simultaneously
- notifying when a page has been updated
- combining content with tasks so that things get done
- The tables feature is horrible. Really hard to edit, and make look nice. I end of just posting screen shots of excel.
- It can be confusing and overwhelming for new users. I would not say it is intuitive.
- It's easy to tag other Confluence users on questions and action items - which generates alerts to them
- The formatting of pages in Confluence is fairly easy to control and change to meet the needs of a particular page
- The tool set, in general, is fairly approachable and intuitive
- Most of the tools my organization uses are controlled with a "single sign-on". Confluence, unfortunately, is not, but to be honest that might not be due to a limitation of Confluence. I don't know enough about the inner workings and available features to know for sure.
Big and complicated but will get the job done
- Full featured
- Secure
- JIRA integration
- Confusing interface
- Cumbersome workflow
- Difficult to orientate yourself when creating pages
Confluence seems to be very good early on
- Organizes and stores project assets, especially development/stage/build credentials across many different projects
- Links with Jira quite seamlessly
- So far it has ben relatively easy to find different types of assets across different projects as compared to our previous tools
- Onboarding was not very intuitive
- I am still unsure how to use the calendar feature
- The "popular" feature doesn't fit my needs as I am consistently jumping across projects and really don't care what is popular.
Atlassian Confluence Review
- Atlassian Confluence organizes documents well. This is a strength in my opinion as our staff can search for documentation easily.
- Atlassian Confluence also allows for various people to edit the same document. This helps with collaboration.
- Atlassian Confluence has many products that can plug into the Confluence platform. We have various products that all work together and enable different functionality for our users.
- Atlassian is not intuitive for the user. Several of our staff who have not received training on the platform find that it is not user-friendly.
- Posting on Atlassian can also take more time than expected due to the plethora of options available.
- Atlassian Confluence does not always look the same in different internet browsers. In talking with a co-worker, he told me it works best on Chrome. My computer has IE and Chrome, so I have to be sure I am using Chrome when I log into Confluence.
Atlassian Confluence - basic user review
- Dashboard with backlog of dev tasks. Prioritization becomes just a matter of drugging items in the list and assigning points to each task. Super easy.
- Sprint reports are also very helpful, they allow us to estimate how successful was our last sprint and what should be changed to successfully finish next sprint on time.
- Cards for writing user stories are very intuitive and even people from production department, with no technical knowledge whatsoever can write a story.
- Integrations with major calendars (Google, Apple, Outlook etc.) would be a good idea.
- No other issues.
Good, simple tool for collaboration
- Links right in from Jira
- Easy to update pages and add information
- Contacts you when others have made changes to certain pages
- Feels like you're in Jira but it actually leaves Jira. Would be nice if you could move back and forth easily instead of using the browser back button
- It's simplistic and I think they should keep it that way instead of complicating things
Complex project workhorse
- Larger teams working in complex projects
- Cross functional communication with multiple departments
- General usability
- Smaller projects might suffer from a large overhead due to the particularities of the tool
- It was not easy for me to liberate the data (export it to my computer)
Knowledge Sharing and Process Management - The easy(ier) way
- Searching for subjects or topics is easy and yield accurate and relevant results that can be tracked to their origin. This is important when researching a subject back to its origin.
- Authoring capabilities are comprehensive, allowing users to produce from single scripts to full-fledged manuals with graphics and active content.
- Integration with other tools is very useful to maintain a unified platform, consistent throughout the enterprise.
- Customization features allow for branding and personal touches.
- The ability to add reminders or expiration dates to topics would be a welcome feature. It is easy to forget about temporary items that stay in the system forever.
- A quick-start tutorial in the form of video would be nice for those that want to jump into producing quickly.
- An auto-start feature when logging in to the workstation would be a nice feature to get users quickly on board.
Get Work Done Together
- Collaboration tool - best way for teams to collaborate on upcoming projects or previous projects that have already been done. Great for people that come on board.
- Shared calendar - lets you see when people have time off scheduled as well as deadlines, and it can all be color coded.
- Integration - integrates very well with Jira, Google, Slack.
- Cost - there are tons of add-ons that are costly and not included in the main package when you purchase the software. like the calendar and other tools which should be native functionality.
