10 Great Alternatives To Confluence For Better Team Collaboration
Udn Webber
Expansion Account Executive
Atlassian’s Confluence is a wiki-style knowledge management system that lets you create and share content with your team while helping you manage projects.
It has been around since 2004.
And as you may have guessed, much has changed since then.
For one, it’s no longer the complete project management solution it once promised to be.
Guess that’s why Confluence is losing its influence over its loyal users. 😬
If you’re looking for the best Confluence alternatives, we have a few recommendations in this department.
In this article, we’ll give you the top ten Confluence alternatives to help solve your project documentation and collaboration needs.
Let’s get started!
Limitations of Confluence
Most companies are familiar with the Confluence Cloud, Atlassian’s wiki collaborative tool. It allows your team to build a knowledge base that’s available to everyone in your organization.
However, Confluence isn’t perfect.
It becomes bloated, and several Confluence users have mentioned that it isn’t very user-friendly. Add a steep price tag for big teams, and you have a collaboration tool that’s hard to justify for most users and businesses.
Additionally, Confluence is another separate work tool that doesn’t allow you to share docs publicly!
So move the Confluence page aside and explore the other options available today…
10 Great Confluence Alternatives
Here are some great Confluence alternatives to help you overcome its limitations:
1. UDN Task Manager
UDN Task Manager is the highest-rated productivity tool on the market today used by productive teams worldwide.
Its powerful Docs make it the perfect knowledge management collaboration software for your remote team .
What’s more?
You can always get started on its Forever Free plan to see for yourself!
Here’s why UDN Task Manager ’s Docs should be your number one choice for your docs or wiki needs and why it’s the best Confluence alternative.
UDN Task Manager allows you to connect your documents to everything else you work on!
You can create Docs for each project or group of tasks to keep everything organized.
Each document lives with its relevant tasks at any level of your organization and can include Doc tags for easy categorization and searchability. This keeps Docs from crowding up your screen or becoming cluttered.
Connect tasks, projects, and other docs via relationships to easily access all related resources, and add views widgets to docs to update workflows instantly.
It’s organization at its finest! 😎
Nested pages are essentially sub-sections in your Docs. You’re no longer working with one endless document.
You’ve broken it down into bite-sized chunks!
Additionally, with Collaborative Editing , you can work on these Docs alongside your team members. No more waiting for someone to finish up before adding your thoughts.
You can also nest documents inside other larger ones to create separations in your Docs. This makes your docs way more organized and easier to manage. It also allows you to create a project plan Doc and store other documents within it as nested pages!
Sure, most wiki collaborative tools allow you to create nested pages for your Docs.
But they make it ridiculously hard to do. So instead, you just end up creating a separate Doc. 😅
You wouldn’t have to deal with that UDN Task Manager . It makes it effortless to manage nested Docs.
Users can add as many nested sub-sections to a document as they want to add a level of organization.
For example, if you want to move a sub-section to a different page, just drag and drop it to wherever you want!
And that’s not all.
You can label them and they’ll show up in your sidebar under each document!
This would help you identify and manage these sub-sections directly!
Take it from anyone who’s had to read through long, monotonous passages, poor formatting is the easiest way to make your docs un-memorable.
You need rich text formatting to call the readers’ attention to important points in the doc.
Sadly, you won’t get that with most Confluence alternatives.
It lacks text formatting options and you’ll be stuck with a rigid, impractical doc.
But with UDN Task Manager ? Format away!
Here are just some of the formatting options you get with UDN Task Manager Docs:
Page formatting options in the UDN Task Manager Docs toolbar
Yup, everything you can do on a Google Doc !
But there’s also something we have that Google Docs doesn’t. 😏
If you’re on Google Docs and want to embed a YouTube video into your doc, you’re out of luck. With UDN Task Manager , you can easily embed videos from sites like YouTube into your Doc to make it as comprehensive as possible.
Wiki tools are great places to store sensitive information, provided it’s in the right hands.
You can’t just let anyone see these Docs, right?
UDN Task Manager gives you customizable access rights to help keep your Docs safe. You can share a document with everyone in your organization or share it with only a few team members.
This means you get complete control over who gets to see these documents!
