Atlassian Confluence Reviews

We primarily use it as a knowledge management tool for all of our consultants, which are architects.

The whole solution is really great. I appreciate the ability to create content, link content, and then search for that content when I need to. 

I love all of the add-ons the solution offers. You get the base product, and then you can plug in a ton of third-party apps. There's a whole ecosystem of third-party products you can add in if there are any features that may be missing on Confluence itself. That's really great. 

There are very good notifications and links. You can subscribe to a page, and whenever that page gets edited, you're notified of a change on that page.

I suppose just the whole structure and organization is what I really like about Confluence. You have at least 500 odd pages. The way it's structured, again, to speed up the ability to find stuff, is phenomenal. 

The self-service capabilities are helpful. Anyone can create content. We do, in fact. It's not one person running lots and lots of pages of content, it's everyone. You can self-service, update, and change things yourself, which is good. It's a great collaboration endeavor. We are a team of 15 people and we'll leverage the content we've created previously. The ability to collaborate on the content is quite critical to us.

The integration's very good. You still have integration with lots of third party products, and it's very good. 

We've used a lot of time in correcting our knowledge in this product. Can't really think of a negative feature of the product.

This is kind of by design, however, the lack of control in terms of editing the page to make it look the way you want it to look is an issue. It would be nice if there was more flexibility there.

It's only a very constrained format you can use. You cannot change the font and you can't really make them smaller. It is by design, but it doesn't like people playing with those aspects. It's probably gone a bit too far. The inability to format the layout of a page is an issue for us.

The logic for searching for pages is a bit off. I assumed it would be very smart in terms of looking at the content on your page and looking at what people clicked on. I assumed it would be like Google in that it would know what people clicked on previously when they were looking for this keyword, what page do they click on, et cetera. It doesn't. I found some detailed explanation of exactly how the search works and it's quite disappointing. It's very basic. Search largely depends on the title of your actual document. It doesn't look at the words in the document, and doesn't look at the search history, in terms of how people pick pages.

It turns out that the searching algorithms are very basic. When I assumed the product was bad, it was actually due to the fact that most of the knowledge management tools have very smart searching logic. This one doesn't. 

I've been using the solution for probably less than a year. It hasn't been too long.

The solution is reliable. I haven't seen a single bug or issue with the product. It's very stable. 

We have about 15 users on the solution currently.

As a company, we use Microsoft Teams. A lot of our customers say, "Oh, I know, we've got the same features in Microsoft Teams." However, that really isn't the case. Usually, if you're in a Microsoft shop, you would try and use all the Microsoft products. This is one space where Microsoft Teams doesn't cut it. We're using the Confluence instead.

The initial setup is very, very good. It's not complex it all. It's very straightforward and they make it very easy.

The entire setup isn't an intricate process. We didn't have to pour over documentation to try and figure things out. We just followed our instincts and it worked out quite well.

We handled the implementation ourselves. We didn't need any assistance from consultants or integrators.

For us, it's free to use. We don't pay any licensing.

We don't have a business relationship with Atlassian. We're just customers.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

This solution is highly recommended. If you're looking for a product in this space, this is the best. We had another really good tool, however, we find Confluence does the same and a whole lot more. I'd say in the knowledge management space, as far as we've been doing our business, and our job is to find tools for organizations, I'm convinced that this is the top product in this space.

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. My one issue is the search capabilities. Otherwise, it's pretty perfect.

Availability of documents hosted in confluence very easily. You only need a browser, so even on a smartphone it is available.

Centralisation of knowledge, easily searchable.

Being robust when dealing with complex pages, eating too much CPU, badly designed plugins.

Nine years.

Yes, if users upload/convert from complex Office documents or upload too many attachments.

Not yet.

It depends on the issue and the support agent handling the case. Sometimes it is super good, sometimes super lame.

No previous wiki solution.

Initial setup is easy‎. The Atlassian documentation is good. Just make sure to read the requirements description.

No advice, pricing is publicly available.

• Do not install too many plugins, and choose them well, since some are heavy or broken.
• Do not allow attachment uploads that are too big.
• Install JavaMelody for easier monitoring‎.
• PostgreSQL is a good DB choice for all Atlassian products.
• Use fast HDD disk for faster search results.

Categories, document editing and creation, the great permission system, awesome plugin management.

Confluence allows creating new documentation very fast. This allowed us to organize our self-written documentation in a very efficient way.

There are two things which annoy us the most:

(a) It is written in Java and therefore comes with all the overhead and issues of Java applications.

(b) It doesn't allow editing documents with multiple users at the same time.

I have been using it for almost two years.

Deployment can be painful when you have to deal with different Java versions or keystores. The rest is very simple since there is a very good install and upgrade wizard.

No, Confluence turned out to be very stable.

No, not yet.

I didn't get in touch with Atlassian yet. But they have an awesome wiki and Q&A section.

I was using several open source wiki systems, all of them lacked the great ACL and plugin system of Confluence.

It was straight forward.

I implemented it myself.

