Atlassian Confluence Reviews

I manage the solution in my organization.

I have used the solution both on-premises and on cloud. Using the solution on-premises is easier than using the cloud version. The cloud version is a different product. The on-premises version has more features.

There were 1,500 people using Confluence at my previous company.

The trial stages, the ability to connect it to Jira, and the ability to export in PDF are all good capabilities.

I would like Confluence to include the ability to draw flowcharts and diagrams.
There's a small tool that you can use to draw, but it was very cumbersome. When you have to import or paste the pictures, you have to get that information into the table columns. When you're merging or unmerging, the table can break. Copy and paste on Excel doesn't work easily because Excel is the primary tool that most people use.

Excel is very easy to use. Confluence has issues with usability. It's slightly cumbersome. If they made it more usable with Excel and drawings, it would be a much more powerful tool.

I worked with Confluence for three years.

I would rate the stability as eight out of ten. We didn't have many issues with stability.

The scalability is fine on-premises. We had some issues with the scalability on the cloud.

We had an internal IT team for support.

We mainly use SharePoint to store documents. We use Confluence as a document creator and storage tool.

Setup is pretty simple. We did the basic setup. When we created a project, we could give access to people and start creating a trial page, parent page, etc.

I would rate Confluence as seven out of ten. 

My advice is go for more features so that the templates can be used. The base version of cloud isn't that usable. There are huge differences between the two.

The company needed a tool that project managers put their plans, documentation, and everything related to project management into, including milestones that are not available on Jira. They have to use both this and Jira in order to give a full report to management.

When you're working with Agile, you can't go through from one sprint to another without having a good burndown chart. 

I love the reports and the Confluence board. 

The search functionality is great. 

For me, the initial setup is easy. 

The solution is scalable.

It's a stable product. 

I have a problem with the burndown chart, for example, if I put a time only on the estimation block, it'll not show on the burndown chart. It has to be the points.

I'd like to see better reporting.

The UX is a little bit all over the place. From my experience, people really find it very hard to cope with Jira when they start using that.

The setup could be streamlined further. 

I've used the solution for about 12 years. 

The stability is great. There are no bugs or glitches. 

The product scales well. 

We started at 100 users and have since scaled to 300 users. We will continue to increase usage. 

We previously used a local tool. We needed something better for handling project management. 

The implementation process is easy for me. People sometimes find it easy and yet there is room for improvement in the process. 

We advised a third party on how our workflows needed to be implemented and they implemented them on the cloud. Then they moved the project to our cloud and set it as a base for everything there. It was actually really smooth. It didn't take too much time.

The full implementation strategy took two months. 

There was a little bit of complication from the bank side. We have a lot of security, unblocked IPS, et cetera. The two months weren't the full implementation time. We had areas that were blocked due to our security control. A couple of times we remained blocked for one week. I want to say the ideal time for the implementation was one month and a week. For us, of course, it took longer. 

We had five people in total ding the deployment. There were three from our side and two from the third party. 

I'd rate the entire process a three out of five in terms of the ease of implementation. 

We have a contract for handling maintenance. The vendor partners are handling it. 

A third-party handled the implementation process. 

I can't speak to the exact cost of the solution. 

We are users and work directly with a vendor partner. 

We are using the latest version of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I love Confluence. I'd recommend it to other users. People should try it out. It would be very helpful. 

We primarily use the solution for software engineering.

We document all of our software development workflows and the test cases around each software feature, which has been quite helpful for our organization.

The integration capabilities are very useful.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

It is stable and reliable.

I find the product to be scalable.

The cost of the solution is too high.

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

The solution is stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

It is scalable and expands well. 

We have 42 people using the solution. We do have plans to increase usage. 

Technical support has been helpful and responsive. 

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. 

The product is easy to set up. It's not a complex process. 

Overall, the product requires zero maintenance. 

We have seen an ROI while using the solution. 

I find the solution to be expensive. We pay $350 a month to use the solution. 

I did not evaluate any other solution before choosing this product. 

This is a SaaS solution. There is no particular version of the product. 

I'd advise potential new users that they cannot implement Confluence without Jira.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. I've been very happy with its capabilities. 

We use Atlassian Confluence for the documentation of the application or applications that we are billing. 

Confluence has other functions. My team uses, Confluence every day, but I am just writing some information there that is used for the entire team and is vital for the entire team. 

We are also writing various kinds of material. It is useful for the team to interact and convey information, as well as to document only the information that we use.

