SharePoint
Confluence vs. SharePoint: Detailed Comparison Features & Use Cases
Updated 30 Oct 2025
In 2026, organisations are more focused than ever on building efficient, interconnected digital workplaces—and for good reason. A recent survey by Atlassian Confluence (via its “State of Teams 2025” report) revealed that knowledge workers and executives spend roughly 25% of their time just searching for answers, rather than acting on insights. Meanwhile, data for Microsoft SharePoint shows that by 2026, it continues to serve as a backbone for collaboration in the cloud—” the hub that lets your team store documents securely, co-author in real time, and power newer apps like Teams and Loop”.
According to a recent usage study of Confluence, 312,860 organisations were using it for knowledge management, representing about 1.88% of that market segment. These figures underscore the need for collaboration tools that truly deliver value—not just more features.
When it comes to Atlassian Confluence vs Microsoft SharePoint, which platform suits their needs, which one should they invest in, and how do the features, use‐cases, trade-offs, integrations, licensing, and implementation compare? In this detailed comparison, we’ll explore exactly that.
Overview of Confluence and SharePoint
Confluence is a team collaboration and knowledge-management platform developed by Atlassian. It emphasises content creation, wikis, pages, spaces, and making it easy for teams to document, share, and collaborate. Meanwhile, SharePoint by Microsoft is a broader enterprise content management, intranet, and collaboration platform deeply integrated with Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365).
In more detail:
- Confluence enables teams to spin up spaces (team or project workspaces), pages, blogs, dashboards, and embed rich content (images, macros, code, etc). It tends to focus on enabling knowledge-sharing, documentation, project connectiveness, and less on heavy custom workflows.
- SharePoint provides document libraries, sites, intranet portal capabilities, lists, pages, metadata, versioning, co-authoring, and can be extended with apps, workflows (via Power Automate), and low-code/no‐code capabilities (especially through the Microsoft Power Platform). It is designed for content management and enterprise-scale collaboration across departments.
Thus, when one hears “Confluence vs SharePoint” (or “SharePoint vs Confluence”), the key is to understand where the strengths lie for your business—and to recognise that there is overlap, but also meaningful difference.
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Key Features of Confluence and SharePoint
Let’s break down the major features of both platforms so you can compare apples to apples.
Features of Confluence
- Document and wiki pages: Create, edit, and collaborate on content in real-time, often with templates and macros to enhance functionality.
- Spaces and pages: Organise work into logical spaces (e.g., by team or project) with nested pages.
- Collaboration and commenting: Inline comments, mentions, and tasks can be created within pages.
- Knowledge management: Build intranet-style hubs or knowledge bases with search, labels, analytics (especially in Cloud/Enterprise). For example, in a case study, Atlassian said, “Employees created 800,000+ pages in fiscal year 2024 alone.”
- Integration with the Atlassian ecosystem: Seamless working with Jira, Bitbucket, etc.
- Add-on marketplace: Many plugins to extend the platform (for example, training modules, analytics dashboards).
Features of SharePoint
- Document libraries: Centralised storage for files, supports versioning, metadata, co-authoring, and sharing externally/internally.
- Sites and subsites: Build team sites, communication sites, and hub sites to structure your intranet.
- Real-time collaboration: Thanks to integration with Microsoft 365 (Word, Excel, PowerPoint online), users can co-author documents stored in SharePoint.
- Lists and data: Structure information like a hybrid between spreadsheets and a database.
- Intranets and portals: Build engaging corporate intranet portals, company news, and dashboards.
- Integration with Power Platform: Low-code/no-code apps built via Microsoft PowerApps, workflows via Power Automate, and business intelligence via Power BI.
- Permissions, governance, security: Strong enterprise controls, audit logs, and compliance features.
- Search: Powerful search across content and integration with Microsoft Graph.
Hence, if you list out the “features of Confluence” and “features of SharePoint”, you’ll find both overlap and divergences—making the detailed comparison all the more useful.
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Detailed Comparison: Confluence vs SharePoint
Here, we dive into a side-by-side comparison across multiple dimensions to truly contrast “Confluence versus SharePoint”.
1. Ease of Use and Adoption
- Confluence: has a lighter weight feel. Non-technical teams often find it easier to create pages and collaborate quickly. Many users report rapid adoption because of the simple wiki-style UI. In an article, it’s noted that small and medium-sized businesses often prefer Confluence because “even a non-technical person can easily get started” compared to SharePoint.
