Atlassian Confluence Reviews

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.

We use Confluence to share weekly project information. Everyone in the company uses it daily from project managers down. 

It's easy to search for information.

I'd like to see some improved reporting on usage. 

We have been using Confluence for more than five years.

Confluence is stable. 

Confluence is scalable. Our company has 1,000 employees, and we're growing. It has kept pace with our growth. 

I rate Confluence eight out of 10. I won't rate it nine because my company didn't develop it. If my company had developed it, it would be much better. 

Our primary use case is for documentation. We used to maintain other documents in another location, but we moved to Confluence. We use it for the design documentation perspective, not for the analytics perspective. 

The most valuable feature is its design documentation abilities. 

Some aspects of the drawing perspective could be improved. When we upgrade a design and make technical architecture drawings to publish, we still use Visio first and then copy and paste it. If this feature were available on Confluence, it would be a useful tool. 

I have been using this solution for more than two years. 

This solution is stable and well-integrated with Jira. 

This solution is scalable. 

I have never directly contacted Atlassian technical support. 

I use SharePoint as well, mainly for the version control because I still need to prepare the document in Word and Visio and then load it to SharePoint. 

The initial setup, the installation, was managed by someone else. 

I implemented through an in-house team of three developers and engineers. They maintain both Confluence and Jira. 

I believe we have the Enterprise license with Confluence. 

I recommend Confluence to others. There are about 400 people in my company using this solution. However, if you are doing extensive drawings or looking for the version-control perspective, then I would caution you and suggest looking at another solution. 

I would rate Confluence a seven out of ten. 

One of the valuable features is Confluence and JIRA integration. The most valuable integration feature between JIRA and Confluence was being able to easily link Jira tickets to Confluence pages and vice-versa. They felt quite seamless. This reduced work friction, and prevented jumping between systems. It is simple, but very useful. The more integration the better, such as the integration with Slack.

The tool improved team collaboration around a usable source of truth.

I would like to see an improvement in licensing so I’m not paying for inactive users. Basically, I’d like the “system” to count unique active users for the past month and only charge me for those, rather than me manually assigning licenses to users. That user management/subscriptions management was a bit painful, especially in larger environments.

We have been using this solution on and off for five years.

There were no stability issues.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support is very good.

We used SharePoint and Wikis. They were hard work and had poor integration.

The initial setup was easy. We used SaaS.

Slowly release to users and add subscriptions. Keep on top of subscribers and remove idle/inactive users.

We did not evaluate other options.

Just do it.

We are using a lot of Confluence. While we are gathering the requirements from the business for the development, Confluence is used. We are creating project charters there. It covers all the functional requirements including knowledge sharing sessions. Basically, when somebody's leaving or somebody is being hired, everything related to that goes on Confluence. This also includes information, for example, about annual leave information, et cetera. If a person is hired and we need to prepare a KT plan for that. So we prepare a page in Confluence.

We like that it is a complete knowledge base where anyone can go and search for various types of information. Different departments are using it. If I want to search for any information, instead of pulling it from files, we have just added everything on Confluence, which makes it easily searchable.

It's easy to use and you can create all types of pages. 

There are lots of functionalities. You can see statues, who is signed in or not, et cetera. 

When we import the data in Confluence from Word or any other document, the formatting is not correct. When we export the data, more or less, it is fine. Let's say from Confluence to Word or Confluence to PDF, it's okay. Otherwise, we face formatting issues.  

The solution would offer more importing features. 

We have used the solution for 15 years or so.

The solution is very stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is great. If your workload grows, it can easily match it. 

We have 700 to 800 people using the solution right now in our organization. HR, production managers, and more are typically on the solution. Pretty much everyone uses it. 

I haven't had any interactions with technical support. I can't speak to how they are in terms of responsiveness.

My understanding is that the pricing is competitive. I'm not directly involved in the pricing and how it was done. That said, the fact that we have been using it for the last 15 years makes me assume it would be fine for our pocket and reasonably priced. I'd rate the pricing at a three out of five in terms of value for money.

Confluence basically is not a management software. It is just a knowledge base. You can search for whatever is there. You cannot manage a project using Confluence. For that, you would need Jira, not Confluence. 

I would recommend the product. Currently, most companies are using Word documents for creating all requirements. Probably they'll be putting those in, either on SharePoint or somewhere. However, these need to be preserved for the future. This solution helps with that.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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.

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.

We mostly use Atlassian Confluence to store information and share knowledge with a colleague.

It is a very popular tool.

Making integration with other tools easier would be beneficial. 

I have found, for example, that Confluence and Teams may be integrated. It's a Microsoft tool, and I was having trouble integrating it the last time.

I have been with the company for one month.

I have been working with Atlassian Confluence for one month.

In my opinion, Atlassian Confluence is very stable.

Atlassian Confluence appears to be quite scalable based on the applications that I have seen.

It is difficult to estimate since we are an international company with, I believe, 2,000 employees in Belgium. It is possible that we have 100 users.

I have not had any contact with technical support.

I am familiar with New Relic and Dynatrace.

I am quite junior at Dynatrace, but this is the tool we use at work.

We use Dynatrace, Azure DevOps, and SharePoint. I'm considering all of my options. At the present, we largely use the tools I stated.

I did automate SharePoint, but it was in a previous mission.  It was a previous job; it is not my present employment.

I don't use GitLab or BitBucket personally, but it's possible that in the future, we will have to implement those tools for the clients.

We are an Atlassian partner, BitBucket is an Atlassian product.

I'm also involved with DevOps. It depends on what the client requests, and we are highly likely to use such products.

We also work with JIRA. Some of our colleagues are JIRA administrators.

We used to store using text editors before, but nothing compared to Confluence.

The initial setup is very simple.

I am not aware of the pricing.

My organization has a partnership with Dynatrace, and I have created a small project to compare New Relic with Dynatrace. I downloaded a report, which was helpful in this regard.

I recommend it to all developers as well as students. because I used it as a student in a team. 

We are able to store all of the necessary information for all of the students,  developers, and architects.  All the individuals involved in our software projects.

Also, it is functional.

I believe we are a reseller and a partner, but I'm not sure since it's largely my colleagues. 

For the implementation of Atlassian, some of them are already certified, and with the certification, they are a partner. They work with a limited number of Atlassian-certified individuals.

I would rate Atlassian Confluence an eight out of ten.