What is Confluence? Unlocking Smarter Teamwork and Knowledge Sharing

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December 10, 2025

What is Confluence? Unlocking Smarter Teamwork and Knowledge Sharing

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Ideas are fragile. Too often, they get lost in crowded inboxes, trapped on hard drives, or isolated in team silos. This chaos stifles innovation and slows you down. If you’ve ever wondered what is Confluence and how it can solve this, the answer is simple: it’s your team’s organized, collaborative brain. It’s the shared space where knowledge seamlessly comes together, providing the solid foundation you need to define strategy, build a minimum viable product, and drive real results. Let’s explore how this platform turns information into your greatest advantage.

What is Confluence?

Get to no Confluence

At its core, Confluence is a collaborative workspace, a modern wiki developed by Atlassian, designed to help teams work together seamlessly. It serves as a single source of truth where knowledge is created, shared, and organized, moving beyond static documents to dynamic, living content.

Born in 2004 from the same company that created Jira, Confluence was conceived to solve a growing problem in the tech industry and beyond: the scattering of critical information. As teams grew and projects became more complex, the need for a centralized knowledge base became paramount. It evolved from a simple wiki into a powerful collaboration hub, integrating deeply with the entire Atlassian ecosystem and a wide array of third-party tools.

So, how does it actually work? Confluence structures information into “Spaces”—dedicated areas for teams, projects, or departments—which are then filled with “Pages.” These pages are far more than simple text documents.

Real-time Collaboration: Multiple users can edit a page simultaneously, with changes saved and version history tracked meticulously.
Rich Content Integration: You can embed everything from videos and diagrams to data tables and interactive roadmaps directly onto a page.
Powerful Organization: A robust search function, page trees, and labels make finding information intuitive and fast.
Template-Driven Creation: To maintain consistency and speed, Confluence offers a vast library of templates for meeting notes, product requirements, strategies, and more.

Confluence has moved from being a niche tool for software teams to a global standard for knowledge management. A benchmark from Atlassian indicates that over % of Fortune 500 companies use Confluence not just for documentation, but as the central nervous system for their operational knowledge, proving that in the information economy, a unified collaboration platform is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.

What Lives in a Confluence Space?

Walking into a Confluence space is like entering a well-organized, digital workshop. It’s not a chaotic storage room; it’s a dynamic environment filled with purpose-built tools designed for creation and collaboration. Each tool has a specific mission to streamline a part of your workflow.

Here’s a look at the key tools you’ll find and what they accomplish:

Pages and Blogs: The fundamental building blocks. Pages are for enduring, collaborative content like project plans and documentation. Blogs are for timely updates, announcements, and sharing insights, fostering a culture of transparency.
Blueprints (Templates): These are pre-formatted page structures that eliminate the need to start from scratch. Whether you’re drafting a project charter, sprint retrospective, or a minimum viable product definition, templates ensure consistency and save valuable time.
Macros: These are the magic wands of Confluence. Macros are small apps that let you embed dynamic content. You can insert a live table from Jira, a diagram from Lucidchart, a video, or a status report that updates automatically.
Tasks and Action Items: Within any page, you can assign tasks to specific team members with due dates. This turns meeting notes and documentation into actionable work, ensuring decisions lead to outcomes.
Mentions and Notifications: This system ensures the right people are looped in. By mentioning a colleague, you draw their attention to a specific update or question, creating a responsive and connected dialogue directly within the context of the work.
Advanced Analytics (in Premium/Data Center): For administrators and leaders, these tools provide insights into how content is being used—which pages are most viewed, where engagement is high, and where knowledge might be stagnant, allowing for proactive knowledge management.

From static documents to interactive hubs, a Confluence space is a living ecosystem. It’s where strategy is documented, projects are tracked, and knowledge is retained, all working in concert to keep the entire team aligned and moving forward.

Why Should You Use Confluence?

Adopting a new platform is a strategic decision. Beyond the basic features, it’s the tangible benefits that deliver a return on investment. For organizations grappling with information silos and inefficient processes, Confluence offers a path to a more intelligent and aligned way of working. Let’s break down the key advantages.

Centralized Knowledge Eliminates Information Chaos

When you’re building a minimum viable product software, scattered documentation kills momentum. Confluence creates a single source of truth where product requirements, technical specifications, and design decisions live together. Your developers don’t waste time hunting through Slack threads for that API endpoint discussion two weeks ago—it’s documented in Confluence, linked to the relevant Jira tickets, and accessible to everyone who needs it.

The impact cascades across your organization:

New hires ramp up faster because onboarding materials, process documentation, and team contacts exist in one searchable location
Cross-functional alignment improves when product, engineering, and marketing reference the same roadmap instead of maintaining conflicting versions
Institutional knowledge persists even when team members transition, preventing the devastating “knowledge walks out the door” scenario

Integration Ecosystem Creates Workflow Continuity

Confluence doesn’t exist in isolation—it connects to the tools you already use. The Jira integration exemplifies this: link Confluence pages to Jira issues, embed issue lists that update automatically, and create requirements documents that developers reference without context-switching.

