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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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (7th), Document Management Software (1st)
Atlassian Confluence
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
108
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%, down 7.9% compared to last year.
Atlassian Confluence, on the other hand, focuses on Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals), holds 13.0% mindshare, down 16.0% since last year.
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alfresco7.6%
SharePoint11.6%
OpenText Content Management8.0%
Other72.8%
Enterprise Content Management
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Atlassian Confluence13.0%
SharePoint22.9%
Drupal16.7%
Other47.400000000000006%
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

Featured Reviews

Peter Liam - PeerSpot reviewer
Human Resources Specialist at Unilever Inc.
Unified document workflows have boosted customization, search efficiency, and collaboration
In my experience, some of the best features that Alfresco offers include document management, intelligent process management, and information governance. Out of those features, I find myself relying on document management the most because it helps users to quickly find and access information from anywhere on any device using web-based viewing tools. I presume all the features are very unique, robust, and helpful. Intelligent process management, integrated process, and content service capabilities help to streamline content-centric processes and enable faster, more informed decision-making. Alfresco is very scalable. Alfresco delivers a scalable way to automatically enrich content and metadata and provides key insights by automatically extracting valuable information. I love the full-text search engine, the ability to automate record lifecycle to save time and cost, and storing documentation. Creating rules for documents and folders adds to the overall usability of the features. Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to save money by only needing to use one platform to serve our customers, which is Alfresco. The community version is free to use. We charge our customers for customization, so this greatly boosted our sales. Sales engagement and sales were boosted by at least thirty to forty-five percent.
Talha Hussain. - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Manage projects effectively with seamless task tracking and integration, but deployment requires familiarity
We are conducting all our project management using Atlassian tools. We use Atlassian Confluence for task management, reporting, visualization of tasks, and reviewing the progress of tickets and work I use Atlassian Confluence for task management and other project management tasks, such as…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Document repository."
"Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to save money by only needing to use one platform to serve our customers, which is Alfresco."
"Alfresco has positively impacted my organization by improving information flow to the shop floor, enabling electronic filing of our parts and drawings, and increasing employee efficiency."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."
"Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional."
"Alfresco has positively impacted my organization as it is open-source with a vibrant community and is very cost-effective compared to other alternatives."
"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 search functionality is a really powerful feature."
"It's easy to search for information."
"It's extremely intuitive."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution is very intuitive and provides excellent content management."
"Confluence can link any ticket or task from JIRA to be included on the Confluence page."
"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."
"It is just the fact that it is a one-stop shop for all project documentation. It is compared to storing things in files and directories and stuff like that. It provides the overall usability and accessibility of many projects and documents in one area."
 

Cons

"Alfresco has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"I feel the documentation needs a lot of improvement, especially for Activiti microservice adoption, which is sometimes frustrating or slows me down."
"The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."
"Alfresco can be improved by adding some more APIs, although the existing APIs provide the required features very well."
"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."
"Atlassian Confluence should improve the interface, it needs to be more user-friendly. It is easy to use, but it could be more intuitive."
"The solution is not very user-friendly."
"An area for improvement in Atlassian Confluence is encouraging more vital interaction among the project members or users involved. I was researching a tool that could be used for better interactions offline among users on a specific topic or discussion. That feature would make Atlassian Confluence better."
"The software does not currently have any kind of AI integration."
"There is room for improvement in maybe the tree structure for articles. If you have a lot of articles, it becomes difficult to navigate."
"I would like Confluence to include the ability to draw flowcharts and diagrams."
"Indentation and other basic word processing styles must be improved."
"In the next release, I would like to have the ability to import pictures."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"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."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"There are some cases where you can go on Confluence as a public site without a license, but you will not have all of the features. You can also have a Confluence site that does not require a license just to read the articles. When you have Jira Service Management attached to Confluence, then you can go through the portal of Jira Service Management and read the Confluence articles without the license. This is good because when you are in an ITSM environment, you have many customers, and you do not want them to have to pay just to read articles. Regarding the use of the full features of Confluence, there is a license cost, and it depends on how many users you want."
"The Confluence pricing is good. The only challenge we have experienced is with Jira and the add ons we use that need to be paid for separately."
"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."
"Licenses are quite expensive"
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"There is a license needed to use Atlassian Confluence."
"In my opinion, it's worth the investment"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
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 Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
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?
What I would like to improve in the product is definitely the Jira integration. It is hard to tell which product is lagging or lacking because I can usually find a feature on the Marketplace if I a...
 

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, Adobe and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: March 2026.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.