- SharePoint: immensely powerful but sometimes perceived as more complex—especially if heavily customised or used for advanced workflows. Adoption may require more training and governance.
2. Document Management & Collaboration
- Confluence: great for content, knowledge bases, team collaboration, and documentation. But its document library and heavily structured document management features are less extensive than SharePoint’s.
- SharePoint: very strong in document management—metadata, versioning, retention, co-authoring, external sharing. If your needs are heavy on file management, repositories, and compliance, SharePoint tends to lead.
3. Customisation and Extension
- Confluence: supports add-ins and macros. Good flexibility for collaborative content scenarios.
- SharePoint: leads in extension capability—because it ties into the Microsoft ecosystem, you can build custom intranet portals, embed PowerApps, integrate with external systems, custom workflows, etc. Thus, if you are working with a full enterprise stack, SharePoint offers deeper extension possibilities.
4. Integration with Ecosystem
- Confluence: integrates well with Atlassian tools (Jira, Trello, etc), also supports many add-ons and third-party integrations.
- SharePoint: excels when your organisation already uses the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Documents in Teams and OneDrive rely on SharePoint for storage, loop in Power Platform, Microsoft Graph, and Azure. If your organisation is Microsoft-centric, the alignment is stronger.
- The concept of “Confluence integration with SharePoint” also exists for organisations using both Atlassian and Microsoft ecosystems. Integrating Confluence pages or spaces with SharePoint portals may help bridge collaboration and content management.
5. Governance, Security, and Enterprise-Scale
- Confluence: offers enterprise plans with advanced analytics, permissions, and audit logs—but historically simpler than large enterprise document control platforms.
- SharePoint: designed for highly governed enterprise usage: permissions at multiple levels, full auditing, external sharing controls, retention policies, compliance certifications. So, if your business has strict regulatory/compliance needs, SharePoint has the edge.
- In 2025, SharePoint continues to evolve with AI capabilities (e.g., Microsoft Syntex) and remains the “hub” underpinning other Microsoft apps.
6. Cost and Licensing
- Confluence: typically, subscription-based pricing, with tiers (Free, Standard, Premium, Enterprise).
- SharePoint: licensing is often part of Microsoft 365 subscriptions (SharePoint Online included in many plans), but advanced features or premium add-ons (like Syntex) may cost extra.
- Implementation cost, migration cost, and training cost should all be considered before deciding.
7. Use Case & Fit
- Confluence: best when your goal is team-centric collaboration, knowledge-sharing, light-weight documentation, and less heavy IT overhead.
- SharePoint: better when you need an enterprise-scale intranet portal, heavy document libraries, governance, integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, and want to build a broader company-wide collaboration infrastructure.
- Many organisations ask: Should I hire SharePoint Developers (or a specialist from a SharePoint Development Company) if choosing SharePoint? The answer is yes—if you anticipate heavy customisation, integrations, intranet branding, workflows, etc, then hiring seasoned SharePoint developers or engaging a SharePoint development company is wise.
In summary, the comparison of Confluence vs SharePoint reveals a trade-off between ease and specialization versus breadth and enterprise power.
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Use Cases of Confluence and SharePoint
Let’s explore actual scenarios where each platform excels and where mixing them (or integrating them) might make sense.
Use Cases for Confluence
- A product development team uses Confluence as the single source of truth for specs, meeting notes, backlog documentation, project plans, and brainstorming.
- A marketing team builds a knowledge base of campaign briefs, assets, lessons learned, and reference materials in Confluence spaces.
- HR or internal comms uses Confluence to publish company policies, onboarding guides, intranet-style content, and culture documentation.
- Smaller or medium-sized organisations that want to get up and running quickly with a collaboration platform and do not require heavy custom workflows.
- Where agile/DevOps team alignment is important, Confluence shines.
Use Cases for SharePoint
- A large enterprise needs a corporate intranet portal with news, departmental sites, employee directory, document libraries, search, and integration with HR systems.
- A regulated industry (financial services, healthcare) wants strict document management, audit trails, retention policies, and compliance workflows.
- A team wants to build custom business apps using PowerApps and store data in SharePoint lists, perhaps tie in Power Automate workflows and Power BI dashboards.
- Organisations already heavily invested in Microsoft 365 and want the collaboration platform to leverage that ecosystem seamlessly (Teams, OneDrive, Outlook, etc).
- When document sharing, co-authoring, advanced metadata, and file storage at scale are required.
