Overview

Confluence is Atlassian’s workspace for team knowledge and project collaboration, best suited to organizations that need shared documentation alongside Jira planning. Its combination of pages, whiteboards, databases, and video messaging is useful for keeping work connected, though its free tier is deliberately small and the broadest controls sit on higher plans.

Teams can edit together in real time, comment on pages or specific passages, and receive notifications when tagged or assigned tasks. Jira connections also let teams turn whiteboard ideas into tracked work, making Confluence a stronger fit for project-centered documentation than a standalone wiki.

Rovo can reshape content into timelines, charts, maps, slides, and prototypes. Its Connectors can bring material from Google Drive, Slack, Salesforce, GitHub, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint into AI-powered search, chat, and workflows. That breadth suits teams working across those services, although Confluence’s central appeal remains the shared workspace and Jira connection.

Key features

Pages, whiteboards, databases, and Loom video messaging: These give teams several ways to record knowledge and develop ideas in one workspace, rather than limiting collaboration to documents alone.
Live collaboration and history: Co-editing, comments, task assignments, notifications, and version history support active team work and a record of changes.
Jira connection: Documentation and project tracking can sit together, and whiteboard ideas can become Jira work. This is a meaningful advantage for teams already organizing projects in Jira.
Integrations and Marketplace: Confluence connects with other apps teams use; Atlassian says its own catalog has hundreds of apps for areas such as theming, diagrams, and workflows, within thousands of Marketplace apps overall.
Sharing and guests: View-only pages can be shared by public link, while paid plans allow up to five free guests per paid user. These options help extend access, but public links are view-only.
Security and compliance: Data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or later with perfect forward secrecy and at rest with AES-256 full-disk encryption. Atlassian’s compliance program includes SOC 2, SOC 3, PCI DSS, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27018, and GDPR.

Pricing

Confluence is freemium, with a seven-day trial and paid plans from 5.42 USD per user per month. Monthly subscriptions qualify for a refund within the first paid month; annual subscriptions qualify within 30 days of payment.

Plan	Price and terms	What it includes and who it suits
Free	0.00 USD per free; free forever	Up to 10 users, 2 GB file storage, three active whiteboards per user, and 50 automation steps per subscription per month. A sensible way for a small group to start, but the user cap and shared automation allowance constrain larger or more active teams.
Standard	5.42 USD per user per month	Everything in Free, up to 250,000 users per site, 250 GB storage, 100 automation steps per user per month, and 9/5 regional support. It removes the free tier’s team-size ceiling and adds business-hours regional support, making it the practical paid starting point for growing teams.
Premium	10.44 USD per user per month	Everything in Standard, unlimited storage and whiteboards, 250 automation steps per user per month, 24/7 critical-issue support, and a 99.9% uptime SLA. The higher price is most relevant to teams that need those capacity, support, or uptime commitments.
Enterprise	Custom pricing; billed annually; contact sales	Multiple sites up to 150, 500 automation steps per user per month, 24/7 support, and a 99.95% uptime SLA. It is aimed at organizations needing multi-site administration and enterprise-level service commitments.

Enterprise adds advanced encryption and Shadow IT controls, IdP support, SCIM, enforced SSO, multiple sites, centralized visibility and identity management with Guard Standard, advanced analytics, and compliance controls. Advanced encryption and these identity controls make the tier more relevant to organizations with stringent governance needs. Support ranges from Community Support on Free to 24/7 dedicated support on Enterprise; Premium has 24/7 critical-issue support, with a 30-minute critical-issue response time on Enterprise.

Platforms

Confluence is available on Android, iOS, web, and as a self-hosted option. The Cloud mobile app syncs published work across smartphones, tablets, and desktop web. Cloud products provide a complete SaaS solution; Data Center products can be deployed on infrastructure of the organization’s choice, which suits teams that need to manage their own deployment.

Who it's for

Confluence fits teams that want a shared knowledge base tied to project planning, especially those using Jira or needing real-time editing, multiple content formats, and integrations with other workplace apps. Small groups can use Free, while larger organizations can scale through paid plans and, at Enterprise, multiple sites and centralized controls. It is less compelling for a team that only needs a lightweight, standalone wiki or has no use for its wider collaboration and project-work features.

Pros and cons

Pro: Pages, whiteboards, databases, and Loom messaging serve different documentation and collaboration needs in one workspace.
Pro: Jira integration links planning and documentation with project tracking, including a path from whiteboard ideas to Jira work.
Pro: The Free plan supports 10 users, with whiteboards and automation included, offering a usable starting point for small teams.
Pro: Cloud and self-managed deployment options, plus guest and public sharing, accommodate different access and operating needs.
Con: Free is limited to 10 users and 2 GB of storage, with only 50 automation steps per subscription each month.
Con: Storage and whiteboards become unlimited only on Premium, and stronger uptime, support, and enterprise identity controls require higher-priced tiers.

Alternatives

MediaWiki is a free, self-hosted option under GNU GPL version 2 or later for teams that want wiki software across a broad range of platforms without a paid plan.

Wiki.js is a free, AGPL-licensed self-hosted alternative for teams seeking a no-cost wiki deployment.

BookStack offers a free, MIT-licensed self-hosted installation for teams that want to run their own instance at no software cost.

Slab has a free plan for up to 10 users, with unlimited posts and topics, making it an alternative for small teams that want a web-based knowledge space.

TiddlyWiki is a free alternative available on web, desktop, and mobile platforms.

BlueSpice offers a free self-hosted distribution with business features including a visual editor, performance search, templates, and PDF export.

Docmost has a free Community edition with real-time collaboration, spaces, full-text search, page history and restore, and public sharing, for teams wanting those capabilities in a self-hosted edition.

MoinMoin is a free software alternative licensed under the GNU GPL, with self-hosted availability.

Browse Wiki Software, Knowledge base software, Knowledge Management Software, Internal Knowledge Base Software, Document Collaboration Software, and Team Collaboration Software for more options in these categories.

Verdict

Choose Confluence if your team needs a shared documentation hub that can connect directly to Jira and support collaboration across pages, whiteboards, databases, and video. Its Free tier is a credible start for up to 10 people, but its limits make Standard the more practical choice as a team grows. Look elsewhere if you need only a lean wiki or prefer a free, self-hosted tool without Confluence’s broader workspace.

	Confluence	Fern
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Free trial	Yes	No
Paid from	$5.42/mo	Free
Open source	No	No
Platforms	Android, iOS, self-hosted, Web	Web
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Paid from	Free	—
Publishing audience	both	both
Custom domain	Yes	Yes
SSO support	Yes	Yes
Version history	Yes	Yes
Content analytics	Yes	Yes

Confluence vs Fern

Confluence

Fern