• long running

Confluence: Collaboration Tool Free for up-to 10 Users $0 Forever @ Atlassian

3362

I'm a big fan of Atlassian as they are an incredible Australian success story.
- https://pando.com/2013/04/26/hard-yakka-why-atlassians-found…
- https://www.smh.com.au/business/small-business/from-uni-drop…

It also helps that JIRA and Confluence are my favourite collaboration tools which I use at work and so much better than email! Now that it's free, I can use it at home as an alternative to my other collaboration tools such as Google Drive, Docs, Etc…

I'm surprised nobody has posted this given the popularity of the JIRA deal just over a year ago https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/401876

Enjoy… Free Forever!!!

Mod: Free since Sep 2019: "Atlassian adds free tiers for Jira and Confluence". Therefore marked as long running deal, this cannot be reposted in the future.

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Comments

  • +7

    Sorry to be aggressive but confluence is way harder to use than before.

    • +20

      Not to be rude and that could be true, however that is like saying an iPhone 10 is getting more difficult to use cause there's so more functionality than the iPhone 1.

      If you use basic features it's the same as it was before.

      • +4

        You are right. It's same as saying Android is not easier to use than iOS cause there's 2x functionality.
        If you use basic features it's the same as iOS ;)

      • It's a UI re-design to look more 'modern', not new features.

        I hate the new one as well. They screwed it IMO.

      • Disagree somewhat and I've spent 100+ hours in old confluence. I find new iPhones just as easy to use as old ones, but this new confluence feels clunkier even for basic features. Maybe I'll get used to it.

    • +8

      It's basically expensive Wikipedia. I hate it.

      • +5

        Lol can you use Wikipedia to store some projects or personal documentation?
        It's actually better than the same tool in MS VSTS or whatever new name they came up with now, they are changing every 6 months lol

        • +20

          Technically, yes. Wikipedia runs on mediawiki, which you can run anywhere… including a private version.

          • +2

            @Lord Fart Bucket: Had no idea. Thanks for the heads up

          • +3

            @Lord Fart Bucket: You need to host it right? This is hosted for you.

            • +2

              @fredblogs: hosting is a no-brainer to setup yourself these days for something like mediawiki. Be it local network or remote web server, it's literally a few clicks of effort.

              • +3

                @cerealJay: Local network you need to worry about backups and dyndns etc. Remote web server and you need to pay.

                • +1

                  @fredblogs: you don't need to worry about dyndns if you only require local access. And if you have a NAS, those systems often can take care of remote access anyway without needing dyndns. If you already have paid web hosting somewhere, (developers often do) mediawiki can simply be added on at no extra cost because it's such a small footprint. Backups are easy.

                  • +3

                    @cerealJay: And you don't need to worry about any of that if you take up this free deal.

                    • +6

                      @fredblogs:

                      if you take up this free deal.

                      It's not a "deal". They've had a free tier for ages, like most services on the internet. Should we cycle through every other service out there that has a "free to sign up" deal? It would take a few years.

                      • +3

                        @cerealJay: To be fair I didn't know about it and am very happy it is on OzB. I've been paying for it…

                      • +3

                        @cerealJay: This is for sure not true. Before it was on $10/month for up to 10 users.

                • @fredblogs:

                  worry about backups

                  is your data in SaaS confluence backed up?

              • @cerealJay: edit: I could see my response opening a can-o-worms that would require too much back and forth… revoked for the sake of my time/effort and sanity…

        • +4

          Yes. You can use Mediawiki, the engine of Wikipedia. I did use MediaWiki to maintain a personal information system, an online WIKI for a hobby interest and at work as a ICT documentation system for projects and procedures. MediaWiki is free, has many plugins and is powerful.

    • True

  • +7

    Can confirm that this software is amazing for the price. I use it in education and it's been a god send.

    • As a student or teacher?

      • +4

        As an internal database for the localised IT work.

  • Did not receive Jira licence from this deal. So not clicking again. Thanks anyway Op.
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/401876?page=1#comment

    • +4

      But JIRA cloud is also free now :/

    • +2

      Same, did not receive JIRA back on that deal. This one worked straight away tho.

