Confluence and Jira are each venture administration instruments provided by Atlassian. Each might help groups get organized, share information, and full advanced initiatives. However what are their variations, and the way do they evaluate for various use instances? On this publish, we’ll break down every instrument’s strengths and weaknesses that can assist you resolve which one is best for you. 

Confluence gives groups with a spot to jot down, edit, and touch upon essential inside paperwork. Wherever from one to 10,000 individuals can collaborate in a single house. That’s spectacular! Start using it for free today and get 2 GB of storage, limitless areas and pages, and room for as much as 10 crew members. 

Jira helps groups of 10 to 35,000 run easily. The software program makes planning and constructing new merchandise straightforward, launching advertising plans, and managing funds—all from a central workspace. Like with most Atlassian merchandise, you possibly can start using it on the free-forever Jira plan for as much as 10 crew members. 

Confluence vs. Jira

Confluence and Jira In comparison with the Finest Challenge Administration Software program

We researched and examined a wide selection of the best project management software that can assist you resolve which one to make use of in your group. Our prime picks from that listing are our Golden Eggs, that are stable alternate options to each Jira and Confluence in managing initiatives for varied use instances.

Monday.com is a venture administration powerhouse with customizable workflows, a CRM constructed into the software program, and over 200 PM templates. Try Monday with a 14-day free trial today

ClickUp affords all of the top-notch venture administration options you want at an impressively low value. Check out ClickUp’s free forever plan to get started

Smartsheet brings groups who love Excel into the fashionable age, with a number of venture views like Gantt charts that improve sheet-based administration of initiatives. Give Smartsheet a attempt with their generous 30-day free trial.

Confluence In comparison with Jira

Should you’re questioning what options Confluence and Jira provide, you’ve come to the fitting place. Let’s look at what these two venture administration instruments can do for you.

Confluence Highlights

Confluence is good for groups which might be steadily collaborating on paperwork. The guts of Confluence is its areas, every of which collects a set of paperwork or pages that your crew works on collectively. Groups can select from 5 forms of areas: 

  • Private: manage your personal notes, drafts, and targets 
  • Group: work along with others in a single centralized, digital location
  • Software program Challenge: hold observe of a improvement venture’s many transferring components
  • Data Base: construct an inside wiki of finest practices and SOPs in your crew to reference
  • Documentation: generate public-facing documentation to assist your services or products

The pages you create inside these areas are saved on Confluence’s cloud, and you may management who has entry to every web page. Together with including textual content to those collaborative paperwork, you possibly can create tables, roadmaps, information panels, and far more. 

Should you’d slightly not spend time creating your personal pages from scratch, select from over 70 Confluence templates for a fast begin on widespread doc and house varieties. 

Confluence affords limitless areas and pages throughout all its plans. Relying on the plan you select, you can too get 250 GB of cloud storage, software program integrations for over 1,000 platforms, person permissions, crew calendars, analytics, and automations. 

Jira Highlights

Jira began as a means for software program builders and IT professionals to trace and repair bugs. It’s now a flexible venture administration suite with 4 most important merchandise: 

  • Jira Software program: an Agile-based DevOps venture administration system particularly designed for software program builders 
  • Jira Service Administration: a customizable hub for incident administration, asset administration, information administration, configuration administration, and customer support 
  • Jira Work Administration: a broad venture administration instrument full with customizable initiatives, duties, and subtasks, together with a calendar, board, and listing views
  • Jira Align: Jira’s venture administration resolution for enterprise groups, supreme for managers and different top-level executives

These instruments are designed to work individually or collectively, so you possibly can select the merchandise that work finest in your crew. 

For instance, a small regulation agency may use Jira Work Administration to prepare all of the work required to attempt instances throughout the crew’s attorneys, paralegals, data clerks, authorized secretaries, and IT managers. An IT supervisor may additionally use Jira Service Administration to maintain observe of—and resolve—IT points.

In the identical vein, an ecommerce retailer may manage product planning, sourcing, delivery, advertising plans, web site improvement, content material creation, and gross sales technique throughout all its staff utilizing Jira Work Administration. 

Confluence vs. Jira: Professionals and Cons

Each software program possibility you’ll take a look at is sure to have its strengths and weaknesses. Confluence and Jira are not any exception. On this part, we’ll dig into the place Confluence and Jira stand out and the place they’re missing.

The place Confluence Shines

Data base administration: Gone are the times of referring to paperwork in a file cupboard or trying to share folders full of Phrase docs to dozens or a whole lot of crew members. Confluence retains your crew’s complete information base in a single simply accessible place. When somebody in your crew must see an organization course of, coverage, or process, they will shortly entry the doc they want in your shared Confluence areas. 

Actual-time modifying: Whether or not you’re working remotely or collaborating side-by-side in the identical workplace, Confluence’s real-time modifying characteristic helps you and your crew members keep on observe. In-page feedback, emoji reactions, GIFs, and likes make communication straightforward and enjoyable. Automated highlights mean you can see the place your teammates are making adjustments. The Confluence dashboard additionally shows essentially the most lately up to date pages, together with inside weblog posts you make to announce updates. 

Confluence webpage with header that says "Build, organize, and collaborate on work in one place virtually from anywhere" and example of a user making a comment in the software

Integrations: As they’re each Atlassian merchandise, Confluence integrates seamlessly with Jira. Our analysis confirmed that prospects steadily use each merchandise collectively—Confluence to collaborate on inside paperwork and Jira to handle workflows, IT points, and software program improvement. Confluence additionally integrates with a dizzying array of apps, from well-liked instruments like Google Drive, Presenter, Slack, and Microsoft Groups, to extra area of interest options like Loom, draw.io, and Gliffy.