I only use it occasionally to check up on documentation or to compose something. 

That is what I am doing. That is the only thing my team uses, however, we also use Confluence to communicate information to the customer. 

Our Confluence is available to the customer. 

We are working on the release notes, and he can get data or the most recent version via our app.

I work with Confluence, however, I'm not sure what's lacking.

The price could be improved. I have heard that certain adjustments would be made in 2024 and that it will then be more expensive, but I don't know the specifics.

I have been using Atlassian Confluence for one year.

We are using the premium version.

Atlassian Confluence is quite stable. I have not had any problems with the stability.

Atlassian Confluence is scalable, and usable from anywhere, as well as from my phone. There are various Confluence or Jira applications, I can access the data immediately anytime I want.

We have multiple projects and half of my colleagues are using it. We have approximately 25 users in our organization.

We have plans to increase our usage. 

We intend to extend it throughout the entire organization. We want to conduct certain HR initiatives on Jira as well. 

Our HR department may also collaborate with them and Jira. I believe it is a useful tool.

I have not contacted technical support.

I use Jira to manage everything in development, and I also use it because we operate in Scrum.

I also use YouTrack.

We used Word to document everything, but that should be the last THRIVE threaded with SharePoint. But, in my opinion, the ideal way is to use all of Confluence for that.

I was not involved with the initial setup. It was done by my colleague.

We now have two or three persons setting up our administrators, and they are setting up some data and looking after the maintenance.

We have to pay licensing fees.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I think that it is one of the best products on the market from my experience.

I would rate Atlassian Confluence a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for documentation purposes. It's very tightly integrated with Jira, so we handle project management with Jira and document management with Confluence.

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 way both work together helps us to reduce the duplication of the codes, and if we need to have documentation, we describe it in Confluence and tag the page in the Jira ticket for someone to work on, which reduces the duplication of work.

On each page, we can see the different version updates that have already been done by colleagues. It's auditable, which helps us to figure out what changes have been done at what point. Documentation with an auditing capability helps us to manage the overall documentation effectively.

Nowadays, the standard for documentation for developers is mostly in Markdown, so pretty much everything we can do is in the Markdown language. The support for Confluence to import something that's in Markdown is not that great. Sometimes it's also not that great when it comes to including code snippets or similar things, so I think the couple of improvement areas would be around Markdown support and support for adding code.

As for added features, I would like to see more flexibility in the way we can design a workflow in Confluence, and maybe some templates that we can use based on the purpose of the document. 

I would also like to see more integration with other common application services. Other than draw.io, there is not much integration to other services like Lucidchart or similar services, which are helpful for reporting your documentation with drawings and architecture diagrams. Those improvements would make it a bit more user-friendly.

I have been using this solution for five years now. 

The stability partly depends upon the resources that you allocate for the solution, but it's pretty much been stable for the last couple of years that I've been working with it.

The solution is scalable and it's centrally controlled, and we have a couple of central responsibility roles for adding new users. It's helpful for us on the backend because if we want to provide access to different sets of people, some may need edit access, some may need read-only access, and we utilize those different permissions.

Other than utilizing the public documentation that is available, I haven't reached out to the support team.

I was not very involved in the setup of Confluence, but my understanding is that it was not that difficult.

Confluence might be a burden to small and medium companies, like startups, so I probably would not recommend it to them, but I would definitely recommend it for companies at the enterprise level.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten because we found it helpful. It's good if you are in need of long-term documentation of projects, both on the functional side and the technical side, but at the same time, it needs some improvements, like more integration to other solutions. 

We use it for our knowledge base and also for internal blogging.

The templates are a valuable feature. You can make templates. There is a space inside where you can create pages. When you use the template, the page auto-generates text and images. You do not have to think about the structure of your page as well, which I think is a very good thing for a user. Because usually when you're in front of a blank page, it can be a bit dreadful to know where to start.

Some macros can be technical, and they are better managed on the Confluence cloud rather than on-premises. For example, when you add an image on the cloud, you can resize it just by using the mouse. This is not the case on-premises yet. You have to write pixels of the size of the image sometimes.

Some of the very old macros are still there, and some of them are technical. It can be hard for users if they are not from an IT background to understand how to use them quickly.

There's a feature that is really helpful that I like, but it is inside the cloud version and not in the on-premises version. It is the inline comment in edit mode. In fact, you can do inline comments on articles and pages on both the cloud and on-premises versions, but when you modify the page on the cloud, you can still see them but in edit mode. When you edit the page, you cannot see them anymore. You need to have two tabs in order to remember what the comments were.

