Confluence is a powerful, enterprise-level tool for building team documentation, which has been garnering it a considerable amount of attention from the public.
Do you need the ability to integrate more collaborating into your daily workflow? If you’ve been wanting to collaborate with your team on documentation in the best way possible – and you’re looking for a great async collaboration application that your whole business can use – you might have been doing some research into Confluence and some word processing alternatives.
The workforce is becoming more remote and requiring more remote work tools as of late. However, it's expensive, clunky to use, and consumes enormous amounts of disk space. If you're looking for a simpler alternative to Confluence, you should instead consider one of these other productivity tools.
Similar to Microsoft Office, Confluence comes equipped with templates they have determined are best practice. The structure of the program stays open and connected for helpful large communications. However, this can be a detriment to getting specific people the information that they need.
Confluence is part of the Atlassian suite of products and claims itself as a remote-friendly team workspace. Confluence does require an internet connection to use and has available integrations that are listed in their Marketplace. This allows you to search for the applications that you use already.
This document editing software is cloud-based and offers applications on all major platforms to support remote working. They also claim to be able to encourage company culture by pushing for all departments to get involved with teams and chats and meetings.
Confluence has features for knowledge management and project collaboration, focused on building a knowledge base for project requirements. Pages are put together in “trees,” with a search feature that is available but can be difficult to use. Some templates are included, and real-time editing is available.
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Confluence has a free version for up to 10 users. After that, the dollars start piling on. For the Standard package, Confluence is an average of $5.50 per user per month, while the slightly elevated Premium package comes in at an average of $10.50 per user per month. Enterprise-level pricing is available by business for over 800 users.
With a higher learning curve and formatting that may not be possible if you do not know HTML, Confluence is okay for creating a wiki that can hold company or product information, but may require a large investment of money and time upfront to work well for your needs.
Yes, Confluence is a safe platform to use. It falls under many compliance programs, uses encryption in transit and on servers, and offers a cloud access security broker for heightened protection.
Uptime is guaranteed, and large enterprises can likely rest assured that data will remain available and safe for as long as the company remains in business.
Though editing and formatting within Confluence offers many options, the higher price and lower focus on UX and UI make users curious about possible Confluence alternatives.
While Confluence is overall a good product, many customers point at the lack of training or information up front that causes downtime in productivity and project task accomplishment, making many of the Confluence alternatives much more attractive in comparison.
Almanac builds knowledge management systems from the ground up with ease. Remote or distributed teams have access to easy collaboration on projects and documents with real-time editing, notifications, and so much more. Similar to Google Drive, Almanac keeps documents available with cloud storage.
Almanac is rich in features and integration and was designed with the idea of replacing some other common applications that, while familiar, do not offer the comprehensive async collaboration abilities of Almanac. Built-in version control, as well as the ability to request review and feedback, make finishing tasks a breeze.
Almanac adds in the use of color with its user interface as well, giving an exciting look to their screens and buttons that pop out on the page. This not only adds a level of interest and fun customization options when using the program, but it may also keep users engaged and learning more than a monotonous application.
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Wiki.js is open-source software for building wikis. While their website makes high-level claims, complaints from users include file system management issues, and permissions that can be confusing and difficult.
Wiki.js works on all platforms and has a number of integrations. The program can be set up on your own private server, or run with a set of pre-installed modules, or programs, on their own cloud-based server.
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Wiki.js is open source and therefore free.
SharePoint is Microsoft’s version of a pre-made intranet for businesses. Knowledge is collected and displayed on sites that can be shared exclusively or company-wide. SharePoint has an extensive range of features, but this can make it difficult to learn and manage.
SharePoint is part of the Microsoft Office 365 package and works best with those applications. Implementation is costly and setup can take a large amount of time. This program includes the ability to create polls, share news, and work collaboratively on documents.
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SharePoint can be purchased as part of the Microsoft O365 suite of products, or on its own. For small and mid-sized businesses Plan 1 is $5 per user per month. Plan 2 starts at $10 per user per month, and as part of the O365 Suite Plan 3 is $20 per user per month.
Quip is another async collaboration tool, but the product is geared towards sales teams, so unless you are specifically looking for a sales team platform you may want to skip this possibility altogether. Quip’s values focus highly on security features and a virtual private cloud that gives the user complete control.
This program does provide a stripped-down user interface and unnecessary formatting, but as an origin point for document or spreadsheet creation, Quip is not very comprehensive. However, because of its lack of extensive features, organizations may find Quip can be very easy to use.
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Quip starts at $10 per user per month, has a mid-level package at $25 per user per month, and the highest package at $100 per user per month. SalesForce data tools are only included at the highest level.
Slite’s mission is to provide knowledge management and project planning for making faster decisions. The goal is to remove unnecessary communication and replace it with focused notes and tasks that keep employees focused.
While Slite is marketed as a knowledge management tool, many aspects of thorough knowledge management are not available. What Slite can do is create conversations that replace meetings and provide tools for creating comprehensive documents that can be used in a variety of ways.
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Slite is free to start for companies — but only for the first 50 documents. After that, companies and organizations will need to pay a monthly fee applied per user per month. That means, unless you’re in the early stages of making a company, you’ll probably need to buy it.
The standard plan costs $6.67 a user per month, while the Premium plan costs $12.50 a user per month. The latter option includes OpenID provisioning and some advanced doc permission features.
ClickUp’s tagline is “one app to replace them all,” and it certainly does try. Docs in ClickUp do allow for real-time collaboration on the creation of everything from wikis to reports to roadmaps, with links to assignable tasks. Automatically assign tasks, see what is completed, and check on forward movement.
Created content in ClickUp has manageable permissions, so your documents will remain safe. The formatting in Docs is extensive, but mostly simple, although commenting on active files seems to leave much to be desired.
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ClickUp starts at a free level for personal use with what looks like an extensive set of features. Plans range from $5 per user per month to $19 per user per month. Different features are available at different pricing structures, and there is Enterprise pricing available by business.
Confluence is a high-level async collaboration tool, but it may not be the best choice for your business. When choosing the software package for your business or even personal use it is important to compare features and reviews of software to determine what is going to work best for you without too much costly trial and error.
Almanac is the best async collaboration and documentation tool on the market, with a huge set of features and integrations that will help any business of any size. Almanac gives you the ability to create stunning documents within projects, and focus on either a big picture project management view or a precise tasks view.
Don’t risk choosing a product for your business that will not work for you as much as you work with it. High-level priority support and continuous updates and bug fixes mean your questions will not go unanswered. Let Almanac be the home for your documents and knowledge management. To learn more, contact their friendly sales team today.
