• long running

Confluence: Collaboration Tool Free for up-to 10 Users $0 Forever @ Atlassian

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Confluence: Collaboration Tool Free for up-to 10 Users $0 Forever @ Atlassian
Go to Deal
Vietsoldier on 18/01/2020 - 07:49 atlassian.com (9945 clicks)
Last edited 18/01/2020 - 17:58 by 1 other user

I'm a big fan of Atlassian as they are an incredible Australian success story.
- https://pando.com/2013/04/26/hard-yakka-why-atlassians-found…
- https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/from-uni-drop…

It also helps that JIRA and Confluence are my favourite collaboration tools which I use at work and so much better than email! Now that it's free, I can use it at home as an alternative to my other collaboration tools such as Google Drive, Docs, Etc…

I'm surprised nobody has posted this given the popularity of the JIRA deal just over a year ago https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/401876

Enjoy… Free Forever!!!

Mod: Free since Sep 2019: "Atlassian adds free tiers for Jira and Confluence". Therefore marked as long running deal, this cannot be reposted in the future.

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Comments

  • aimon on 18/01/2020 - 08:56

    Completely off topic but we have been using not and azure DevOps at work and find azure DevOps a much more mature product. It's weird Microsoft don't have a confluence competitor but that's probably because it would canabilise o365.

    • Vietsoldier on 18/01/2020 - 08:57

      They do, it's called MS Teams.

      • Lord Ra on 18/01/2020 - 09:28
        +2

        We're switching to teams in a couple of months, getting rid of Skype for Business and Office 2013 and jumping to O365 E3. I will give this a go as well, always good to learn new stuff.

      • ShouldIBuyIt on 18/01/2020 - 09:35
        +3

        Teams is more a competitor of Slack. But they're trying to do too much in one place, hence not doing anything as good as everyone else…
        Personally would choose Slack over MS teams anyday

        • [Deactivated] on 18/01/2020 - 10:00
          +4

          Teams channel structure sucks.

          • ShouldIBuyIt on 18/01/2020 - 10:34
            +1

            @[Deactivated]: Can't agree more!
            Can't be difficult to just look at what Slack is doing… And just do the same…

      • gilbarc on 18/01/2020 - 10:00
        +3

        Teams is trash

      • spaceflight on 18/01/2020 - 15:05
        +1

        Why would anyone ever use that piece of rubbish

        • NWLikeShopping on 07/02/2020 - 18:53

          Because management decrees it and tells everyone that skype is now unauthorised software.

    • ShouldIBuyIt on 18/01/2020 - 09:32
      +1

      ?? Microsoft's confluence competitor tool IS Azure DevOps

      • nformone on 18/01/2020 - 11:27
        +1

        Microsofts competitor is SharePoint. Though IMO they have different strengths.

        I've yet to find a better knowledge base tool than confluence.

    • gk0r on 21/01/2020 - 07:43
      +1

      They do, it’s called SharePoint. We got rid of our Confluence and replaced with SharePoint. I am not a fan of either, but the organisation never locked back

      • realaaa on 02/02/2020 - 21:42

        aye I hear you, whatever it is - most important is adoption and adherence, if everything is in ONE place, then it's already a win - I could live with god forsaken creation called SharePoint, but implemented and widely used, as opposed to Confluence that not everyone uses

  • turtlesinmypants on 18/01/2020 - 09:00
    +8

    Also free for millions of users (not hosted) https://wiki.js.org/

  • ilovefullprice on 18/01/2020 - 10:00

    What is the difference between Confluence vs. Jira?

    • neo on 18/01/2020 - 10:25
      +2

      Workplaces typically use these two. Confluence used for collaboration, documentation etc. JIRA used for tracking software development.

      • ilovefullprice on 18/01/2020 - 10:53

        Thanks. So Github would be an open source version almost similar to Jira & Confluence?

        • gunslinger on 18/01/2020 - 10:58
          +1

          Yes, less featured in terms of their wiki (confluence) IMO.
          But Github is not open source (owned by Microsoft now, if that is important).

          • ilovefullprice on 18/01/2020 - 11:21

            @gunslinger: Yup, agreed Github less features.

            Since Github is acquired by MS now, would be interesting MS vs. Atlassian.

        • ASA on 18/01/2020 - 12:02
          +6

          No, Github is a code repository. It does have a primitive wiki but nothing like Confluence. It also has issue tracking, but again relatively basic compared to Jira.

          • ilovefullprice on 18/01/2020 - 19:57

            @ASA: Noob question, Jira could be used as code repo too?