Choose who has access to your documents and how to share them in UDN Task Manager
UDN Task Manager gives you numerous knowledge sharing options:
1. Shareable links ( a nyone with the link can access)
You can create a public URL to your document that allows anyone to access your Doc. As this is a public link, anyone can access your Doc, even those who aren’t part of your Workspace.
Note : creating a public link doesn’t mean Google can index your document. You’ll have to choose that option separately.
2. Private s haring
Alternatively, you can choose to share your document only with select individuals in your business. This helps when your document contains sensitive information that you don’t want everyone to see.
Keep your documents private or share them publicly via links or export in UDN Task Manager
3. Public with s earch engines (anyone can access your docs)
UDN Task Manager also allows you to share a business doc with search engines like Google. This allows Google to index your Doc, and it’ll show up in Google searches!
Cool, right?
4. Private d ocuments
You can make a Doc completely private. This helps when you’re drafting a strategy or idea, and you don’t want anyone seeing it yet.
You can also protect your pages from unwanted edits by controlling who has the ability to make updates to the page.
Once you feel your drafts are ready, you can easily share files with everyone in your organization!
Most wiki tools are a mess when it comes to collaboration on Docs. There’s no organization to it, and you’ll have comments strewn all over your page.
We’re all for team communication. But there’s got to be some order!
Luckily, UDN Task Manager keeps conversations organized and straightforward. Your team can add Comments to your Docs to share files, update team members, and even tag people for a revision needed!
This way, your comments are in relevant places, and you’re not scratching your head trying to figure out what’s going on.
UDN Task Manager p ros:
UDN Task Manager limitations :
Check out UDN Task Manager ’s roadmap to see how we’re overcoming such drawbacks.
UDN Task Manager pricing :
UDN Task Manager offers a Free Forever Plan with unlimited tasks and members. Its paid plans start at as low as $5/user per month.
UDN Task Manager customer ratings:
2. Nuclino
Nuclino is an excellent Confluence alternative that serves as an internal knowledge base and wiki software.
Let’s look at Nuclino’s features that can help your team organize information and collaborate in real-time.
If you like to visualize your work, Nuclino is a fantastic collaboration tool to have.
Nuclino lets you organize your team’s information using kanban boards and mind map graphs.
This feature makes Nucluno a great choice for several use cases, including knowledge sharing, employee onboarding, process documentation, sprint planning, etc.
Another great selling point of Nuclino is that it lets you create internal links, so everything can be organized instantly.
Users simply need to type @ inside an item to link it to another item or document. It’s quite similar to creating a website with internal links.
Whether it’s a personal document or employee information, users want documents and text to look a certain way.
In Nuclino, you can use markdown commands to format content quickly via your keyboard.
You can work with text, images, videos, code blocks, embeds, and much more to make your knowledge base highly comprehensive.
But if you want to work on these documents in offline mode, you can’t lean on Nuclino.
Nuclino pros:
Nuclino limitations:
Nuclino pricing:
This collaboration tool has a free plan. Its paid version starts at $5/user per month.
Nuclino customer ratings:
3. Friyay.io
Friyay.io is another knowledge management and collaboration software that you can consider as a Confluence alternative. Here are a few reasons why it’s on this list:
The best thing about the Friyay app is how good it looks. It adopts a clean, minimalist approach to display notes.
Each document is stored as a card on your dashboard that’s easily accessible. This eliminates any navigation difficulties in finding your notes and file sharing.
Another great thing about the Friyay platform is how powerful each card can be.
Unlike many other tools that require you to store information on a standard blank page, Friyay gives you multiple templates to choose from.
You have over 25 different templates to choose from to help you find the perfect template for your information.
Whether it’s a cup of coffee or knowledge databases, we all like stuff tailored to our needs.
That’s why Friyay allows you to customize your dashboard and cards to suit your preferences.
You can move the cards around and create your own sub-sections to change how you view your dashboard.
But when it comes to handling complex tasks, this tool can quickly turn from Fri- yay to Fri- nay . 🥳 ➡️ 😟
Friyay p ros :
Friyay limitation s :
Friyay pricing:
Friyay is a free knowledge management tool. Its paid plan starts at $4/user per month.
