Confluence Reviews

Pros

Confluence is a powerful collaboration tool that offers several impactful features. Its most impactful features include the ability to create and organize content, collaborate in real-time, and have version control for easy tracking and reverting of changes. With a user-friendly interface and intuitive design, Confluence is generally considered easy to use, allowing users to navigate, create, and edit content seamlessly. As for integration with existing business processes, Confluence provides various integrations and APIs that make integration with other tools and systems relatively straightforward. It offers flexible options for customizations, allowing businesses to tailor the tool to their specific needs and workflows, thus facilitating a smooth integration process with existing business processes.

Cons

As an end user of Confluence, I find the tool to be quite robust for collaboration, but there are a few features that I feel could be improved or added. For instance, I would appreciate more advanced formatting options, better task management capabilities, and improved visualization options for data. Additionally, I must admit that certain aspects of the product, such as complex permissions settings and the learning curve associated with advanced features, can be difficult to use initially. When it comes to integrating Confluence with our existing business processes, the level of difficulty can vary based on the complexity of our processes and the specific integrations required. In some cases, it has been challenging and has required additional configuration or development efforts, but Atlassian does provide resources, documentation, and support to help facilitate the integration process.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Primavera Cloud and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Less features in Workday

Switched From

Workday Adaptive Planning

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

Those are planning tool but confluence come with JIRA tool as KM application.

Pros

Atlassian Confluence is a platform for teamwork and information exchange that has helped our company greatly improve its operations. The platform is accessible to all users and features a straightforward interface, enabling our company to set up shared workspaces where employees can efficiently complete a wide range of assignments. It's steady, and it's facilitated the simple expansion of our holdings.

Cons

There was a difficult learning curve for some of our less tech-savvy consumers to become proficient on the site. Some users may find it inconvenient that customer service is only offered in English.

Pros

Confluence is the best solution for document management and knowledge base than i try, give me control in the entire life cicle of and document, is excelent for sharing, for request approvals and it solution understand the fact that approval cycles must be done with workflows.

Cons

As many Atlassiand products, the translation feature can be better, in spanish the solution is not clear, it must be used in english for better results.

Alternatives Considered

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

We looked for more than a ITSM solution with knowledge base management. Conflunce is so much complete than others solution for this, and it can be integrated with jira ITSM solution

Pros

It is somewhat hard to speak about Confluence pros without constantly resorting to integration with other Atlassian products.
Confluence was a first haven for a lot of companies and developers, it is safe to say that most of us started their meeting with information systems world with Confluence.
It offers some sort if hierarchy for documents, crossreferences, editing. Confluence is offers a number of connectors to other products, and what is of most importance here is that confluence has a set of tools to build statistical data into user-friendly representation.
Confluence is a part of Atlassian ecosystem and this is something to keep in mind, because this is the direction developers are pushing you.
Confluence may be deployed on premises which is a significant distinction from many other products. It is costly but there is a comprehensive set of documentation, reliable techsupport.
Confluence is a handy management tool for it is capable of collecting, digesting and representing a data from various sources. Say, you may render server status page, Jira's taks flow, gantt diagram and all of them will be live.
Confluence is quite reliable system and I can not say I can remember a single bug while using it.
Mobile and desktop apps for the most platform are there.
It has notification, chats, email listings etc.

Cons

To start with it is pricy.
It is slow. The editor is hugely outdated.
It pushes you toward other Atlassian products and while the ecosystem itself is not bad, this is not something you'd want these days. Basically, it represents too much of vendor lock and there are a lot of much better substitutions.
And the overall design is stuck in 2010. It is heavy, leak, slow. User paths through different usage scenarios could use a hand of able UI designer.

Pros

Atlassian has created a really well-designed solution that allows teams to share information in a single workspace. The user interface is simple to use not only for users but also for administrators; the program is simple to use and versatile for users. Templates allow you to write papers more faster, exchange comments, track progress, establish deadlines, and manage files smoothly. Confluence is highly beneficial for maintaining notes and modules for a very specific environment, and it is the most secure way to get the rights required to acquire that correct document, as well as the easiest way to manage the work accordingly and quickly share.

Cons

Confluence, in my opinion, needs a better way to search, and it has recently become a little slower for regular usage. When we try to move to other Confluence-like systems, it takes a long time to export our files, regardless of whether we use HTML/PDF or XML, thus if this improves, consumers will benefit greatly. Confluence may be sluggish and complicated when switching between pages and contexts; it would be preferable to have some type of option to make it easier to use and comprehend.

