The right content creation, knowledge sharing, and collaboration platform for your team will obviously depend on your business needs. But in general, Confluence is made to scale with enterprise organizations, connecting work across individuals, teams, and departments, while Notion tends to be used for individual work or smaller teams.
In this blog, we will dive into the strengths of each platform. But ultimately, the right “fit” for your business will depend on your organization’s unique needs. Notion is a popular tool for individual users, while Confluence offers the integrations and admin controls needed by larger teams. Notion can become disorganized as a company grows or workflows become more complex, while Confluence has a structure designed to scale for enterprise teams.
Discover the similarities and differences between Confluence and Notion, and arm yourself with the information to make the best choice for your organization.
What is Confluence?
Released in 2004, Confluence is a connected workspace — for teams of all sizes — where knowledge meets collaboration. In Confluence, content is organized on pages within dedicated spaces to help more than 75,000 users structure and share work easily and accelerate teamwork.
Confluence features
Confluence makes document collaboration simple and is a favorite among teams of all kinds. Compared to its competitors, Confluence integrates better with tools — like Jira — that keep teams’ work moving forward. Confluence has an entire marketplace with free and paid apps and integrations that help users achieve just about any work-related task they can imagine.
Content creation
In Confluence, spaces are organized in a way that makes information easy to find and access. Think of spaces as different closets in which teams can store their work. Teams can create pages within their spaces — like organizing clothes on hangers within your closet. And old pages get archived, so new content can be searched and surfaced quickly.
Creating company-wide content like knowledge bases and wikis is easy with Confluence. Its templates make getting started simple. And its functionality — including formatting options and macros — makes adding and editing content a breeze.
Confluence’s navigation structure features a page tree that helps enforce the organization of content organically. And with the ability to get AI-powered answers straight from the search bar, finding relevant content is faster than ever. The powerful search function lets users easily find content for any team across any Atlassian product.
Apps and integrations
With more than 3,000 apps and integrations, Confluence’s collaboration features can keep teams’ work moving forward and manage projects with ease.
Confluence offers seamless integration with other tools within the Atlassian suite, like Jira and Trello. But it also connects with external apps like Slack, Figma, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, and many more third-party integrations to power automations. More than 600 cloud-based apps are added to the Atlassian Marketplace every year.
Confluence is also adding whiteboards to its lineup. With whiteboards, program managers, marketers, team leaders — or anyone who needs to visualize information — can put their ideas into action. Users can import Jira issues for efficient task management, convert whiteboard stickies into Jira issues and Confluence pages, and collaborate with teammates on an endless canvas.
Confluence has a tool, databases, that lets users structure, connect, and manage work in one streamlined view (and get out of that giant Excel sheet!). Databases give project managers and teams a comprehensive look at how their work is connected and have real-time syncing, so users will always see the most up-to-date information.
Admin controls
Confluence puts the power in admins’ hands with control across all paid plans. Its features support large-scale collaboration and knowledge sharing with more functionality than its competitors. And Confluence not only includes system-wide global admin controls but space-specific admin controls, too. Space admin controls take the burden off of site admins for more granular permissions.
Confluence’s structure and extensive admin features provide the guardrails businesses need to organize information and scale effectively. Confluence admins can create permissions, set controls, and assign roles across any paid plan. Admins can also:
- Add and invite new users.
- Delete or disable users.
- Restore passwords.
- Change users’ information.
- Manage site-wide groups.
- Configure user directories.
Site-wide admin analytics help leaders see how content is performing and how active users are and help them make informed decisions. Analytics can also help teams identify dependencies, uncover blockers, and facilitate efficiency.
All Confluence’s paid plans allow users to collaborate externally, outside of their organizations. External collaboration settings and features include anonymous space or page access for “viewing only,” “guest” permissions that include full editing access, and public links where users can publicly share URLs to individual Confluence pages.
Scalability
96% of Confluence users say that Confluence is highly scalable across entire organizations. That’s because Confluence is built to grow alongside your company – offering enterprise-grade security, fully customizable integrations, and advanced admin controls.
Confluence empowers teams across all departments to work together in the same space. With robust integrations across every team’s favorite tools and supported by the Atlassian platform, Confluence can serve as a company-wide hub for content collaboration without requiring access to additional tools. It has use cases and functionality for every team within a company, so even scalability is streamlined.
Templates in Confluence help teams standardize knowledge, kick-start content creation, and provide a consistency to pages that makes information easier to digest. Templates are like step-by-step guides that do a lot of the structural heavy lifting for you, so they make scaling easier. Space and site admins can even create customized templates to standardize team- or company-wide work.
Confluence security is part of the Atlassian Trust Center, which helps organizations strengthen their security infrastructure resilience and makes it safe to add users in any location. It allows teams to scale effectively without compromising data security, privacy, or compliance. Confluence data is protected with storage in the U.S., EU, Australia, and Germany.
Confluence pricing
Confluence has plans and pricing that work for any number of team members at any budget.