            • AH on 18/01/2020 - 22:41
              +3

              @ilovefullprice: That would be bitbucket. Atlassians version of GitHub.

            • blahman on 19/01/2020 - 02:43
              +1

              @ilovefullprice: The atlassian version of github would be bitbucket.

            • ASA on 19/01/2020 - 18:31
              +2

              @ilovefullprice: No, code repositories are an entirely different thing. I won't bore you with my old man stories of the good ol days using SCCS, CVS and even SVN ;) These days GIT is king and SaaS git repositories include github, gitlab, bitbucket (by Atlassian) and AWS codecommit (pretty basic tho). Check them out. They all have free tier offerings.

              • ilovefullprice on 19/01/2020 - 19:23

                @ASA: Thanks!

              • [Deactivated] on 20/01/2020 - 17:11

                @ASA: You also forgot… well, Azure DevOps!

              • NWLikeShopping on 07/02/2020 - 18:58

                @ASA: What, no RCS? :-)

                That aside, one of the issues with Confluence is that it's oriented specifically toward The Online Experience of Collaboration.

                That means asynchronous collaboration, unconnected, is not handled well at all.

                I've found its versioning to be primitive at best compared to what's offered by code repositories. If you consider what you're creating to be primary source assets (marketing copy, etc), and you need to have people updating the information offline around the world and then uploaded when there's connectivity, most code repositories will do a better job of that.

  • Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 18/01/2020 - 10:04
    +6

    I have absolutely no idea what this software does.

    • bchliu on 18/01/2020 - 16:04
      +2

      I daresay that 95% of OZBers don't either. lol

      • Vote for Pedro on 18/01/2020 - 16:14

        it’s upvotes are quite high for that to be the case

      • xmail on 18/01/2020 - 21:38
        +1

        On the contrary I'd say there'd be a significant number of OZBers that work in IT/software and are familiar with it, much more than 5%.

    • syousef on 18/01/2020 - 16:25
      +1

      At it's heart Confluence lets you share stuff on a web page - team blogs, articles, pages describing a product - whatever you like.

      JIRA is for issue tracking - typically for writing up software bugs and planned improvements to software. Then you can track progress on the task, add comments, compile stats on your project etc.

      • Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 19/01/2020 - 17:37

        So it's an "advanced" excel spreadsheet essentially?

        • syousef on 19/01/2020 - 18:08

          Blogging and sharing articles would be one hell of a weird use for a spreadsheet.

          For Wiki software I think Confluence tends to be the leader. Though it wasn't the first and there are certainly free alternatives.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

          Issue tracking on a shared spreadsheet is painful and impractical if you have a team of more than 4 or 5 people. There are other tools, like Bugzilla (free) or Team Foundation Server - Microsoft - does more than just bug tracking). Atlassian has poured a lot of time adding features and linking other products, as has Micrsoft with TFS. But if you need a basic bug tracker setting up Bugzilla would make sense. Other options here:
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_issue-tracking_s…

        • Vietsoldier on 19/01/2020 - 21:57

          Confluence is more of an Intranet… It stores information in a webpage style.

  • edsheehan on 18/01/2020 - 10:11
    +3

    Thank-you for posting this. I love Jira and Confluence so much that I has previously installed it on a home server and was happily paying the USD10 each year for the family to use. This should allow me to access it anywhere now, save a couple of bucks, and the environment too.

    • ASA on 18/01/2020 - 12:18

      The 2GB limit would stop me from using it fully at home - for example I have PDF user manuals for virtually everything we own (that need manuals :) ).

      But it sounds like an awesome backup of some of my home conflunence spaces - for example my Home Network space. My main achilles heel is that I have all my network configs and things Ive done to fix stuf documented in confluence. But when I do something stupid and my network goes down and I recall,

      "Oh yeah this has happened before and I wrote how to fix it in Confluence!… Oh… the confluence I can't access cause my network is down… DOH!"

      • Vietsoldier on 18/01/2020 - 12:35

        Store your pdfs on another service and link the URLs in confluence?

        • ASA on 18/01/2020 - 18:28
          +1

          Its not just PDFs. I write up what I've done, say to configure my router or whatever, or how I fixed a certain problem. Later, when it happens again I will have forgotten what the hell I did (like minutes later :) ) but I will check if I wrote it down in Confluence and Et Viola! I'm back in business :)

          But I use it for lots of stuff…

      • syousef on 18/01/2020 - 16:26

        What is the advantage of storing your user manuals on JIRA? I just put them on a drive and share it using Windows sharing or Samba.

