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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

"Document repository."
"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 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."
"I like the ease of use, sections, and calendar."
"Alfresco allows broad searches with many index fields that you can search on, although the created fields and their values may not be intuitive."
"It is a very popular tool."
"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."
"The trial stages, the ability to connect it to Jira, and the ability to export in PDF are all good capabilities."
"The solution is very intuitive and provides excellent content management."
"The interface is good....I didn't face any issues with the scalability. It was very good."
"The most valuable feature is the accessibility from different sites for different colleagues and the search option."
"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."
"This is a scalable solution that supports thousands of users."
 

Cons

"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."
"I think the presentation layer could be improved - currently, it's too complex, and there are too many features cluttered all over the screen."
"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 has a very steep learning curve, and unfortunately, during the learning process, it's very easy to make errors, which often are unforgiving."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"The cost of the solution is too high."
"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."
"The solution is not very user-friendly."
"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing."
"There are some issues with performance when creating tables."
"When we import the data in Confluence from Word or any other document, the formatting is not correct."
"Confluence cannot replace Microsoft Word at the moment, so even though it can be used as a document management system, it is not meant for document creation, which adds a lot of limitations to it."
"I'd like to see some improved reporting on usage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"We pay $350 a month to use the solution."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"Licenses are quite expensive"
"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."
"There is a license needed to use Atlassian Confluence."
"When you purchase this solution you get some support."
"Making integration with other tools easier would be beneficial."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

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: July 2025.
862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.