Pros

The wiki feature and ability to use with draw.io, and integrate to a calendar, was used by the entire team, we broke the pages down to departments and also enabled individual users, when used as wiki for the department the logging and means to edit was superb. The metrics showing whom had viewed the page(s) was excellent and rollback options for previous versions of a page pretty easy to use. Notifications could be selected to be distributed to certain persons for accountability.

Cons

The search and filters, were a bit cumbersome, and initially it wasn't always clear about how notes interacted, the notes element could be improved, document management was a little tricky, and it wasn't clear if a page was saved or in draft mode. It wasn't clear at a glance what notifications I was subscribed to on what pages.

Pros

It is the best documentation for our organization it help our company to puts all the important notes and future planning at one place. Even when we outage we document the postmortem in the confluence and we do team collaboration like all the team able to edit the page at one place. We also learn the advance features with help of Atlassian university and it also provide free certification.

Cons

We are very big company and we have lot of documentation of several topic is very hard to manage and update the confluence on the time. The licensing cost is very high compared to other similar tools

Pros

As product manager, there is not a day that I do not login to Confluence, create an epic, follow up with a story or assign a sub-task to someone.

Cons

I do not like the edit stuff here because it still looks to me very primitive.

Pros

Ability to customize based on use cases. Integration with popular systems for a connected experience - specifically with Jira.

Cons

Not a huge fan of the comment structure. Wish there was a better way to stack and filter comments on a page.

Pros

The eazy search and the great and high store data and integration with more application so its really so nice and friendly to use

Cons

I like use it and i would like to integrate witb python and need more smart tools to be the best in world

Pros

Easy to use and high integration level with other Atlassian tools is the most interesting part of Confluence. There are more powerful software out there, but none of them has this integration level in a full bundle that Atlassian offers.

Cons

Managing tables (with a huge amount of data) is not easy here, so usually, we prefer to attach excel files, but if it was more powerful in managing sheets, definitely we like it more!

Alternatives Considered

Notion

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Better document and file management system, Higher access level management system. Better price and very better ease of use.

Switched From

Google Drive

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

Better integration with other Atlassian tools that we use during our daily work in the company.

Pros

Easy to use navigation bar per space (topic area) of store notes coupled with a range of text formatting and style features - Confluence is one of the best software tools available for notes taking! The inbuilt macros, linking page functions, mentions, comments and live editing all add to the allure of the Atlassian product range.

Cons

Confluence can be a steep learning curve due to the overwhelming amount of functionality available - including the permissions and access control clashes.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft OneNote and Google Docs

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Confluence was cleaner and more agile with a clear collaborative value over other products.

Switched From

Asana, HubSpot CRM and Evernote Teams

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

The range of features, integration potential and ease of collaboration. The storage, navigation and organisation of Confluence sold it beyond any other product.

Pros

What I like the most about Confluence is the integration with Jira, the flexibility of creating your own department space, and managing the permissions. We use it for a large knowledgebase. Having the in-line comments helps identify issues with a document and can be shared and modified by the correct knowledge expert. The history feature is nice if you want to compare document versions. This is like a wiki on steroids.

Cons

The plug-ins needed to be a great product. It is expensive to run. User management is poor and difficult to maintain since this is a license-per-user software (Cloud version). I think the comments on each page are overused, which greatly slows the page loading. Task management is clunky and not recommended. Many features and fixes requested on the Atlassian site still have had no movement or comments from developers for years. Every solution is a hack or a plugin, which adds more cost to the service.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SharePoint and Wrike

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Dynamic documentation and knowledgebase for the entire company. Works well with Jira.

Switched From

Google Docs and Microsoft Project

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

We still use the alternative listed.

Pros

Confluence gives best documentation platform for your projects. We can categorize based on different projects and sub projects. we can create links to another pages which is very useful to route to another document without searching for it. we can see all the documents related one project in one section. It gives you wide range of features to include images and diagrams to make the documentation more useful. We can also subscribe to the pages so that anyone make any changes we get notified.

Cons

Confluence needs more integration with the CICD tools available in the market to make more automated documentation. confluence needs to provide to create diagrams for documentation so that users dont need to go for external software for that.

Alternatives Considered

Google Docs

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

In confluence I can categorize based on projects and sub projects and I can see all the documents for that project and select based on the priorities. But in google docs we need to we need to keep a separate index for each documents and the docs are separate. we need to browse through the google docs to go to next one.

Pros

Confluence is very user friendly so no need to spend time and money on employee training and learning.
It is time saving tool in agile project lifecycle reducing heavy documentation and support.
Better customer support compared to other vendors and softwares.
Cost effective and resilient for Risk management and project planning activities.

