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Atlassian Confluence vs HCL Connections comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Atlassian Confluence
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
2nd
Ranking in Enterprise Social Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Knowledge Management Software (1st)
HCL Connections
Ranking in Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
6th
Ranking in Enterprise Social Software
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) category, the mindshare of Atlassian Confluence is 16.6%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL Connections is 2.9%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals)
 

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.
Hasnain Zahid - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable tool useful to manage marketing-related activities
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. Sometimes, the portal hangs because I find that if I am on a web page, I have to log out, and then I have to log in to the portal again. Since I see that the portal hangs at times, I have to move from one side of the portal to the next, making me feel that some things are scattered in the product. I attended a meeting with IBM recently, and they are improving a few of the things, in my opinion. The concerns that I have related to the product are being improved since I think many other users have reported issues similar to the ones I faced.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Confluence, everything is in one place, so it's easy to find documentation."
"The most valuable features are the ease of creating documentation, as well as charts."
"What I like the most is the Wiki software that comes with Atlassian Confluence."
"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."
"The solution is stable."
"I like the documentation. It's a central platform, and there are many things that I can do with it. I'm very pleased about it."
"It's extremely intuitive."
"Confluence is very easy to use and feature-packed."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the Activity flow that is used to catch new activities."
 

Cons

"The flexibility and simplicity of this solution could be improved. We would also like the ability to add plugins."
"Confluence could incorporate stronger records management and automation features. The current management structure is too open, which becomes an issue."
"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."
"The user interface is a little bit stale. The file attachments and how they work could be improved. There is also room for improvement when it comes to CDNs."
"The cost of the solution is too high."
"There are some issues with performance when creating tables."
"The UI is good but bland. It could be updated a bit to make it more modern and interesting to look at."
"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 inclusion of a file plugin for Windows Explorer would make it easier to use."
"The support is an area where the product can improve...If you are having an issue on a Monday, the support personnel will contact you next Monday."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, meaning its price falls somewhere in the mid-range zone."
"Maybe we're only using 10% of it, but we have to pay for everything."
"Licenses are quite expensive"
"We have to pay licensing fees."
"We have a site license for Atlassian Confluence and there are some limitations on external users."
"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."
"I am using the paid version. My company has purchased it for company employees. We are using Confluence as a company. I don't know how much it costs, but its price is good enough. Its price is not so high."
"The issues I have with the pricing are in respect to the add-ons."
Information not available
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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
39%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 HCL Connections?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
What needs improvement with HCL Connections?
The support is an area where the product can improve. My company faces some support-related issues because whenever we create or generate a ticket, it takes two days for the product's support team ...
What is your primary use case for HCL Connections?
I use HCL Connections for marketing purposes. The IBM product in our company already provides us with direct links to the marketing and HR sides.
 

Also Known As

Confluence
IBM Connections, Lotus Connections
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Skype, Microsoft, NASA, Netflix, Adobe, Bonobos, LinkedIn, Pfizer, Citi.
Yamato Financial Co. Ltd., University of Zurich, Gwinnett County Public Schools, Royal Boskalis Westminster N.V., Telus, Rabobank, Christian Brothers Services, Grupo Financiero Banorte, The Loft Group, Dow Water & Process Solutions, JGC Corporation, College of Medicine, Swansea University, solvito GmbH, Loft Group, Hamm-Reno Group GmbH, Geno SA
Find out what your peers are saying about Atlassian Confluence vs. HCL Connections and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.