Atlassian Confluence Reviews

I primarily used this solution for IT documentation and documenting ISMS based on ISO 27001.

With the Confluence Wiki, I implemented quite a series of successful IT and Security Documentation projects. Confluence was my preferred product when starting any collaboration project that had to produce comprehensive, centrally organized, and highly usable documentation.

I worked on several projects that implemented an ISMS, based on the ISO 27001 standard, which mandates a "documented ISMS". I introduced Confluence as the tool to be used for that documentation.

I used Confluence as the "self-hosted" server in VMs or on MiniPCs running Linux. I always added backup methods, so the HA functionality of the much more expensive "datacenter-edition" was never needed. The largest environment I worked in had 100+ active authors, but typically I would work with the 10- or 25-user license, which are both quite affordable even for small customers and where the server resources are manageable (From two to four virtual cores and 4-16GB RAM will do fine).

This solution worked fine until Atlassian decided to force everybody into the cloud.

The most mentionable improvement is that documentation with Confluence gains a much better structure. Instead of hundreds of .doc and .xls files roaming the network shares and C: drives of team members, once you get Confluence set up, spend a few hours with all designated authors to define a few guidelines on how pages should look, be interlinked, and how to generally use the tool, the productiveness of creating and improving documentation is phenomenal!

The key is to take the mentioned few hours, get everybody together and produce a "style guide", for want of a better word, about how to use Confluence. Then agree on the top-level structure of your documentation and if everybody accepts this and uses it in their work, all is fine.

My recommendation is to meet for an hour every other week with those who work the most with the tool and fine-tune said "style guide" and the structure. This will help everybody to keep being motivated and to produce the best results. Also in such meetings, ideas about add-ons can be discussed and their integration planned.

Atlassian Confluence is a very good and seasoned Wiki Solution.

First and foremost, I want to mention its top-notch usability. It has a very intuitive user interface, which every user able to manage the basic functionality of a PC will be able to work with and produce quite satisfactory results.

There is a big and responsive community to help with questions and so far, Atlassian is still doing a good job to help.

Also, there are add-ons from various sources, which can be integrated with the product quite easily and have good chances to function together as a whole, like intended.

Another thing worth mentioning is the very good import and export functionality. You can just use Copy-Paste on a website or a document and Confluence will in most cases manage to reproduce the content quite recognizably. Export not only as XML, to be able to reimport, but also, PDF and Word DOCX work quite well. They can be further improved, speaking from personal experience with PDF files, by adding a few add-ons for formatting, page heading, and such.

Oh, and last but not least the flexibility should be mentioned. If for any reason there is the need to change the structure of the contents, say to move a branch of pages from one top-level area to another, just copy them or export them and re-import them in their own area. Mostly, that works without a glitch (exceptions prove the rule) and even cross-area-links will continue to work. For more complicated restructuring, one can always use the XML-Export and load it into an XML-Editor. Of course, that´s for people who can read and understand XML structure.

Atlassian should rethink its withdrawal of the self-hosted version of the product. They only offer cloud-based service or the "datacenter-edition", which is quite expensive for small companies and private users.

I have been using and recommending Atlassian Confluence for more than four years now, and never had to regret it until the end of 2020, when they suddenly got this cloud madness.

Not only does the cloud version come nowhere near the responsiveness of the self-hosted version (which is a matter of course, as self-hosted servers are within the LAN with single-digit milliseconds of round trip time, whereas cloud-hosted servers will always have 20+ ms), but also it requires a customer to entrust their data to a third party, which is in many cases a no-go.

The only way out would be to buy the "datacenter edition" and thus spend a whole lot more money on the product. This may be what Atlassian intended in the first place and if so, shame on them.

With that, I will no longer recommend the product, as I am opposed to the cloud-first hype. Our data should be our own and we should be free to decide where we store them.

We have been using Atlassian Confluence for approximately five years.

No complaints that I know of - unless some admin shoots the underlying VM (has been heard to happen), confluence is just rock-solid. To be sure: It needs some resources, and if the VM starves of memory or CPU, performance and stability will suffer.

As I said, the largest environment i was working with at a customer has 100+ authors and I imagine plenty of pages and other content - sadly I do not know the exact figures - but we never had reason to complain in our project which only consisted of 12 people actively using Confluence. So I guess scalability should not be an issue.

Prior to Confluence, I tried working with Microsoft SharePoint. Well, there were those sad tries, and my advice is to forget it.

SharePoint may have advantages when it comes to organize and share files, but the ease and intuitive way to create structured documentation just is not there.

And as a sidenote: When working on projects we would oftentimes edit a page in confluence with three or four of us concurrently updating table entries or text segments. Very seldom have I experienced problems with allowing concurrent edits and in my mind never incorrect merging of inputs. Again, that is true for the on-premises self-hosted version, in the cloud that does not work quite as well.