        • ASA on 18/01/2020 - 18:25

          I store them in Confluence, not Jira

          • syousef on 18/01/2020 - 19:14

            @ASA: Sorry, yes I was looking at both as I typed that and typed the wrong name, but that still doesn't tell me what advantage you see in adding PDFs to a Wiki/Confluence. That's a lot of house keeping and I don't know what you expect to gain.

            • ASA on 19/01/2020 - 09:17
              +1

              @syousef: Well, I guess I do a lot more than just treat it as an archive container for PDFs. But it is handy to keep them all in one place, and associated with the page which documents them. Let me give you an example:

              I do woodworking as a hobby and have some gear like table-saws, bandsaws, etc. I bought them a few years ago and occasionally something goes wrong, or I need to get a part for them, or just need the details of accessories such as blade size, teeth per inch, etc. Or perhaps I need to recall the weird way of taking a particular part of the saw apart to maintain it… Lots of things.

              I have a page for, say, my table saw which has all the details about when I bought it, where from, when the warranty expires… I keep the PDF manual there for reference (better than digging through my attic for the actual paper copy :) ) and make notes about how to service it; what I did to it and when; what size blades it takes, and what bore the blades have; what actual blades I have and where I got them from…

              I have sub-pages for the accessories I bought for the saw. I might store links to youtube vids of people showing how to do particular things for it (like modify the trunnions to allow it to be calibrated easier (mine actually can't… easily). Etc, etc.

              I just find it really useful, and I actually enjoy the process (and the mindset) with Confluence - which I don't with other tools.

              Hope that kind of answers your question :)

    • NWLikeShopping on 07/02/2020 - 19:00

      The cloud version has limits on how much you can customise. For example, I don't think custom macros are supported.

      Good for some hobby/home uses, but for complex information management, it's probably not the go.

  • Westpac on 18/01/2020 - 10:12

    Can someone explain what this does to someone who has absolutely no idea? ELI5?

    • ShouldIBuyIt on 18/01/2020 - 10:37
      +3

      It's like Wikipedia. You write your doc online, format it, and can create a tree structure of pages, linking pages to each other, and moving them around in the repository without breaking the links.
      Basically write your documentation as a website.

  • sageybadegey on 18/01/2020 - 10:16
    +2

    Whats the advantage of confluence over google docs if one is not using JIRA?

    • henryph-am on 18/01/2020 - 11:07

      Confluence is more like a wiki. Great to host your internal documents( policy etc)

    • fredblogs on 22/01/2020 - 22:05

      It's a good question and there's a lot of overlap. I find docs like a cloud version of Word.
      Confluence is like your own personal wikipedia. Great for notes, shopping lists, linking between pages, whatever you want to put there.

  • henryph-am on 18/01/2020 - 10:48

    OMG I just bought this last week for work :(

  • gunslinger on 18/01/2020 - 10:58

    Legend OP

  • Elijha on 18/01/2020 - 12:02

    I literally looked at the pricing of this yesterday and figured they always had a free tier, has this just changed?

    • Vietsoldier on 18/01/2020 - 15:14

      It's only recently become free.

  • kapone on 18/01/2020 - 12:12
    +1

    Not sure why this is posted as a deal. It's been this way for a while.

    We started using Confluence late last year. It is easier to use than most wikis, but still far from ideal. I don't think the perfect tool for this kind of documentation platform exists though.

    • Vietsoldier on 18/01/2020 - 12:40
      +2

      This is posted as a deal to bring about awareness. I personally paid for my own private confluence space last year but stopped when my income dwindled between jobs. It was only this morning I realised that I no longer had to pay to have confluence.

      I'm glad this post is bringing about benefit to others, because many here didn't know the basic tier had become free either.

  • cerealJay on 18/01/2020 - 12:43

    My opinion: Atlassian software is clunky, convoluted at times, and a bit too "Atlassian account spammy". Atlassian really wants those sign-ups. And once you're in, they set up a ridiculous amount of hoops to jump through if you want to close your account. Best thing I did was ditch BitBucket and move to Github, where I've had no trouble. I haven't used Jira for years, but man was that a pile of junk last time I used it. Confluence looked horrible when I last used it. Best thing Atlassian has is Trello which they acquired and mostly haven't touched. Because if they touch it, they will turn it to crap and they know it!