- Updates - are very much behind the times. There is a lacking in the product functionality that is very common with other collaboration tools.
- customization - this can be very hard if multiple departments are using the same instance. typically you have to run with the same customization across the entire organization.
Confluence, solid document management tool
- WYSIWYG editing of content
- Rich text formatting capabilities
- Search and indexing of content
- Sometimes search is overly inclusive or doesn't appear to be contextual, eg I may search for a keyword used frequently in a particular document, yet it appears lower in search results than others that use it less often.
- Limiting searches, for example by business unit or time, can be clumsy or awkward to use.
- Performance/speed.
Fantastic wiki and document management system
- Live-editing. This was a key component for us as some of our teams were used to using Google Docs specifically for this feature.
- Site-wide searching. The search tool is fantastic and does search document contents so it's not just metadata that is being queried.
- Tie-in with other Atlassian products. We use JIRA for task and project management and being able to link Confluence pages to JIRA tickets or have JIRA Service Desk use Confluence as a Help Desk Knowledge Base for simple Tier 0 support was a key selling point for us.
- Out-of-the-box templates. While you can definitely define your own templates for pages, the OOTB templates provided are sufficient for 90% of what we need. Meaning that documentation is standardized and simple for our users to create new pages or content.
- Pricing. As with all Atlassian products, the demo pricing of $10 is great. However, the hop to the next pricing tier can be hard to justify without a strong business case.
- No folder support. Unlike SharePoint, there are no folders to organize documents under. This is a feature as the hierarchy is meant to be flexible, similar to a wiki site. Migrating from SharePoint or a file server on the other hand is a bit laborious.
- Consistency across Atlassian Suite. Each Atlassian product has their own version of the system settings, which as an administrator of multiple products, makes it a bit of a headache to remember where Confluence keeps their SMTP settings, versus where JIRA keeps theirs, etc. Thankfully we have a Confluence page to document the differences.
- OOTB features. Counterintuitive to my pluses, there are some major features that are lacking out-of-the-box. There is a marketplace to find add-ons, and using the RestAPI you can easily build your own if you have the time and expertise in-house, but it would be great if some features, like a reporting dashboard for JIRA, were built-in OOTB.
Confluence for Collaboration
- If you use JIRA then having Confluence is a no brainier. The out of the box integration is worth the money!
- There is no need to check in / check out documents. Live editing makes collaboration easy.
- Reduces the need to email meeting notes and have multiple people save copies locally.
- Confluence table functions could be improved.
- The email notifications that are sent when a watched page is changed could be improved to highlight the changes better.
- There is no easy way to see all comments in a view.
Congregate around Confluence
- Connecting to other applications including Google Drive and Slack.
- Providing macros that allow users to create pages that meet specific design/format criteria.
- Updating users when other users make changes or mention them on a page.
- They recently changed the interface and it's not as intuitive or easy to use as the former UI.
- When issues arise, it's difficult to understand what the issue is or what's wrong. Sometimes it's even difficult to explain the problem to customer support so that they can accurately address the issue.
- Needs to be a way to limit updates (via email or via Slack) to only be crucial updates.
Solid collaboration tool
- Provides tools to quickly and easily author simple documents.
- Provides inline review tools for documents.
- Provides @mention capability for people in the organization to draw attention to specific issues
- Search capability is basic at best
- There's little to no real ability to make documents look pretty
- Multi-user collaboration on a single document is primitive. Something more of the order of Google Docs is more appropriate.
- Review and comment on documents produced by a single user
- Repository of 'accepted' documents and processes
- Basic documentation
Unsuited
- Multi user collaborative content creation
- Non-basic formatted docs
Not many cons for Confluence
- Integration with JIRA
- Allows for customization
- Attractive and simple interface
- Easy to learn and use
- Large community of users to draw tips from
- Poor document editing
- Documents organization is not intuitive
- The interface is attractive but could allow for more customization of fonts and colors, etc
Confluence - the one-stop-shop for collaboration tool!
- Very simple and intuitive user interface.
- Very easy to go ahead and start writing, very low "learning curve", really fun.
