Confluence vs Quip
When comparing Confluence vs Quip, the Slant community recommends Confluence for most people. In the question“What are the best multi-user wikis?” Confluence is ranked 3rd while Quip is ranked 12th. The most important reason people chose Confluence is:
Confluence offers a highly intuitive and user friendly experience without sacrificing the advanced feature set of a typical wiki.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to use
Confluence offers a highly intuitive and user friendly experience without sacrificing the advanced feature set of a typical wiki.
Pro Integrates well with other services
Confluence integrates well with other Atlassian offerings like Jira, a bug tracking system.
Pro Keyboard shortcuts support
There are a lot of shortcuts to speed up the interactions with the editor, viewscreen, workbox, etc.
Pro Hierarchical page tree
Most wikis don't have a page hierarchy, but Confluence has one, and this is very helpful for a lot of people.
Pro Great plugin ecosystem
Confluence offers a huge selection of paid and free plugins across all kinds of different categories that extend the functionality of the core software.
Pro Document and inline commenting offers low-commitment opportunities to contribute
Often someone that is not an expert/owner of a process is hesitant to edit documentation of someone that is. The ability to merely comment on the existing material helps elicit improvements without requiring as much boldness.
Pro LDAP integration
Confluence provides built-in connectors for:
- Microsoft Active Directory
- Apache Directory Server (ApacheDS)
- Apple Open Directory
- Fedora Directory Server
- Novell eDirectory
- OpenDS
- OpenLDAP
- OpenLDAP Using Posix Schema
- Posix Schema for LDAP
- Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition (DSEE)
- A generic LDAP directory server
Pro Offline editing
Quip allows for offline editing of documents which then sync upon connection to Wi-Fi. This way users can continuing working while not connected to a data signal, but they can still back up their work when they do finally get one.
Pro Amazing mobile interface
Unlike other mobile apps, Quip has really innovated the text editor on mobile, making for a good Evernote alternative. It has a great interface for formatting text that stays out of your road so to maximize how much room you have to type.
Pro Private document sharing
Files can be shared with others via a URL. The owner of the shared document can set it to be in read-only mode or they can allow anyone to edit it. Collaborators don't need to have a Quip account to participate. This feature makes for a great Evernote alternative, for those looking for a different app that has this similar function.
Pro Highly compatible
Quip can export documents to several formats, including .DOC, .PDF, .HTML, as well as a couple of others. This allows for compatibility with a wide selection of other apps.
Cons
Con Pretty slow
The hosted version feels slow and can be annoying to use regularly.
Con Search is utterly terrible
It requires having to put in almost exactly what's needed to get a result on the front page. Defeats the purpose of the problem it's supposedly solving.
Con Many unresolved bugs
Atlassian is notorious for not resolving bugs for months or even years in Confluence.
Con Costs money
Although inexpensive, starting at $10/mo for 10 users, many other solutions are free.
Con WSIWYG editor is broken
Markup is not saved and complicated to use.
Not suitable for dev teams.
Con Redesigns are rolled out without thorough testing
There were two major redesigns for Confluence (cloud version) in the last couple of years, and both of them were released in a very immature state, causing a lot of trouble for existing clients.
Con No full Unicode support (no real emoji support)
Confluence has a limited number of "emoticons" but doesn't support emojis as defined in Unicode.
Con New version has performance issues
…on my old phone. Yes I know my phone is at fault but the old version wasn't annoyingly slow in the Spreadsheet component.
Con Not really free with stringent controls on trial
The trial is content limited which means if you start using it quite a bit they'll pick the perfect moment to swoop in and start charging you. It's better for them because it means they can look at your account and pick the best time to ask you to pay (hey we notice you're using Quip lots and have a new project you just started how about you pay now or you lose everything).
Con Limited formatting on spreadsheets
Within spreadsheet cells, you can't do things like, for example, taking part of the text and aligning it to the center or to the left. Furthermore, in the mobile app, you can't jump to the next line to keep writing inside the same cell.
Con Can't rename files
You can't really rename documents per se in Quip. What you do is put the first line of the document as its title, so that it is displayed on the main list of documents on the app. The program suggests to combine it with a HL (Large Heading) format.