Atlassian Confluence Reviews

It is easy and simple to implement. Some of the valuable features are its ability to customize via add-ons and the collaborative environment.

For many of my clients, we use Confluence as a shared collaborative knowledge management tool. It helps them as it is one repository for all the information and is easily searchable .

Rich text could always be better but it is nice to have.

I have used this product for two years.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues, i.e., if you have enough IT resources.

I would give the technical support a 8/10 rating.

My customers were previously using a different solution. The reason they switched is because Confluence is a simple wiki-based solution, compared to the other wiki tools.

The setup was straightforward.

You should do it. It is so simple and can give so much added value rapidly.

The valuable features are:

• It is easy to use.
• It is easy for newcomers to start using it.
• It has the “what you see is what you get” functionality of MS Word.
• It is easy to move pages around. There is no excuse for not doing documentation just because you do not know where to add it.
• It has good integration with JIRA. You can really do great things with the two products.

The license part is too flexible.

We have been using this solution since 2008.

There have not been any stability issues.

There have not been many scalability issues.

I would give technical support a rating of 9 out of 10.

We used SharePoint a long time ago, and we will never go back to it.

The installation can be quite complex. You need to know what you are doing in order to install it on your own. The cloud version is very easy to install.

You need to buy a full license for your entire organization, even though you only need a plugin for two people.

There needs to be an owner of the installation, in terms of the system and the infrastructure.

• Easy import and creation of new documents
• Notifications of the updated content
• Version history changes
• Cross team changing

Before using Confluence we have had the documentation spread across multiple shared drives and emails. Confluence gave us a chance to re-arrange the documents into a single repository and group the information logically in home page(s). I have called our home page a one-stop-shop for all team related links. Furthermore, other teams have created their own home pages and we are able to access each other spaces, sharing knowledge and know-how. When we do project work we can share the progress and develop documentation on the go while everyone has access to the latest version in real time. Talking about this, the thing I love about Confluence is that every document becomes a living document and we don't need to wait until it is 100% ready, but start with a draft and develop in progress.

Surprisingly enough the text editor is very limited in its functionality and given the fact that so many forum platforms and web sites have mastered this tool I believe Atlassian have no excuse to keep it this way. It lacks basics such as text highlighting, and adjusting the text size and working with tables is a nightmare. Text formatting and working with numbers and bullet points is time consuming. I would like to see more plugins and additional functionality such as embedding of other pages, drop down menus, insert buttons, and page templates.

I have used it for over two years.

No issues faced with deployment.

The software has been running as expected. We have faced an issue where the hard disk ran out of space and the application continued working, putting all the changes in the memory. We have identified this fact after a server restart and as a result the changes made in the last few weeks were lost (the current RAM setups are huge enough to store plenty of text based information). I believe a simple space utilisations could be implemented in the app to warn or stop it from working if there is no space. In my opinion, the impact of losing the work is bigger than having the app down until fixed.

As above plus the available users are based on license.

Customer Service:

I find the customer sevice limited.

Technical Support:

Technically speaking they have just enough resources to confirm bugs and lack of functionality but no people to follow on fixing and improving.

First of its kind in this environment.

Straightforward install and setup.

Implemented in-house. Quick and painless.

Confluence has saved time in finding information, reduced the on-boarding time, improved provisioning of repeatable scripted operational process, provided a central point for knowledge sharing and supplied better retention of Intellectual Property.

Not sure about the initial cost but the application itself needs little computing and some disk space.

Go fast, cheap and dirty when creating new documents and improve in progress - this tool concentrates on the sharing, arranging and collaboration part but doesn't aim too high about how the content looks like. If you are after some serious functionality such as a table of contents, body styles and track changes I would recommend using Word and attach as a doc file. Index your content in home pages and sub-home pages for better logical arrangement of the information and fast navigation. Research additional modules like Confluence Questions. You can use the spaces for team building management like having a section for photos from events, out of work activities or sharing industry related links.

It is very easy to use and setup. The Word import works well (except for styling issues). Users can collaborate and you can allow certain users to see certain content dynamically. Many plugins are offered. The most useful one is to generate PDF on the fly. You also have send this page, print, etc. If you do not require log ins (only allow anonymous users), I would highly recommend Confluence.

I had a tough time importing Word and allowing use of an external style sheet (and not import hard coded). Also, the pricing module needs to be adjusted. We want all our customers to be able to view Confluence as anonymous users. However, all our customers require a log in to our platform. And, to integrate with Confluence would require user licenses for every one of our users (over 10,000). It is not affordable.

My team uses this solution for documentation and collaboration.

The solution is very intuitive and provides excellent content management.

You can easily switch between tools through hyperlinks. It is also well integrated with Jira.

In the next release, I would like to have the ability to import pictures.

I have been using this solution for about six months.

The solution is scalable, we currently have about two hundred users who are senior employees within our IT department.

There is an annual license.

Public Cloud

We mainly used Jira for backlog management within IT development landscapes. We used Confluence for early-stage documentation and communication within and across teams.

Since we worked mostly with large enterprises, they typically install and host any server-based solutions on their own.

