A Detailed Comparison: Confluence vs SharePoint

Confluence vs SharePoint for Knowledge Management

Technologies and processes are designed to enable organizational insights and meet business objectives by capturing, creating, sharing, using, and accessing knowledge. Additionally, knowledge can be derived from tacit, structured, unstructured, learned, analyzed, or processed information.

Note that this definition includes technologies that facilitate knowledge management. KM software is integral to the definition of the field itself. Managing software is exactly what these tools do.

With Confluence and SharePoint, both solutions tend to facilitate internal knowledge-sharing with some varied features. For example, Confluence is tightly focused on knowledge management with additional feeds and content pages, making knowledge social. SharePoint offers something a little extra. SharePoint is also an intranet and can create microsites where teams can share resources and co-author content.

Teams love Confluence because it is part of the Atlassian suite. Atlassian builds popular tools such as Trello and Jira, which many organizations use. Other teams will swear by SharePoint because of their loyalty to other Microsoft products, such as Office 365. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches.

At a Glance Comparison: Confluence vs Microsoft SharePoint

Confluence vs Microsoft Sharepoint Features Comparison

Now, we’re going to take a deep dive into a comparison of Confluence and SharePoint features, respectively.

Confluence

Confluence likes to emphasize knowledge-sharing and the ability to collaborate. This makes Confluence’s approach to knowledge very dynamic since it recognizes that knowledge exists within a context and must be useful to users. Confluence is intended for all types of teams, ranging from IT to support to marketing to HR. Confluence is quite simple to use out of the box and offers a lot of potential.

Key features:

Co-editing in Real-time & Inline Comments

Many users like Confluence for the ability to co-edit and create content in real-time with colleagues. This is alongside inline comments and tagging, and up to twelve people can collaborate at any one time. Like the Google Docs platform, Confluence is a content collaboration tool.

Powerful Macros for Custom Functionality

Confluence macros can give you added functionality to what Confluence calls your Pages. For example, you can use the Attachments macro to list all the files attached to Page. You can use the Widget Connector macros to include a YouTube video or Twitter feed.

Extensive Integrations with Leading Tools

Confluence encourages you to integrate with Jira so you can share knowledge and track tasks at the same time. Confluence also uses add-ons from the Atlassian Marketplace to provide further integrations with leading tools. You could get Confluence updates in Slack, for example, if Slack is your primary communication tool.

Access Ready-to-use Templates

Pre-format your content with templates to quickly launch a business strategy or take meeting notes without starting from scratch. You can also create custom templates in case you find a format you want to reuse for your business.

Collaboration on a Visual Whiteboard

Whiteboards are an exciting feature of Confluence, which allows you to collaborate visually with team members on ideas. You can use one click to turn a sticky note into a Jira issue, embed a YouTube video in your whiteboard for even greater clarity, and change colors and fonts to suit your team’s mood or brand.

Drawbacks:

Limited Customization Options​

While Confluence has many add-ons and integrations, it’s much harder to customize than SharePoint. You will likely need an IT administrator to spend significant amounts of time customizing Confluence, making it hard to adapt Confluence to any use case outside of its intended purpose.

Poor Search Functionality

Users consistently report that Confluence search is hard to use and not fit for purpose. This means that even when users know a document exists in Confluence, they can’t find it using search because the search engine is not accurate enough.

No Custom Domain Option​

Although this feature is coming, you can’t create a custom domain for your documentation in Atlassian Confluence yet. Since the feature has been in beta for a few years, if a custom domain is essential for your business, then Confluence might not be suitable.

Doesn’t Support Content Re-use

In Confluence, you cannot reuse content across projects or share workspaces. This means that even if you are creating internal knowledge repositories for multiple teams, you have to start from scratch every time.

Poor User Interface​

Users sometimes struggle with the Confluence user interface because of issues with their browsers, extensions, and versions. Some users consider the interface unappealing and unintuitive, although this is a subjective opinion, and you may find it to your liking.

User opinion about Confluence from G2

“What I love the most about Confluence is the fact that it is so easy to use, considering that it has a vast amount of templates for different documents and projects. This makes it easier to begin any project or work on any document because a lot of people struggle with starting. I also love the fact that it makes it easier to collaborate because of being cloud-based. We can collaborate as a team in real-time, and if we are working on a project, it helps a lot to have everyone on the same page in real-time.”

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Microsoft SharePoint

Since SharePoint has been around since 2001, Microsoft has had time to add many features and make many updates since then. The result is a tool with a plethora of features that require extensive training to use and specialist help to implement. SharePoint can do a lot, but you’ll need the right resources to make the investment worth it. Since launching SharePoint online as part of Microsoft 365, even smaller businesses can take advantage of SharePoint without having to maintain costly servers.

Key features:

Integration with Microsoft 365 Suite

Naturally, SharePoint works well with Microsoft 365, integrating with business tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, and Teams. This means you can keep using all your favorite SharePoint tools and stay comfortably within the Microsoft ecosystem. Compatible file types such as Word and Excel work well with SharePoint. Anything you might want to do from a business perspective is technically possible with this approach.

Easier Onboarding for Microsoft Users

Your team will find onboarding much easier if they are already Microsoft users. And let’s face it: there aren’t many office workers who haven’t used any of Microsoft’s tools. This comfort and familiarity is a key feature of SharePoint.

