Comparison of SharePoint and Confluence

Without a professional knowledge management, businesses loose a lot of potential, waste resources and gain a competitive disadvantage. Like many others, Microsoft has developed an application to centrally store and manage data: SharePoint.

But is MS SharePoint really an alternative to a matured enterprise wiki application? Learn more about the differences between SharePoint and Confluence.

Criteria

Microsoft SharePoint

Confluence

Comments / Additional Info

Speed of the internet dashboard, perceived reaction time

(tick)  OK, 1.5 to 3 seconds

(plus)  Very fast, mostly < 1 second

Confluence requires considerably less hardware resources, especially with high volume of instances.

Searching within the system: speed, scope of function, good results

(warning)  Very basic search functions, partially bad results

(plus) Very fast, matured, type ahead, good search results, intuitive filters  

Confluence is clearly the winner, especially with daily use.

General user comfort and usability

(warning)  Still a challenge, 2010 considerably better than 2007

(plus) Very good. Have already won prices

This is the main difference. Almost everything is somehow possible in SharePoint. However, Confluence is super easy and is being used.

Templates and design for print-outs and exports

(minus) Not available

(plus) Completely via HTML, CSS for PDF and Word-Export in style  


Direct viewing of Office- und PDF-documents within the browser

(minus) Not available

(plus) Great solution. Requires Flash

 

Copying of pages

(minus) Not possible

(plus) Works

Some functions that are necessary for daily business simply don't exist (yet) in SharePoint.

When renaming a page: Automatic refreshing of links, that redirect from other wiki pages to the renamed page

(minus) Not available

(plus) Possible

Big and active SharePoint instances are subject to many dead links.

Simple notifications and monitoring of content

(minus) Not (easily) possible

(plus) Possible

 

Structuring of documents in a tree structure

(minus) Not possible

(plus) Possible

 

XML export of contents for use in other systems

(minus) Not possible

(plus) Possible

The portability of content in confluence is much higher.

Document templates

(minus) Not possible

(plus) Possible

Templates are very helpful to structure content and keep the layout consistent.

Number and sophistication of plugins

(warning) Almost no Plugins in Standard

(plus) In Standard alone >250 Plugins

SharePoint Foundation has almost no plugins.

Comments / Forums / Discussions

(minus) Not possible in Foundation

(plus) Possible

SharePoint allows for collaboration with comments and likes only starting with "Enterprise" license.

Videos and Multimedia content

(minus) Not possible in Foundation

(plus) Possible

SharePoint allows for Multimedia-Integration only starting with "Enterprise" license.

Integrate RSS-Feeds

(minus) Not possible in Foundation

(plus) Possible

SharePoint allows for content syndication only starting with "Enterprise" license.

Folksonomies

(minus) Not possible in Foundation

(plus) Possible

SharePoint allows for "Folksonomies" only starting with "Enterprise" license.

Editing in simple source text

(minus) XHTML-Code is nearly impossible to read

(plus) Possible

Especially experienced users (programmer, IT pros) like to use wiki markup.

Privilege settings

(tick) Possible, but complex

(plus) simply configurable

Confluence is simple and intuitive. With SharePoint, parts of pages can be blocked.

JIRA Integration

(warning) Possible with plugin

(plus)  Easy solution

JIRA and Confluence have the same developer.

Political acceptability

(plus) Many businesses follow a "Microsoft strategy". SharePoint is often already available or installed

(minus) Often unknown, not installed.

It is often times much more complicated to establish Confluence in a business compared to SharePoint.

Excel integration

(plus) Partially Online Live Editing

(tick)  OK via Office interface

 

If you have ideas and further information on how to complete this table, please contact us using the form below. Please also let us know if you have encountered an error.

Additional Information

We are happy to help you choose and evaluate a wiki system and plan your project. Learn more about wikis on our special wiki pages.

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This content was last updated on 02/13/2019.

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