Confluence vs. Jira Comparability – 2023

Confluence and Jira are each undertaking administration instruments provided by Atlassian. Each can assist groups get organized, share information, and full complicated initiatives. However what are their variations, and the way do they examine for various use circumstances? On this submit, we’ll break down every software’s strengths and weaknesses that can assist you resolve which one is best for you. 

Confluence offers groups with a spot to write down, edit, and touch upon essential inner paperwork. Anyplace from one to 10,000 individuals can collaborate in a single area. That’s spectacular! Begin utilizing it without spending a dime as we speak and get 2 GB of storage, limitless areas and pages, and room for as much as 10 staff members. 

Jira helps groups of 10 to 35,000 run easily. The software program makes planning and constructing new merchandise simple, launching advertising and marketing plans, and managing funds—all from a central workspace. Like with most Atlassian merchandise, you’ll be able to begin utilizing it on the free-forever Jira plan for as much as 10 staff members. 

Confluence and Jira In comparison with the Greatest Venture Administration Software program

We researched and examined a big selection of the very best undertaking administration software program 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 strong options to each Jira and Confluence in managing initiatives for numerous use circumstances.

Monday.com is a undertaking administration powerhouse with customizable workflows, a CRM constructed into the software program, and over 200 PM templates. Attempt Monday with a 14-day free trial as we speak. 

ClickUp affords all of the top-notch undertaking administration options you want at an impressively low value. Try ClickUp’s free endlessly plan to get began. 

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

Confluence In comparison with Jira

If you happen to’re questioning what options Confluence and Jira supply, you’ve come to the suitable place. Let’s study what these two undertaking 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 staff works on collectively. Groups can select from 5 sorts of areas: 

• Private: set up your individual notes, drafts, and objectives 
• Staff: work along with others in a single centralized, digital location
• Software program Venture: maintain monitor of a improvement undertaking’s many shifting components
• Data Base: construct an inner wiki of finest practices and SOPs on your staff to reference
• Documentation: generate public-facing documentation to help your services or products

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

If you happen to’d somewhat not spend time creating your individual pages from scratch, select from over 70 Confluence templates for a fast begin on widespread doc and area sorts. 

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

Jira Highlights

Jira began as a manner for software program builders and IT professionals to trace and repair bugs. It’s now a flexible undertaking administration suite with 4 predominant merchandise: 

• Jira Software program: an Agile-based DevOps undertaking 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 undertaking administration software full with customizable initiatives, duties, and subtasks, together with a calendar, board, and listing views
• Jira Align: Jira’s undertaking administration answer for enterprise groups, excellent for managers and different top-level executives

These instruments are designed to work individually or collectively, so you’ll be able to select the merchandise that work finest on your staff. 

For instance, a small legislation agency might use Jira Work Administration to prepare all of the work required to strive circumstances throughout the staff’s attorneys, paralegals, information clerks, authorized secretaries, and IT managers. An IT supervisor might additionally use Jira Service Administration to maintain monitor of—and resolve—IT points.

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

Confluence vs. Jira: Execs and Cons

Each software program choice you’ll have a look at is certain to have its strengths and weaknesses. Confluence and Jira aren’t 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 lots of of staff members. Confluence retains your staff’s whole information base in a single simply accessible place. When somebody in your staff must see an organization course of, coverage, or process, they’ll rapidly 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 staff members keep on monitor. In-page feedback, emoji reactions, GIFs, and likes make communication simple and enjoyable. Computerized highlights assist you to see the place your teammates are making adjustments. The Confluence dashboard additionally shows essentially the most not too long ago up to date pages, together with inner weblog posts you make to announce updates. 

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 inner paperwork and Jira to handle workflows, IT points, and software program improvement. Confluence additionally integrates with a dizzying array of apps, from fashionable instruments like Google Drive, Presenter, Slack, and Microsoft Groups, to extra area of interest options like Loom, draw.io, and Gliffy.

Ease of use: With a helpful consumer dashboard, drag-and-drop modifying, and a clear, intuitive structure, Confluence is straightforward to study. Your staff gained’t must spend hours studying the way to navigate the software program. The short begin tutorial that Confluence offers once you first log in offers any consumer sufficient information to begin collaborating instantly. 