Free plan
- Up to 10 users
- Up to 2 gigabytes of file storage
- Unlimited spaces and pages
- Includes apps and integrations
Standard plan
- $6.05 per user per month — up to 50,000 users
- 250 gigabytes of file storage
- User permissions that allow admins to assign, revoke, and modify space and page permissions
- Local business hours support from a dedicated team
Premium plan
- $11.55 per user per month — up to 50,000 users
- Atlassian Intelligence AI capabilities
- Unlimited storage and analytics
- 24/7 support
Enterprise plan
- Unlimited users — pricing depends on the number of users
- Atlassian Intelligence (AI)
- Up to 150 sites
- 24/7 support
Confluence reviews
Confluence has more than 3,700 reviews on G2. Some of the features people mention appreciating include:
- Pages
- Project documents
- Search functionality
- Project management
- Collaboration tools
What is Notion?
Launched in 2016, Notion is a relatively new solution in the productivity space. It’s a flexible option for note-taking, building wikis, documenting product roadmaps, organizing notes, and more. Although it’s powerful, it may not be robust enough for all knowledge-sharing and collaboration use cases — especially at scale.
Notion features
Notion is a simpler option that may be more attractive to some for personal use cases. Its integrations, Kanban boards, and clean interface are useful for those seeking an individual productivity solution.
Content creation
With Notion, the drag-and-drop block editor allows users to get started quickly and customize content structure. Content is also flexible — users can convert text to a table, calendar, Kanban board, or bullet points.
Apps and integrations
Notion’s desktop app lets teams collaborate on their most important work in a focused environment. The app is optimized for speed so users can find and create content quickly.
A Notion desktop app user can start docs, connect them to projects, and keep track of tasks without navigating countless browser tabs.
Like Confluence, Notion also integrates with some third-party apps like Slack to reduce the inconvenience of tool-switching. However, Notion doesn’t have the APIs or range of free and paid integrations that the Marketplace offers Confluence users.
Admin controls
Notion provides users with controls that let them share documents and databases outside of their companies. However, guests get access to specific pages, and cannot access entire workspaces, which can make team-scale collaboration with agencies or vendors challenging.
Outside of external sharing, Notion doesn’t have extensive admin controls for its standard plan options. Notion admins can:
- Add and remove members
- Change settings in workspaces
- Update billing information
For more admin control, users have to have an Enterprise account. The lack of admin control in Notion may make it more difficult for users to scale this product.
Scalability
Although Notion’s organization and information structure make it easy to get started, information may quickly become hard to find as more teams join. When a lot of content is added to Notion workspaces, pages, and blocks information visibility may become difficult.
In a team collaboration setting, many different people will be adding and working on pages within Notion. But because there’s no real workspace standardization in the platform — parent pages aren’t consistent — the search function may become more difficult to use as more content is added.
Notion pricing
Notion offers plans for every company size, starting with a free plan for small teams.
Free plan
- Unlimited blocks for single users — up to 10 guests
Plus plan
- $8 per user per month — up to 100 guests
Business plan
- $15 per user per month — up to 250 guests
Enterprise plan
- Up to 250 guests — pricing depends on specific needs
Confluence vs. Notion: Which is best for your organization?
The best tool for your organization will be based on your team’s needs. Overall, Confluence’s features lend themselves best to organizations with large teams, high levels of content creation, or complex workflows, although small teams and single users can find just as much success with the platform. Notion is targeted more toward individuals and personal use.
Confluence vs. Notion side-by-side comparison
Both Confluence and Notion are powerful tools in their own right, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. The biggest differences between the two are the variety of integrations offered and level of admin control.
Key features to look for
Seek out features that align with your team’s functional requirements. Here’s how Confluence vs. Notion features stack up.
Integrations
When Confluence users were surveyed, 95% of them who had also used Notion said Confluence’s app integrations were better.
Support and community
Confluence offers users comprehensive support through a dedicated team, documentation, and community forum. Notion offers a help center with documentation, community groups, and email support.
Training
Atlassian University offers free courses on software fundamentals and hands-on training to help users shorten their learning curve, build their skills, and train teams. Notion doesn’t have any advanced training programs.
Along with Atlassian University, Confluence offers users training courses for everyone from single users and admins to team leads and provides a large knowledge base that makes onboarding easy. Notion has web pages with guides, tutorials, and webinars.
Partners
Atlassian Partners offers a variety of accredited services, trainings, integrations, and customized solutions to help you tackle challenges at any scale.
- Solution Partners: Team with consulting companies that help with product knowledge, implementation, and customized solutions.
- Marketplace Partners: Provide apps and integrations in the Atlassian Marketplace.
- Global Alliance Partners: Offer Enterprise customers vertical market and business transformation expertise.
- Platform Partners: Pair with tech companies that offer tools and services that have integrations with Atlassian products.
Notion also offers partner programs:
- Technology Partners: Grow product distribution and develop solutions with new tools using Notion and partner products.
- Consulting Partners: Support Notion customers and grow business through sales opportunities.
- Startup Partners: Offer free Notion access to startup networks.
- Affiliate Partners: Let users earn rewards through the Notion referral program.
The best choice for your team
When it comes to Notion vs. Confluence, there’s no objective “best” choice. The right choice for you is dependent on your knowledge management and organizational needs.
While Notion is great for individual users, if you want a scalable team workspace that works for any size group, consider Confluence.