    • netsurfer on 18/01/2020 - 13:25
      +2

      Didn't neg you. My opinion is that if you work in IT long enough in big organisation(s), you would have used Sharepoint and Confluence (and most likely still be using at least one of them). Confluence might take a bit of time to get used to initially, but it is not that bad. It's for documentation. The main advantage is the search functionality (for these portal type products). As for BitBucket, GitHub, GitLab etc… Those are again all basic stuff. Who cares which one the client wants me to use, no issue with any one of them.

      I don't get the big deal about this post though. The free cloud deal is limited to 2GB storage. I am not sure that's useful enough. Might be okay for really slow company, but I really doubt 2GB will get you far.

      • cerealJay on 18/01/2020 - 16:20
        -2

        Couldn't care less about votes, plus or minus. It's just clueless people not knowing how to use words to express their difference of opinion. Or disgruntled Atlassian fans or employees, who knows. What I said is accurate though.

        I don't have great things to say about Sharepoint or MS Teams either, but that's another topic.

    • syousef on 18/01/2020 - 16:29

      Welcome to NegBargain. Where people who don't know what they're talking about pile on.

      I hate anonymous voting.

    • Vote for Pedro on 18/01/2020 - 17:03
      +1

      +1 Trello

    • Flintz on 18/01/2020 - 17:10
      +2

      Our team moved to clickup for project management and slite for shared documentation. Agreed that atlassian products are a bit too heavy now and we as a dev team felt like it took longer to manage our work with JIRA or confluence than some of their newer competitors. IMO atlassian software is slowly creeping more towards enterprise solutions hence the clunkiness

      • ShouldIBuyIt on 18/01/2020 - 17:12

        Thanks, didn't know about clickup. What's their business model? I see it's free

  • No Username on 18/01/2020 - 12:43

    Is this like Monday.com?

    • netsurfer on 18/01/2020 - 13:07

      It is more like Microsoft Sharepoint. Basically, an intranet type portal to store documentation.

    • kingdoofus on 18/01/2020 - 14:35

      This isnt like Monday, however the other free tier product they offer, Jira is.

  • [Deactivated] on 18/01/2020 - 14:01

    Confluence is a great tool when using with other Atlassian product such as Jira and bit bucket (eg. Linking confluence page with Epic, which linked with Jira tickets)

    Otherwise as other said it’s just like a more powerful Wikipedia

  • peterpeterpumpkin on 18/01/2020 - 14:07
    -1

    Atlassian is proof that the most boring, uninformative product names can still be successful.

    The word Atlassian itself has too many syllables and sounds like the surname of a guy I went to school with. If it was actually based on a surname then that would be understandable. But it's not.

    Um, so yeah, that's my review. Carry on.

    • netsurfer on 18/01/2020 - 14:31

      It has nothing to do with the product names. It's more about they released cloud based solutions at the beginning of the cloud wave. Certainly, Atlassian have done well so far. However, things are changing rapidly. Their products don't really hold key, business critical information that's difficult to replace.

      Their products are mostly for developers. Things is, developers are more flexible and happy to switch / move on to the new shinny tools, solutions and applications. So, Atlassian do have tough competition moving forward.

    • xmail on 18/01/2020 - 21:39

      Yet almost nobody refers to the products as 'Atlassian', more commonly referred to as 'confluence' or 'jira'.

  • andycandy on 18/01/2020 - 14:17

    Thanks OP. Main limitation is the 2GB size. If you are using it for a small to medium project with 6 to 7 people, you will blow is away within few months. Say you are storing documentations and screenshots and images etc. When that happens they will come and knocking at your door for money. This is how everyone is doing. Google, Dropbox etc all do the same.

    • Elijha on 18/01/2020 - 16:44
      +1

      So you are saying this business wants to make money and expects those who used it and find it useful to pay?

  • [Deactivated] on 18/01/2020 - 14:17

    (profanity)fluence is a pain. 2 people can’t edit the same document in different locations without it throwing a hissy fit and removing someone’s work. And the search function in both jira and (profanity)fluence is terrible, worse than bing.

    • AssociatedShwayne @ atlassian.com on 18/01/2020 - 18:32

      Collaborative editing was implemented four years ago.

      https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/confluence-6-0-release-…

      • [Deactivated] on 18/01/2020 - 20:16
        -3

        Still doesn’t work. Can’t use standard colours to highlight sections/boxes. I’d rather share an excel spreadsheet than use this rubbish. And Jira search must do a translate into Chinese and back into English given some of the results it finds.

      • NWLikeShopping on 07/02/2020 - 19:04

        Collaborative editing brings with it its own problems. For orgs with heavy web filtering and lots of routing, it can be slow as molasses. The more complex the page, the slower it gets >1 minute response time to mouse clicks is not unheard of.

