Confluence vs SharePoint

Feature/Context

SharePoint

Confluence

Overview

SharePoint is the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Internet. It enables employees in an enterprise to work with other people, share content and information, or line-of-business data in a seamless manner. SharePoint comes with rich set of out-of-the-box integrated capabilities for most enterprise functions, and provides the tools and gadgets to customize for the extensive business needs.

Atlassian Confluence is the evolution of wikis designed to perform as an online collaboration and, document management product. Using Confluence connect your entire business in one place online to collaborate and capture knowledge – create, share, and discuss your documents, ideas, minutes, and projects. Confluence is an easy-to-use, user friendly and powerful tool.

Feature/Context

SharePoint

Confluence

On-premise and Cloud offering

Offers both. Part of Office 365 offerings. There are third party cloud offerings apart from Microsoft. Cloud plans start at $5 /user/month.

Offers both. Cloud offer costs ~ $2000 /2000 users / month.
https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/pricing

Supported browsers

Supports all major browsers

Supports all major browsers. (https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/supported-platforms-207488198.html)

Mobile support

Can be accessed through mobile browsers.

Can be accessed through mobile browsers.

On-Premise Platforms supported:

Windows Sever OS

Supports window, Linux, and Solaris.
https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/supported-platforms-207488198.html

Scalability

Can be scalable

Can be scalable

Pros

- SharePoint is a robust platform on which you can build on to suit your business needs.
-  SharePoint offers a wide range of possibilities as an integration platform, and comes with plenty of options/templates/Workflows to suit most complex business problems.
- SharePoint custom lists/libraries to capture any kind of information.

- Confluence is an easy-to-use, user friendly and powerful tool.
- Confluence Dashboard lets you practically browse through all the information on your portal.
- On premise version supports multiple platforms.

Cons

Share point’s out of the box user interface is not as intuitive as Confluence. Needs some user training. SharePoint 2013 version has improved UI.

Limited with Document management and wikis.
Custom list and Libraries to collect any kind of information.

Feature/Context

SharePoint

Supports

Confluence

Supports

Remarks

Sites/Spaces

A SharePoint Site is a collection of pages, lists, and libraries. A site may contain sub-sites, and those sites may contain further sub-sites.  Sites can be created per pre-packaged functionality. Examples   Site templates in SharePoint include: collaboration (team) sites, wiki sites, blank sites, and publishing sites.

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Confluence Spaces are containers for pages and blog posts with related content and they come into two main varieties. 1.Site Spaces: Sometimes called 'global' spaces, these are areas where you can create content and collaborate with other users. 2.Personal spaces:  You, and other Confluence users, can set up a personal space. You can keep it private, or open it up for other users to view or edit.

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Dashboard

SharePoint does not have this feature as all.

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The heart of Confluence is the Dashboard where you can practically browse through all the information on your intranet, at least the information you have permission to read.

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Site / Space Categories.

SharePoint comes with bundle of templates and options to start building your portal based on your business need.
E.g.: In Collaboration [Team, Blank, Blog, Group work, Visio…]
Enterprise:  Document, Records, Business Intelligence, Search,
Publishing, Wikis, Web database, etc.

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Confluence comes with: Team, Personal, Knowledge, Documentation, Wikis, Blogs, and Blank spaces.

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Though SharePoint leads in this context, but most users do not get the value right away. They need a training to get the most value of each site type.

Site / Space permissions.

 A SharePoint site can be set up to either inherit permissions from the parent site, or to allow unique permissions to be set for the site. Can grant permissions to users or SharePoint groups.

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A Confluence Space can set up its own set of Permissions which are granted to users and groups by a space administrator.

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SharePoint also lets you grants permissions to AD groups directly.

 Site / Space Directory

The Site Directory provides a central location from which administrators can view, manage, and access all the Web sites that are associated with a portal site. From the Site Directory, administrators can view both the portal structure and individual sites within the portal, approve or reject new sites, and edit or delete site links.

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The Space Directory, accessible from the global header, allows users to view spaces by category and add spaces to their favourites list.

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Feature/Context

SharePoint

Supports

Confluence

Supports

Remarks

Notifications/Alerts:

Out of the box feature.

