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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 (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 8.8%, up 7.6% compared to last year.
Atlassian Confluence, on the other hand, focuses on Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals), holds 13.2% mindshare, down 17.0% since last year.
Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alfresco8.8%
SharePoint15.0%
OpenText Documentum Content Management10.2%
Other66.0%
Enterprise Content Management
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Atlassian Confluence13.2%
SharePoint28.8%
Liferay Digital Experience Platform19.1%
Other38.9%
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

"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the flexibility of the searching elements of the metadata."
"Document repository."
"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."
"Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional."
"Confluence can link any ticket or task from JIRA to be included on the Confluence page."
"It integrates well with other Atlassian products"
"The solution is stable."
"What I find the most valuable about Confluence is how easy it is to use."
"Easy to share information and the integration with JIRA is good."
"Documenting everything related to the project is good for me. It enables me to use rich text to document, insert macros and links, highlight with different colors, and organize pages in a hierarchical way."
"As for valuable features, the team management features help us to share information very easily."
"The interface is good....I didn't face any issues with the scalability. It was very good."
 

Cons

"The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"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."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"There needs to be a flexible pricing model, where we can pick and choose services and customize our pricing model."
"When editing a page with many iterations, it takes time to scroll down to the last iteration."
"Space maintenance could be made a little more user-friendly."
"When we import the data in Confluence from Word or any other document, the formatting is not correct."
"They can improve the table feature of Confluence. It is currently not adequate."
"Managing user permissions and credentials could be easier."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"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."
"We pay $350 a month to use the solution."
"In my opinion, it's worth the investment"
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"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."
"We have a site license for Atlassian Confluence and there are some limitations on external users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
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, OpenText, IBM and others in Enterprise Content Management. Updated: September 2025.
871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.