And why do I point this out: Have any of you tried to edit a word document in MS Teams concurrently? ... it produces quite funny effects but in my opinion cannot be trusted, really.

The cases where I set up the server myself were straightforward and went without any glitch along the documented steps.

Up until now I only had inhouse admins implement the servers, they did it noiselessly and with satisfying results.

Erm. ROI. Hm. Can anybody please call the finance guy? ...

Well, that´s difficult now. Until the end of 2020, using a self-hosted server, have one of your IT-Admins set it up, costs $10 a year for the 10-Author license.

Nowadays? Don´t use it. The price of the on-premises data center version is too expensive.

To be honest, after being introduced to Confluence by a colleague all those years ago, I did not evaluate any other option in earnest.

Recently, I started looking at Tiki Wiki, which is a fully OpenSource alternative, but I haven´t gotten around to installing it or using it in a new project.

I would not consider alternatives but for the policy of Atlassian. Such a good product should run in every datacenter. NOT in the Clouds, though.

My advice for everybody is to flame Atlassian into re-providing the self-hosted server version!

We mainly use Confluence for our internal documentation work and to plan new features, design documents, and knowledge transfer documents. Most of the documentation work is done using Confluence. 

We have a separate Confluence space for our team, with public articles about our projects and how to set up our repositories, available for anyone to access. 

Additionally, we maintain private content within the team's Confluence space.

Confluence has significantly improved the productivity of our team. Previously, finding information required asking someone or searching through improperly organized resources. Now, all onboarding documents, knowledge transfer documents, and documents regarding features are within our Confluence space, making it easy to find information as needed.

Confluence is very easy to use and feature-packed. It allows us to design well-organized documents and offers valuable add-ons. Its integration capabilities enable direct linking of pull requests and certain issues across spaces, facilitating easy navigation and enhanced collaborative work.

The discoverability of documents could be improved. In scenarios where documents are managed by another department or we are looking for specific documents, the process could be enhanced for easier discovery.

We have been working with Confluence for about a year.

Confluence is stable, and we haven't experienced any disruptions with their service.

We have not escalated any questions to technical support.

Positive

Before Confluence, we predominantly used SharePoint and Microsoft products. We decided to switch to Confluence as we were already using Jira and Bitbucket, making the transition to Confluence seamless with other Atlassian products.

Properly use the features available in Confluence, such as site spaces and other functionalities.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use Atlassian Confluence for project documentation. It works as a repository of documents. We can write documents, including tutorial information, technical manuals, and other company procedures.

The product has a valuable feature for quick verification of documents.

There could be an option to collaborate with other users while editing the documents. We have to wait for other users to edit and release the document to make further changes or updates.

We have been using Atlassian Confluence for one and a half years.

The product is very stable. I rate its stability a ten out of ten.

We have 125 Atlassian Confluence users in our organization. We use the tool every day. I rate its scalability a seven out of ten. The lack of a collaboration feature affects the scalability level.

I have used SharePoint before.

I rate Atlassian Confluence a six out of ten. I advise others to look for other tools if they want a feature for collaboration.

I use Confluence to organize my data. In the case of Confluence, I use it to handle various transactions in the bank. We have multiple channels in the bank. The bank I work for is one of the largest in Brazil.

I manage five different channels in the bank. I receive messages, put them in a pipeline, and then process the data in various ways. After that, I distribute the processed data through different channels. I also have other tasks related to client management.

For example, I have to connect my legacy systems with new solutions, and Confluence helps me with that. I use different connectors to transfer data from legacy systems to new core solutions.

For me, the most valuable feature is its high performance. It's crucial for us in the bank, as we handle a massive number of transactions every day. It's very efficient and saves a lot of time.

Additionally, the ease of use and the availability of different connectors are important. They help me connect with various databases and facilitate integrations with different solutions.

I have a couple of different pipelines that I work with. However, I'd like to see them displayed differently on the same dashboard. So, I would like to have a unified dashboard to view the different pipelines.

In my case, the governance aspect is the most important. It doesn't work well with a huge company, and it's not as effective as it could be for software developers.

Moreover, there is an area of improvement in the governance functionality within Confluence, especially for large companies like ours, to have a more sophisticated governance solution associated with Confluence.

I have been using it for six months. I am using both Confluence SaaS solutions. I have access to various versions of the software.

It is very stable solution. 

I would rate the scalability high. 

The customer service and support team was not so good. In Brazil, the technical support for Confluence is not very good because the team is small. We are still trying to improve, but there are a lot of open permissions on the internet. However, Confluence is a very important tool and has good features. So, it's important to have better support because it can make it easier for users to work with Confluence. Currently, it's not as close as other brands, which makes it hard to propose new ideas or get prompt assistance. There are a lot of opportunities to make it more user-friendly.