Cons

Build deployment sometimes take time and version controlling mechanism require better practice for stability

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SharePoint

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Efficiency and ease of use for confluence is better than Jira. It can be integrated to different sources for data management. Easy to work within Service Now platform compatibilty with Confluence

Switched From

JIRA Service Management

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

Easy,user friendly,cost effective and version control ability to mitigate project risk

Pros

It is very useful to share all our documentation and knowledge base. All the users are now able to get updated information, and can share any documentation with the team.

Cons

It can become a bit slow sometimes, causing the pages to take longer to load and look for information.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SharePoint

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

We were looking for a better documentation and information sharing tool

Switched From

Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft OneNote

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

It was the better option for our company, thinking on how robust is the tool.

Pros

Confluence is the most useful documentation tool of all time. It allows you to have all your documents in one place and not only that but it organizes them so very well. The number of tools it provides for editing a document is just amazing, something that is missing in all other documentation tools. The customizable templates are very useful too. I love adding images and videos to my documents, arranging the texts in blocks or tables, highlighting the important notes, etc. Confluence lets me do all of this. I also like how it allows collaboration of multiple people and highlights the contributors.

Cons

I did not find any cons in the product itself but I would like to see better support service for confluence

Pros

Using Confluence you really appreciate its user-friendly interface, powerful collaboration tools and robust knowledge base management functionalities. Confluence empowered us to easily create, organize and share content with our entire team, making it our go-to solution for efficient idea management, knowledge sharing and alignment between current and future team members. Most importantely, the ability to integrate with our other tools and serbices made it seamless for keeping knowledge synced and shared across the team.

Cons

With so many great features it can be quite overwhelming for our junior and newer team members to onboard as the learning curve is quite steep.

Alternatives Considered

YouTrack, monday.com, ClickUp, Notion and Evernote Teams

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Speed, value for money and integrations with Jira.

Switched From

YouTrack and ClickUp

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

The loading speed of documents, tickets and content, value for money and integrations with Jira.

Pros

Confluence has been used extensively by my team to keep track of and add new information to the knowledge base. It appears that we have done a good job of creating pages that provide the information new employees require. Small businesses can use the tool, but I believe it is better suited to larger ones. It's quick and easy to set up a wiki for your team. Real-time collaboration, complete version history, and automated change logs and diffs are all included. You can move and drop documents in the document tree with ease because each document has a unique URL. This is one of the most convenient methods for obtaining such a combination. Confluence integrates seamlessly with the other Atlassian products, making project and product management as simple as possible. This year has seen an explosion in the number of templates that are available to help you keep your documentation organized and easy to fill out. Useful, but sometimes you must look up exactly how to use macros. Confluence's macro documentation is extremely helpful.

Cons

If you don't have a lot of experience with wiki software, the editor can be difficult to work with. When it comes to macros and formatting settings, it can be difficult to know which tool is best for your project. It's difficult to organize a collection of articles, but that's to be expected. With the help of the software, you can organize your pages in a predetermined way. This is effective, but it necessitates a great deal of self-control as your familiarity with the software increases.

Pros

Confluence is a robust collaboration and knowledge management tool that empowers teams to work together efficiently and share information seamlessly. Having utilized Confluence extensively, here is my review highlighting its key strengths and areas for improvement.Confluence excels in fostering collaboration within teams. Its intuitive interface and easy-to-navigate structure allow users to create, organize, and collaborate on content effortlessly. Teams can collaborate on projects, share documents, create knowledge bases, and track progress all within a centralized platform.The platform offers a wide range of features that enhance team productivity. Rich text editing, page linking, and embedding multimedia content enable users to create visually appealing and informative pages. The ability to comment, mention team members, and receive notifications keeps discussions organized and ensures that important information is not overlooked.One of Confluence's standout features is its powerful search functionality. With a robust search engine, users can quickly find relevant information across the vast content repository. This becomes especially valuable as the knowledge base grows and serves as a valuable resource for team members to access critical information.Confluence's integration capabilities make it even more powerful. Integration with other popular tools such as Jira, Trello, and Slack allows for seamless workflow management and real-time updates.

Cons

While Confluence offers numerous benefits, it can be overwhelming for new users who are not familiar with its interface and features. The learning curve can be steep initially, but Atlassian's comprehensive documentation and support resources help users navigate the platform effectively.Another consideration is that Confluence might require additional customization to meet specific team requirements. Although it offers extensive functionality out of the box, teams with unique needs may find themselves relying on third-party apps or custom development to fully tailor Confluence to their workflows.

Pros

Since we work remotely, confluence is the main repository for our documents (I belong to the People & Ops team and we have a lot of policies and processes documents to maintain).

