Managing and collaborating with a team, especially in the era of remote work, can quickly become a complex, cumbersome task. Luckily, there are lots of software solutions out there that assist with project management, task management, and team productivity. These technologies are designed to help teams work together more effectively and efficiently, but which one is right for you? Today, we’re going to compare two popular choices: Notion vs Confluence.
We’ll discuss:
- The basics of Notion vs Confluence
- Pricing
- Key feature comparison of Notion vs Confluence
- User experience, interface, and integrations
- How Slam Media Lab uses Notion
Here at Slam Media Lab, we’ve become Notion experts. We use it for so many different day-to-day operations and, as an award-winning digital marketing agency specializing in webflow design and development, it’s become invaluable for our team. After we compare Notion vs Confluence and discuss the features of both these solutions, we’ll share our favorite Notion templates and resources to help you get started!
What Is Notion?
Notion is a versatile all-in-one workspace designed to simplify and enhance the way teams and individuals manage their projects, tasks, and information. Combining note-taking, task management, database functionality, and collaboration tools, Notion offers a highly customizable platform that can adapt to various workflows and organizational needs.
Whether you're a freelancer looking for a powerful tool to organize your work or a large team needing a centralized hub for collaboration, Notion provides the flexibility to meet diverse requirements, though it does take some setup to customize it for your team.
Notion Use Cases
Notion excels as a personal productivity tool, allowing individuals to create to-do lists, track habits, manage personal projects, and store notes and ideas. Its intuitive interface and extensive customization options make it easy to tailor a workspace, whether you’re a freelancer developing a content writing strategy or a student taking notes during a lecture.
For teams, Notion is a powerful collaboration platform. It enables team members to create shared spaces for project documentation, meeting notes, and task management. Real-time editing and commenting features ensure smooth communication and collaboration. For example, marketing teams can use Notion to create a content calendar for a nonprofit Instagram, while sales teams can manage leads and prospects via the platform.
Organizations can use Notion to build a comprehensive knowledge base, storing company policies, procedures, and best practices. Its powerful search functionality allows users to quickly find the information they need. Notion can be used to create company wikis, SOPs, and so much more.
Notion Pricing
Notion offers a range of pricing plans to cater to different needs, from individual users to large enterprises:
- Free (no cost): Although designed for individuals, the Free Plan allows up to 10 guests to be invited for collaboration.
- Plus ($8/user/month if billed annually, or $10 if billed monthly): The most popular option, the Plus Plan has the standard functionality that most teams need.
- Business ($15/user/month if billed annually, or $18 if billed monthly): Upgrading to Business unlocks private team spaces and a few other features you can see here.
- Enterprise (price varies—contact Notion to learn more): For larger companies, the Enterprise Plan comes with a customer success manager, additional security and compliance integrations, and more.
For an additional $8 per user per month (for annual billing) or $10 per user per month (for monthly billing), AI features can be enabled on any plan. Notion’s AI is designed to assist with drafting content, brainstorming, pulling insights from multiple sources, and answering questions.
Top Features of Notion
Notion’s top features include:
- Customizable templates: From project management to personal journaling templates or even tables to track the results of a non-profit content marketing campaign, users can customize their templates as needed, saving time and ensuring consistency within teams.
- Databases and tables: Create and manage complex databases, including tables, boards, calendars, and lists, all of which can be linked and filtered to display relevant information.
- Real-time collaboration: Multiple users can edit pages simultaneously, leave comments, and mention team members, ensuring everyone stays on the same page.
- Embeddable content: Embed a wide variety of content types, including images, videos, audio files, PDFs, and even code snippets.
- Task management: With Kanban boards, calendars, and to-do lists, Notion makes it easy to plan, track, and manage tasks. Assign tasks, set deadlines, and monitor progress.
Notion has several more great features, including integrations with agency tools and other software (more on that later) and a powerful search feature that becomes helpful once you start to build out a large number of pages.
What Is Confluence?
Confluence is a collaboration and knowledge management software developed by Atlassian, designed to help teams work together more efficiently and effectively. Known for its robust document management capabilities, Confluence allows teams to create, share, and collaborate on content in a centralized, structured environment.
Whether used for project documentation, meeting notes, or as a comprehensive knowledge base, Confluence provides the tools necessary to enhance team productivity and ensure that critical information is easily accessible.
Confluence Use Cases
Confluence excels in creating detailed project documentation. Teams can document project plans, specifications, and progress updates, keeping all stakeholders informed and aligned. The ability to link related documents and integrate with other Atlassian tools like Jira enhances its project management capabilities.
Many organizations use Confluence as a centralized knowledge base where employees can find and contribute to company policies, procedures, and best practices. Its powerful search functionality ensures that users can quickly locate the information they need.
Confluence provides an excellent platform for note-taking and documenting meeting agendas, notes, and action items. Teams can collaborate in real time, ensuring that important discussions and decisions are accurately recorded and easily accessible for future reference.
Confluence Pricing
Confluence has four different pricing plans:
- Free (no cost): The Free Plan includes access for up to 10 users, and comes with unlimited pages and spaces, plus a range of templates and app integrations.
