Confluence vs You Need A Wiki

Confluence

• Teams that run Jira and want documentation linked to their issues
• Company wikis and intranets organized into spaces per team or project
• Small teams: the Free plan covers up to 10 users

You Need A Wiki

• Teams that already keep their documentation in Google Docs
• Small companies that want a wiki without migrating content to a new tool
• Publishing a public knowledge base straight from a Drive folder

Confluence

• The Free plan stops at 10 users and 2 GB of storage and has no space or page permission settings.
• The pricing page's default prices ($5.42 Standard, $10.44 Premium) are per-user averages for a 300-user team; the first 100 users cost $6.70 or $13.20 each.
• Enforced SSO and SCIM need a separate Atlassian Guard Standard subscription on every plan except Enterprise, which is sold on annual contracts only.
• The self-managed Data Center edition reaches end of life on March 28, 2029, when its subscriptions expire and it becomes read-only.

You Need A Wiki

• It depends on Google Drive and Google Docs: all content lives there and editing happens in the Docs editor.
• The wiki folder has to be shared with a You Need A Wiki service account so its server can act on the files.
• Only 1 user is free; the next tier is $19 a month for up to 10 users, and teams above 75 users must email for a price.
• The site shows monthly prices only, with no annual billing option or free trial of the paid tiers listed.

Confluence

Pages and spaces

Pages hold project plans, meeting notes and policies, and are grouped into spaces with a page tree. Several people can edit at once, with inline and page comments and version history.

Whiteboards

Freeform canvases for brainstorming and diagrams, with built-in links to Jira. Free allows 3 active whiteboards per user, Standard 10, and Premium and Enterprise have no limit.

Databases

Structured collections that gather information from Jira and other apps and can be laid out as tables, cards or boards.

Rovo AI

Rovo Search, Chat and Agents come with paid plans and are metered in monthly credits: 25 per user on Standard, 70 on Premium and 150 on Enterprise.

Automation

Rule-based automation with templates and a low-code builder. Monthly allowances run from 50 steps per subscription on Free to 500 steps per user on Enterprise.

Permissions and external sharing

Paid plans add space and page permissions, view-only public links, anonymous access and up to 5 free guests per paid user, each limited to a single space.

You Need A Wiki

Wiki from existing Drive folders

Existing Google Drive folders and files are imported into a wiki with a nested tree menu. Changes made in Docs or Drive show up in the wiki, and everything is saved to Drive.

Google Docs as the editor

Pages are edited in Google Docs, so live collaboration, suggestions and formatting come from Docs. The wiki shows who last edited a page.

Search across document content

Search covers the text inside documents. To speed it up, document content is cached for up to a month, which can be turned off in settings.

Team, contact and public sharing

A wiki can be shared with a team or individual contacts or made publicly accessible. Read-only users are unlimited, and a read-only mode guards against accidental edits.

Custom domain and embedding

The plans list a custom domain alias, a custom sidebar color and the option to embed a wiki in another page as an iframe.

Confluence

• Free$0

  Up to 10 users on one site with 2 GB of file storage, 3 active whiteboards per user and community support.

• Standard$6.70

  per user / month, billed monthly (first 100 users)

  250 GB of storage, page permissions, guests, public links and 25 Rovo credits per user. Annual billing is $680 a year for up to 10 users.

• Premium$13.20

  per user / month, billed monthly (first 100 users)

  Unlimited storage and whiteboards, analytics, company hub, 24/7 critical-issue support and a 99.9% uptime SLA. $1,300 a year for up to 10 users.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Annual contracts through sales: Atlassian Guard Standard included, up to 150 sites, Atlassian Analytics and a 99.95% uptime SLA.

You Need A Wiki

• 1 user$0

  A single user, with wikis set up from existing Google Docs and Drive folders.

• Up to 10 users$19

  per month for the whole team, not per user

  Up to 10 users, with unlimited wikis, unlimited read-only users, document search and a custom domain alias.

• Up to 25 users$49

  per month for the whole team, not per user

  The same feature set for a team of up to 25 users.

• Up to 75 users$99

  per month for the whole team, not per user

  The same feature set for a team of up to 75 users.

• More than 75 usersCustom

  Priced by email. Private instances and enterprise pricing are also offered on request.

Confluence

• Annual discount

  Save up to 17% with annual billing

  The pricing page's billing toggle states a saving of up to 17% on annual plans. Annual prices are set by user tier: Standard is $680 a year and Premium $1,300 a year for up to 10 users.

• Nonprofit

  75% off for eligible nonprofits

  Atlassian's licensing page offers Confluence Cloud at 75% off to eligible Community customers: registered nonprofits and social enterprises, verified through Goodstack.

• Education

  75% off for academic institutions

  Academic licenses give eligible schools, colleges and affiliated research institutes 75% off the list price of Confluence Standard, Premium and Enterprise.

• Education

  75% off Classroom licenses

  Eligible college students, graduate students and teachers using Confluence for classroom or learning activities get 75% off Standard and Premium.

You Need A Wiki

• Nonprofit

  50% off for registered non-profits

  The site's FAQ offers registered non-profit organizations a 50% discount after they email a copy of their 501(c)(3) or their country's equivalent.