XWiki vs. Confluence | The Open-Source Alternative for Teams

📖 Read here all about how to migrate from Confluence to XWiki

More organized

XWiki is a leading alternative to Confluence. Beyond the set of features you can expect from an Enterprise wiki to have, like WYSIWYG editing, rights management, file attachments, PDF exporting, XWiki offers advanced capabilities that help you better organize and structure your information. Unlike Atlassian Confluence, XWiki supports a structured data model that lets you add form and consistency to your content. This structure simplifies the creation and editing process and, when combined with XWiki's nested page feature, drastically improves navigation and searchability across your wiki.

Compared to Confluence which is addressing mainly technical users, XWiki allows development, support, sales, HR, and marketing teams of all sizes to use XWiki as knowledge bases, collaborative intranets, or external resource centers to increase efficiency and better serve their customers. What's more, the dedicated migrator makes the transition a seamless process by providing the right tools, means, and resources.

Affordable and safe

XWiki is free to use and download thanks to its open-source nature, which gives you full access to the source code and complete control over your deployment. In contrast, Confluence is proprietary software, meaning its code is not publicly available and switching away can involve vendor lock-in and limited data migration. We believe open source is about your own choices, making it the safest path from an investment point of view. As a Confluence free alternative, you choose where you deploy, what services you use, and what features you need. XWiki can be deployed both on your server or on our cloud, but the best thing is that you can change your mind anytime without losing any data or code.

XWiki SAS offers services and solutions with a better price-to-quality ratio than most alternatives on the market. Furthermore, market leaders such as Amazon and Lenovo are using XWiki and benefit from the expertise that our professional team possesses.

Extensible and fully customizable

XWiki is designed with extensibility, adaptability, and flexibility in mind. We believe that software should adapt to the needs of its users, not the other way around. Whether you start with the default features or require deep customization, XWiki gives you the freedom to tailor the platform to your exact requirements.

As an open-source platform, XWiki provides full control over both the interface and the underlying structure. Developers can build entirely new functionalities, while non-technical users can use built-in tools like App Within Minutes to create custom applications quickly, without writing any code.

While both XWiki and Confluence offer extension directories, the level of flexibility is very different. XWiki allows full custom development and user-driven configuration. Confluence, on the other hand, is proprietary software that offers limited customization. This impacts cloud environments where control over functionality and hosting is restricted, reducing the compatibility between the need and the solution.

This flexibility makes XWiki suitable for a wide range of use cases and team sizes. Whether for HR, support, marketing, or development teams, it can serve as a knowledge base, an intranet, a collaboration space, or the backbone for business-critical applications.

Technology and features

	XWiki	Confluence	Why is it important?
Technology	Java	Java
Open Source	✅	❌	Open source protects your investment through reversibility and extensibility.
On-premises version	✅ FREE FOR UNLIMITED TIME	✅ PAID	XWiki can be used for free, while XWiki SAS' support services are more affordable than Atlassian's license and support costs.
	Support for Confluence Migration Toolkit included, Business plan: 2.89 euros/month/user for 1000 users, yearly payment	Starting from 3.59 euros/month/user for 1000 users, yearly payment (data center)
Cloud version	✅	✅	XWiki has generally better price-value ratio compared with Confluence for the same feature set. We are not even taking into account the additional extensions available for free in XWiki.
	Price Business: 2.31 euros/month/user for 1000 users, 3-year contract	Price Premium Cloud: 6.07 euros/month/user for 1000 users, yearly payment
Translations	40 languages, with 17 of them translated at 85% or higher	21 languages

Usages

XWiki's extensibility allows going beyond the simple wiki and respond to enterprise needs, including public websites and general collaboration tools.

Use case	XWiki	Confluence
Wikis	✅	✅
Knowledge bases	✅	✅
Documentation	✅	✅
Intranet	✅	✅
Collaboration for teams	✅	✅
Project management	✅	✅
Integrated management system/Procedures	✅	✅
Confluence migration	✅	❌
Helpdesk	✅	❌
Organization manual	✅	❌
Process management	✅	❌
Business applications	✅	❌
Blog	✅	❌
Content management system	✅	❌
Data management system	✅	❌
Digital workplace	✅	❌
Discussion boards	✅	❌
Extranet	✅	❌
Website	✅	❌

Editing

Feature	XWiki	Confluence	Why is it important?
WYSIWYG Editor	✅	✅	From version 8+, XWiki uses CK Editor, the best WYSIWYG editor with advanced features.
Wiki syntax editor	✅	❌	For advanced users, Wiki syntax editing is more efficient and, when creating pages for public display, it allows fine-grained control over the page.
Section editing within page	✅	❌	This allows for easier editing of particularly long pages.

