Confluence Reviews

Pros

Confluence is a powerful collaboration tool that offers several impactful features. Its most impactful features include the ability to create and organize content, collaborate in real-time, and have version control for easy tracking and reverting of changes. With a user-friendly interface and intuitive design, Confluence is generally considered easy to use, allowing users to navigate, create, and edit content seamlessly. As for integration with existing business processes, Confluence provides various integrations and APIs that make integration with other tools and systems relatively straightforward. It offers flexible options for customizations, allowing businesses to tailor the tool to their specific needs and workflows, thus facilitating a smooth integration process with existing business processes.

Cons

As an end user of Confluence, I find the tool to be quite robust for collaboration, but there are a few features that I feel could be improved or added. For instance, I would appreciate more advanced formatting options, better task management capabilities, and improved visualization options for data. Additionally, I must admit that certain aspects of the product, such as complex permissions settings and the learning curve associated with advanced features, can be difficult to use initially. When it comes to integrating Confluence with our existing business processes, the level of difficulty can vary based on the complexity of our processes and the specific integrations required. In some cases, it has been challenging and has required additional configuration or development efforts, but Atlassian does provide resources, documentation, and support to help facilitate the integration process.

Alternatives Considered

Oracle Primavera Cloud and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Less features in Workday

Switched From

Workday Adaptive Planning

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

Those are planning tool but confluence come with JIRA tool as KM application.

Pros

Confluence's suite of team communication tools is crucial to any effort to increase output. It's a lot dependable and much cheaper than other options. It's essential equipment for anyone seeking total control over their team's overall performance.

Cons

It's a steep learning curve for our less tech-savvy customers to become proficient at working on our websites. The fact that the support staff is exclusively fluent in English may also be an inconvenience for some consumers. Integration with Azure DevOps is a little bit of a challenge.

Pros

It's industry standard and just works. Most people know how to use it already.

Cons

It's easy for information to become unorganized and sometimes the search functionality does not perform well making it hard to find information.

Pros

The software provides a rather generous free tier. The search capabilities are quite good, and there are many page formatting options, which makes it quite a good Wiki software potentially. However, the bugs and shortcomings of this software renders it rather unusable for us.

Cons

The software is VERY buggy, tends to crash unexpectedly (we tested it on strong machines, across users and browsers). It takes FOREVER to login. Getting to your Wiki takes lots of unnecessary clicks. What's worst is that each page must hold a unique names, so if for example you plan to create several page structures (with subpages and so on) with similar names, forget about it. It's due to the legacy architectural structure of the software, and can't be easily changed. Unfortunately, that what makes it fall behind. We dropped it for favor of modern alternatives.

Pros

I greatly enjoy the Kanban views, and ability to easily set up reporting across teams/boards. It's fairly easy to customize. Planning Sprints and seeing burn down reports is also very easy with this tool.

Cons

There really isn't much I dislike. I haven't used it for Resource Management so if you need to be able to do that ...I'm not sure if this is the tool for you.

Pros

Very easy to familiarize with and to use

Cons

The display of the inserted file that are not well attractive

Pros

The easy UI and descent editing options that are available.

Cons

Joint-editing a page is cumbersome as it provides less options to accept/discard changes.

Pros

It is easy to create and modify pages. Links and attachment are properly supported.

Cons

Search function cannot get to the page that I need. As a workaround, I rely to my broswer's bookmark function to help me find the page at a later time.

Pros

Compact and user-friendly, allowing easy editing and saving of changes.

Cons

I do not see any drawbacks while using the tool.

Pros

Confluence is good for a virtual meeting space where our team can document, collaborate, and brainstorm their ideas without the constraints of time or location. It's a workspace that allows us to organize our knowledge into a structured and accessible format, making it easy to share insights and best practices.

Cons

It is not easy to learn as a newbie and hard to find specific information sometimes. It can be slow and crashes sometimes.

Pros

Confluence gives best documentation platform for your projects. We can categorize based on different projects and sub projects. we can create links to another pages which is very useful to route to another document without searching for it. we can see all the documents related one project in one section. It gives you wide range of features to include images and diagrams to make the documentation more useful. We can also subscribe to the pages so that anyone make any changes we get notified.

