5 Open-Source Alternatives to Atlassian Confluence

Phil, Jerry

— 5 min read

Confluence was created by Atlassian, an Australian company, in 2004. Since its inception, Confluence has solidified its position as one of the best knowledge management platforms on the market. Teams and organizations can easily share information, work together on projects, and speed up workflows with Confluence's many features. Although Confluence is a highly effective solution for team collaboration and documentation, it may not be the most suitable choice for everyone. This software is also proprietary, which means users do not have access to the source code; thereby, they aren't able to directly modify the codebase to suit their specific needs.

In October 2020, Atlassian announced the end of support for "Confluence Server," with sales and support ending in February 2021 and February 2024, respectively. This shift mandates customers to transition to the "Confluence Cloud" and "Data Center" editions.

As a result, many customers find themselves stranded, unable to host Confluence on their own premises. Existing Confluence Server instances are no longer receiving support and upgrades, leaving them outdated and vulnerable to security threats, which has been a constant issue with Confluence. Furthermore, not all data is suitable for the public cloud due to varying business requirements, data sensitivity, and regulatory concerns.

Thankfully, open source comes to the rescue. Over the years, several free open-source wiki projects have spun up, providing comparable functionality to Confluence and even greater freedom for users.

In this post, we'll look at five open-source Confluence alternatives that are worth exploring.

Docmost

Docmost, an open-source collaborative wiki and documentation software, positions itself as a viable alternative to Confluence. It provides a suite of features akin to Confluence, including spaces, pages, comments, permissions, and groups.

Docmost includes a real-time collaborative editor, enabling multiple users to edit a page simultaneously without overwriting each other's changes. While there are several open-source wiki software, only a handful can boast of real-time collaboration.

The rich-text editor has support for LaTeX (math), tables, callouts (panels), pasting images from the clipboard, and many more.

That's not all; Docmost has built-in support for diagramming tools such as Drawio, Excalidraw, and Mermaid. With these, you can draw and design charts and UML diagrams without leaving the editor.

Workspace home
Docmost Home

Features​

  • Collaborative Real-time Editor: Work together on pages in real time.
  • Diagrams: Built-in support for Drawio, Excalidraw, and Mermaid diagramming tools.
  • Spaces: Organize your pages by team, projects, or departments for better collaboration.
  • Permissions Management: Easily control access to pages with easy-to-understand permissions.
  • Groups: Easily grant unified permissions to users via groups.
  • Comments: Add inline comments to pages for better communication and feedback.
  • Page History: Track changes with a comprehensive version history.
  • Nested Navigation: You can nest and reorder pages via the sidebar.
  • Search: Quickly find the information you need with powerful search capabilities.
  • File Attachment: Attach files to your pages for quick reference and sharing.

GitHub: https://github.com/docmost/docmost

Wiki.js

Wiki.js is a popular open-source wiki software that allows you to write documentation in Markdown, Visual Editor, and AsciiDoc.
It is very appealing to the technical audience.
It is adaptable and versatile and runs smoothly across a wide range of systems and environments. You can set your wiki to be private, public, or a combination of the two with this software. 

The software is built with Node.js, which ensures high performance, and overall, it can be a suitable open-source alternative to Confluence.

  • Wiki.js provides a straightforward installation process that can be done via Docker, Node.js, or manual deployment.

Main Features of Wiki.js:

  • Wiki.js features a rich text editor that allows users to create and format content easily with features such as headings, lists, tables, and assets.
  • It supports several databases from MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MS-SQL Server. However, Postgres will be the only supported database in Wiki.js 3.0.
  • It includes built-in version control to track changes, compare revisions, and revert to previous versions if need be.
  • It supports integration with third-party authentication services such as GitHub, Google, and Microsoft for user authentication.
  • It includes powerful search functionality that enables users to quickly find relevant content within the wiki.
  • It has support for Git.

GitHub: https://github.com/requarks/wiki

BookStack

BookStack describes itself as a simple, open-source, self-hosted, easy-to-use platform for organising and storing information. If you're searching for an easy-to-use, lightweight alternative to Confluence for knowledge management and documentation, you might want to give BookStack a try.

BookStack categorizes content structure into three groups: books, chapters, and pages. Users can build books to collect relevant content, chapters to further organize content inside books, and pages to include actual content like text, images, or files. This hierarchical structure makes it straightforward to organise and navigate information within BookStack.

BookStack is adaptable and offers a wide range of customisation possibilities to meet a variety of purposes. Overall, the platform is best suited for smaller teams that require a simple solution for managing documents and knowledge.

Main features of BookStack:

  • BookStack has Markdown and WYSIWYG visual editor.
  • Content is organized in a hierarchical structure.
  • BookStack allows integration with authentication providers such as Okta, LDAP, Google, GitHub, and Slack.
  • It supports various types of media embeds.
  • The user interface is very friendly, making it accessible to users with varying levels of technical expertise.
  • Amongst other features are comments and page history.

GitHub: https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is one of the most popular open-source wiki software. This software has an extensive feature set that makes it a reliable alternative to Confluence for collaborative documentation, knowledge repositories, and knowledge sharing across various domains and industries. MediaWiki powers some of the biggest wikis in the world, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikimedia Commons. 

MediaWiki is designed to handle large volumes of content that need to be accessed and edited by many people. You can add extra features to this software by installing helpful extensions and customizing it by using templates. However, for non-techies, MediaWiki may not be the easiest to use, and some may find it difficult to get started. Nevertheless, it is one of the trusted wikis and is available for free.

Main features of MediaWiki:

  • MediaWiki has a vast ecosystem of plugins and extensions which can be used to add additional functionality.
  • Good page editor conflict-handling
  • Pages can be organized into categories, allowing for structured navigation and browsing of content.
  • MediaWiki provides built-in media management capabilities, allowing users to upload and embed images, videos, and other files into wiki pages.
  • MediaWiki supports templates, allowing users to create reusable content blocks.
  • MediaWiki includes a powerful search engine that enables users to quickly find relevant content within the wiki.
  • Permissions management
  • Support for extensions

GitHub: https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki

XWiki

XWiki is another powerful open-source wiki alternative to Confluence. It offers a versatile and adaptable solution for knowledge management, collaboration, and documentation. Knowledge bases, intranets, and any other kind of business application can be created with XWiki because of its high degree of versatility. The software can also manage both structured and unstructured data effectively.

XWiki can be used by small businesses or teams, but its advanced features and functions make it ideal for larger organizations and teams with complex collaboration and knowledge management needs. The built-in security measures make it simple to create group-specific wikis and manage user access appropriately.

Main Features of XWiki:

  • WYSIWYG editor
  • XWiki offers extensibility through its wide range of available extensions and plugins.
  • Access control and permissions.
  • Hierarchical organization of structured content through nested pages and sub-wikis.
  • XWiki includes built-in version control functionality, allowing users to track changes made to pages over time, revert to previous versions, and compare revisions.
  • It provides collaboration features such as comments, notifications, and user mentions, facilitating communication and teamwork among users.

GitHub: https://github.com/xwiki/xwiki-platform

Closing thoughts

We hope we have been able to open your mind to the numerous free open-source alternatives to Confluence.

The choice is now yours to make.

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