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Atlassian Confluence vs Box comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Atlassian Confluence
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (2nd), Enterprise Social Software (2nd), Knowledge Management Software (1st)
Box
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (6th), Cloud Storage (12th), Digital Asset Management (3rd), Document Management Software (2nd), Content Collaboration Platforms (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Atlassian Confluence is designed for Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) and holds a mindshare of 16.6%, down 18.7% compared to last year.
Box, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Content Management, holds 3.9% mindshare, down 6.2% since last year.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Massimo Banzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, efficient, allows the concurrent development of documentation and lets you add comments offline
An area for improvement in Atlassian Confluence is encouraging more vital interaction among the project members or users involved. I was researching a tool, but I forgot the exact name of the tool, and that tool could be used for better interactions offline among users on a specific topic, development, or discussion. I want that feature to be present in Atlassian Confluence. If there's a possibility to integrate Atlassian Confluence, Jira, and that other tool, that will make Atlassian Confluence better. My team had problems accessing Atlassian Confluence a couple of times, but I wonder if that was due to a network, server, or tool issue. I have to say that I've been working with Atlassian Confluence for years, and it has been improving its functionalities, so I feel that as a tool, it's working very well, but some features could still be improved. For example, the search engine should allow you to define some keywords you could use when searching, though I wonder if it's staff-related or setup-related, or lacking in the search engine function itself. I also want artificial intelligence added to Atlassian Confluence where you're working on a specific issue or argument, and Atlassian Confluence, through its AI, can propose some improvements based on what has been done on the same topic by different teams or different projects within the same infrastructure, similar to an internal reference, which can be helpful. Through AI, it would also be great if Atlassian Confluence could advise you on what has been done outside your specific project, and maybe there's the possibility of an installation where you have several projects installed and working together. Another feature that would be good to have in the next release of Atlassian Confluence is the tool recognizing a keyword or two that's fully developed in project B, which you can use in project A, for example.
Parthasarathy Chellapillai - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for data storage and data collaboration, but its data security could be improved
If I have restricted access within an organization by keeping the data in Box, there are other applications through which I can barge into the data. If anyone wants to keep a file restricted to four people, I can access it because it's available in the cloud. I can directly access the file and pull in the data by entering the file's name. Someone from outside the organization can't access it. However, someone from within the organization who is not supposed to access the data can access it, provided it is in Box. Box is almost like a folder structure outside your system. The solution uses the cloud, and you don't need any separate storage in your system. Even if your system crashes down, the data will be saved. Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It integrates well with other Atlassian products"
"The interface is good....I didn't face any issues with the scalability. It was very good."
"The most valuable features of Atlassian Confluence are version management and search and linkage to the JIRA tickets. They are integrated very well together. You can have links from many places and can easily jump from one to the other. If you want to find all the information about a topic, you only need to click and you receive the information."
"Great shareable and co-editing features."
"Document collaboration is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Documenting everything related to the project is good for me. It enables me to use rich text to document, insert macros and links, highlight with different colors, and organize pages in a hierarchical way."
"The customization that Confluence offers is one of its most useful features. You can customise it based on the specific project you are working on. It also supports multiple languages."
"It's easy to use and you can create all types of pages."
"It is really easy to load files to and from this solution."
"File sharing with collaborators not on the same domain with offline access from multiple devices: I work on many projects that are multi-organizational, such as with customers, suppliers, or acquisitions."
"Box is extremely stable, they have not been hacked or lost any data in the past seventeen years. I am very impressed with it."
"The interface is very good."
"The sharing feature, with its various permission settings, such as viewing or uploading, is convenient and helpful."
"The ability to collaborate around data anywhere, anytime is the most powerful features of Box."
"Office Integration. The full integration into the Microsoft Office products is just perfect."
"The most valuable feature of Box is security."
 

Cons

"It would be good if they can continue working towards making documentation and editing as quick and easy as possible. It has got a lot of capability, but I don't know how to use it. I don't find some of the things that intuitive. Sometimes, it doesn't seem obvious to me how to use it, but it is like learning any new tool. You actually need to get trained on the tool to get maximum out of it."
"The scalability for larger companies could be improved."
"Atlassian should rethink its withdrawal of the self-hosted version of the product. They only offer cloud-based service or the "datacenter-edition", which is quite expensive for small companies and private users."
"Space maintenance could be made a little more user-friendly."
"The cost of the solution is too high."
"The UI is good but bland. It could be updated a bit to make it more modern and interesting to look at."
"The UX is a little bit all over the place."
"Confluence cannot replace Microsoft Word at the moment, so even though it can be used as a document management system, it is not meant for document creation, which adds a lot of limitations to it."
"I don't like the low level of role-based security it provides – it's very cumbersome, and the support is ordinary at times."
"Improvements in speed - Box's high level of security impacts performance, especially when compared with other similar services."
"The integration with other products should be improved."
"I recommend doing the trial first, because it's not cheap ware. It's not overly expensive, but it's not cheap ware, and enterprise has a minimum number of users."
"I haven't really come across a case where we're not able to use it for what it is, so I don't really have anything holding us up or any customers holding us up at this point that I know of. There are always some limitations, but as a technologist, I just live with them, and there is always room for improvement, but I don't have anything quantifiable."
"Maturity of the enterprise security around user management."
"Data privacy, regarding where to store your data: Offering several transparent(!) options (where to store my data and whether to sync back or not and where to sync) regarding the local law situations (USA, EU, Switzerland!) would increase the credibility of a US based company (after NSA ‘snooping’)."
"I find their API to be quite complex and it could be more straightforward."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a site license for Atlassian Confluence and there are some limitations on external users."
"In my opinion, it's worth the investment"
"Licenses are quite expensive"
"For us, it's free to use. We don't pay any licensing."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"The price of the on-premises data center version is too expensive."
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"When you purchase this solution you get some support."
"Box's pricing is excellent."
"There's a free version that allows you to use it with almost full-feature access. Even in the free version, it gives you all you need."
"We are using the free version of the solution. There is a free version and monthly and yearly subscriptions available."
"The pricing may seem steep at first, but delve into the features and you'll soon realize it is incredible value for what you get."
"Box needs to improve with their pricing in terms of licensing costs."
"I have to pay for Box. It could be a little cheaper. On a scale from one to ten, I would give the pricing a five."
"Better sign a full year's contract to get a discount."
"My organization pays for the license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
72%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
3%
Educational Organization
59%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Healthcare Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Atlassian products, including Confluence, have yearly price increases of approximately five to twenty percent.
What needs improvement with Atlassian Confluence?
There is a significant difference between the data center version and the cloud version of Confluence. Providing the same features in both versions would be beneficial. Additionally, there is no fu...
What do you like most about Box?
The solution is used for data storage and any kind of visualization.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Box?
The solution is expensive when it comes to API calls.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Confluence
No data available
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, NASA, Netflix, Adobe, Bonobos, LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
GE, Toyota, P&G, Caterpillar, Flex, Schneider Electric, Sally Beauty, Eurostar, AstraZeneca, AirBnB, Whirlpool, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Nationwide, Aeropostale etc
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Atlassian, Liferay and others in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals). Updated: November 2024.
824,067 professionals have used our research since 2012.