Cons

Confluence needs more integration with the CICD tools available in the market to make more automated documentation. confluence needs to provide to create diagrams for documentation so that users dont need to go for external software for that.

Alternatives Considered

Google Docs

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

In confluence I can categorize based on projects and sub projects and I can see all the documents for that project and select based on the priorities. But in google docs we need to we need to keep a separate index for each documents and the docs are separate. we need to browse through the google docs to go to next one.

Pros

From the word go, our team was able to jump start and create a solid knowledge base for our entire enterprise. Being in Education and E-Learning domain - content is the heart of our business.

Managing content created by various teams inside company, partner contributions, freelancers content is extremely crucial and critical.

Some of the most important features of this product for us are: Document Management, Knowledge base, Version Control System, Structured Pages, Search

Cons

Confluence product does content related work really well. But that's not enough as we have grown in last 3 years and so are our requirements.

Integrations with forms, data collections, Kanban board, tasks etc have become kind of a must rather than good to have features.

We are currently on the premium plan and $10 per user for just managing document and collaboration seems little too much, specially when there are products which provide much more for less.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SharePoint, Drupal, Dropbox Paper and Asana

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

Initially we started maintaining and collaborating using Google Docs. With the amount of documents created, it was really getting difficult to manage, tag, structure the content and files around various categories of our educational departments.

Switched From

Google Docs

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

With confluence managing, creating and organizing content is extremely easy and above all confluence will keep track of all the changes. With easy file uploads, managing documents and creating structured pages will only help create better content.

Pros

The best feature that this has is the extended Add-In marketplace. You can find the proper Add-In to express your ideas in the best way: Coding, Images or illustrations, animated gifs or videos, and even forms inside the documents and pages. From a user perspective, this is one on the easiest knowledge base software in the market, and also you have the bakcing of Atlassian. The process of the integration with our existing business logic was easy because we didn't have a strict knowledge base, but Confluence gave us the foundations to build one from scratch.

Cons

The export tools and options you have inside the platform are not good. The data isn't portable, so you can't migrate easily to another platform in case you want. The installation process was complex, but today, they stopped producing self-hosted applications, so you are obligated to use their cloud services, and it can be a problem if the company has a strict data policy, like restrictions in the phisycal storage of the data.

Alternatives Considered

MediaWiki

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

It's easier to use from a end-user perspective. It stimulates the generation of the documentation inside the business.

Pros

Confluence provides a safe method for sharing knowledge and working on projects among team members. The main business, Atlassian, provides a wide range of reliable plugins. Because everyone on the team can make changes to the document repository and see when and who made them, this is one of the finest features of confluence's document sharing and management system.

Cons

Many plugins are available, and it might be difficult to pick the ideal one for our purposes. This takes up a lot of time. The guidelines are typically adequate.

Pros

Atlassian Confluence is a platform for teamwork and information exchange that has helped our company greatly improve its operations. The platform is accessible to all users and features a straightforward interface, enabling our company to set up shared workspaces where employees can efficiently complete a wide range of assignments. It's steady, and it's facilitated the simple expansion of our holdings.

Cons

There was a difficult learning curve for some of our less tech-savvy consumers to become proficient on the site. Some users may find it inconvenient that customer service is only offered in English.

Pros

Confluence is an incredibly powerful and flexible collaboration platform for teams. It enables teams to easily store, share, and collaborate on documents, notes, tasks, and more. The interface is intuitive and easy to use, making it simple for teams to get started quickly. It also has a wide range of powerful features, including powerful search capabilities, easy-to-use editing tools, and the ability to create custom workflows.

Cons

While Confluence is a powerful collaboration platform, it can be a bit overwhelming for users who aren't familiar with the platform. Additionally, the cost of using Confluence can be prohibitive for smaller teams.

Pros

The ease to document a wide variety of software related information makes it a strong tool for the teams it has been developed. They also have made it very easy to use several templates for meetings etc. If you integrate it with the main product Jira, then you have a very good combination of tools for software development and follow up documentation.