The initial setup was complex.

In my opinion, it's worth the investment. I saw an ROI in a short time.

The pricing is good. In my opinion, there are no better alternatives.

I would definitely recommend using this solution. Overall, I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

The business analysts use Atlassian Confluence for project documentation and use case stories. I use it primarily for dashboards and KPIs that are set for programs. Most people are comfortable using Atlassian Confluence.

This solution should have customized dashboards that could be built by the user and connect to the data and filtering mechanisms to create dashboards. It will be great for any C-level executive to monitor their KPIs rather than depend on somebody else to create them. So, the dashboards should be improved.

I have been using this solution for about ten years. It is mainly deployed on cloud.

We don't have any issues with stability. We have about 200 users of Atlassian Confluence.

We don't have any experience with technical support.

We have used Zoho, Salesforce, Bamboo and Trello. They almost all work the same because I've seen things done differently. Whether you do project management or documentation, you can choose a solution that's friendly for developers and easy to understand and pick up quickly. I would not say one is better than the other, and each solution has its abilities. Atlassian Confluence seems stable, and we don't have a problem. When dealing with compliance, some of our projects need people and PCI nest compliance, so we also have to look at tools hosted in the manner in which they comply with these standards. IBM products meet some of those requirements.

All things in Atlassian Confluence are set up on cloud. The clients have their administration teams, and they extend an account for our developers, our PAs, and our managers on these platforms. So we don't set up anything. The administration team sets up the Jira accounts on cloud. GitLab and GitHub are set up on-premises while keeping the code version internally. Setup is not a major issue because most of these things are very simple, and you have instructions.

I rate the price an eight out of ten, with ten being a good price and one being a high price. Pricing is not a problem, and you might have other products with lower rates. For bigger companies, price is not a problem because there is always a budget, and the clients fund it. However, if the price gets cheaper, it will be better for users.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten.

My primary use case is for documentation.

The most valuable feature is the accessibility from different sites for different colleagues and the search option. 

I would like to see the text editor upgraded from its current limited abilities.

I have been using Atlassian Confluence for the past ten years.

When it comes to stability I have not seen the solution go down in the past couple of years so it is good.

When it comes to scalability you can add as many documents and sites as you like. We currently have around two thousand users 

I can recommend Atlassian Confluence for any company that requires document management and documenting ongoing processes, Of course, it is not a very intuitive or very comprehensive management tool because you cannot track the requirement object changes with it, but you can use it for general documentation purposes. I would rate Atlassian Confluence an eight out of ten.

The sharing of information and simple formatting are valuable features. That is, there are no templates, and everything uses one format. This means that people don't need to worry about formatting.

When we have a project that we don't want to share with everybody but want people to know that it exists, there is no way to do this in Confluence. When a project is not shared, people cannot see that it exits.

I've been working with Confluence for eight years. It was initially on-premises, but we moved to the cloud four years ago.

It's stable, and we haven't had any issues at all.

We haven't had any problems with scalability. We have about 300 users.

Some technical support staff are very helpful, but some just send documentation that is not very helpful. I would say that technical support needs improvement.

I didn't do the initial setup, but I think it's pretty easy. When I had to configure a new site, it was very easy.

SharePoint is very confusing, but Atlassian Confluence is very simple. After a couple of days, most people understand how it works, and it's quite simple.

I recommend Confluence to any company that wants to share information inside the company. Confluence is great; it's like a wiki. I would give it an eight out of ten.

It is a collaboration tool. All of our company documentation is on Confluence.

I am using its latest version. It is a cloud solution. Atlassian is the cloud provider.

It is very useful for companies that want to deploy their documents in a private cloud repository. Companies don't need to store their documents on some servers on their premises. This document collaboration platform makes it flexible to reach your documents at any time. There is no time or location limitation. You can reach your documents whenever you want and wherever you want. For that reason, it is a very useful tool.

Collaboration is most valuable. You can upload or create your documents on Confluence and share them with your team members. Your team members also can share documents. 

Confluence can integrate with draw.io and some of the other third-party tools as well. For that reason, it is joyful to use.

It has good integrations, but its integration capabilities can be improved.

They can improve the table feature of Confluence. It is currently not adequate.

I have been using this solution for three months.

It is a stable solution.

It can be used by as many team members as you want to collaborate. It is no problem.

You don't need any technical support. It is easy to use.

It is just for document collaboration. There is no deployment period. You are just creating your documents on Confluence.

I am using the paid version. My company has purchased it for company employees. We are using Confluence as a company. I don't know how much it costs, but its price is good enough. Its price is not so high.

It is a collaboration tool for document development. You can create, improve, and share your documents through Confluence. It is quite an efficient tool to collaborate with your team members. I would strongly recommend it. 

I would rate it a nine out of ten.