The place Confluence Wants Enchancment

Sharing permissions: If you happen to rely closely on limiting paperwork to sure teams of individuals on a staff, Confluence could 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 individual at a time, navigate to the Teams characteristic, create a bunch of individuals, and add that whole group to an area. To create the identical permissions settings for a brand new area, you have to undergo a prolonged copying course of—even that isn’t out there except you buy the Premium plan. 

Workflow administration: In contrast to Jira, Confluence doesn’t present customers with a technique 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 undertaking administration service, you’ll be disillusioned. 

Exporting paperwork: Although you’ll be able to export recordsdata to a Phrase doc or PDF, the method might 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 would possibly must tinker with the export operate for a very long time earlier than the PDF seems simply the best way you need it to. 

The place Jira Shines

Helps Agile workflows: Workflows primarily based on an Agile framework break complicated initiatives into manageable duties and subtasks. If that is your staff’s favourite technique to work, you’ll love Jira’s Agile workflow talents. Set up your work into Kanban boards, roadmaps, backlogs, sprints, dependent duties, calendars, and lists. With Jira, everybody on the staff can simply maintain monitor of a number of initiatives in several phases of completion. 

Collaboration: Like Confluence, Jira excels at fostering communication and collaboration. You can begin a remark thread inside every job field, tag staff 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 help tickets and begin a dialog inside each. It’s also possible to watch a ticket or job by clicking the little eye icon. This implies you’ll obtain an replace every time somebody in your staff makes a change or provides a remark.

Customization: Groups actually wish to keep inside their most well-liked workflow format, and typically, numerous initiatives inside one firm require distinct workflows. With Jira, you’ll be able to customise this for every undertaking you and your staff sort out. The duty bins inside every undertaking are customizable, too. You possibly can add hyperlinks, descriptions, labels, checkboxes, dropdown menus, numbers, dates, and other people to every job field. This high-level customization is certainly one of Jira’s best strengths. 

Versatile: Between Jira Software program, Jira Service Administration, Jira Work Administration, and Jira Align, groups in nearly any subject can use Jira. From legislation corporations to software program builders to building corporations, Jira might 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 could be a highly effective software for you and your staff. However you may want to enroll in a Jira 101 course at your native college earlier than you decide to the software. We’re joking…largely. It takes some devoted studying time to determine the way to use all Jira’s instruments. The interface is also just a little friendlier to the typical consumer. Earlier than you begin utilizing Jira, be sure to put aside a few days for you and your staff to discover ways to use it. 

Searchability: Whenever you create dozens of initiatives with numerous duties and subtasks, you in all probability need to have the ability to rapidly search and discover what you need. However Jira makes this unnecessarily troublesome. You need to study Jira Question Language (JQL) to seek for issues inside your Jira workspace. Although Jira touts JQL as a versatile search methodology, it entails (once more) a steep studying curve. Jira appears to be conscious that JQL isn’t essentially the most user-friendly technique to allow looking out, 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 the way to use. 

Cellular system help: If you happen to get a job replace notification in your e-mail when you’re driving the subway, for instance, you’d wish to head to the Jira cellular app to check out how your undertaking is progressing, proper? Sadly, Jira’s cellular apps lack a few of the options we love in regards to 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 could or is probably not mechanically saved. App shutdowns are frequent. Lengthy story brief? Jira’s cellular apps want some critical love.  

The Final Phrase on Confluence In comparison with Jira

Confluence and Jira supply useful undertaking administration instruments for a lot of sorts of groups. Confluence excels at serving to groups construct inner information bases, whereas Jira shines at undertaking 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. Nonetheless, exporting these paperwork into PDF or Phrase paperwork when you wish to share them with individuals exterior your group might be difficult. If you happen to want workflow administration, you’ll want to make use of Jira together with Confluence. Jira does a pleasant job of letting customers customise and monitor each single a part of a workflow, undertaking, job, and subtask. It could possibly be a bit extra user-friendly, although, particularly relating to the search characteristic. 

Keep in mind, Confluence and Jira are simply two of the various undertaking administration software program companies you’ll be able to select from. See our favourite selections in our listing of the very best undertaking administration software program.