  • +10

    I've used it at home as a knowledge-base, asset ledger, recipe tome, archive, journal of my home network changes, …. for over 10 years. I'm a huge fan.

    Its been $10 per year for 10 users all that time and it all goes to a kids reading charity. The fee is basically for a years worth of maintenance and I've always been happy to pay it. :)

    I run it in a docker container (db in a separate container) which makes it trivial to upgrade and maintain. The only bad thing I have to say about it is the startup time - which is in the order of minutes. Thank you, Java ;)

    • +2

      Wow, thanks for sharing, didn't even think can use it for home, recipe, finance, etc.
      Do you have any tips to use at home, without making it feel like "office feel"?

      • +4

        For myself I drag and drop and copy and paste entire Web pages into confluence then edit it as I like.

        Works well for food recipes, including pictures, give it a go. It's pastes screen grabs too!

      • Umm, not sure that I do anything to make it not office-ey :) I've created some of my own templates… for eg I have a space for household assets - it was meant as a collection of photos of all the stuff we own, in case of an insurance claim (I've made claims in the past where I only realised a year later that a few other things had been stolen, apart from what I told the nice insurance man). In that space I made a standard template - which really is just a table at the top with details like date and place of purchase, link to manufacturer site, warranty details, etc.

        I have spaces for assets, my home network stuff, knowledge base, projects I'm working on, recipes (I also edit recipes I get off the web), my dogs, health stuff, courses I've done, …

    • I use StackEdit for my personal KB but might try out switching to confluence.

    • Why do you host rather than use this cloud version?

  • +3

    Just realised this is for the cloud service. Nice! :)

  • +1

    Agile can just go and (profanity) right off!!!

    https://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/2008/11/16/the-agile-dis…

    • +4

      What's Agile this got to do with this post btw? What's your personal experience with Confluence?

      • +5

        I guess that Jira is often used for agile project management of projects

        • +16

          correct, both tools pushed by Agile evangelists
          no issue with the tools themselves but rather the militant push of this mantra by consultants and non tech folk

          edit: upvote for this post as it’s a good deal. Just had to vent about the bigger picture where this is mostly used.

          • @00: I'm sure many here share your pain with work. Working with people who are unable to communicate and collaborate is tough.

          • @00: I agree.

            Our team switched to agile 18 months ago, because a new bloke who came in "had the religion".

            So what we've found is that there is tremendous overhead and sometimes bad PR (when big features don't make it in because we're so busy doing the bits and bobs in the backlog) in maintaining such a reactive development paradigm.

            Does it please managers because they can micromanage schedules? You betcha, in the short term.

            Does it please execs? No, because with an enterprise product, teams are so busy churning through minutiae in weekly sprints that time to step back and consider product direction and plan new functionality (not just new small features, but full subsystems requiring many months of work) is in short supply because that sort of thing is open ended enough that it can't be scheduled into a sprint, and if it can't be scheduled into a sprint, people aren't doing it, LOL.

            Does it please the folks doing the work? Nope, because time is micromanaged to the point that if you have an off day because it's just not happening that day for whatever reason, it's an issue in the scrum.

    • +61

      You just haven't realised, yet, that complex problems can be solved in unrealistic timeframes by having more and more meetings, and explaining what you are doing over and over again to people who have no idea what you are talking about

      ;)

      • +2

        Thumbs up :D

      • +24

        not to mention used by analysts as a reason to not plan ahead and just wing it during each sprint

        It’s the weekend so must stop thinking about this. Makes my blood boil.

        • +3

          Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you work in a terrible workplace. I empathise however confluence isn't your enemy.

      • +5

        Or people who think they know more than the actual SMEs

        • +3

          Or SME’s who want the new thing being delivered to function exactly the same was the old one. Sometimes the SME is the road block.

      • Oh the visionary….thanks for bringing back the numbed paint

    • -1

      I don't think confluence has much to do with agile. That's more a jira thing.