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Out of the box feature called page watches

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Both the tools provide good notification options.

Full-text search:

Out of the box feature.

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Out of the box feature. Can be accomplished using macros.

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Both SharePoint and Confluence have good search capabilities.

Security / User Roles / Permission Groups:

Out of the box feature.

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Out of the box feature.

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Single Sign-on

Supports LDAP integrations and User profiles

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Supports LDAP integrations and User profiles

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LDAP & Active Directory Support:

SharePoint Supports LDAP integration. Active Directory is the default supported LDAP.

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Confluence can delegate user authentication to LDAP and use LDAP group memberships to set the user's Confluence access permissions. This also allows Active Directory (AD) integration

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Branding / Customization:

Supports extensive customization. Including SPA (Single page application) integrations such as Angular JS, etc.

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Provides moderate customization. For more info: https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/customise-space-layouts-139512.html

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SharePoint comes with basic look and feel, but lets you design any way you like.

Social features:

User profiles & Following other users:

In SharePoint, we can create our own personal site, and we can follow other users. We can give comments on their updates

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In Confluence, also we can create our personal space, we can update and follow others users

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Blog posts, discussing on forums, and commenting and liking posts, articles and other content:

Out of the box feature. Articles can be posted on chosen Sites or into your own blog with a connection to your Profile (My Site).

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Out of the box feature. Articles can be posted on chosen Spaces or into your own blog with a connection to your Profile (Personal Space).

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As SharePoint being a platform it comes with many options such as Discussion boards, Announcements, Survey, etc. SharePoint also has a Blog Site template.

Content export:

SharePoint provides several ways to export content to other formats depends on content.

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Confluence provides several ways to export content to other formats. You can export all or part of a Confluence space to various formats, including Microsoft Word, HTML, PDF and XML.

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Backup and Restore:

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Administration:

Administration of SharePoint environment varies by the size of the farm, user base, integrations, and no of services usage.

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Confluence administration can be simpler as there may not be that many services/integrations as in SharePoint.

Feature/Context

SharePoint

Supports

Confluence

Supports

Remarks

Document Management and collaboration:

Supports very sophisticated document management and collaboration. 

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Supports very sophisticated document management and collaboration. 

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Support types of documents:

Supports all major file types

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Supports all major file types

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Co-authoring with Check-In/Check-out control:

It is out of the box feature.

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Needs a plugin called Arsenale Lock point from Atlassian Market place. It costs extra.

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SharePoint leads in this feature. Confluence plugin costs approximately between $3 K to $5K per annum for 2000 uses.

Versioning:

SharePoint allows major and minor versions and default versioning is set to 500 versions.

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Scroll Versions enables you to manage different product variants in a single space. With Scroll Versions, you can use duplicate page titles within a single space. 
Scroll Versions you can manage and author multiple versions of your documentation in a single space.

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Both the technologies are good in context with versioning, file size, file types features.

Max File size allowed:

2 GB

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2 GB

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Max no of files allowed on in a library:

5000 files per document library. Though it has a limit we have seen cases where we had more than the limit.

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Not mentioned

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Tagging:

SharePoint supports tagging by adding metadata to describe what the content contains.  I have 2 primary types of Tagging: 1) Authoritative tagging 2) Social tagging.

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Labels are key words or tags that you can add to pages, blog posts, attachments and spaces. You can define your own labels and use them to categories, identify or bookmark content in Confluence.

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Confluence leads in this context and its tagging is more sophisticated.

Content approval and Workflows:

Out of the box feature.

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Need additional plugins from third party vendors. Here are few for additional price: 1) Approvals Workflow plugin 2) Content Publishing Plugin 3) page approval macro 4) Mark for Review plugin.

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SharePoint provides out-of-the-box advanced workflows and as well as sophisticated content approval process.

File management:

Can map to windows explorer and manage collaboration right from windows explorer. Can create subfolders and copy subfolders etc.  Also, drag and drop files in the browser.

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Files are attached to Confluence pages. Can drag the flies in the browser to upload the files. Does not support folders. Can display the files with images

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While SharePoint provides just like windows file management system, and where as Confluence provides easy navigation of the files with configurable images.