Friyay customer ratings :
4. Slite
Slite is a good knowledge base software geared towards active team collaboration.
Here’s why it’s on our list:
One of the best things about Slite is that it’s easy to set up. No complicated setup procedures or manual adjustments. You’ll be up and running in no time!
Slite’s team collaboration capabilities are its main calling card. Your team can easily communicate and share ideas on your docs.
You can:
Another great thing about Slite is that it allows you to choose who gets access to what.
You can control who has edit and view access to each of your documents. You can keep a document private or keep it entirely public. It’s up to you!
Slite can’t let Google index your documents, though. So you won’t be able to rank on Google as a result.
We know you’re slite-ly disappointed. 🙊
Slite p ros :
Slite limitation s :
Slite pricing:
Slite is a free tool. Its paid plan starts at $8/user per month.
Slite customer ratings :
5. Helpjuice
Helpjuice is a popular knowledge management solution and an Atlassian Confluence alternative.
With advanced features like branding and analytics, it’s no surprise that Helpjuice is one of the best-known tools on the market.
Let’s take a closer look at it.
Helpjuice is one of the few wiki tools that allow you to brand your documents. You can add your company name and logo to each doc. This makes your docs look far more professional!
Branding is important when your docs are publicly available. When your docs are branded, people will instantly recognize your company when they open any of your documents.
Helpjuice offers you tons of helpful analytics to understand how your docs are being used.
You can analyze who’s viewing your docs, who’s contributing to them, which docs are being viewed more often…The list goes on!
Helpjuice does a great job of organizing all your docs. You can easily label and find them using the search feature.
No more squinting at folders to find the document you were looking for!
One of the best things about Helpjuice is that you can keep a document in multiple folders simultaneously. For example, you can place a document on social media marketing in your marketing and PR folders!
You won’t have to keep shuffling between folders to find relevant docs!
On the downside, Helpjuice isn’t the most pocket-friendly option out there.
Better help yourself with a cheaper Confluence alternative.
Helpjuice p ros :
Helpjuice limitation s :
Helpjuice pricing:
Its paid plan starts at $120/month (up to 4 users.)
Helpjuice customer ratings:
6. Notion
Notion is a sleek knowledge management software that lets you write, plan, collaborate, and get organized altogether. It makes using a wiki fun and engaging.
Here’re a few features that have earned it a place on our list.
One of the strong points of Notion is its team wiki. It gives you features to centralize and customize your company’s most important information.
With Notion, users can document company policies, goals, employ data, etc. You can also ensure that your team can easily access up-to-date information from a central location.
Notion allows you to customize your workflows by assigning tasks and creating projects for your team.
If you prefer the Get Things Done (GTD) approach to productivity, Notion offers a to-do list view to keep stock of what’s on your plate.
Another powerful Notion feature is templates.
You can create templates that make it easier to replicate pages in your database and save time. Select from templates for HR, startups, non-profits, and more.
You can also create new pages in seconds instead of working on them from scratch.
However, Notions tends to get confusing for users who like to keep things simple.
Sometimes too much of anything is bad, right?
Notion pros:
Notion limitations:
Notion pricing:
Notion has a free version . Its paid plan starts at $4/user per month.
Notion customer ratings:
7. Documize
Documize is an excellent knowledge base platform for your team.
Here are a few collaboration features that make it a great open source Confluence alternative:
The Documize platform gives you loads of functionality to categorize your documents.
Users can file each document into its category and group related files together easily. This means, if you’re looking for resources on a particular topic, they’ll all be stored together.
Like UDN Task Manager , Documize allows you to customize access rights every time you share files.
This solution has two benefits:
Another powerful Documize feature are the insights you get about documents you’ve uploaded.
Users have access to data about which documents are used most often, which ones are barely touched, and who’s been contributing to these documents.
If several team members keep revisiting a training doc, it indicates they’re struggling with the process, and you might need to find a solution to make the process clearer.
Or change the project management software!
However, be ready to pay a hefty price for Documize. 💰
Documize p ros:
Documize limitations :
Documize pricing:
The paid plans of this tool start at $75/month (up to 25 users).