The interesting thing is the connector between Jira and Confluence (it works wiki-like and provides a deep-connection with links between both systems). The alternative is to run for early-stage backlog-items in immature state a separate wiki-instance that would not feature the proper linkage of backlog-entries automatically.

With respect to Confluence, it would be interesting if they had graphical templates that allowed typical agile ceremonies to be documented better. For example, one of the agile cadences that we regularly run is risk roaming. Confluence, as of now, doesn't provide any kind of graphical support for creating a two-by-two portfolio matrix design or even something similar. Basically, Confluence is heavily text-based. Some of my customers have actually started to tweak the system a bit and implement workarounds. On the screen, you can make it look as if it is a two-by-two portfolio; however, if there were templates provided, that would be great. The basic graphical templates that are used regularly in management would be fine. It would be great to see them supported in the future. 

In regards to Jira, it would be nice if they had two-dimensional features for backlog support. At the moment, backlog management is always a flat, one-dimensional list but our customers actually prefer having the opportunity to have that read out in a graphical fashion as well. That way, there's so much more overview and they can cluster smaller backlog items that come as a bunch. It just provides much more clarity.

Jira still seems to have issues on modelling Kanban-systems - as far as I know it still doesn't support the so-called "commitment point" (i.e. creating a non-romovable time-stamp when moving a ticket onto a board) helpful in creating transparency about start- and end-time of performing an activity — similar to signing a document in writing.

Think of it this way: if you take an item into a boardroom, it must be noted and signed. It should be done in pencil where the data could be erased later on, rather, it should be stamped — basically, you are not losing the data again. That is still an issue with these systems. That's one of the reasons why many teams who want to run Kanban methodology don't want to use Jira. They tend to use other software, which is able to do these sorts of things. 

Until 2018, I was employed with an applier of Atlassian solutions. Within that context, I used Confluence for a year. I have used Jira 2012—2018 as an end-user myself. From then onwards, I was more of a consultant to other companies implementing and using similar solutions. In short, if you count only end-usage, then it's 6 years with Jira and one year with Confluence.

With respect to our experiences with Confluence, we haven't had any issues; however, we definitely have had issues within the Jira environment back in 2014.

Scalability issues should have been fixed by now - they arose back in 2010-2014 at one of the largest enterprise implementations for multi-1.000s of concurrent users on the system, causing the system to operate very slow - I would expect that by 2020 this is treated accordingly to make the system scale without loss of performance. 

I have not personally contacted Atlassian's technical support. It was always routed via the respective IT staff, which I was not involved with.

I was not involved with technical administration or the implementation procedure from an IT infrastructure team perspective. For this reason, I can't speak for individual customers.

The problem with the pricing model is not so much the price for the Atlassian basic software itself; the issues I have with the pricing are in respect to the add-ons. The problem with add-on pricing is that it typically is always calculated based on the amount of basic Confluence or Jira licenses. Since some of the add-ons will only get used by a very limited number of users, having to pay for the full implementation (for all the people using Confluence or Jira), seems like an unfair pricing model. It also prohibits the usage of certain add-ons, too. Certain add-ons from a functionality-perspective are much more exclusive to only a few users. That pricing model should be reviewed and potentially edited or amended to make it more flexible.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. If they added the graphical templates, I would give them a higher rating.

To me, as an end-user, the topical templates are pretty basic. Under the current conditions, since COVID-19, our teams have tried to become more virtual in their collaboration model. The collaboration model that we had installed before, face-to-face, couldn't be transferred, which is kind of a pity because the graphical features are missing.

On-premises

• Document management
• Knowledge base
• Team collaboration
• Security
• User management
• Integration with different tools

• Avoids the need for document versioning
• Centralizes document access
• Provides easy access
• Has an easy search facility
• Allows you to store all documents in one place
• Enables you to share documents
• Allows you to publish articles

• Bulk editing of documents
• Reports
• Content sharing
• Document publishing

I have used it for over three years.

I did not encounter any stability issues.

I did not encounter many scalability issues.

I would give them a rating of 7/10. The technical support was helpful.

The initial setup was fine. More memory may be required, depending upon the size of the attachments.

Pricing is provided on the Atlassian site. You can choose the license depending upon the number of users.

We evaluated SharePoint, XWiki, and MediaWiki.

Confluence is very easy to use and has strong search functionality.

The flexibility and scalability of Confluence.

The structure of spaces, pages and child pages allows an easy way to structure content in a way which suits our business.

Confluence has been our central knowledge platform for several years. All of our agent team use the knowledge base constantly throughout their work.

It takes some thought into how to structure confluence in a way which is intuitive for the team to use.

Search only takes you to a page, not an area of a page.

3 years

We had no issues with deployment.

We had no issues with stability.

Just in respects of how we structure our content. Confluence is perfectly scalable.

Customer Service:

Responsive and to the point. Also extensive knowledge base which is useful for most queries.

Technical Support:

10/10

We implemented in house with (at the time) limited technical expertise.

Hosting yourself allows greater flexibility in terms of extensions and customisation.