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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
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (9th), Document Management Software (3rd)
Atlassian Confluence
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
105
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 7.6%, up 7.6% compared to last year.
Atlassian Confluence, on the other hand, focuses on Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals), holds 15.1% mindshare, down 18.2% since last year.
Enterprise Content Management
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

Featured Reviews

Karthi Keyan - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlining document management with enhanced digitalization features needed
We used Alfresco as a document management system for automating and digitizing manual forms. Those were the main use cases The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes has improved our organization. The most valuable features of Alfresco include its integration with…
Rabindra K Maharana - PeerSpot reviewer
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 allows broad searches with many index fields that you can search on, although the created fields and their values may not be intuitive."
"The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant."
"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."
"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."
"Document repository."
"I like the ease of use, sections, and calendar."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."
"It is easy to use."
"It's extremely intuitive."
"It integrates well with other Atlassian products"
"We value the way we can tag documentation to Jira because we can cross-reference a Jira ticket to a Confluence page, and we can also add a Confluence page to a Jira ticket."
"Copying another page and providing an option to edit everything is valuable."
"It is stable and reliable."
"Easy to share information and the integration with JIRA is good."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."
"The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"Atlassian needs to provide the source editor or a built-in plugin."
"There is no concept of peer review or a draft mode - whatever you write is live."
"There are some issues with performance when creating tables."
"The one way in which this solution could be improved is by offering better design and UI."
"When editing a page with many iterations, it takes time to scroll down to the last iteration."
"When we import the data in Confluence from Word or any other document, the formatting is not correct."
"The product is considered expensive."
"Some macros can be technical, and they are better managed on the Confluence cloud rather than on-premises. For example, when you add an image on the cloud, you can resize it just by using the mouse. This is not the case on-premises yet. You have to write pixels of the size of the image sometimes. Some of the very old macros are still there, and some of them are technical. It can be hard for users if they are not from an IT background to understand how to use them quickly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"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."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"There is a license needed to use Atlassian Confluence."
"Confluence charges an extra fee for analytics."
"We have a site license for Atlassian Confluence and there are some limitations on external users."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, meaning its price falls somewhere in the mid-range zone."
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"The price of the on-premises data center version is too expensive."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
37%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
With Atlassian, the costs are reasonable. Although higher than before when we used multiple platforms and licenses, having a collaborative platform like this is advantageous. It streamlines license...
What needs improvement with Atlassian Confluence?
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 foru...
 

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, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: June 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.