Cons

To work properly with confluence you should also use Jira as project management tool. It is hard to implement it without Jira.To make proper documentation a lot of extra plug-ins make your live a lot easier. Some are free, others are at a cost.Integration with office, google workspace etc is hard.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft SharePoint

Reasons for Choosing Confluence

The documentation and integration with Jira is way better then trying to integrate microsoft sharepoint with Jira. Also the ease of the interface makes it for developers easier to create relations to the project.

Switched From

Microsoft SharePoint

Reasons for Switching to Confluence

Ease of use and integration with Jira.

Pros

You can design your own page layouts in Confluence and use them for your content. This facilitates the development of uniform, expert-looking web pages. Using Confluence's built-in macro functionality, you can easily incorporate data-driven elements like tables, charts, and photos into your pages. The ability to leave comments on Confluence pages facilitates conversation and furthers teamwork.

Cons

One of my biggest gripes with Confluence is how sluggish and unresponsive it can be at times. When working on a group project, this can be very irritating. In addition, the search function isn't always the most refined, and it may take some time to locate the data you require.

Pros

#1 I love Confluence, as it's so user friendly and so simple to use. I've taken it and built out the structure at my new company, as well as previous ones to make our shared Confluence space a HUB for our Documentation, Meetings Customers/Projects/Team, Resources, Planning, you name it. It's so easy and it's a great way to keep everyone informed and involved. AND you can customize how it looks.

Cons

Not much I dislike. Maybe if I could have a few more customization options, but that is about it.

Pros

Excellent program for group work and information exchange. It comes with more than a hundred different layouts to choose from. Access controls are provided, and team members can easily connect with one another. It's an excellent resource for building and managing a database of how-to guides to be distributed to clients. It's also great because it works in tandem with other attlassian applications, such as JIRA.

Cons

Unless one is familiar with the relevant duties, I find the administrative side to be a bit of a hassle. Limitations in personalization and usability in document format selection make it difficult to create documents in specific ways.

Pros

Confluence is great for creating company manuals or documenting company procedures. Think of it as a formal business blog or a wiki where you can keep a record of anything from basic tables outlining company info to company policies which can then be shared with the rest of the employees so that they can in turn, learn and input their own observations and knowledge. It organizes the pages for you and it makes it easy for anyone to search, edit and add new pages to keep the knowledge growing. At my company, we use it as a manual and all new employees have to read through it as part of their training. It allows you to add photos or videos to document special past events or to just simply make the page more interesting. The formatting ribbon looks similar to Microsoft word's so if you have experience with using a Word document then it should be no problem using the different types of formating options and if you have no experience then you'll get the hang of it pretty soon as it's fairly easy to deduce what each button does. I love how it is able to save any edits you make to a page and it doesn't publish it until you are ready so you are able to make new pages and edit old ones at your own pace and once you are done you can click on "publish". It alows you to restrict what other people can and cannot edit, it sends notifications to those who have a user in your account. I would recommend it.

Cons

The interface could use more color or some pizzazz as it looks pretty dull and it reminds me of an electric appliance manual: gray and boring to the point that you feel like throwing it away but then you are too afraid to do so because you may never know when you might need it. But then again, I use it as a company manual so I can't do much there, I'm guessing if you want something prettier then go get a blogging account but Confluence gets straight to the point and it should be taken seriously.

Pros

We use Confluence for serval years now, together with Jira (Ticket Management) and Bamboo (Build Server). It has proven its value time and again for us and provided us with clear, easy to navigate and edit business documentation for almost all areas of business. The Editor is esy to use, there are Plugins for all imaginable use cases (for example specific PDF exports) and a great FAQ and very helpful community. The Editor for content is fantastically in terms of ease of use and results to be generated. Also all Articles are stored versioned, so you can easyly go back a version, or check what has been changed in case you have to get back up to speed on a topic you left checking a while ago. You can follow authors, topics or wiki Spaces so Confluence keeps you in the loop about what is happening. In case you work on confidential material the user access management is just a dream to use, simple, powerful and without any ruged edges. Additional Features are added and when they are they are well thought through and perfectly conceptualized. I never have found a feature which did not deliver what it promised and more. Some are not for me but the ones that were introduced and sounded interesting generally were. This is THE tool for anyone who wants to document all kinds ok business knowledge from simple things like HowTo or FAQ Article to complex branches of deccsion documentations connected to development progress (by Jira ticket integration).