The more users you have, the more money you will spend. Make sure to give only those users access who really need it.

Make sure to run backups by dumping the database and saving the Confluence home on nightly basis.

1. Its ability to display data from an excel sheet attached to the page. A simple one line code can do this.

2. Allows markers in the page so that they can be referenced in other pages thereby avoiding duplication.

3. Allows creation of random tables when needed for representation.

4. Allows document attachments to be visible as a link whose display text can be user-defined.

This became the primary location where all knowledge documents and other documentation were recorded and held. Its ability to allow creation of child pages helped to nest topics within topics

1. When excel sheets are added for being displayed, it skips document formats and does not recognize merged cells.

2. Supports only MS office 97-2003 formats. Should also support 2010 formats as its a overhead to convert everytime.

3. JIRA and Confluence connectivity needs to be stabilized. We've faced embarrassing situations with stakeholders when the Confluence pages could not pull the list of JIRAs to be referenced on the page.

5 years

Deployment was handled by the client's infrastructure team. I'm unable to comment on this.

Yes. JIRA to confluence connectivity was a nagging issue. To circumvent this, we started using JIRA dumps into excel and uploading them to the Confluence page.

None

I'm unable to comment on this.

I'm unable to comment on this.

Confluence was already used as the primary tool for reporting and documentation.

However, there have been Sharepoint based solutions for holding documents and their version which I did not find as user-friendly as Confluence.

The other option, of course, is to maintain your documents in a configuration management tool like Visual Safe Source.

Deployment and setup was handled by the client's infrastructure team. I'm unable to comment on this

Deployment was handled by the client's infrastructure team. I'm unable to comment on this.

I'm unable to comment on this.

We did not particularly evaluate other tools, but when compared with VSS and Sharepoint based solutions, Confluence would be an easy choice. This depends on what exactly is your purpose of using this tool. My views are based on its use as a tool for documentation and a QA's perspective on it.

I used Confluence mostly for the wiki and documentation.

The most valuable features are the ease of creating documentation, as well as charts.

Space maintenance could be made a little more user-friendly.

I have been working with Atlassian Confluence for at least six years.

There are no bugs or glitches that I'm aware of.

This product is scalable.

Atlassian technical support is pretty good.

I am currently using the cloud version, but previously, I used to use the on-premises deployment model.

The initial setup was easy, and not complex at all.

We have an in-house team to take of maintenance.

Confluence is a good product and I recommend it. My only complaint is that certain things, such as space management, can be made easier.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Configurability, modern web application, and the large community.

Thorough tracking and logging of actions (Nothing gets lost), far fewer office files sent around by collaborating online, instant availability of information.

• A lot of bugs already reported to Atlassian are not addressed.
• Avatars must be square.
• Status lozenges must offer more than three colors.

5 years.

No issues with deployment.

Yes. Both applications do not recover from loss of database server connection. Even if DB server is back online, applications need a restart.

Up to now it performs ok. We are at 300,000 issues. Getting the impression that it will get tight now.

As an Enterprise Customer the service is not sufficient. Our concerns are not being addressed. Active visits at our site would be appreciated to explain our issues.

Did not need it yet.

We switched because it was the better product for a lesser price.

Initial setup was straightforward.

In-house team.

At the time it was $8000 one off and $4000 yearly maintenance. Atlassian forced to switch to Enterprise licenses which doubled the cost.

Mantis.

Be prepared that functionality of today might be changed or removed or charged separately without being asked. Bugs can be reported but are often not addressed for years. Atlassian may make major design decisions not considering their customers needs and requirements.

Content creation and sharing, collaboration

Reduced redundant communication and overall better communication among knowledge workers

Working with 3rd party content i.e. MS office, PDF files, email integration

6 years

Social adoption - it is always tricky to change current way-of-doing things you are bringing a new culture of collaboration and working with information.

Haven't had any issues with stability.

Haven't had any issues with scalability.

9/10

9/10

Filesystem and email, we switched because it was not a effective way of collaborating in teams.

Straightforward

In-house

Initial 50K USD, cloud-based infrastructure cost + maintenance = 30k / year

Yes - all wiki and collaboration platforms available

Just do it, it will give you quick benefits and will change the overall atmosphere when doing things together in one place. Here's an example of ours:

Implementing Confluence in documenting functional specifical documents and preparing RTMs, product requirements.

It has tremendously improved our organisational culture, as it is a more streamlined way of handling customer issues/responses/queries and for documenting.

Integration with JIRA, draw.io, Creately, and other mockups tools is a boon to Confluence's usage in handling complex problems.

Confluence textual editor could be improved and integrated with MS Word for easy usage and better formatting of documents.

It is indeed a stable and error-free application, as it is a mature application running for decades.

It can be easily scaled up to different levels if used wisely.

Quick support with an easy resolution.

N/A.

Straightforward.

In-house.

N/A.

• It's easy to set up, as it gives a quick guide for the same process.
• Costing and pricing may vary depending on usage.

N/A.

N/A.