        And it takes an act of tech support+Atlassian product admin gods who have more important things to do with their time, to get it turned off for selected pages… and this can take more than 24 hours, when one needs to edit a page now.

  • shallanz on 18/01/2020 - 15:05
    +1

    Great till you want SSO

  • equitygame on 18/01/2020 - 17:51
    +3

    Confluence is a really bad name.

  • atlinus on 18/01/2020 - 18:53

    Im using free onenote(limit is my cloud storage) for house documentation, recipe or for almost anything i need to record. I can share with family members as well editing the notebooks.

    Read from comments above few use it at home.

    Is confluence target use mainly for work?
    Can this be a better option using at home and replace onenote or evernote?

    • Vietsoldier on 18/01/2020 - 19:32

      Didn't know this was possible will try it out. I use Confluence at home to also show my wife how she could better use it at work.

      In a way I'm her confluence and JIRA trainer because nobody is trained to use these tools. You're kinda expected just to pick it up in most workplaces.

  • NimitzHarrington on 19/01/2020 - 00:26
    +4

    We've got both Jira and Confluence and not a fan of the products at all. As both an admin and a user, they are a pain to configure and use. Let's not even get started about dealing with this company. Love supporting Aussies but these guys are now no different to the likes of Oracle.

    You want SSO = you pay. You want automation for managing your users and groups = you pay. You want a feature because the product is fundamentally broken (like being able to delete a group!) - they don't want to hear about it!

    And to think we were even looking at their service desk solution sends shivers down my spine. Fortunately we avoided that altogether when neither their product team nor their customers could respond to our requirements.

    If there was a good alternative product for both Jira and Confluence, we would look at it. And NO Sharepoint, or MS teams please!

    • calcium on 20/01/2020 - 14:42

      Any suggestions regd better alternatives?

    • NWLikeShopping on 07/02/2020 - 19:08

      It is the Microsoft VB model, where they're using add-in developers to pull sales of their product when those add-in developers sell some enhanced functionality sitting over Confluence. They provide bare-bones functionality to encourage these developers, who then coincidentally by marketing their add-ons become additional (free) salespeople and support people for Atlassian.

      I tend to agree with you about responsiveness. They're going for easy sales from non-demanding customers, it seems.

  • Buy2Much on 19/01/2020 - 01:30
    +1

    IMHO the Collabnet suite is more intuitive to use and set up. However I support Atlassian products because they are Australian and the local tech jobs they created (the country needs more tech industry rather than relying on natural resources). You have to get used to their quirkiness, not so intuitive for either end users or administrators unless you are very used to it.

    • [Deactivated] on 19/01/2020 - 15:26

      Yeah, Australian company but not paying income tax though.

  • Aly on 19/01/2020 - 20:23

    is the offer still running

    • AssociatedCanberraCobber @ atlassian.com on 19/01/2020 - 21:04
      +1

      Yes. Free tier.
      I’m the founder of an Atlassian Solution and Training Partner business in Canberra.

  • Andard on 20/01/2020 - 14:50

    even CIA uses confluence. Go aussies.. nice post OP.

  • Andard on 20/01/2020 - 14:55

    To any lurking Atlassian associates.. why the hell isn't there an "uncheck all" ?? It doesn't make sense and its a massive PITA unchecking all the boxes manually each time.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=confluence+uncheck+all&sa=X&…

    (But great product regardless.)

  • bin555 on 20/01/2020 - 17:07

    FYI: JIRA Service Desk is free as well. Just curious if anyone uses it for their business?

  • nuno on 20/01/2020 - 21:38
    +2

    no thanks to proprietary software. Many a proprietary software targeted for consumers on a free basis, only to either lock you in, harvest analytics or worse, breach your security and trust.
    Open source forever in the day. Be wary.. .very wary.

  • ShouldIBuyIt on 06/03/2020 - 16:35

    Any idea what the expiration date means on the account page?
    Mine is 17/03/202.
    I hope I won't loose or be forced into paying a subscription. I thought it was free? (I'm the only user)

  • CircularIllusion on 04/06/2020 - 11:37

    I was thinking about picking up a cloud solution to host a wiki for my personal usage and recalled this "deal". I use Confluence and Jira at work so I figured using Confluence in my personal life would also help in my professional life. I signed up and realised Atlassian cloud products do not have support for custom domain names even for the more premium plans… Pretty disappointing and enough to make me look for a different option.

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