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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

"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."
"Alfresco's technical support is very fast and professional."
"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 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."
"Document repository."
"It's extremely intuitive."
"The trial stages, the ability to connect it to Jira, and the ability to export in PDF are all good capabilities."
"The best feature is the automatic tagging of information in documents. The automatic algorithm highlights irrelevant information that conflict with the actual documents."
"It's easy to use and you can create all types of pages."
"I find the editing option straightforward and quick."
"It's easy to search for information."
"Confluence is very easy to use and feature-packed."
"Copying another page and providing an option to edit everything is valuable."
 

Cons

"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"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."
"Currently, documents in Alfresco are stored on a file server, which, while good for performance, is a security risk."
"The setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"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 configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."
"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."
"When editing a page with many iterations, it takes time to scroll down to the last iteration."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to have the ability to import pictures."
"The search function is not great."
"The UX is a little bit all over the place."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The add-on feature is not readily available or well-documented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"It is cheaper compared to head-to-head competitors."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"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 issues I have with the pricing are in respect to the add-ons."
"The price of the on-premises data center version is too expensive."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"We have a site license for Atlassian Confluence and there are some limitations on external users."
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"For us, it's free to use. We don't pay any licensing."
"Making integration with other tools easier would be beneficial."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
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.
881,227 professionals have used our research since 2012.