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Atlassian Confluence vs Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs Slack Business - Enterprise 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

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)
Content Collaboration Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server4.7%
Dropbox Business - Enterprise10.1%
Google Workspace9.8%
Other75.4%
Content Collaboration Platforms
Enterprise Social Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Slack Business - Enterprise15.8%
Microsoft Teams14.0%
Atlassian Confluence8.9%
Other61.3%
Enterprise Social Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Daniel Giacomelli - PeerSpot reviewer
Has transformed how I manage documents through metadata and automation while enabling structured collaboration
Microsoft should restore some functionalities from older versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 and 2010. Specifically, bringing back something similar to SharePoint Designer would be beneficial. SharePoint Designer was both advantageous and challenging - developers found it limiting and preferred Visual Studio, while non-developers struggled to use it effectively. A new tool for configuring webpage design and development for content pages would be valuable. The current system is too basic. While integration of filtered lists and libraries is possible, it requires knowledge of Python or jQuery. A WYSIWYG editor would be preferable to requiring programming knowledge or Visual Studio.
Awais Mehmood - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation features and user-friendly interface support seamless communication
Slack is very supportive in terms of communication between my colleagues and clients. While working with the reimbursement feature, I found the automation capabilities on Slack to be incredibly useful, allowing me to automate messages for specific dates or times and even to greet someone on their birthday. I haven't specifically used the channel organization feature of Slack, as I am added to channels, but I use it with Airtable, which automates notifications to a specific Slack channel when a user fills out a form on our website. In my experience, Slack is a stable product for communication, and I appreciate its automation features and integration of AI capabilities for enhancing specific functions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Many people enjoy its zero learning-curve.​"
"It's easy to use and you can create all types of pages."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"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."
"Great shareable and co-editing features."
"The most valuable features are the ease of creating documentation, as well as charts."
"Atlassian Confluence's most valuable features are the ease in which you can use the tool, the flexibility in creating folder structures, receiving notifications in case others put remarks on the documents, and working together on documents."
"The solution offers a lot of freedom when drafting directly online."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't require coding. You just need to configure it. You don't need to code before getting something running. It makes it very fast."
"What I appreciate most about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is how it centralizes information and collaboration in one place."
"The solution's most valuable aspects are its collaboration capabilities, its communications site and the innovation within the product itself."
"Ability to collaborate with others in one location."
"The features for low-code and no-code capabilities in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are among the best, which are very user-friendly and not seen in any other cloud services, such as S3 from AWS and blob storage from Azure."
"The software is friendly to use for mixing data and analyzing it."
"The most valuable feature is the "Alert Me", which provides the ability to set an alert when content is either added or changed and that the alerts can be either real-time or aggregated for the day or the week."
"Sharing information is the best feature or advantage of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server based on my experience."
"In terms of setup, approaching its menu is simple."
"It's valuable for announcements and communicating between team members."
"Slack is a very stable product."
"The product makes communication seamless."
"Tasks and team huddles are the most valuable features of Slack."
"The solution is scalable."
"The huddle feature is valuable to me."
"I am impressed with the product's calls and screen share features which are very useful."
 