Use Cases for Confluence integration with SharePoint
- Suppose an organisation uses SharePoint as the intranet backbone for all enterprise content, but Agile teams use Confluence for rapid documentation and collaboration. Integrating Confluence pages into the SharePoint intranet (via web parts or embed widgets) allows unified access.
- Or use SharePoint for governed documents and records, and Confluence for dynamic team collaboration; link both to create a holistic collaboration and knowledge environment.
- This hybrid approach can deliver the best of both worlds: ease of use (Confluence) and enterprise governance and integration (SharePoint).
Therefore, when reviewing “SharePoint vs Confluence”, it’s not always a zero-sum choice—some organisations choose both and integrate them.
Analyzing the Pros and Cons of SharePoint
Because your blog request specifically asks for “pros and cons of SharePoint”, let’s dive into that piece with detail.
Pros of SharePoint
- Strong document management features: version control, metadata, check-in/check-out, rich permissions, and governance.
- Seamless integration with Microsoft 365 ecosystem—so organisations already using Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, and Azure will benefit from a consistent environment.
- Powerful intranet & portal capabilities: build communication sites, departmental sites, hub sites, searchable content across organisation.
- Extensibility: via PowerApps, Power Automate, Power BI, custom web parts, SPFx (SharePoint Framework). This means custom business applications, workflows, and dashboards can be built on top.
- Enterprise governance and compliance: external sharing controls, auditing, retention policies, record management, etc.
- Scalability: designed to handle large enterprise usage, high volumes of data, many users, and global deployments.
- Built for hybrid/cloud deployment: SharePoint Online simplifies infrastructure management, while on-premises or hybrid options exist for organisations with strict locality or regulatory constraints.
Cons of SharePoint
- Complexity: because of its broad scope, SharePoint can become complex to configure, maintain, govern, and customise. For smaller teams without dedicated IT resources, adoption may be slower.
- Learning curve: Users and administrators may need training to use advanced features, customisations, and workflows effectively.
- Cost and licensing: although SharePoint Online is included in many Microsoft 365 plans, advanced features (Syntex, premium storage, advanced apps) may add costs. Customisations and hiring SharePoint developers raise the total cost.
- Implementation time: building customised intranets, workflows, and portals can take time, versus simpler platforms where teams can get started quickly.
- User experience: Without thoughtful design and governance, SharePoint sites may become cluttered, disparate, and suffer from “data sprawl” (many sites, uncontrolled libraries) as one article notes.
- Over-engineering risk: because SharePoint can do so much, there’s a risk of building overly complicated solutions when simpler ones would suffice.
So, these are the typical “pros and cons of SharePoint”. In the context of the broader decision with Confluence, these trade-offs matter.
Understanding User Trends and Adoption
Let’s explore what the data tell us about how widely used these platforms are and how users adopt them—especially in 2025.
Adoption of Confluence
- According to statistics for 2025, Confluence was adopted by 312,860 entities for knowledge management, around 1.88% market share.
- Adoption leans strongly in the U.S. (~54.38%), followed by the U.K. (9.51%) and Germany (8.67%).
- Company-size distribution: Of Confluence users, about 24% are small (<50 employees), 46% medium, 30% large (>1,000).
- A Forrester study found that Confluence users saw knowledge-worker productivity improvements of ~8% in year one, ramping to ~12% by year three.
- There’s less consistent data on the exact “percentage of Confluence users in business teams” (i.e., non-IT teams), but these adoption metrics suggest that while Confluence is widely used, it remains more niche compared to gigantic enterprise platforms.
Adoption of SharePoint
- Dedicated global headline numbers for SharePoint (e.g., number of organisations) in 2025 are harder to find publicly, but multiple sources describe SharePoint as the “hub” for many organisations’ collaboration, especially in Microsoft 365 deployments.
- The trend indicates that organisations investing in Microsoft 365 often already have SharePoint Online (included) and therefore adoption is broad by default, even if advanced usage varies.
- Usage analytics features for SharePoint sites are increasingly available, allowing unique viewers, site visits, and time spent to be measured.
Implications
- For a business deciding between “SharePoint vs Confluence”, the data suggest that Confluence has strong traction (especially in agile, development, and team-collaboration scenarios), but SharePoint has a broader reach in enterprise ecosystems.
- This means if your organisation is already Microsoft-centric, you likely already have SharePoint, so the question is how much additional benefit Confluence brings (or how much you need to enhance SharePoint usage).
- From a management perspective, the right tool should align with your user base, adoption readiness, team culture (e.g., agile vs structured), and IT governance maturity.
