Why pay for confluence when I have free tools like "MediaWiki"?
Asked by Pablo Portalo:

Hello,

I would like to know what offers Confluence that other tools do not...


Answers:
author: Christian Czaia _Decadis AG_
body: Maybe Atlassian marketing will jump on this right away but have you tried to look up the information on your own? I mean what do you want people to tell you (from their subjective point of view)? A thorough analysis of the tools? That's what you get when you google Confluece vs. MediaWiki (just the first two)

<http://www.wikimatrix.org/compare/TWiki+MediaWiki+Confluence+TracWiki>

<http://blog.blue-spice.org/2012/10/23/mediawiki-vs-confluence-not-a-question-of-features/>

There's tons of information out there and I bet people are more than happy to answer specific question but at least in my opinion you should take a look around before you post questions :-)

Cheers Christian


author: Mick Davidson
body: Pablo,

Christian's answer is a very good one in terms of telling us exactly what you want to know and also in looking at the info the links supply.

There are a many reasons to choose Confluence but in a nutshell I'd say its comprehesiveness, it's an enterprise level tool, the support and community are excellent. In terms of those who use it, I'd look at their customer list, it's extremely impressive.

Finally, Atlassian, who are highly successful, run their entire business through Confluence. Personally I do 99% of my work in Confluence and am very happy to do so.

Cheers.

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: I'd like to scribble "integration" on that as well. Confluence talks to other systems relatively easily (obviously, it's very good at talking to other Atlassian products). Other wiki's I've used are an absolute nightmare because you say "we're tracking issues in X, documenting in (wiki)Y and building in Z" and Y doesn't have much or any reporting on X or Z. Obviously, all-in-one systems like Trac don't have that problem, but hooking Confluence up to report on issues is a doddle compared with bodging something into (say) mediawiki.


author: Michael Dave
body: I've found the "rich text editor" to be incredibly confusing. It tries to be what its not i.e. a full featured WYSIWYG. Further, it severely restricts all markup functionality in that it pretty much forces you to work in WYSIWYG mode.

Its not like Word at all except in a very superficial way.

So far, I find the attachment functionality is incredibly confusing too. We're moving from Confluence 3.8 to Confluence 5.5 and truth be told, I find myself wishing for the old version. It was very clear and much easier to use and navigate.


author: RPT Admin
body: For me, Confluence's Rich Text Editor is a killer feature. I work with a lot of non-technical people who would find wiki markup very intimidating. But when I show them the rich text editor, it looks just like Word, and they are immediately confident about diving in to the wiki and creating content. There are lots of other features I love - but that's the headline advantage.

comments: author: Graeme Geldenhuys
body: I find it totally opposite. The Rich Text Editor in Confluence 5.4.4 is terrible. Give me MediaWiki any time of the day. My reasons \* Large documents (eg: 130pages +) are terribly slow to edit. \* Plus it is a edit All-or-Nothing mode. In MediaWiki I can edit just a section of a large document. Editing sections like MediaWiki is MUCH faster and more multi-user friendly! \* The Rich Text Editor forces WYSIWYG on you and limits the markup you can use