Standard features

XWiki has everything Confluence has and even more.

Feature	XWiki	Confluence
Real-time editing	✅	✅
Comments	✅	✅
Annotations	✅	✅
Version history	✅	✅
Version comparison	✅	✅
Unlimited rollback	✅	✅
Granular rights management	✅	✅
Customizable navigation	✅	✅
Notifications	✅	✅
Import/Export	✅	✅
Tags & Tag cloud	✅	✅
User mentions	✅	✅
Visual editor (rich text editor with CKEditor)	✅	✅
Internationalization	✅	✅
Page hierarchy via subpages	✅	✅
Attachments	✅	✅
Templates	✅	✅
Page and file versioning	✅	✅
Live Table	✅	With separate add-on
Scripting in pages	✅	With separate add-on
App Within Minutes	✅	—

Advanced & structured forms within pages

	XWiki	Confluence	Why is it important?
Advanced & structured forms within pages	✅	Partially available with plugins	XWiki's unique structure feature will enhance the navigability of information, increasing the value of information for all users. See an example of App Within Minutes on our blog.

Programming capabilities

	XWiki	Confluence
Programming capabilities	Advanced — Using velocity, groovy and java via thousands of available APIs.	Basic — Only possible via extension using Java.

The programming capabilities allow XWiki to adapt to the project's needs increasing the project's success. By using scripting, non-developers can reuse existing examples to create custom solutions, while developers benefit from faster development.

App store & LDAP

	XWiki	Confluence	Why is it important?
App store	✅	✅
LDAP (for on-premises & cloud)	✅	Partial	Going for XWiki Cloud does not mean you want to give up your Enterprise Directory.

Multi-wikis

	XWiki	Confluence	Why is it important?
Multi-wikis	✅	❌	You can create collaborative spaces with a set of collaborative applications enhancing productivity. Each sub-wiki can be fully customized independently. Confluence has workspaces which are limited in functionalities and customization possibilities.

Office documents & Applications

	XWiki	Confluence	Why is it important?
Office documents Import/Export and Office/PDF viewers	✅	✅
Applications	✅	Partial	The Pro Gold package (cloud) or Confluence Migration Toolkit Gold level (on-premises) includes all apps, with no extra purchases required. In contrast, in Confluence, the more you raise the complexity of your work, the more you need to purchase extra add-ons to carry out your tasks.

Application	XWiki	Confluence
File Manager	✅	Partial
Ideas and polls	✅	Partial
Meetings	✅	Partial
Calendar	✅	Partial
Task Manager	✅	Partial
Analytics (intranet and public website)	✅	Partial
Diagram	✅	Partial
Blog	✅	Partial
Forum	✅	Partial
Jira macro	✅	Partial

Customizations and services

	XWiki	Confluence
Customizations and services	A team at your service — XWiki SAS has a consulting team specialized in customizations on top of XWiki. We can adapt it to your specific needs, even in the Cloud, starting at Pro Gold level (cloud), respectively XWiki Pro Gold level (on-premises).	By third parties — Atlassian does not offer support services and the customization capabilities are limited, especially in the Cloud.

XWiki offers over 700 free community extensions to mix and match in order to customize your instance to best fit your needs.

AI assistant

	XWiki	Confluence
AI assistant	BETA	Atlassian Intelligence

Why choose XWiki as an alternative to Confluence?

Structured, adaptable, and extensible

We believe software needs to adapt to its users and not the opposite. XWiki's features, extensible capabilities, and data structure model allow making this happen without too much struggle.

An open model

XWiki is 100% open-source software (developed under the LGPL license), unlike Confluence which is proprietary software.

This brings a number of benefits.

From the innovation point of view.
At XWiki SAS, we believe that innovation is led by transparency and free competition. The open-source concept relies on community contributors who are freely improving the product. This means that XWiki is a secure investment and has a better ROI due to the ongoing updates and improvements developed by the community.

Adaptable to the market needs.
The open-source software will always be transparently developed as the contributors provide ideas, report bugs, find fixes or suggest new features. This model ensures a better understanding of the market needs as the improvements come directly from real users.

Never stop adapting.
Thinking beyond the standard extensibility features such as plugins, structure, and UI that Confluence also provides, XWiki benefits from the open-source values which dictate that the source code will be always available for further improvements. This means the sky is the limit when it comes to customizations and extensions.

Change your mind at any given time.
We believe open source is about your own choices, making it the safest path from an investment point of view. You choose where you deploy, what services you use, and what features you need. XWiki can be deployed either on your server or on our cloud, but the best thing is that you can change your mind at any given time, which makes it a clearly superior alternative to Confluence.

Interested in talking with a specialist? Send us a request and we will get back to you as soon as possible.