      • +7

        Not when they ask every test results to be documented in 10 different pages in confluence. Plus create a table on each page with 100 columns reading dynamically what the JIRA tickets status are

        • +1

          ROTFL, you have those status pages, too, huh?

      • Nah.. but integration with JIRA and the way Confluence is structured, makes them pretty much same suite of tools for Agile PM.

    • +3

      So True!!!
      This is someone who knows there shit and doesn’t drink the Confluence and Jira cool-aid.

      • That’s why sometimes having a small local team and a simple xls delivers better quality outcome for project well within budget as it will have less “noise”.

        Not against Jira or confluence but sometimes it is information overload :)

        • +2

          Keyword: sometimes

        • +1

          most of the time you dont get to choose your team. a lot of projects span multiple countries involving vendors half way across the world. good luck working on that without a clear, defined way of working.
          whether waterfall or agile, the biggest problem with projects are not the methodology, but the teams motivation. it takes a few members who refuses to play nice to make everyone else miserable. the methodologies are there only as a guide to help members communicate with each other.
          on the topic of people not knowing shit, the other side is that quite often people think they know better than they actually are. Time and again we see business teams think they are more technical than they actually are and tech teams think they know the business more than the customers they delivery solutions to. a good consultant can stand in between these 2 to keep everything in line.

          • @blahman: Consultants can at times do only so much, management need to understand the issues, make the decisions and communicate the why to everyone, so everyone is targeting to the same goalposts as a unified team. This is easier said than done Btw…

        • I manage my single-person projects in an XLS. Fantastic response time as it doesn't go across our slow network with its crap routing and 3 layers of virus/malware checking at the packet level + web access logging, and doesn't fall over when I'm editing a large table.

    • +1

      You know, your company probably provides employee assistance programs and my advice is you use one.

    • +2

      Lol.. I'm glad I am not the only person that thinks this of Agile. Really, only PMs who can't manage a schedule (!LOL) with no structure and not coordinated enough will use this methodology.

      • +2

        Agile doesn't have PMs.

      • Also: PMs who have failed to manage a schedule and been a year late delivering something will be told to use this methodology so that people don't work for a year without anything new to ship. Yes, I've seen this happen.

        At least with Agile, you ship SOMETHING. It might not be a priority for your project, but it will be something, and SOME customer will be glad it's there. (Meanwhile, the team could have been thinking big picture, planning architecture, etc. of something big… but no.)

        • Home builder: "Sorry.. We haven't gotten anywhere building your house in the last 12 months, but here, we got you Chocolates"..

    • Said by someone who has probably never worked in an organisation that has uses Agile practices successfully. So many poor "implementations" of Agile out there, I can understand people's frustration. But done right, with the right culture and support it is great!

      • +2

        like a small software development house producing a web app?

        For everywhere else, it probably sucks too.

        • In a financial institution with over 300 developers where speed to market, time to value and the ability to change direction on a product to meet changing market conditions or customer needs is vitally important. In those situations you can't rely on a BDUF waterfall project to deliver something in 6 - 12 months time that isn't relevant.

          Like I said, plenty of poor Agile implementations out there. I was part of one (and was wondering what this sh!t was, along with the rest of my team), it only became workable after we had the proper training round the culture and what we were trying to achieve. Remember, the tools are a very small part of Agile.

          • -1

            @skeggman: I'm sure it works well when you have minimal to no documentation, lip service to security, weak governance and little repercussion for not delivering increment goals.

            • +4

              @Speedster: Did you see the bit about working for a financial institution? More governance than you can poke a stick at, 65 people working in cyber security roles who check everything before it's released with a fine tooth comb, severe penalties for non-delivery.

              And on the documentation side, why produce pages of rubbish that people will never read? The goal is just enough documentation.

              • -1

                @skeggman: Yes, and I know well the institution you refer to.

        • +7

          Absolutely no reason why it would not work.
          Delivering incremental value in manageable iterations, retrospectively learning from your experiences and not spending 3,6,12 months designing and building something that may or may not be valuable to your customers.
          That's agile, unfortunately, it's very frequently done wrong, far more often than done right :(

      • +9

        I suspect the number of organisations using a bastardised version of Agile greatly outnumbers the number using it properly. I'm yet to actually see the latter for myself.