Online office authoring/editing:

Needs office web app plug in.

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The Office Connector allows you to edit attached office files in their native application (such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OpenOffice) and save the file right back to the Confluence page. No need to download and re-upload the file.

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SharePoint leads in this feature. Confluence office connector has some limitations such as browser versions, file versions, etc.

Wikis:

SharePoint provides enterprise wikis, web application hosting, social media functionality and more. SharePoint is working its way towards offering the same functionality as Confluence, in a Microsoft way.

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Confluence is an enterprise wiki compared to SharePoint. Confluence page hierarchy, plugins, security, user macros, page alias, metadata macros, scaffolding and user interface offer a superior wiki platform over SharePoint. Confluence is a better wiki. 

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Confluence is still superior for information input and management of wiki pages. SharePoint is a Superior Document Management System. SharePoint's Site Collection / Sites / Subsites structure may be more suitable than Confluence's site structure for organizations 

Publishing:

SharePoint offers a Publishing template and Wiki page library for the most enterprises publishing needs.

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Confluence spaces are collection of pages where one can publish any web content.

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Confluence pages highly user friendly, whereas SharePoint comes with better control on data governance.

Document Management and collaboration summary:

Both the technologies offer sophisticated document management and collaboration. Both let you create, edit, share and manage documents. Each may lead in certain space. A benefit of Confluence is integration into Jira; of SharePoint integration into Exchange Calendar and task list, and better control on data governance.

If your organization prefer to write, take notes and save your thoughts easily, Confluence leads with its wiki features as a collaboration tool. Both Confluence and SharePoint do have the possibility to create a wiki site, but in practice, Confluence is the tool for wiki kind of writing. Its text editor is more intuitive, linking wiki pages to one another is simpler, and a deeper hierarchy of wiki pages is supported. It also has the Blueprints feature that allows you to create page templates easily for different purposes like meeting agendas or minutes.

if your organization is using and editing large amounts of office documents (Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents) SharePoint trumps Confluence as the collaboration platform of choice. In general SharePoint being a Microsoft product, it supports and integrates Microsoft Office files in a detail. Although Confluence recently introduced new features with office still not yet there.

Feature/Context

SharePoint

Supports

Confluence

Supports

Remarks

Apps and List Libraries

SharePoint comes with an out of the box option to create a List container to capture any type information.

These are like a database table or a spread sheet. All lists are CRUD enabled.

The following types of List templates are readily available:

- Tasks
- Site Mailbox
- Form Library
- Wiki Page Library
- Picture Library
- Links
- Announcements
- Contacts
- Calendar
- Promoted Links
- Discussion Boards
- Issue Tracking
- Survey
- Asset Library
- Custom List

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Confluence comes with an out of the box option to create a Task list. Task list can be customized.

For more info: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/features/#tasks

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The magical feature of SharePoint that Confluence is missing is the lists (or libraries) function. You can create lists on SharePoint about almost anything and include data as if you were using a tiny database. You can collect information on the list (for example through web forms) and view information based on list attributes. For example, you could create different views to a single Document Library sorted by “modified by” or type of document, or you could bring up only some of the documents like those labelled with an “important” tag.

Business services

SharePoint comes with an out of the box option called BCS (Business Connectivity services). BCS is a view on external data—that is, data that is contained not within SharePoint but in external databases and systems. All list is CRUD enabled. 

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This feature is not an out of the box option for Confluence.

Web parts and third party solution integrations.

A standard SharePoint page contains text, images, Web Parts, and other elements. Content in Web parts can be customized. Most of the apps available in the server can be configured to view in a Web Part. An App can be native to SharePoint or an it could be completely a third part app to integrate their application into SharePoint portal.  Here is an example to integrate Tableau dashboard into a SharePoint portal. 

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In Confluence, also, integration can be achieved through customization and/or coding.Not the native feature. http://community.tableau.com/thread/140398?start=0&tstart=0

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As SharePoint being widely used as an enterprise intranet portal, most third party integration solutions are already developed. Confluence lacks this advantage.