
Ask HN: Alternatives to Atlassian Confluence? - alexbecker
My team currently uses Confluence (an Atlassian product) for requirements, designs, procedures, and for various other engineering and product-related documents. However, I find it slow and difficult to navigate.<p>Has anyone found a better alternative?
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purephase
In these situations, I find that the conversation always revolves around the
tool, and not the end goal. Documentation is a lot like code, but with a lot
less people willing to write it.

Confluence and it's ilk are only as good as the effort / ownership of those
that are willing to put in the time. If your org is not willing, than no other
tool is really going to solve the core product.

~~~
boltzmannbrain
Respectfully disagree. We may not be representative of all teams, but we did
devote considerable time and energy into Confluence. No amount of love from
the users can resolve application issues like slow load times, buggy draft-
saving, inability to copy-paste, clunky commenting UI, etc.

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tianshuo
I played around with: [https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/) it
didn't stick. Our team is using Tapd (free, in Chinese, made by Tencent) for
kanban boards, document sharing and other kinds of collaboration.

~~~
boltzmannbrain
I'm curious, why didn't Notion stick?

We started using Notion as an alternative to Confluence, but I'm not a fan. It
feels too fluffy (as do other tools like Monday). Confluence can be a pain and
expensive, but the UI/UX is professional.

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jbms
Navigation is about how you've structured things as team/company. Perhaps
creating additional directory pages would help to get different views on all
the pages/data in the system?

Speed: Does the server have enough RAM? Is it running with the recommended
database for fastest use? Atlassian offer some guidance:
[https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/performance-
tuning-1302...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/performance-
tuning-130289.html)

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dmitripopov
I create SimpleDocServer for one of my customers as a quick-and-dirty
Confluence replacement based entirely on Markdown. So if your point is
information delivery and you are OK to collaborate on content creation via Git
(or any other similar tool) then it might fit your needs.
[https://www.helpinator.com/simpledocserver.html](https://www.helpinator.com/simpledocserver.html)

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stevesimmons
I could live with Confluence if it played better with Markdown

~~~
Hnrobert42
When you create a new page, click the Try the New Editor option. It handles MD
inline. I still haven’t figured out how to open existing pages with the new
editor.

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philpem
At the last place I worked -- and at a volunteer-run event I'm involved with
-- we use DokuWiki.

The most difficult problem is getting people to use the damn thing, whatever
you choose. WYSIWYG editing might help for less-experienced users (or those
who don't want to learn the markup language), but I haven't looked for a
plugin for that. Yet. :)

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codemusings
[https://wiki.js.org](https://wiki.js.org) seems to be pretty neat. It's all
file based and only uses CouchDB for user administration.

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chrisked
You can try [https://www.getoutline.com/](https://www.getoutline.com/).

~~~
neverminder
I tried. Couldn't install it on my vanilla Ubuntu server because of infinite
dependency hell. Then I tried wiki.js which installed and worked fine, aside
from a few minor bugs. I was actually rather surprised by absence of decent
open source wiki options.

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billconan
recently saw [https://www.nuclino.com/](https://www.nuclino.com/)

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tekronis
Maybe try Slab: [https://slab.com/](https://slab.com/)

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bigtrakzapzap
tl;dr, check these sites:

[https://www.wikimatrix.org](https://www.wikimatrix.org)

[http://wiki.c2.com/?TopTenWikiEngines](http://wiki.c2.com/?TopTenWikiEngines)
<\- origin of the word "wiki" (
[http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiWikiWeb](http://wiki.c2.com/?WikiWikiWeb) )

Having setup the whole Atlassian on-prem SSO suite of apps on Linux with Git
and LDAP talking to AD on Windows, it depends on your needs, as there are a
variety of different wiki/collaboration solutions with different capabilities.
I've also used these:

\- Dokuwiki (very simple, text file-based)

\- Mediawiki (LAMP / database-backed)

\- SharePoint (MS $$)

\- Quip

Others to look at (including sometimes CMSes)

\- OneNote

\- Liferay

\- Drupal

\- Statamic

\- WordPress

Also, Confluence has tons of plugins for customization and can be made to be
fast with proper configuration.

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hajrice
try helpjuice.com

