When comparing DokuWiki vs Confluence, the Slant community recommends DokuWiki for most people. In the question“What are the best multi-user wikis?” DokuWiki is ranked 1st while Confluence is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose DokuWiki is:
To install you need a webserver running PHP 5.2 or later where you unpack the downloaded archive and navigate to install.php in your browser, fill out the necessary information required for the one-page installer and you are done.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Easy to set up and mantain
To install you need a webserver running PHP 5.2 or later where you unpack the downloaded archive and navigate to install.php in your browser, fill out the necessary information required for the one-page installer and you are done.
Pro Local and open source
Local...
Pro Plain-text file storage
Dokuwiki does not require a database, it stores everything in plain-text.
Pro Version control
Dokuwik offers unlimited page revisions.
Pro Access control
DokuWiki has built-in ACL support.
Pro Runs on any PHP server
It requires a webserver running PHP 5.2 or later of any kind.
Pro A dedicated page for recent changes
A dedicated page to quickly note what has changed recently can be set up.
Pro Search functionality
DokuWiki allows searching through pages.
Pro Very last, consuming very few Local
Local....
Pro Good selection of plugins
DokuWiki offers over a thousand plugins to extend its functionality.
Pro Good selection of themes
DokuWiki offers over a hundred templates to change the visual appearance of the site.
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
Cons
Con Lots of plugins to manage
DokuWiki is highly modular. Even thing like WYSIWYG editors and categories have to be added separately as plugins. This can quickly lead to managing lots of plugins.
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.