I've been using it for four years.

Stability wise, Confluence is a reliable tool, and as a wiki, it's a good tool. So, there are no known performance issues.

With regard to Confluence on-premises, the performance would obviously depend on the infrastructure and the hardware behind the installation. So, it won't really be linked to the tool.

On the cloud side, the stability is okay as well.

Confluence is scalable on both the cloud and server data center. On the cloud, you can even go up to 10,000 users, which was not the case three or four years ago.

We have nearly 300 users. We do our assignment reports on it, and some use it in sales. Managed services staff use it to share information with clients. It is used by everyone.

The installation is easy, and there's nothing more to do after the installation. It can be ready to use very quickly.

Deployment would probably take a day or two at the most. However, if the client needs advice regarding the structure of the company and how to do the knowledge base, then it can take several days. Usually, this is up to the organization, but as it's really quick to use, you can create whatever you want the day after the installation.

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.

You should use Atlassian Confluence, but you should not expect it to behave like a document manager. People do ask me what the advantage of Confluence is compared to that of SharePoint, but in fact, this is not the same use case. SharePoint is for storing documents at a place, and Confluence is a wiki.

I would recommend that you go for it but you will need to remember that it's a wiki and is not designed to store documents. It can store documents, but only up to a certain size. Also, it's not meant to be used to store documents.

If you are looking to deploy your organization or your projects inside Confluence, do think about the right structure because it will influence the way your people use it. Think about how to deploy the structure of your projects or your documents inside the Confluence, and do not expect it to be a document manager.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Atlassian Confluence an eight because it's a great tool. It's a great wiki and is easy to use. It's easy to understand how to use it as well, particularly if you are from an IT background. Someone who is not from an IT background might need some help in the beginning on how to use it. The setup is really easy, and you do not need specific skills to deploy it. However, the comment feature and macros need improvement. It would be nice to have more templates in the future.

We mainly use Confluence for our internal documentation work and to plan new features, design documents, and knowledge transfer documents. Most of the documentation work is done using Confluence. 

We have a separate Confluence space for our team, with public articles about our projects and how to set up our repositories, available for anyone to access. 

Additionally, we maintain private content within the team's Confluence space.

Confluence has significantly improved the productivity of our team. Previously, finding information required asking someone or searching through improperly organized resources. Now, all onboarding documents, knowledge transfer documents, and documents regarding features are within our Confluence space, making it easy to find information as needed.

Confluence is very easy to use and feature-packed. It allows us to design well-organized documents and offers valuable add-ons. Its integration capabilities enable direct linking of pull requests and certain issues across spaces, facilitating easy navigation and enhanced collaborative work.

The discoverability of documents could be improved. In scenarios where documents are managed by another department or we are looking for specific documents, the process could be enhanced for easier discovery.

We have been working with Confluence for about a year.

Confluence is stable, and we haven't experienced any disruptions with their service.

We have not escalated any questions to technical support.

Positive

Before Confluence, we predominantly used SharePoint and Microsoft products. We decided to switch to Confluence as we were already using Jira and Bitbucket, making the transition to Confluence seamless with other Atlassian products.

Properly use the features available in Confluence, such as site spaces and other functionalities.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We are a banking institution and use this solution to provide the key technical and functional documentation of the project that we share with our users. I'm the managing partner and we are customers of Atlassian.

The product is quite intuitive and user-friendly. It offers a lot of freedom when drafting directly online, and there are some very nice features to connect with JIRA, for instance. It's helpful that the solution enables documentation of user histories that you are following or tracking in JIRA and links the two. 

The performance could be improved, we sometimes run into difficulties creating tables. 

I've been using this solution for six years. 

The solution is very stable, we've never had a problem. 

The solution is very easy to scale, especially because it's easy to interface with other applications. In my project at the bank we have over 100 users; my client has thousands of users. 

I've never directly contacted Atlassian support because we have our internal IT department. If I have an issue, I raise an internal ticket via ServiceNow and the administrators of the bank take care of things. If necessary, they contact the vendor.

I'm not an administrator but I believe the initial setup is relatively simple. From a user perspective, you can very easily create a dashboard, quick links, and things like that.

This is a very easy cloud-based solution that permits collaborative drafting of documents. We can have several people editing documentation at the same time which simplifies things. It's a good solution for technical and functional documentation.

I rate this solution eight out of 10.