Documize customer ratings:
8. Google Drive
Google Drive is a highly popular cloud-based file storage and collaboration platform that’s easy to use. Best of all, it integrates well with other Google products.
Here’s what makes it one of the good Confluence alternatives:
Google Drive is a favorite of many for its simplicity. Compared to Confluence, it’s far more user-friendly.
Google Drive mimics the structure of traditional file storage systems but with options for team collaboration.
This tool also eliminates the need to email different document versions as everything happens within the interface.
With Google Drive, you can access files without using your disk space.
A few reasons that make Google Drive worthy are its centralized administration and data loss prevention. The Vault for Drive (an information governance tool) helps you retain, hold, search, and export users’ Google Workspace data.
Another remarkable feature of Google Drive is its Google AI support that helps predict and surface important data in real-time.
The AI can recognize important content, events, and collaborators with Machine Learning-based search enhancements. This way, Google connects each user with files that require their attention.
However, Google Drive still falls to drive your projects as a project management tool.
Google Drive pros:
Google Drive limitations:
Google Drive pricing:
Google Drive is a free file sharing tool.
Google Drive customer ratings:
9. You need a wiki (YNAW)
If you love working with Google Docs, You Need a Wiki !
Though this tool is comparatively new to the market, it has quickly made a place for itself. YNAW helps you connect all your Google Docs and build an organized wiki out of them.
Here’s what makes it a good Atlassian Confluence alternative.
YNAW is designed to integrate with Google Drive API.
What does it mean for you?
You don’t need to spend hours onboarding a new tool.
With YNAW, anyone with access to your Google Docs can edit or update your wiki-style website in seconds. The process of inviting anyone to your wiki is similar to inviting a user to a shared file or folder on Google Drive.
With YNAW, you can get started with your wiki software in less than 30 seconds. Enjoy all the perks of a wiki software minus the confusing and clunky interface.
YNAW allows you to create a nested tree-style menu for your documents and lets you find files faster. You can access the menu of documents on the left and the content of a selected file on the right.
YNAW allows you to set up a table of contents and link documents to one another. This way, all the ambiguous documents are organized and stored in the form of a clean website.
However, this tool lacks task management features.
Bottom line: You (may) need a wiki, but you also need a tool that can help you improve workflows.
YNAW pros:
YNAW limitations:
YNAW pricing:
YNAW is a free tool. Its paid plan starts at $10/month (up to 10 users).
YNAW customer ratings:
10.Gitbook
GitBook is another popular knowledge base platform that helps create an internal wiki and works as a personal note-taking app.
Let’s look at the key features that make it one of the best Confluence alternatives.
With GitBook, you can collaborate with other team members to edit and review drafts before publishing them.
This way, GitBook helps you create beautiful docs for your users and maintains a centralized knowledge base for your team.
You need to keep certain company documents private while you want to share others with your stakeholders.
GitBook lets you share your knowledge base both publicly and privately with anyone. You can also create a secret link to give access to your private content to non-GitBook users.
Users can bring their documents to life using GitBook’s rich content and rich-text editing capabilities.
You can use its elegant WYSIWYG* (what you see is what you get) editor to add value to your documents by branding and customizing them as per users’ needs.
However, it’s difficult to embed videos in your Gitbook documents. 😟
GitBook pros:
GitBook limitations:
GitBook pricing:
GitBook is free for open source projects. Its paid version starts at $8/user per month (up to 5 users.)
GitBook customer ratings:
Why Dedicated Wiki Tools Are Horrible for Project Planning and Management
Many companies use dedicated collaboration tools like Atlassian Confluence for action plans like project planning, product launches, meeting notes , and file sharing.
The problem with this strategy is that your team can’t map these action plans within Confluence alone.
Confluence only serves as a reference point. They’ll have to use another dedicated project management and collaboration software to map out these actions.
Think about it…
Why You Should Use UDN Task Manager for Project Management
Using a dedicated project management software and collaboration tool like UDN Task Manager is a far smarter choice than wiki tools.
