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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
6.8
Number of Reviews
108
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 7.8%, up 7.8% compared to last year.
Atlassian Confluence, on the other hand, focuses on Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals), holds 13.0% mindshare, down 16.0% since last year.
Enterprise Content Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Alfresco7.8%
SharePoint11.3%
OpenText Content Management8.0%
Other72.9%
Enterprise Content Management
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Atlassian Confluence13.0%
SharePoint24.3%
Liferay Digital Experience Platform16.8%
Other45.900000000000006%
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.
Talha Hussain. - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Manage projects effectively with seamless task tracking and integration, but deployment requires familiarity
We are conducting all our project management using Atlassian tools. We use Atlassian Confluence for task management, reporting, visualization of tasks, and reviewing the progress of tickets and work I use Atlassian Confluence for task management and other project management tasks, such as…

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's technical support is very fast and professional."
"Document repository."
"The product allows engineering teams and developers to introduce new things in a seamless and easy way."
"You can meet your users' expected features without having Alfresco's involvement."
"The digitalization of workflow, forms, operations, and business processes is also significant."
"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."
"Atlassian Confluence is flexible and allows adding different types of context on the page and connecting a hypertext, like a web page, without a source."
"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."
"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."
"Confluence is very easy to use and feature-packed."
"I think that it is one of the best products on the market from my experience."
"The most valuable features are hyper-linking, the Drawing Tool, and enhanced tables."
"It has a very intuitive user interface, which every user able to manage the basic functionality of a PC will be able to work with and produce quite satisfactory results."
"The solution helped us to see where we were going wrong and where we were doing good, and that helped us to make proper decisions"
 

Cons

"Metadata, auto class, disposition log, and legal hold."
"I would like them to consider document capture functionality."
"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."
"Alfresco could improve workflow digitalization and enhance artificial intelligence capabilities."
"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 setup process for Alfresco was complex."
"The configuration of Alfresco is a big challenge."
"The UI is good but bland. It could be updated a bit to make it more modern and interesting to look at."
"The search function is not great."
"The UX is a little bit all over the place."
"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."
"The flexibility and simplicity of this solution could be improved. We would also like the ability to add plugins."
"Managing user permissions and credentials could be easier."
"Some elements of the user interface could be more user-friendly, including embedding diagrams."
"When we have a project that we don't want to share with everybody but want people to know that it exists, there is no way to do this in Confluence. When a project is not shared, people cannot see that it exits."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If you buy Alfresco through a partner, there is usually a OEM licensing option."
"There are costs for any upgrade or additional functions."
"There is a license needed to use Atlassian Confluence."
"The issues I have with the pricing are in respect to the add-ons."
"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 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."
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"To my knowledge, Atlassian Confluence had a pricing approach which is a commercial open-source solution, so that if you are a company, you had to pay an amount. This fee was not huge compared to other traditional solutions, and it was free for personal use or if you were an individual."
"In my opinion, it's worth the investment"
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, meaning its price falls somewhere in the mid-range zone."
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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
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
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 Business39
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: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.