        • +2

          Agile is not the issue. Companies partly committing to it cause it's the trend and choosing what they implement in the methodology (i.e. just sprints/stand ups without proper planning and ceremonies) is the issue

    • +2

      oh man you're not wrong. Same with the whole 'Digital' transformation bullshit. Apparently we need a Head of Digital to tell everyone that people are using the internet more than they did 10 years ago.

      • +4

        People with your attitude are the reason your company has hired a Head of Digital Transformation. You clearly don't understand what it is. Digital Transformation is many things - converting a paper based forms to something used online, automating a manual and repetitive process, using online collaboration tools (such as Confluence), etc.

    • +4

      Horrible article.

      • +2

        It's sounds like a rant for someone that thinks they are better than Agile.

      • Agreed

  • +8

    This is an amazing piece of software. Not ideal but very helpful and they are constantly improving it. I use it every day at work and I can't imagine losing it.

    • +6

      Same here, now that my team is collaborating well on these tools it's hard to go back to emails, SharePoint, network file shares etc…

      In my work meetings I beam up confluence on the main screen, turn on the polycom and I ask everyone to use Confluence as a digital whiteboard. You can have 12 people making concurrent updates in real time! People can easily add content including photos of post it notes taken in the meeting.

      And the best bit, once the meeting is done nobody has to be the poor person to write up the minutes, summarise the discussion, and check with everyone else if they've assigned the actions correctly, because we do the all together in the meeting. Further still team members can further progress content after the meeting and nothing is lost as you retain a full history of all updates made.

      This works great for those working remotely or WFH. They're totally part of the discussions and part of the whiteboard!

      If you try this with your team and let them work from home, you'll have advocates in no time!

  • +1

    Just signed up for this Free Thing! Now, what do I do with it?

    • +3

      Use it like a wiki or google docs

      It's best used with a team to collaborate. I use it for meeting minutes and actions so everyone knows what was discussed and who's doing what.

      Also read this https://www.atlassian.com/blog/confluence/five-tips-confluen…

      • This is very helpful. Thanks.

        I manage website projects with an outsourced team of freelancers, so I've been looking for a good PM tool. I'm not a big fan of Asana which many seem to love, so I will look into Confluence.

        I've been wondering a few things about Jira/Confluence and can't seem to find appropriate use cases:

        1) What is Jira used for? and;

        2) What are the main differences between Jira and Confluence?

        3) With Asana you can use the API to automatically create and setup a new project during client onboarding (client fills in a Google form > Zapier into Asana to create the project including permissions). Is this possible with Confluence?

        Thanks in advance to you or anyone else for any tips or advice.

        • +1

          JIRA is more for requirements and progress tracking of confirmed deliverables (i.e. workfow management).

          Confluence is more for knowledge and documentation. Think of it as an internal Intranet that most companies have, except that anyone can edit the pages and put any content they like as well as give comments and feedback.

          The truth is that both are super powerful and flexible you can use them in almost any way you want!

        • Jira is basically a bug tracking software. You probably won’t have a use for it. Neither JIRA nor Confluence are a replacement for Asana, if you don’t like that, you probably won’t like either of these two.

      • noob question ; when I tried to 'lock' a page there's this message

        Upgrade for page restrictions
        You're on the free plan, so anyone who's logged in can view and edit this page. To set page restrictions, upgrade your plan.

        Does that mean anyone with a Confluence account can view or ONLY those whom you explcitly invite to the space ?

        • +1

          On the free account only invited people can see the pages, and you're limited to 10 users.

          • @Vietsoldier: Thanks very much.
            I was loading some private travel details (idea was to collab on a small group holiday) and freaked out on that message

  • Completely off topic but we have been using not and azure DevOps at work and find azure DevOps a much more mature product. It's weird Microsoft don't have a confluence competitor but that's probably because it would canabilise o365.

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