Integrations extend to:

Communication platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams, bringing Confluence updates into your daily workflow
Cloud storage services including Google Drive and Dropbox for unified file management
Design tools such as Figma and Miro, embedding mockups and diagrams directly into documentation
Productivity suites like Google Workspace and Microsoft Office for seamless content import

This interconnectedness means that when you’re working on minimum viable product software development, your entire toolchain operates as a cohesive unit rather than isolated islands.

For enterprises looking to create a unified digital workplace, Confluence often serves as a key component in broader Web portal solutions that brings together multiple collaboration tools under one interface.

Permissions and Security Support Governance

Not all information should be universally accessible. Confluence’s granular permission system lets you control visibility at space and page levels. For enterprises managing sensitive intellectual property or regulated information, this control is non-negotiable. Confluence supports single sign-on, two-factor authentication, and compliance with standards like SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA—making it suitable for organizations with stringent security requirements.

The cumulative effect of these benefits transforms Confluence from a documentation tool into operational infrastructure. When you ask what Confluence contribution to your business is, the answer becomes clear: it’s the platform that ensures your team’s collective intelligence remains accessible, actionable, and continuously growing.

What Challenges Does Confluence Present?

No platform is perfect, and understanding Confluence’s limitations helps you implement it effectively while managing expectations.

Content Sprawl Creates New Disorganization

Ironically, Confluence’s ease of content creation can become its Achilles heel. Without governance, spaces proliferate uncontrollably. Teams create redundant documentation, outdated pages linger undiscovered, and the “single source of truth” fragments into dozens of competing versions.

The underlying issue is cultural rather than technical. When everyone can publish freely but no one owns content curation, entropy wins. You search for the API documentation and find seven versions, unsure which reflects current implementation.

Overcoming this challenge requires:

Designated space administrators who maintain organization and prune obsolete content
Regular content audits scheduled quarterly to archive outdated material and consolidate duplicates
Naming conventions that make page purposes immediately clear
Page templates that enforce consistent structure and discourage ad-hoc documentation styles

Organizations that succeed with Confluence treat it like a garden requiring regular tending, not a storage unit where things get dumped indefinitely.

Learning Curve Affects Adoption

While Confluence markets itself as user-friendly, the platform’s depth creates an adoption barrier. New users struggle with the distinction between spaces and pages, fumble with macro syntax, and find the editor’s capabilities non-intuitive. This friction particularly impacts non-technical teams who lack patience for platform learning curves.

Mitigation strategies include:

Hands-on training sessions focusing on common use cases rather than exhaustive feature tours
Champion programs where power users provide peer support and evangelize best practices
Simplified templates that abstract complexity and let users accomplish tasks without understanding underlying mechanics
Integration configuration that meets users where they work, surfacing Confluence content in Slack or email rather than demanding they visit the platform

The most successful implementations recognize that adoption is a change management challenge, not a technical deployment.

Performance Issues Scale with Content Volume

As your Confluence instance grows, performance can degrade noticeably. Pages with extensive editing history load slowly, spaces with thousands of pages become difficult to navigate, and search results take longer to return. For large enterprises with years of accumulated content, this isn’t theoretical—it’s a daily frustration.

Addressing performance requires:

Archival strategies that move inactive content to read-only spaces or external storage
Media optimization ensuring uploaded files are appropriately compressed
Macro usage discipline avoiding computationally expensive dynamic content on frequently accessed pages
Infrastructure investment in Confluence Cloud Premium or self-hosted instances with adequate resources

Organizations running Confluence at scale should monitor performance metrics and establish thresholds that trigger optimization efforts before user experience suffers significantly.

Integration Maintenance Demands Ongoing Attention

Confluence’s strength—its integration ecosystem—also creates maintenance burden. Third-party app updates break existing functionality, API changes require workflow adjustments, and permission misconfigurations create security gaps. Someone needs to own this operational overhead.

For small teams without dedicated IT support, this invisible work falls on whoever set up the integration, often becoming their unexpected responsibility. When that person leaves the organization, integrations become mysterious black boxes no one understands or dares modify.

What is Confluence Used For?

Understanding what Confluence product application in practice reveals its versatility across different organizational contexts.

Software Development and Product Management

When teams ask what Confluence in software development is, the answer centers on requirements management and technical documentation. Product managers use Confluence to translate business objectives into detailed product requirements documents. These living specifications outline user stories, acceptance criteria, edge cases, and technical constraints—providing engineers with comprehensive context before writing a single line of code.

The product manager creates a Confluence space dedicated to the MVP, with pages for:

Product vision: Articulate the problem being solved and target users
Feature specifications: Detail expense capture, categorization, and reporting functionality
Technical architecture: Document API design, database schema, and third-party integrations
Sprint plans: Link to Jira epics showing what’s being built when

As the minimum viable product software development progresses, the Confluence space becomes the definitive record of decisions made, features shipped, and lessons learned. New engineers joining the project read through this history to understand not just what was built, but why specific approaches were chosen.

Project Management and Team Coordination

Beyond software, Confluence serves general project management needs across industries. Marketing teams plan campaigns, legal departments maintain policy documentation, HR manages employee handbooks, and operations teams document standard procedures.