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Integration and Extension Capabilities
Let’s explore how the platforms integrate and how they can be extended—crucial for modern business environments.
Confluence Integration
- Confluence has built-in integrations with other Atlassian tools (Jira, Bitbucket, etc), and many third-party apps/macros from the marketplace.
- It can also integrate with external tools (Slack, Teams, Google Drive, etc) via add-ons.
- If you already use Atlassian for software development or agile project management, Confluence offers seamless team collaboration, documentation, and knowledge-sharing.
- One notable integration scenario: Confluence integration with SharePoint. Some organisations embed Confluence spaces/pages into SharePoint portals or use connectors to bring Confluence content into the Microsoft environment—bridging the best of both worlds.
SharePoint Extension & Integration
- SharePoint’s integration with Microsoft 365 is deep: documents in Teams, files in OneDrive, collaboration in Outlook, all leveraging the SharePoint backend.
- Using the Microsoft Power Platform, SharePoint can act as a data source (lists) for Power Apps, workflows for Power Automate, and dashboards for Power BI.
- With APIs (Graph, REST, SPFx), custom apps and branding can be built—so if your business wants a tailored intranet, business apps, or complex workflows, you can “hire SharePoint developers” or engage a “SharePoint Development Company” to deliver these solutions.
- Because it has many connectors (ERP, CRM, BI systems), SharePoint is positioned to serve as a central data, content, and collaboration hub in a large enterprise digital ecosystem.
Considerations
- If you anticipate needing complex workflows, custom apps, and large-scale integrations, then SharePoint’s extensibility gives you more “room to grow”.
- If you want a quick setup, collaborative content sharing with minimal IT governance overhead, Confluence might offer faster time to value.
- The integration story of Confluence with SharePoint is an interesting hybrid path: you don’t have to strictly choose one. For example, use Confluence for agile team spaces, SharePoint for the corporate portal and governed content, and integrate them for a unified experience.
Cost, Licensing, and Implementation Considerations
The financial and implementation aspects often determine whether organisations choose one platform, both, or neither. Let’s examine what to watch out for.
Licensing and Cost
- Confluence: pricing typically per-user, per-month/year. Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans. Consider user count, storage needs, and plugins.
- SharePoint: often included in Microsoft 365 subscriptions (for many organisations), but premium features (for example, Microsoft Syntex, advanced security, large-scale usage) may require extra licensing. Implementation costs, custom development, and ongoing support add to TCO (total cost of ownership).
- Implementation cost: SharePoint often requires more upfront work (site architecture, governance, training, customisation) compared to Confluence’s lighter setup.
- Migration cost: If moving from legacy systems, both platforms involve migration, user training, and change management. Choosing the wrong platform may cost more in re-work.
- Ongoing maintenance and support: SharePoint customisations may require dedicated developers/admins. Confluence, although lighter, still needs governance and upkeep, especially as usage grows.
Time to Value & Implementation Risk
- Confluence: may offer faster get-started for team collaboration; less customisation means less up-front risk.
- SharePoint: depending on deployment complexity (intranet portal, integrations, workflows), time to value may be longer. Risk of over-scoping is higher.
- When implementing either, you should define your use cases clearly, design governance (especially for SharePoint), engage stakeholders early, plan training, and monitor adoption metrics.
- If you expect your business to scale usage, you should consider future growth when designing architecture (e.g., SharePoint hub sites, site sprawl control). For example, one article highlights the risk of “site sprawl” in SharePoint if project teams are given permissions without governance.
Decision Criteria
- Number of users, team vs enterprise, purpose of collaboration.
- Existing ecosystem: Are you Microsoft-centric? Do you already use Atlassian tools?
- Document management, compliance, and lifecycle needs.
- Budget: licensing + implementation + ongoing support.
- Change management readiness: user training, governance maturity.
- Integration needs: do you need custom apps, workflows, BI dashboards, business systems connectors?
- Time-to-value expectation: Do you need to roll out quickly, or do you have the luxury of a phased enterprise build?
Final Verdict: Confluence vs SharePoint, Which One Should You Choose?
Choosing between Confluence vs SharePoint (or choosing to use both) depends on your organisation’s needs, size, culture, and ecosystem. Here’s a practical verdict:
If you’re a mid-sized or agile organisation, your primary need is team collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and documentation, and you want something quick to implement with minimal heavy governance, then Confluence is a strong choice. It’s user-friendly and lowers the barrier to adoption.