- No need for a different authoring tool, compile and publish cycles. Simply edit and save and voila!
- It makes documenting stuff a breeze, and really fun!
- Good import/export functionality to Word, PDF.
- Editing features are quite simplistic and limited. Would love to see more font styles, color selectors, and themes.
- It's not clear how to make confluence a public web site documentation tool.
- No built-in support for placing and showing presentations from the tool. Instead of attaching a PowerPoint presentation, I'd like to prepare pages as slides and show them from the tool. Either an add-on is needed for that, or not supported at all.
It is less good when it comes to document management where it lacks functionality - as it aims to be a content management and not document management system.
Confluence - A jack of all trades collaboration tool
- Confluence tries to provide a lot of team collaboration features under one cohesive product, and it succeeds in giving the user an integrated experience throughout its product(s).
- Confluence is highly configurable to suit different needs and processes a team may have for managing their work.
- Confluence has a developer API which offers even further customization and automation possibilities.
- Confluence as a whole is very resource intensive and runs extremely slowly. This was the main reason our team abandoned it as our scrum tracking solution.
- The number of configuration options can cause the application to be confusing if you're wanting to tweak any of the defaults.
- The relationship between Kanban, backlog and sprint views could be particularly counter-intuitive.
My Atlassian confluence review
- Easy to create documents and the team has access
- Control over privacy
- Able to create diagrams and flows
- The UI is not too intuitive
- Every so often some error shows up
- It is not easy to copy and paste previous work
Planning, Collaborating on a Successful Project
- Straightforward and fairly easy to use the platform.
- Lets you know when others on the team are accessing the same materials/files.
- It is quite adaptable to our needs.
- Unfortunately there are different levels of usability depending on the various web browsers for opening this tool.
- Functionality is somewhat rigid such as for not being able to easily post screen shots or images for reference.
- The most important issue is the lack of being able to copy rows or columns easily to move to other files. It is a flaw that will hopefully be fixed.
Confluence - bringing organization and documentation to an unorganized/undocumented group
- Internal IT documentation and notes
- Project/meeting notes, agendas
- Collaboration between IT and many non-IT areas
We use it instead of Sharepoint or some other technologies we have access to as it provides a great and easy to use place to collaborate, keep notes, and keep organized.
Note: we did not use or attempt to use any integrations with Outlook, Google Hangouts, Gotomeeting/webex/etc., so any questions I answer saying Confluence does not have them isn't necessarily accurate (there is just no option on Trust Radius to say "don't know").
- Confluence is incredibly easy to use - and is simple for both technical and non-technical staff to use. It is easy to create content, and edit existing content.
- The template system makes it easy for people to keep to a consistent format for some tasks, and creating new templates is pretty easy.
- The system is easy to update and administer. It requires very little time and resources, especially since the 4.x/5.x versions.
- It integrates well with our multifactor authentication system (Duo).
- It is still very annoying that Atlassian does not support MariaDB, the default MySQL database that is used by all major Linux distributions now. This is even more of an annoyance since there has been a case open since 2013 that they have given little or no response to: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-29060
- The mobile site, at least on android isn't that great. Our staff uses it to get info while away from their computers, but never to edit/update content.
- Some users have issues with navigating the system, primarily when they are more used to a lack of organization (i.e. files dumped in a single network share directory). A tutorial about how to organize content couldn't hurt - though it isn't a major issue.
- Some functionality which should be (in my opinion) part of the core application is supplied by third-party commercial plugins (like Creately).
It isn't just a replacement for a traditional network drive or Dropbox though - and users seeking something like that may have issues shifting culture in that direction.
- Confluence shows you recently updated documents by other team members.
- Allows you to build multiple spaces for all your department or client needs.
- Confluence has a lot of quick templates to add calendars, images, tables, grids, etc. once you figure out how to use it.
- You can tag team members on a page if you want them to review or be notified if the page has been updated.
- Confluence has a lot of features and it seems simple at its core, but it can take a while to get up to speed to find how/where all the helpful tools are.
- Document collaboration is a little better on Google Docs where you can make in-line comments to the author so they know exactly what you are talking about.
- Google Docs also lets you go back through the revision history so you can see what editor made which change. Confluence does not.