Last Updated: November 2024
Tired of being buried in Slack channels or lost in a never-ending email thread? Atlassian Confluence is a popular choice for teams that already use collaboration tools but need a more advanced collaboration space. The most popular use case for Confluence has to be task documentation, meeting agenda creation, integrating with collaboration tools to create tasks from meetings, creating how-to articles on workflows and procedures, and much more.
As you can see, this tool integrates a variety of software, including internal wikis, project management tools, collaboration tools, and so on. This adaptability is at the heart of Atlassian’s Confluence’s advantages and disadvantages.
However, despite the various features, is Atlassian Confluence the right help desk for your business? In this post, we will do an in depth Atlassian Confluence review to help you make the right decision.
Atlassian Confluence Pros and Cons
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Confluence Reviews, Pricing, and Features
Pricing and Plans (Rating ⭐4.52/5, 48 reviews)
Pricing and Plans
Let’s take a look at some of the Atlassian confluence pricing options: Free, Standard, Premium, Enterprise
- Free- $0 Per 10 agents/mo (2 GB file storage, Community Support, Unlimited spaces and pages, etc)
- Standard- $5.50 Per 10 agents/mo (User limit- 35,000 users, Page insights, 250 GB file storage, Local Business Hours Support, etc)
- Premium- $10.50 Per 10 agents/mo (User limit- 35,000 users, Unlimited storage, 24/7 Premium Support, 99.9% Guaranteed Uptime SLA )
- Enterprise – Minimum user tier: 801 – 1000 ($97,500/ year) ( User limit- 35,000 users, Unlimited Site Limit, 24/7 Enterprise Support, 99.95% Guaranteed Uptime SLA)
Please note that the pricing mentioned above is based on monthly plans for 10 users. The pricing per month will move up based on the number of users you have.
If you are using lots of plugins pay attention to their pricing condition. Very often the vendors changing from free to pay model. Apps / plugins are billed based on the number of users in your host product (Confluence).
⭐3.5 /5 Tomáš L
Pricing is a little bit tricky – every time you add a person to your headcount, you not pay more per user….. until certain threshold is met. After that, the price shoots up pretty fast and might quickly double.
Some features feel outdated, especially concerning user interface, e.g. calendar. Also, adding a document and versioning it is a little bit confusing and not very straight forward.
However, users have discovered that the platform can be quite costly to own and operate. The Marketplace apps appear to be very cheap – even free – but if you have a large user base, the cost per app is automatically multiplied by the number of users. If your company has a large number of users, it can add up to a significant investment. It’s also worth noting that some basic functionality, such as page views and document workflows, are only available as expensive add-ons.
Interface and Ease of Use (Ratings ⭐4.21/5, 329 reviews)
Interface and Ease of Use
The first thing you’ll notice when you open the platform is that it has a simple user interface that allows your organization to create collaborative work spaces to easily work on various tasks and projects on time.
Atlassian’s Confluence has a very well-structured user interface that allows users to quickly scroll to the topics they want to read. This can assist your team in better preparing for meetings and asking the right questions after reading the entire workflow.
Here are some important things to know about Confluence’s user interface:
- You’ll discover that dragging and dropping files in the platform is simple. Users can choose who they want to share a file with when they add it to a page. Everyone on the team who has access to them can view and download them.
- Confluence lags behind other collaboration tools in terms of document collaboration. It includes the standard features such as uploading, commenting, and adding notes, but it is not nearly as impressive as how other tools handle document collaboration. Advanced features such as PDF markup tools, drawing options, or a star rating system are not available.
- The comment option on pages is the only default communication feature. You’ll need to integrate with communication apps like Slack for real-time communication.
The interface is very clean and intuitive. You can automatically generate a Table of Contents. You can collaborate with your colleagues and easily link to a heading in the document, an outside source, or Jira issue. There are many, many plugins hidden behind the Insert button in the editor. You can even customize, say, a Lucidchart diagram you inserted.
The platform is web-based, but there are free Android and iOS mobile apps available. Confluence can be used as a desktop app, but it requires some workarounds using tools such as ConfluenceFX. (Note: Users have complained that the mobile versions are lacking in basic features.)