Here is what I like the most about confluence:

1. I feel its a perfect combination of a word and a presentation file; you can be as creative as you want with your content with no length limit (like in a presentation file)
2. I absolutely love how we can create sections within the document - makes the whole document look absolutely organized
3. We also can create indexes like in books so it's very convenient to find any particular topic that we are looking for
4. Easy to create and share any document
5. If you are collaborating with multiple people on a document, it's very easy to assign a certain task to them using the tagging and action item feature
6. You get amazing options to complete your document - layouts, table, heading, alignment of text/images, emoji
7. Also if you have not tried the insert function yet, you are missing out a whole deal there - with so many options to choose from, this makes the document very very interactive

Cons

All the features in confluence are great. However, since I am also a user of the google sheet and word, the only pinch I feel - and this is about every time I use Confluence - is the lack of font to choose from.

The default font is good as it makes the whole document look very professional. But for documents where we actually want to add more fun, I believe, we would definitely need more fonts :)

Pros

Confluence is great for creating company manuals or documenting company procedures. Think of it as a formal business blog or a wiki where you can keep a record of anything from basic tables outlining company info to company policies which can then be shared with the rest of the employees so that they can in turn, learn and input their own observations and knowledge. It organizes the pages for you and it makes it easy for anyone to search, edit and add new pages to keep the knowledge growing. At my company, we use it as a manual and all new employees have to read through it as part of their training. It allows you to add photos or videos to document special past events or to just simply make the page more interesting. The formatting ribbon looks similar to Microsoft word's so if you have experience with using a Word document then it should be no problem using the different types of formating options and if you have no experience then you'll get the hang of it pretty soon as it's fairly easy to deduce what each button does. I love how it is able to save any edits you make to a page and it doesn't publish it until you are ready so you are able to make new pages and edit old ones at your own pace and once you are done you can click on "publish". It alows you to restrict what other people can and cannot edit, it sends notifications to those who have a user in your account. I would recommend it.

Cons

The interface could use more color or some pizzazz as it looks pretty dull and it reminds me of an electric appliance manual: gray and boring to the point that you feel like throwing it away but then you are too afraid to do so because you may never know when you might need it. But then again, I use it as a company manual so I can't do much there, I'm guessing if you want something prettier then go get a blogging account but Confluence gets straight to the point and it should be taken seriously.

Pros

Confluence offers pretty good UI for creating excellent documents (requirements or design). It does support pretty much all features of Microsoft word for creating a great documentation. Between all Atlasssian products, if you are tight on budget, I would suggest you to get Jira and confluence combo. It’s indeed great tool combo for the remote agile teams to work together due to their seamless integration.

Cons

One thing that I loved on the share point that’s not great with confluence is integration with the Microsoft office products. To be very frank, I feel this is not a big drawback as now a days, web interface is pretty much replacing the traditional interface.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SharePoint

Pros

It is extremely easy to create a large number of documents, it is possible to reference other documents within them to facilitate ease of research, and documents can all be put into sub-folders to contain them within separate trees to aid with organisation.
The mobile app is extremely useful for reading documentation whilst on the go - an example would be that we keep Video Conference details on one page that I have favorited, as such when I set up a VC from any location I am able to rapidly find the correct details to dial.
The search functionality allows for extremely quick location of relevant documents. On many occasions I have not been able to find what I need looking through the lists, only to immediately find it on the first search. Indeed I no longer look through the list as the search is so efficient.
When changes are made to documents it is possible to set it up to notify other members of the team so that they are able to see what has been done.

Cons

The only minor issue I have discovered with confluence is that when creating new documents setting the location is not as smooth as I would like.
Specifically I need to begin creating the document, then select "Move" and finally put it into the desired place. This does not really cause issues as it is still a quick process, however a one click setup would be appreciated.

Pros

Confluence has a lot of advantages and here are some of them. Confluence is part of Atlassian Suite which is connected with Jira and you can easily integrate them. This software provides a documentation platform for your projects. You can create links to other pages, see other documents that are related to some specific project, also it provides you with different kind of images and charts to make your document more powerful. This software supports everything starting from images, tables, diagrams, charts, whatever you need Confluence has it. Also, another thing that is worth mentioning is that you can see if anyone has made any change to the document and if it has you will get notified.

Cons

There are not so many disadvantages, to be honest, this is great software, maybe a bit hard for some beginners, but not too hard and you will have to spend some time on this software to know how it works. Another thing that I don’t like is that they are changing Confluence non-stop. They are doing updates most of the time and changing the software. I understand that they need to make changes for better but that can sometimes be annoying because you know something where is it and then they change it and add something else and you have to learn again.