Here are a few reasons:
1. Task descriptions with super-rich editing
A wiki tool will never be powerful enough to manage an entire project plan . Your employees will have to go into your wiki tool, check what needs to be done, and then use another project management or collaboration tool to manage their to-dos!
Having to toggle between multiple tools is an unnecessary pain that will slow down your team’s workflow.
UDN Task Manager gives you unified Workspaces for all project and task-related activities. You can note down task descriptions with great detail, outlining what needs to be done.
Organize all tasks within a single workspace in UDN Task Manager and add unique descriptions to tasks as shown above
As everything is in one place, your employees won’t have to look at other Workspaces or wiki docs to refer to detailed notes, plans, and instructions. They can carry out all their project-related activities inside UDN Task Manager !
2. Clear status updates
Most wiki tools don’t support status updates. It’s one reason tools like Confluence need to be used with a project management tool like Jira or Trello .
Because without status updates, there’ll be no way to keep track of what’s going on!
In UDN Task Manager , you can set Custom Statuses for your projects. Be as detailed as you want here and use statuses like “Editorial Process” or “Client Review.”
Stay up to date with all project progress by creating custom statuses in UDN Task Manager to show how far along a task is in each phase of the process
Custom Statuses make it super easy to keep up with your projects and check whether tasks are on track to meet deadlines.
3. Commenting on Tasks
Most modern wiki tools allow team members to contribute to a document. Great.
However, there’s no separate section for these comments, so they’re all over your document instead.
Not so great.
Because comments are all over the place, your doc will look incredibly messy!
Trying to work with such an impractical document isn’t the most effective approach to task management.😬
UDN Task Manager gives you a separate Comment section for each task and subtasks for easy team communication.
Your comments can include text, pictures, links, videos. It’s up to you!
Take a look at the screen recording below.
All the comments on a task are organized beautifully in their dedicated communication space on the right.
Communicate with your team directly in a task, share other tasks, and upload files with threaded comments in UDN Task Manager !
Looks great, right?
Your project description and task list will be neat and legible, making task management a breeze!
4. Assigned Comments
Contrary to what you may think, wiki software isn’t great for team communication.
You’ll have to individually notify each software team member of what needs to be done and then follow up to see if they’ve finished it.
You know what that’s going to look like?
Asking this question a hundred times:
However, that isn’t all. Even after notifying your software team, they still have to go through long documents to find out where you’ve asked them a question or needed their insights.
Wiki app templates also can’t assign actions to team members. This is a massive problem when dealing with action plans.
Here’s a better way out.
UDN Task Manager lets you assign comments to team members. This is a great way to assign individual tasks to people without worrying about bothering anyone else.
The concerned person will receive notifications about these tasks and can take action on them right away!
As the Assigned Comments service functions as a task assignment of sorts, your team can mark a comment as resolved. This reduces the need to follow up on anything.
Assigning a comment to a team member to notify them directly in UDN Task Manager
5. Subtasks with their own comments
Trying to juggle subtasks is impossible on wiki collaboration software. That’s because these subtasks are often complex enough to need their own documents.
Unfortunately, you’ll overcrowd your workspace if you create separate docs for each subtask! This will force your team members to collaborate on large, impractical, and confusing project documentation instead.
UDN Task Manager subtasks can be as detailed as you need them to be. You can add assignees, detailed task descriptions, due dates, and priorities to each Subtask in your project.
In addition, every subtask has its comment section for your assignees to discuss ideas and collaborate over objectives!
This way, each subtask has the individual space it deserves, making it far easier for your software team to collaborate over them and get things done quickly!
Create subtasks within a task to track your project status and add as many details, assignees, and comments as needed in the subtask
UDN Task Manager : A Wiki Tool and a Welcome Change
Tools like Documize, Friyay, Helpjuice, YNAW, or Jira are all great Atlassian Confluence alternatives for a small team.
However, only UDN Task Manager can offer the perfect project management solution for teams of all sizes.
It’s a powerful wiki tool, a bonafide project management software, and undoubtedly the best Confluence alternative. This way, you won’t have to use other tools like Jira for project management .
UDN Task Manager has everything you need!
In case you’re still not influenced by this Confluence alternative, why not get UDN Task Manager for free today and experience the project management magic yourself?