- Standard ($4.89/user/month): The Standard Plan unlocks external collaborations and access for an unlimited number of users, as well as page permissions features.
- Premium ($8.97/user/month): Premium comes with new AI-powered creation features, admin controls and insights, per-user automation limits, and 24/7 support for critical issues.
- Enterprise (price varies—contact Atlassian to learn more): The Enterprise Plan includes advanced analytics and admin controls, unlimited automations, and more.
You can save up to 17% by switching from monthly to annual billing—view all Confluence pricing information here.
Top Features of Confluence
There’s a lot of overlap between Notion vs Confluence features, with both offering real-time collaboration, customizable dashboards, and helpful task management features. Here are a few specific areas where Confluence shines:
- Templates and blueprints: Confluence offers a variety of templates and blueprints to help teams get started quickly. These pre-configured pages cover common use cases such as meeting notes, product requirements, and project plans, providing a structured starting point for creating content.
- Integration with Atlassian suite: As part of the Atlassian ecosystem, Confluence integrates seamlessly with other Atlassian products like Jira, Trello, and Bitbucket. This integration streamlines workflows by allowing users to link Jira issues, embed Trello boards, and reference Bitbucket repositories directly within Confluence pages.
- Page and space permissions: Confluence provides granular permission settings, allowing administrators to control who can view, edit, and comment on pages and spaces. This ensures that sensitive information is only accessible to authorized users.
- Version control and page history: Confluence tracks changes to pages, allowing users to view version histories, compare changes, and revert to previous versions if needed. This version control is crucial for maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation.
Confluence also has a draft mode and a publishing workflow, allowing you to control which data is published and when. With Notion, all content is published and editable at any stage.
Notion vs Confluence: Key Feature Comparison
Choosing between Confluence vs Notion can be challenging, as both platforms offer a range of powerful features tailored to enhance productivity, collaboration, and knowledge management. To help you make the best decision for you and your team, we'll compare their key features across several different categories.
Project Management
Notion provides a highly customizable project management experience. Users can create detailed project plans using databases, Kanban boards, calendars, and timelines. Notion's flexibility allows teams to structure their projects in a way that best suits their workflows, linking related tasks and documents within the platform for easy navigation.
For example, a team running a non-profit marketing campaign can link their small business Instagram story template to a document where engagement metrics are stored and tracked, providing a simple, streamlined view of the campaign’s features and results.
Confluence excels in project documentation and planning, integrating seamlessly with Jira for comprehensive project management. While Confluence itself provides tools for creating and managing project documents, roadmaps, and timelines, its true strength lies in its ability to link with Jira to track project progress, manage tasks, and analyze project metrics.
Task Management
Task management is Notion’s bread and butter. Users can create to-do lists, assign tasks, set deadlines, and track progress of everything from a marketing campaign to a technical SEO audit within customizable views. Tasks can be embedded within project pages, ensuring all relevant information is centralized and accessible. Notion’s flexibility enables users to create personalized workflows tailored to individual or team needs.
Confluence’s task management capabilities are more basic than Notion’s. Users can create and assign tasks within pages and track their status, but for more advanced task management, Confluence relies on integration with Jira. This integration provides a more comprehensive solution for managing tasks, complete with detailed tracking and reporting features.
Collaboration and Communication
Notion supports real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit pages simultaneously, leave comments, and mention team members. The platform’s commenting and discussion features facilitate communication directly within the context of the work being done, making it easy to track feedback and decisions.
Confluence is designed with collaboration at its core. It allows multiple users to collaborate on documents in real-time, with robust commenting and notification features. Users can leave inline comments, tag colleagues, and track changes through version history. Confluence’s integration with other Atlassian products enhances team communication by linking discussions directly to relevant tasks and projects.
Customization and Flexibility
One of Notion’s standout features is its high degree of customization. Users can build their own workspace layouts, create custom databases, and design personalized dashboards. This flexibility allows individuals and teams to tailor Notion to their specific needs, making it a versatile tool for a wide range of use cases, whether you’re building an editorial calendar for social media or compiling prospects for a sales team.
Confluence does offer flexibility, but within a more structured framework than Notion. Users can customize spaces and pages to an extent, using macros and various add-ons to enhance functionality. However, Confluence’s customization options are generally more constrained, focusing on maintaining a consistent structure across the platform.
Templates
Notion provides a rich library of templates for various purposes, including project management, personal productivity, and content planning. Users can customize these templates to fit their specific needs, and even create and share their own templates within the organization. This makes it easy to standardize processes and ensure consistency across teams.
Confluence also offers a range of templates, particularly geared towards project documentation, meeting notes, and knowledge base articles. These templates help users get started quickly and maintain consistency in their documentation. While not as flexible as Notion’s templates, Confluence’s options are well-suited for structured documentation and collaborative projects.
Notion vs Confluence: User Experience and Interface
When choosing any software, it’s important to evaluate the user experience. An unintuitive interface or technology with a steep learning curve can make it difficult to onboard your team and get them up to speed. So, how does Notion vs Confluence compare when it comes to user experience and the platform’s interface? Let’s take a look.
