We have seen a lot of competition in
the cloud software market which has been expected to grow from $47.2 billion
(currently in 2021) to $85.8 billion by the end of 2026. The cloud software
market is without any doubt very robust and ever-changing where you can witness
a variety of both young and established companies. These types of companies are
offering very efficient options for document collaboration to small and
medium-sized businesses (SMBs). For us, there are only two popular document
collaboration software that you can consider best and that is worth buying in
the market. These two are,

  • Microsoft SharePoint.
  • Atlassian Confluence.

In this article, we are going to do a comparison between Microsoft SharePoint and Atlassian Confluence and understand the differences between the two.

Some interesting facts about SharePoint and Confluence:

Before we dig into the comparison
between the two, let us take a look at some interesting information or facts
that we have gathered about SharePoint and Confluence.

Since Microsoft managed to be
recognized again as a leader in the 2020 Gartner Content Services Platforms Magic Quadrant
Report, SharePoint has managed to make a family of over 200 million users
worldwide.

As per the number of organizations is concerned, there are
almost 250,000 organizations that are using SharePoint. Now this figure
includes over 85% of the Fortune 500 companies as well.

Similarly, if we talk about Confluence, then there are 2339 companies who have reported to use Confluence continuously in their technology. Some of the popular companies included in this figure are:

  • Facebook
  • Udemy
  • RobinHood
  • LinkedIn
  • LaunchDarkly
  • Netflix
  • CRED
  • Lyft

SharePoint VS
Confluence-The Differences:

Now comes the part where we shall
take a close look at SharePoint and Confluence and understand the key
differences between them.

Introduction to SharePoint:

First, let us understand what SharePoint is:

SharePoint is known to be a web-based content management system tool that is a product of Microsoft. It is used widely for collaboration, sharing, organization, and data access. This program is integrated with a variety of MS office applications and used for editing the office files. With that, SharePoint acts as a document management and a tool for storing purpose. You might also be interested in best online Sharepoint training courses here.

Introduction to Confluence:

Now moving towards confluence which is an Atlassian web-based collaboration software and it has an in-built tomcat server. Confluence has an HSQL database which makes it a wiki tool that is used for creating and navigating internal wikis and web pages. With the help of Confluence, it has become really easy for developers to upload such documents which are integrated with JIRA and HipChat.

Why should we use SharePoint?

The
power that SharePoint has to offer might be a little too overwhelming for
smaller companies. But the situation is totally otherwise for the larger
organizations as it acts as a more convenient and feasible solution to them as
compared to Confluence.

Features of SharePoint:

SharePoint has the following features to offer:

  • It is a mobile-friendly program that lets you easily work through your phone. This feature is very important for when you are not in your office and there is a need to log into your company's intranet.
  • As SharePoint has been built by Microsoft so it is obvious that it can easily integrate with other products offered by Microsoft.
  • Another important feature offered by SharePoint is it lets you set up a video conference which can also be recorded and sent to those team members who weren't present.
  • SharePoint acts as a data warehouse for storing important files which are relevant to your project.

Why should we use Confluence?

The following points will help you understand why we should use confluence:

Even
though Confluence has been created by a younger company, it has many features
same like SharePoint which we will mention later. And you should be using
Confluence if the size of your company or organization is small.

Features of Confluence:

Confluence offers the following features:

  • With
    confluence, each of the users is given space in the larger wiki database which
    can help create pages.
  • It is popular
    among web designers and many other programmers as they let them create
    different pages for technical documentation. With that, it also lets you upload
    many important documents.
  • Just like
    SharePoint, confluence can also pair really well with other Atlassian products
    which include JIRA, HipChat, etc.
  • Most
    importantly, confluence is a very easy program or software to use why because
    the wikis offer a variety of templates that can help to set up a page and even
    upload the documents easily.

SharePoint pricing:

SharePoint offers three pricing tiers:

  • Pricing
    1 costs $5.00 per user per month.
  • Pricing
    2 costs $10 per user per month.
  • Pricing
    3 costs $20 per user per month.

The number of features offered depends on which pricing plan you decide to take. Check out how AI is playing a vital role in industrial companies.

Confluence pricing:

  • With confluence, you get a pricing
    plan of $5 per month per user and that too for first ten users.
  • After the first ten users, the cost
    will increase and reach to $10 per month per user for up to 100 users.
  • After 100 users, the cost starts to
    decline for all the users after 100.

Combined features of SharePoint and Confluence:

There are some combined features offered by SharePoint and Confluence and that is why we have gathered some of them for you:

  • They both let you set up web pages.
  • Both SharePoint and Confluence lets you manage documents and store all types of important files.
  • Similarly, both the programs give you access to send instant messages to other team mates. You might also be interested in Pros and Cons of custom software.

Conclusion:

In the end we can say that both the software or programs are very competitive and have something unique to offer. With that, they both have some combined features as well that they offer. This shows that it is very difficult to decide which one to use. So the best answer here is to use SharePoint when the size of your company is big. And use Confluence when you have a smaller company to run.