Cons

Confluence has a lot of great features. The main Issue with Wiki Systems often is they work great in teh beginning and later become bogged down with badly maintained content or just forgotten structures. The search for the wiki still is not perfect. It has improved and is fine to use but I have seen better. There are also not a lot of features that support administrators in decluttering a large or huge Wiki and sometimes we had issues for complex, nested user rights. Also as always the case when you have an ecosystem of plugins, you have to make sure anything is compatible with a new version before you update, especially if it is a third party extension. Don't get me wrong, there is not much to complain here, you have to really look hard in order to find anything bad about Confluence.

Pros

We use Confluence on a daily basis to document various aspects of our organization. There is a large variety of built-in templates for a variety of sorts of documents. We heavily utilize the how-to articles to record procedures. Although it does link with other Altassian products, like Jira, we don't use that functionality currently as we run Confluence on-site and Jira in the cloud. The upgrade to version 6 greatly increased the usefulness of the product, as it brought in concurrent editing, ala Google Docs, which was functionality we needed when developing procedures for an event as a group. The search and indexing capabilities make it easy to find a document if its location is not obvious.

Cons

Search and indexing can lose usefulness in the event you have many similar documents, like say a checklist that is executed often. I would like a function to be able to click a check box to "ignore results like this." The initial setup of Confluence was not completely straightforward, however, we were installing on an older version, version 5. (The upgrade to version 6 went much smoother.) I would prefer an omnibus install package if it doesn't currently have that rather than having to install PostgreSQL and the application. The LDAP integration could have been a little bit smoother than it was, although it is in line with the other Atlassian products I have integrated.

Pros

The software is very easy to use for its most basic features - as a place to create and store content. It is a solid tool for a knowledge base or even project management. Macros allow creatively in how content is displayed and linked or mirrored from other pages. Users can control permissions, visibility and see a clear history of changes - which can be easily reverted back to if necessary. Page trees make it simple to navigate complex "spaces" of information and the search functionality is robust. Overall, a great place to develop content for internal collaboration and future reference.

Cons

Although Confluence is a great place to create and collaborate on content, it has a few major downfalls that are a constant source of frustration. The biggest issue relates to users working on the same page at the same time. This is a horrible experience at best. Content between users is frequently lost or overwritten and you can never be confident in if your content will save successfully and not disappear. When Confluence tries to merge changes, it often will lose content or simply not work at all. The result is users ensuring that only one person is editing at a time, which is a terrible annoyance and slows teams down. It often causes teams to actively collaborate in another tool where this is not an issue and then simply link to it through Confluence.

Pros

Since we work remotely, confluence is the main repository for our documents (I belong to the People & Ops team and we have a lot of policies and processes documents to maintain).

Here is what I like the most about confluence:

1. I feel its a perfect combination of a word and a presentation file; you can be as creative as you want with your content with no length limit (like in a presentation file)
2. I absolutely love how we can create sections within the document - makes the whole document look absolutely organized
3. We also can create indexes like in books so it's very convenient to find any particular topic that we are looking for
4. Easy to create and share any document
5. If you are collaborating with multiple people on a document, it's very easy to assign a certain task to them using the tagging and action item feature
6. You get amazing options to complete your document - layouts, table, heading, alignment of text/images, emoji
7. Also if you have not tried the insert function yet, you are missing out a whole deal there - with so many options to choose from, this makes the document very very interactive

Cons

All the features in confluence are great. However, since I am also a user of the google sheet and word, the only pinch I feel - and this is about every time I use Confluence - is the lack of font to choose from.

The default font is good as it makes the whole document look very professional. But for documents where we actually want to add more fun, I believe, we would definitely need more fonts :)