Ease of Use
Notion’s emphasis on customization and flexibility means that there is a learning curve involved, depending on what you’re using the software for. It can take a while to configure Notion to meet your team’s needs, but once you have your pages and templates customized, the UI becomes fairly intuitive.
Confluence offers a more structured approach to content creation, generally making it easy to start using. While its interface is mostly user-friendly, the abundance of features and customization options can be overwhelming at first, but it usually doesn’t take too long to grasp the platform's layout and navigation.
Design and Aesthetics
Notion's design emphasizes simplicity and minimalism, with clean layouts and customizable themes. Users can personalize their workspaces with different color schemes and icon styles, enhancing the visual appeal of their documents and pages.
Confluence's design is functional rather than flashy, focusing on providing users with the tools they need to create and collaborate effectively. While it may not have the same level of visual customization as Notion, Confluence's interface is clean and professional, with clear navigation menus and consistent design elements across the platform.
Mobile and Desktop Apps
Notion offers both mobile and desktop apps that mostly provide the same user experience across devices. The mobile app, in particular, is well-designed and optimized for on-the-go productivity, allowing users to create, edit, and collaborate on content from anywhere.
Confluence also provides mobile and desktop apps for users to access content on the go. While these apps offer basic functionality for viewing and editing pages, some users may find the mobile experience less polished than the desktop version.
Automation and Third-Party Integrations
Notion offers a growing list of integrations with third-party tools, including technical SEO audit tools like Semrush, as well as other popular software solutions like Figma, Dropbox, GitHub, Google Drive, Slack, Zapier, and more. You can find the full list here.
Confluence integrates seamlessly with other Atlassian products like Jira, Trello, and Bitbucket, providing users with a comprehensive suite of tools for project management and collaboration. While Confluence's third-party integration options may not be as extensive as Notion's, it still offers a wide range of plugins and add-ons to enhance functionality and automate tasks.
Notion vs Confluence: Drawbacks and Considerations
For most teams, Notion is a more expensive option (it does depend on the number of users you have, though), but it also has more versatile functionality. Notion’s flexibility and customization options mean that it can be easily tailored to meet your team’s needs, but it also means that you have to invest the time into setting up and building out the software. Also, if you’re an enterprise-level company with hundreds of users and extensive content, you may find that Notion becomes slow and laggy.
Compared to Notion, Confluence offers less flexibility in terms of customization. While it provides robust tools for documentation and collaboration, users may find it more rigid and less adaptable to unique workflows and preferences. But, if you’re already using software in the Atlassian ecosystem, adding Confluence to your stack is almost a no-brainer.
Notion Resources from Slam Media Lab
Our team at Slam Media Lab has used Notion extensively, and we’ve created some templates that have saved us hundreds of hours and streamlined our operations. If you decide that Notion is the right tool for you and your team, here are some of our favorite templates—they’ll save you so much time!
- Notion meeting notes template: Perfect for Google Meet, Zoom, and other online syncs, it ensures every meeting is professional, productive, and on point.
- Notion assignment tracker: Keep track of your to-dos and and help your team stay organized with the perfect task tracker.
- Notion Wiki template: This all-in-one HQ wiki hub replaces the need for multiple software solutions. Store crucial information, meeting notes, documents, calendars, and more.
- Notion task list template: Designed for efficiency, this template is a great solution if you’re not using dedicated project management software.
- Notion agency meeting template: This template is a game-changer for internal meetings, helping your team stay on-topic and efficient.
- Notion content creation template: Notion is ideal for content creation, and this template (with a bonus content calendar) will get you off to a flying start.
- Notion social media planner: Whether you’re learning how to use TikTok for a small business or hunting small business hashtags for Instagram, this planner keeps you organized.
- Notion TikTok content planner: Plan and organize your short-form video content with this easy-to-use tool, including both the planner and a script.
- Notion TikTok script template: Don’t start planning every new video from scratch—use our script template to save time and expand your audience with less effort.
- Notion sprint template: For weekly sprints, there’s no easier way to track your plans and progress than with our sprint template.
- Notion documentation template: This Notion board helps you keep track of all your internal process documentations, streamlining things for your team.
Trust us—these templates will have a big impact on your team’s organization and productivity, and help you find the value of Notion very quickly!
Notion vs Confluence: What’s Right for Me?
At the end of the day, the decision between Notion vs Confluence depends on the specific needs of you and your team. Notion shines with its flexibility, customization, and user-friendly interface. It’s ideal for teams and individuals who need a versatile tool to manage tasks, projects, and personal productivity in a highly adaptable environment.
Confluence, on the other hand, excels in structured documentation, robust collaboration features, and seamless integration with other Atlassian products like Jira. It’s particularly suited for teams that require detailed project documentation, advanced permissions, and comprehensive integration within the Atlassian ecosystem.
Take the time to carefully compare the two solutions—the right documentation tool can make a huge difference to your team’s productivity and performance. And don’t forget to check out our Notion templates to help you make the most of the software’s capabilities!
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