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Alfresco vs Atlassian Confluence comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alfresco
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (7th), Document Management Software (1st)
Atlassian Confluence
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (2nd), Enterprise Social Software (3rd), Knowledge Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Alfresco and Atlassian Confluence aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Alfresco is designed for Enterprise Content Management and holds a mindshare of 8.0%, up 7.8% compared to last year.
Atlassian Confluence, on the other hand, focuses on Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals), holds 13.6% mindshare, down 16.4% since last year.
Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alfresco8.0%
SharePoint11.8%
OpenText Content Management8.4%
Other71.8%
Enterprise Content Management
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Atlassian Confluence13.6%
SharePoint26.7%
Liferay Digital Experience Platform17.8%
Other41.900000000000006%
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

Featured Reviews

JM
Country Head Spain at Apiux
Maintaining document integrity with persistent linking and customizable workflows
Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk. Clients, especially large enterprises such as banks, are concerned about document security if someone breaches the server. It would be beneficial if Alfresco offers different options for document storage, such as databases or cloud solutions. Also, it would be helpful if Alfresco's viewer could be easily embedded in other systems, as its integration is currently complex.
Rabindra K Maharana - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Editing features improve document accessibility
There is a holiday calendar, however, I need to install an app or add something to it. The add-on feature is not readily available or well-documented. Guidance on this should be available in a forum. Recently, I used a feature in another tool—perhaps GitHub—where it helped prepare a chart. It involved listing resources, like having fifteen people in the X team, ten in the Y team, and seven in the Z team. It created a bar chart showing these numbers. This chart used AI to offer users the option to create it based on the data. It was then created on a separate page and made available.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."
"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."
"The product allows engineering teams and developers to introduce new things in a seamless and easy way."
"The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with the scanning solution, the ability to search, and the capability to store and index to capture metadata."
"The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant."
"Alfresco allows broad searches with many index fields that you can search on, although the created fields and their values may not be intuitive."
"Document repository."
"The most valuable features of Atlassian Confluence are version management and search and linkage to the JIRA tickets. They are integrated very well together. You can have links from many places and can easily jump from one to the other. If you want to find all the information about a topic, you only need to click and you receive the information."
"Users can create tables and directly pull all Jira tickets into a Tableau format."
"The most valuable features is its design documentation abilities."
"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."
"Confluence is easy to use and integrate with other solutions, including social media platforms."
"The ease of use has been one of the most valuable features. It has a very simple wiki."
"Copying another page and providing an option to edit everything is valuable."
"As for valuable features, the team management features help us to share information very easily."
 

Cons

"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."
"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"If you don't have proper governance, things can go wrong. You have to make rules, such as one folder should not have more than 5,000 subfolders or children."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"The user interface is a little bit stale. The file attachments and how they work could be improved. There is also room for improvement when it comes to CDNs."
"The software does not currently have any kind of AI integration."
"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."
"Atlassian Confluence could improve how information is shared outside our company. We had some negative experiences with the rights we have with our information when sharing it within Atlassian Confluence and with other teams outside the company. It's due to the limitations on the rights we have on the export capabilities. We don't have sufficient rights to do so."
"Atlassian Confluence is not really a community-friendly solution."
"There is room for improvement in maybe the tree structure for articles. If you have a lot of articles, it becomes difficult to navigate."
"It would be interesting if they had graphical templates that allowed typical agile ceremonies to be documented better."
"Atlassian Confluence should improve the interface, it needs to be more user-friendly. It is easy to use, but it could be more intuitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"The license for Alfresco is expensive - not the maximum, but close. There are also extra costs once you start building integrations, as implementation seems to be very costly."
"The price of the on-premises data center version is too expensive."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"In my opinion, it's worth the investment"
"For us, it's free to use. We don't pay any licensing."
"To my knowledge, Atlassian Confluence had a pricing approach which is a commercial open-source solution, so that if you are a company, you had to pay an amount. This fee was not huge compared to other traditional solutions, and it was free for personal use or if you were an individual."
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"The issues I have with the pricing are in respect to the add-ons."
"Licenses are quite expensive"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alfresco?
The pricing of Alfresco starts at $100,000, which can be expensive for small projects. There is often a transition from the community version to the licensed version, which incurs migration costs. ...
What needs improvement with Alfresco?
Currently, the challenge is the general availability to users. Initially, they had poor documentation, but over the years, their documentation has highly improved. Initially, we had challenges find...
What is your primary use case for Alfresco?
This is mainly for unstructured document management systems with workflow and data classification.
What do you like most about Atlassian Confluence?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from its document-controlling feature. In Atlassian Confluence, controlled documents cannot be edited by anyone else.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Atlassian Confluence?
Money is a factor because Atlassian Confluence is not free. I need to purchase extra components when adding new projects or employees.
What needs improvement with Atlassian Confluence?
Currently, I have no suggestions for improvements. There are no issues with stability or downtime with Atlassian Confluence.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Confluence
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Over 1,300 companies from 180 different countries. Including EuroStar, Saks Fifth Avenue, NASA Langley Research Center, and KLM.
Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, NASA, Netflix, Adobe, Bonobos, LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, IBM, OpenText and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: January 2026.
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