Effective Intranet Solution

Many companies have tried to build intranet software, but SharePoint has consistently been a winner. As a one-stop shop for common applications and resources, employees can follow workflows, communicate, and share updates every time they log onto your business network.

Automation of Repetitive Tasks

SharePoint can help you manage approval flows, work with files and lists, and route finished documents. This means you can standardize a process and complete it every time using automation. Employees are more likely to stick to your policies with SharePoint. Thus, SharePoint facilitates better teamwork, compliance, and productivity.

Highly Customizable

Many teams love the ability to customize SharePoint to suit their own needs. Although complex and feature-heavy, if you can think of a scenario, you can probably accomplish it with SharePoint.

Drawbacks:

Steep Learning Curve

SharePoint is powerful but it takes time to learn to get the most out of it. Users like it, but they need training. This means you might train employees once when you implement SharePoint, but you’ll be obligated to train new hires again every time someone moves on. This makes SharePoint a highly costly tool to use effectively. Administrators also struggle to learn to use the interface. 

Complex Customization Options

In SharePoint, you can create customized intranets, communication portals, and microsites to connect your whole team. For example, customized site branding, customized workflows, and customized themes are all possible. Technical expertise is required to customize SharePoint, which can be very costly.

Integration with Non-Microsoft tools is Limited

If you want to use SharePoint with a tool outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, then your options are limited. If you decide to start using Microsoft, you are relatively committed to a specific set of options when it comes to integrations. This is a problem for more complex software environments.

Restricted Number of Users

Even if you have a read-only site in SharePoint, anyone accessing your content must be a registered user with a subscription seat. This means your user base is either severely restricted or subscription costs begin to mount up very fast. There’s a reason that SharePoint is associated with the enterprise.

Subpar Search Functionality

As with Confluence, users also struggle to make use of the search function in SharePoint. This means your sprawling network of sites, intranets, and documents can quickly become impenetrable. Knowledge silos are entrenched again. Even when users know that a page exists and can access it through a direct URL, a search may fail to work – usually due to differing approaches to metadata.

Involves Higher Licensing Costs

It costs a lot to get everyone involved in SharePoint, especially if you choose a plan with all the features you need. Getting everyone on board also involves training and administrative costs, consulting, governance, and more, which soon mount up.

No Built-in AI

SharePoint has no built-in AI capabilities to help you create content. To get around this, you can pair it with Microsoft Copilot (for an extra fee) to take advantage of generative AI.

User opinion about SharePoint from G2

“Microsoft SharePoint provides an excellent platform for collaboration. We use it as our Intranet, but it’s also the foundation of OneDrive and Teams. As a result, our entire company runs on SharePoint in one way or another. Every Team member uses it every day. We’ve integrated OneDrive, which runs on SharePoint, as our file storage for all of our user’s information. This makes transitioning from one device to another seamless. SharePoint is easy to set up, and once you learn its quirks, administering it is not difficult.”

Document360 as an alternative to Confluence & SharePoint

If you’re looking for a knowledge-sharing platform, then you should consider Document360 as an alternative to Confluence or SharePoint. Companies implementing knowledge-sharing tools are struggling with adoption. Of all the companies with more than 500 employees that have implemented knowledge-sharing platforms already, only half of employees are engaged with it. If you use the right tools, this figure will rise rapidly.

Integrations with many popular tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, and more mean you won’t be losing out if you choose Document360. Sharing knowledge should be easy, and Document360 requires virtually no training before you can start documenting knowledge. This means your team is much more likely to adopt Document360 universally.

Document360 is a tool that enables you to benefit from the network effect of software. This phenomenon means that the more people use the tool, the more valuable it becomes. You can eliminate knowledge silos and connect teams in an enterprise with hundreds, or even thousands, of employees using Document360.

Features

Generative AI

Document360 is an AI-powered knowledge base for teams. It is especially geared towards using AI to help with the content creating process and also optimize search and  knowledge discovery for your teams. AI features are built into every Document360 plan.

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Analytics

Understand search success rate and most-read articles with Document360 analytics. Rich analytics enable you to take data-backed actions that will improve the knowledge base.

Information Architecture

The knowledge base is organized into articles and categories so your users experience a clear information architecture when navigating your content. It’s easier to find what they’re looking for and also a better content experience.

Continuous Development

We regularly add new features that improve Document360 in line with current trends and customer needs. We consider user feedback and use it to develop our product.

Supported Migration

The Document360 team will help you migrate your existing content from any platform into Document360.

User opinion about Document360 from G2

“We transitioned our customer knowledge base to Document360 in January 2022, which was previously created via Madcap Flare. The Document360 team was easy to communicate with and made sure our migration went smoothly. Customer support is always happy to help and answer questions, usually going above and beyond. The Doc360 Portal is easy to use and very intuitive and has made collaboration across our team so much more efficient. The team is constantly listening to the customers’ feedback and introducing bug fixes and new features.”

Feature Comparison Table

Wrapping up

When it comes to choosing between Confluence and SharePoint, both tools are relatively similar. With SharePoint, you’ll find that distinctive Microsoft feel, while Confluence is trusted particularly by agile teams. Many users are accustomed to SharePoint and feel comfortable with it. Confluence can be more sociable and fun to use, encouraging collaboration and sharing.

If all you want is a knowledge base without the fuss, then Document360 could be a great fit for your business. Entirely dedicated to knowledge management and content creation, Document360 is a highly intuitive tool for businesses large and small.

An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!

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