A marketing agency managing multiple client accounts might structure Confluence with spaces for each client. Within these spaces, pages capture:

Campaign briefs: Come with objectives, target audiences, and creative direction
Content calendars: Show publication schedules across channels
Performance reports: Analyze campaign metrics and insights
Brand guidelines: Ensure consistent visual and messaging standards

This use case demonstrates what is Confluence advantage: it scales from individual project tracking to enterprise-wide knowledge management without requiring fundamentally different approaches.

Knowledge Base and Internal Wiki

Many organizations deploy Confluence primarily as an internal wiki—a searchable repository of institutional knowledge. IT departments document troubleshooting procedures, customer success teams maintain solution databases, and facilities management tracks office procedures.

A manufacturing company might use Confluence to document:

Equipment maintenance procedures with step-by-step instructions and safety protocols
Quality control standards defining acceptable tolerances and inspection criteria
Supplier information including contact details, lead times, and pricing agreements
Training materials for onboarding production staff

This documentation reduces dependency on tribal knowledge. When the senior technician who’s maintained the CNC machine for fifteen years retires, their expertise doesn’t disappear—it lives on Confluence pages they’ve documented over time. New technicians reference these guides during troubleshooting, continuously updating them with new insights.

Confluence vs. SharePoint – How to Choose The Best One?

When centralizing knowledge is the goal, two names consistently dominate the conversation: Confluence and SharePoint. While both aim to break down information silos, they are built on fundamentally different philosophies. Understanding their core strengths is not about finding a ‘winner,’ but about identifying which platform is the right engine for your organization’s specific collaboration needs.

Feature	Confluence	SharePoint
Primary Philosophy	A collaborative workspace for creating and organizing knowledge.	A powerful document management and intranet platform.
Core Strength	Dynamic Content Creation: Seamless editing, rich templates, and threaded discussions built directly into pages.	Document Governance & Control: Robust versioning, complex permissions, and deep integration with the Microsoft 365 ecosystem.
User Experience	Intuitive and user-friendly, designed for ease of use with minimal training. Encourages broad adoption.	Powerful but can be complex. Often requires IT/admin support for initial setup and customization.
Ideal For	Project Documentation, Knowledge Bases, Team Collaboration. Perfect for agile teams defining a minimum viable product.	Enterprise Document Repositories, Corporate Intranets, Formal Asset Management.
Content Model	Page-centric, organized in Spaces. Focuses on living, constantly edited content.	File-centric, organized in Sites and Libraries. Focuses on managing final documents.

The choice ultimately boils down to your core objective: Are you building a workshop or a library? Confluence is the dynamic workshop where teams gather to build, brainstorm, and document collaboratively. SharePoint is the highly-organized library where finalized documents are stored, managed, and secured. Many successful enterprises use both, leveraging Confluence for project-team collaboration and SharePoint for enterprise-wide document governance. Understanding this distinction is the key to selecting the platform that will deliver the highest return on collaboration for your organization.

FAQs

Is Confluence only for software development teams?

Absolutely not. While it has deep roots in tech, Confluence is used by marketing, HR, finance, operations, and executive teams. Any group that needs to create, share, and collaborate on information can benefit from its structured yet flexible environment.

How much does Confluence cost?

Confluence uses a tiered, per-user subscription model. It offers a Free tier for small teams, a Standard tier with more admin and security features, a Premium tier with advanced analytics and governance, and a Data Center option for large enterprises needing self-managed infrastructure. The cost scales with the size of your team and the features you require.

Can I use Confluence without Jira?

Absolutely—Confluence functions independently as a standalone knowledge management platform. While Atlassian designed them as complementary products and their integration offers powerful workflow benefits, many organizations use Confluence exclusively for documentation, meeting notes, and team wikis without ever implementing Jira. You lose the ability to link issues to requirements documents and embed live ticket data, but core Confluence functionality remains fully operational.

Wrap Up

Confluence is far more than a documentation tool. It is a structured, scalable workspace that brings teams together, centralizes knowledge, and creates organizational clarity across every department. For businesses navigating rapid growth, distributed teams, or complex projects, Confluence becomes the foundation for alignment, transparency, and long term operational efficiency.

Understanding what Confluence is also reveals what it enables: better collaboration, faster decision making, and a unified source of truth that supports every stage of modern digital operations. But to fully maximize its value, organizations often need systems that integrate seamlessly with Confluence — from custom internal tools to enterprise grade software platforms designed around their workflows.

That is where Newwave Solutions steps in. With a highly skilled development team based in Vietnam, we build scalable enterprise software, custom internal systems, and integrated digital solutions that complement and enhance platforms like Confluence. Our expertise spans software development, workflow automation, system integrations, and end to end enterprise application development for global clients.

If your organization is ready to strengthen its digital infrastructure and create tools that work perfectly alongside Confluence, Newwave Solutions can help you design, develop, and scale systems that drive lasting efficiency and business impact. Let’s build your next enterprise solution together.

To Quang Duy is the CEO of Newwave Solutions, a leading Vietnamese software company. He is recognized as a standout technology consultant. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.