Cons

"Confluence could incorporate stronger records management and automation features. The current management structure is too open, which becomes an issue."
"The UI is good but bland. It could be updated a bit to make it more modern and interesting to look at."
"This is kind of by design, however, the lack of control in terms of editing the page to make it look the way you want it to look is an issue. It would be nice if there was more flexibility there."
"There is no concept of peer review or a draft mode - whatever you write is live."
"Managing user permissions and credentials could be easier."
"The search function is not great."
"Atlassian should rethink its withdrawal of the self-hosted version of the product. They only offer cloud-based service or the "datacenter-edition", which is quite expensive for small companies and private users."
"It lacks ease of integration."
"Making it more intuitive could help teams adopt it faster and use it more effectively by being more user-friendly."
"The product is behind in development and lacks some features."
"Searching information internally in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server could be better because when we get a lot of information, it is difficult to find."
"The solution needs to be more collaborative. I believe they are just coming up with the themes for this right now."
"It is a bit restrictive to develop in the cloud version. A lot of features are in the cloud now, and you have to develop on the outside. As far as the platform and the programming side of things are concerned, it is moving more towards configuration management rather than programming. When we are doing solutions, we are basically just configuring it to make solutions happen rather than actually using the Visual Studio code and developing from scratch in the cloud. It is almost like creating an app. You have created an app for your phone, but the app doesn't really sit on your phone. It sits somewhere on a server, and the database sits on another server. The app is just pulling and pushing information. The whole development has changed. We used to install things directly on the server and then run the application from the server. Now, it is more of a modular architecture."
"The user interface needs improvement because there is a lot of stuff in there. I use five to eight navigation buttons. It should be more user-friendly. Frequently used menu items should be arranged in a proper way. That would be helpful."
"The GUI is outdated."
"The solution needs to have more flexibility. The classic version had more flexibility, however, the modern version has many more limitations."
"Slack could add additional and better integrations."
"The solution’s initial setup is not very easy."
"Slack's interface is not simple for me. It's not a user-friendly interface"
"The reason is we are moving towards a new CRM, so we have a suitable solution to integrate with the new CRM."
"The tool should be able to fetch a conversation when we search for it even if it is in the thread."
"The product should provide integration with other solutions like Gmail or Outlook."
"Slack's Canvas feature could be improved in terms of its user experience."
"The notifications on the phone are delayed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Licenses are quite expensive"
"Confluence charges an extra fee for analytics."
"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."
"There is an annual license."
"Maybe we're only using 10% of it, but we have to pay for everything."
"We have a site license for Atlassian Confluence and there are some limitations on external users."
"There is a license needed to use Atlassian Confluence."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"There are some aggressive discounts offered by Microsoft for organizations that are not for profit, which we are, and it makes it quite attractive to consider."
"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost. With the on premise version, you pay for the license once. For the cloud version, there is a recurring fee. It is very expensive. They expect everyone to pay $20 or $30 per user per month."
"It can be expensive for on-premises deployments, especially when you have to support SQL Server as your backend database. That's where the cost comes into play. SQL Server has its own licensing, which Microsoft keeps on changing. Therefore, it can become costly. In the earlier versions of SharePoint, version 2007 or 2010, they had an express version where the SQL Server licensing was free. It wasn't like a full-blown SharePoint. It was only a slimmed-down version. It used to be whatever your hardware costs. You would install the free software and work with it, but you were very limited in what you could do in SharePoint. If you wanted the SharePoint Enterprise Server with all the bells and whistles, then you had to pay more to get the SQL Server license based on the number of users or servers. The subscription model is different for cloud deployments. Licensing is per user and per month. The cost also depends on the storage required. If you have a lot of sites or documents, then you need to expand it based on your needs."
"The solution’s pricing is cheap."
"We use the free version that does not have a license."
"The solution is cheap in my country."
"It is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The tool's pricing could be cheaper."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a four out of ten."
"It is an expensive tool. We pay 15 to 20 USD monthly per user."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
Performing Arts
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business54
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Atlassian Confluence?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from its document-controlling feature. In Atlassian Confluence, contr...
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, h...
What needs improvement with Atlassian Confluence?
There's room for improvement in the way folders are structured in Atlassian Confluence. Sometimes it's frustrating wh...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
There are areas that could be improved with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. My company has more than 5,000 collab...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
The regular use cases with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server are to share files and to plug them into websites in co...
What do you like most about Slack?
Nowadays, we don't need to visit an HR portal. Our marketing and human resources teams directly share details about b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Slack?
I am not aware of pricing, setup costs, or licensing, due to my company's partnership with Slack.
What needs improvement with Slack?
From my perspective, a disadvantage of Slack compared to Teams is that connecting between the apps can be a bit diffi...
 

Also Known As

Confluence
Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, NASA, Netflix, Adobe, Bonobos, LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Del Monte Foods, Unicredit Leasing, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Nokia Czech Republic, Perkins Eastman, JLL, ICA, óxito Software, Dorset Software, PKP Cargo, Arcapita Bank B.S.C., AVE CZ, Chesapeake Energy
Strava, The New York Times, Spotify, Blue Bottle Coffee Company, Eventbrite, Box, Circa, Stripe
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Atlassian, Liferay and others in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals). Updated: September 2025.
868,654 professionals have used our research since 2012.