Dashboards (Ratings ⭐4.41/5, 24 reviews)
Dashboards
Atlassian Confluence includes a global dashboard to which all of your users can access. You can customize the dashboard to display the most recent company blog posts, announcements, Gantt charts, and so on. Admins can even change the layout of their dashboard to match the required workflows.
Centralized knowledge base, easily searchable, and seamless integration with Jira makes Confluence our go-to tool for keeping track of documents, projects, and files. The wiki tools give it a nice look and there’s so much useful information in the dashboard. I like how the labels in Jira and Confluence are linked to show related pages/issues.
⭐5/5 Lisa H
Get the whole Atlassian Suite! It has majorly improved our work flows and processes and overall business needs with all of the tools included. Having everything in one place, with an included dashboard to see everything, really helps make work much more efficient, from the top, down to the lower level employees!
⭐5/5 Usman K
The Confluence dashboard is extremely user-friendly. All of your project information is on the right, and the navigation menu allows you to move to new updates or assigned work. Although creating multiple dashboards is not an option, your users can choose a specific page as their dashboard when they first access the platform.
Reporting (Ratings ⭐ 4.28/5, 38 reviews)
Reporting
Confluence, in addition to being an excellent tool for task management and cross-functional collaboration, provides some reporting functionality to collect data from various pages, organize it, and provide a clear overview.
Traditional repositories and reporting tools you use can be potentially replaced by the platform. Here’s why:
- Direct integration with Jira
- Good location to store and display reports that can be updated through Jira queries, making them live, real-time reports
- A practical method for keeping current documents updated, so they don’t become obsolete
Confluence has a project status report template, but it requires Jira. If your team does not use Jira, you must create a new page with the Page Properties macro. It’s also safe to say that this platform isn’t the most visually appealing project management software solution available. You only have two options for viewing projects/reports in different ways. Build a page using custom properties macros, which are limited, or use a marketplace integration.
I like the ability to easily customize pages, structures, and content to make it easy to find. I love the integration with Jira to create easy to use and fully traceable reporting between the two. In addition, I like the ability to store and collaboratively edit documents with teams so that there is always a single source of truth.
Integrations (Ratings ⭐ 4.4/5, 343 reviews)
Integrations
As you can see, Confluence already has enough features to distinguish itself from other collaboration tools. When you consider the platform’s various integration options with other Atlassian and third-party products, it becomes a compelling sell for any modern organization. Integrating with all of the platform’s apps can make it the only platform a team needs to run a project from start to finish.
The platform integrates deeply with other tools such as Jira, Slack, HipChat, and Miro, allowing you to easily share content between them. Confluence also integrates with Google apps and Microsoft software such as Office 365. Other popular integrations include:
- Zendesk
- Notion
- GitHub
- RocketChat
- Google Drive
- GitLab
- BitBucket
- Bamboo
The Atlassian Marketplace has a plethora of apps that power integrations and add functionality. If you need a tool for design, document management, communication, productivity, or project management, there’s a good chance this marketplace has an integration or a plug-in for it.
There’s even a “Staff Picks” section where Atlassian’s Ecosystem team selects top apps to highlight each quarter. If you’re new to the Atlassian Marketplace, these apps are a great place to start.
We can easily integrate any other app which we see fit, for example, Miro or Slack or anything other plugins or integrations. Confluence is a paradise for software developers because it offers seamless integration with Jira,, which coders already use for debugging.
⭐5/5 Krishna V
Although many of these are paid integrations, Confluence is a no-brainer for teams that already use Atlassian products and require ease of use.
Bottom Line
Confluence is obviously a great platform that provides an intuitive workspace and integrations with key productivity and tracking tools. However, Confluence’s pricing can be complicated. This is exacerbated by the pricing of plugins. Some plugins, such as Gliffy Diagrams, cost $3.8 per user per month (once you have more than 10 users). That’s a significant increase from your initial investment in the platform, and these can quickly add up. If your team is already using Atlassian tools like Jira, investing in this tool may make sense because it is designed to work with those platforms. Otherwise, you should probably look into other options.
If you’re just getting started with knowledge base systems and want to make it easier for your team to provide the best service possible, Saufter could be the platform for you. It is a multi-channel customer service help desk designed for both small businesses and enterprise teams. The platform is designed to be cost-effective, easy to set up, and most agents can get started on Saufter with little to no training.
So, what are you waiting for?