On the other hand, if you’re a large enterprise, you already live in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, you require high-governance document management, an intranet/portal build, custom business apps, and you’re ready to invest in implementation and support, then SharePoint is likely the better fit. Using a “SharePoint Development Company” or hiring dedicated “SharePoint Developers” makes sense for such a deployment.
But there’s no need to think exclusively: some organisations realise value in a hybrid approach—use Confluence for rapid team-level collaboration and knowledge-sharing, and SharePoint as the enterprise-wide content and collaboration framework, with integration between the two. The key is to clearly define your use-cases, architecture, governance, and rollout plan.
Therefore, the answer is less about “which one is better” and more about “which one aligns best with your needs”, how you plan implementation, how you adopt it, and how you sustain usage long-term.
Why Choose Q3 Technologies as Your SharePoint Partner
When it comes time to evaluate and implement SharePoint (or a hybrid solution), partnering with the right services provider matters. Here’s why Q3 Technologies stands out:
- Proven experience in Microsoft ecosystem projects: Q3 Technologies has deep expertise in Microsoft 365, SharePoint Online, intranet, and collaboration solutions across industries.
- End-to-end services: from strategy and architecture to implementation, customisation (including workflows, PowerApps, intranet branding) and support.
- Skilled team of SharePoint Developers: When you need to “Hire SharePoint Developers”, Q3 Technologies provides certified professionals who understand governance, security, user adoption and integration.
- Focus on business outcome: We don’t just deliver technology; we align with your business goals — helping you choose the right platform, build adoption mechanisms, train your users, and monitor usage metrics.
- Hybrid and integration capability: If you have both Confluence and SharePoint in your environment, we can help integrate them and craft a cohesive collaboration ecosystem.
- Cost-effective and scalable: Our delivery model is designed to maximise ROI, reduce risk, and ensure your collaboration platform scales as your business grows.
In short, if you’re seriously considering SharePoint (or evaluating SharePoint vs Confluence) and want a partner who can guide you through the technical, user adoption, integration and governance journey, Q3 Technologies is well-positioned to help.
Conclusion
In the world of modern collaboration platforms, the debate of Confluence vs SharePoint is not about one being universally better than the other—it’s about fit. Confluence offers speed, ease, agile-ready collaboration, and excellent knowledge-sharing features. SharePoint delivers enterprise-grade document management, deep integration with Microsoft 365, intranet/portal capabilities, and custom business-app readiness.
By 2025, adoption data show both platforms are relevant: Confluence with hundreds of thousands of organisations, SharePoint underpinning enterprise collaboration across Microsoft’s ecosystem. The key is to evaluate your team size, culture, existing tools, governance maturity, use-cases, and long-term roadmap. Whether you opt for one or both, success depends on clear planning, user-centric rollout, governance, training, and ongoing measurement.
When your decision path leads to SharePoint (or a hybrid model), partnering with a competent provider like Q3 Technologies will ensure your investment translates into productive collaboration, not just another platform.
FAQs
What factors should you consider when comparing Confluence vs SharePoint?
Key factors include features, team use cases, integration, scalability, and pricing. Confluence focuses on collaboration, while SharePoint emphasizes document management and enterprise control.
What is the difference between SharePoint and Confluence?
SharePoint, part of Microsoft 365, offers strong document management and intranet tools. Confluence, by Atlassian, is ideal for team collaboration and project documentation.
What is the difference between Microsoft Office and Confluence?
Microsoft Office integrates with SharePoint for productivity and document storage. Confluence connects with Jira and Trello for knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Is Confluence Data Centre better than SharePoint Online?
Confluence Data Centre needs manual setup for HA/DR, while SharePoint Online offers built-in scalability, recovery, and enterprise resilience.
What is the difference between Confluence and SharePoint tagging?
Confluence uses labels for informal classification; SharePoint applies structured metadata for enterprise-level organization.
How many seats does Confluence support?
Confluence supports up to 50,000 seats across all paid plans, suitable for both small and large teams.
Table of content
- Overview of Confluence and SharePoint
- Key Features of Confluence and SharePoint
- Detailed Comparison: Confluence vs SharePoint
- Use Cases of Confluence and SharePoint
- Analyzing the Pros and Cons of SharePoint
- Understanding User Trends and Adoption
- Integration and Extension Capabilities
- Cost, Licensing, and Implementation Considerations
- Final Verdict: Confluence vs SharePoint — Which One Should You Choose?
- Why Choose Q3 Technologies as Your SharePoint Partner
- FAQs