Confluence integrations with logos for Jira, Trello, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Figma, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box

Ease of use: With a useful person dashboard, drag-and-drop modifying, and a clear, intuitive structure, Confluence is simple to study. Your crew gained’t must spend hours studying learn how to navigate the software program. The fast begin tutorial that Confluence gives whenever you first log in provides any person sufficient information to begin collaborating instantly. 

The place Confluence Wants Enchancment

Sharing permissions: Should you rely closely on proscribing paperwork to sure teams of individuals on a crew, Confluence might disappoint. The model’s permissions characteristic wants some fine-tuning. Setting permissions is a prolonged course of, requiring you so as to add approved customers to an area individually. If you wish to add a couple of particular person at a time, navigate to the Teams characteristic, create a bunch of individuals, and add that complete group to an area. To create the identical permissions settings for a brand new house, you will need to undergo a prolonged copying course of—even that isn’t out there until you buy the Premium plan. 

Workflow administration: In contrast to Jira, Confluence doesn’t present customers with a method to create initiatives, assign duties, and handle due dates. Utilizing Confluence along with Jira or a third-party integration solves this drawback, however if you wish to use Confluence as a standalone venture administration service, you’ll be upset. 

Exporting paperwork: Regardless that you possibly can export information to a Phrase doc or PDF, the method may be time-consuming and formatting points after conversion are widespread. If it’s worthwhile to export a Confluence doc to PDF and share it with a shopper, for instance, you may must tinker with the export operate for a very long time earlier than the PDF seems to be simply the way in which you need it to. 

The place Jira Shines

Helps Agile workflows: Workflows primarily based on an Agile framework break advanced initiatives into manageable duties and subtasks. If that is your crew’s favourite method to work, you’ll love Jira’s Agile workflow talents. Arrange your work into Kanban boards, roadmaps, backlogs, sprints, dependent duties, calendars, and lists. With Jira, everybody on the crew can simply hold observe of a number of initiatives in numerous phases of completion. 

Jira scrum boards webpage with example of an agile board

Collaboration: Like Confluence, Jira excels at fostering communication and collaboration. You can begin a remark thread inside every activity field, tag crew members to ensure they see the updates and extra. This collaborative focus is current all through all of Jira’s merchandise. In Jira Service Administration, for instance, customers can create assist tickets and begin a dialog inside every one. You can too watch a ticket or activity by clicking the little eye icon. This implies you’ll obtain an replace every time somebody in your crew makes a change or provides a remark.

Customization: Groups actually wish to keep inside their most well-liked workflow format, and generally, varied initiatives inside one firm require distinct workflows. With Jira, you possibly can customise this for every venture you and your crew sort out. The duty containers inside every venture are customizable, too. You’ll be able to add hyperlinks, descriptions, labels, checkboxes, dropdown menus, numbers, dates, and folks to every activity field. This high-level customization is one in every of Jira’s biggest strengths. 

Jira webpage that highlights how templates give you a headstart and then you can customize as you grow

Versatile: Between Jira Software program, Jira Service Administration, Jira Work Administration, and Jira Align, groups in nearly any subject can use Jira. From regulation companies to software program builders to building firms, Jira may be molded to suit your wants. Every Jira product helps you collaborate with others, handle initiatives, and produce work that your purchasers will love. 

The place Jira Wants Enchancment

Studying curve: Jira is usually a highly effective instrument for you and your crew. However you may want to enroll in a Jira 101 course at your native college earlier than you decide to the instrument. We’re joking…principally. It takes some devoted studying time to determine learn how to use all Jira’s instruments. The interface is also a bit of friendlier to the typical person. Earlier than you begin utilizing Jira, be sure you put aside a few days for you and your crew to learn to use it. 

Searchability: If you create dozens of initiatives with numerous duties and subtasks, you most likely need to have the ability to shortly search and discover what you need. However Jira makes this unnecessarily tough. You could study Jira Question Language (JQL) to seek for issues inside your Jira workspace. Regardless that Jira touts JQL as a versatile search technique, it entails (once more) a steep studying curve. Jira appears to be conscious that JQL isn’t essentially the most user-friendly method to allow looking, asking customers to not be intimidated by the search language. However even their cheat sheet is complicated. Some issues—like a product’s search operate—are higher left in a easy, acquainted format that individuals already know learn how to use. 

Cell machine assist: Should you get a activity replace notification in your e-mail when you’re using the subway, for instance, you’d wish to head to the Jira cellular app to try how your venture is progressing, proper? Sadly, Jira’s cellular apps lack among the options we love concerning the platform. Syncing takes for much longer than it ought to. The structure of the app is totally different than it’s on the desktop and net interfaces. Feedback might or will not be routinely saved. App shutdowns are frequent. Lengthy story quick? Jira’s cellular apps want some severe love.  

The Final Phrase on Confluence In comparison with Jira

Confluence and Jira provide useful venture administration instruments for a lot of forms of groups. Confluence excels at serving to groups construct inside information bases, whereas Jira shines at venture and workflow administration. 

If most of your work is document-based, Confluence could also be all you want. It’s a lot simpler to collaborate on paperwork in Confluence than, say, Microsoft Phrase and even Google Docs. Nevertheless, exporting these paperwork into PDF or Phrase paperwork when you wish to share them with individuals exterior your group may be difficult. Should you want workflow administration, you’ll want to make use of Jira together with Confluence. Jira does a pleasant job of letting customers customise and observe each single a part of a workflow, venture, activity, and subtask. It could possibly be a bit extra user-friendly, although, particularly concerning the search characteristic. 

Bear in mind, Confluence and Jira are simply two of the various venture administration software program companies you possibly can select from. See our favourite selections in our list of the best project management software


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