The ultimate guide to finding the right Confluence AI bot

Let's be honest, Confluence can get messy. It starts as a clean, organized library for your team's knowledge, but over time it can turn into a sprawling maze of pages. Your team ends up wasting time digging for answers, bugging coworkers, or worse, using outdated info.

An AI bot promises to fix this by pulling instant, accurate answers straight from your documents. But where do you start? You've got Atlassian's built-in tools on one side and a whole marketplace of apps on the other. We'll walk you through the options to help you figure out which Confluence AI bot is actually right for you.

What is a Confluence AI bot?

What exactly is a Confluence AI bot? Think of it less like a search bar and more like a super-smart assistant that has actually read every single page in your Confluence. Instead of just matching keywords in titles, it understands the content and gives you straight answers in plain English.

It's like having a company expert on call 24/7. Your team can ask normal questions like, “What’s our parental leave policy?” or “How do I set up the dev environment for Project Phoenix?” and get an answer right away, with a link to the source page. The whole point is to stop the endless searching and let people find what they need, when they need it.

The native option: Atlassian Rovo

Atlassian's answer to the AI question is a tool called Rovo (you might have known it as Atlassian Intelligence). Since it’s built right into Confluence and other Atlassian products, it’s a pretty convenient starting point.

You'll see Rovo's features popping up to help you draft pages, summarize long documents, or get the gist of a comment thread. It can also search across other Atlassian tools, which is a nice perk if your team is all-in on their ecosystem.

A screenshot of Atlassian Rovo's interface, the native Confluence AI bot, summarizing a lengthy document.

Limitations of Atlassian Rovo

While having a built-in tool is handy, Atlassian's native AI comes with some pretty big strings attached that you should know about.

Not designed for customer support

A huge reason to get an AI bot is to give customers instant support. Unfortunately, Rovo isn't built for that. As users in the Atlassian Community have pointed out, it’s strictly for your internal team. If you want a customer-facing bot that uses your public Confluence pages, you're forced to buy and set up Jira Service Management, which means more money and more hassle.

Locked behind expensive plans

Rovo’s best features are kept behind the paywall of Confluence's Premium and Enterprise plans. The Standard plan gets a very limited version, but to get the good stuff, you have to upgrade everyone. The per-user cost adds up quickly, and you might end up paying for premium features for team members who don't even need them.

Limited customization

With a built-in tool, what you see is what you get. You can't really tweak the AI's personality to match your brand, set up rules for when to hand off a chat to a human, or control how it behaves. Want to stop it from answering certain questions or teach it to do something specific, like look up info in another app? You’re out of luck. You have to play by Atlassian's rules, which might not work for your team.

Third-party bots: The marketplace alternative

If Rovo feels too restrictive, the Atlassian Marketplace is your next stop. It's packed with apps from other developers, including a bunch of different AI bots. These tools are often more powerful and specialized than the native one because they're built to do one thing really well.

They give you the freedom to connect Confluence to all the other tools your team uses. By going with a third-party app, you're not stuck with Atlassian's pricing or limitations. You can shop around for a bot that fits your exact needs and budget, whether it's a simple helper for your team or a full-blown customer support bot.

What to look for in a third-party bot

Okay, but with so many options, how do you pick one? Here are a few things to keep an eye out for:

• A quick, no-nonsense setup: How long does it take to get started? A lot of 'enterprise' tools make you sit through a sales demo just to see the product. Look for one you can set up yourself. For instance, with eesel AI, you can connect your Confluence space and have a bot running in a few minutes, no sales call required.

• Connects to all your knowledge: Let's face it, your company's information isn't just in Confluence. It’s scattered across Google Docs, Notion, Slack, and old support tickets. The best bots can tap into all those places and bring everything together, so you have one source of truth.

• Customization that matters: A good bot should do more than just spit out answers. Can you change its tone to match your brand's voice? Can you teach it to do things, like hand off a tricky question to a human or pull order details from another system? Tools like eesel AI have workflow builders that let you control exactly how your bot acts and what it can do.

• A way to test it safely: You don't want to launch a bot and just cross your fingers. Look for a tool with a simulation mode. eesel AI, for example, can test your bot on thousands of your past support questions in a safe environment. This gives you a good idea of how well it will perform before it talks to a single real person.

• Solid security and privacy: This is a big one. It's your company data, after all.

  

  People on Reddit have rightly raised concerns about where their data goes with AI tools.

  Reddit
  Make sure any provider you choose is clear that your data won't be used to train their models. eesel AI is built with privacy first, so your information is only ever used for your own bots.

Pricing compared: Atlassian Rovo vs. third-party bots

Of course, price is a huge part of the decision. The way Atlassian charges for Rovo and how third-party tools charge can be very different.

Atlassian Rovo pricing

To get Rovo, you have to be on one of Confluence's more expensive plans. The cost is billed for every single user, every month, so it grows right alongside your team.

Plan	Price (Annual)	Key AI Features
Standard	$5.42 / user / month	Limited Rovo search, chat, and agents (25 AI credits/user)
Premium	$10.44 / user / month	Full Rovo capabilities (70 AI credits/user)
Enterprise	Contact Sales	Advanced Rovo capabilities (150 AI credits/user)

The per-user model can get expensive, and the whole "AI credits" thing means you might hit a surprise limit during a busy month.

Third-party bot pricing (eesel AI example)

Most third-party tools have their own subscription, separate from what you pay for Confluence. Many, like eesel AI, use a more predictable model based on how much the bot is used, not how many people are on your team.

Plan	Price (Annual)	Key Features
Team	$239 / month	Up to 1,000 AI interactions/mo, train on docs, Slack bot.
Business	$639 / month	Up to 3,000 AI interactions/mo, train on past tickets, MS Teams, AI Actions, simulation.
Custom	Contact Sales	Unlimited interactions, advanced integrations, custom security.

This approach is usually more budget-friendly because you’re paying for what the bot actually does (the number of interactions), not just for giving everyone on the team access. A quick heads-up: some tools charge per resolution, which can get you a nasty surprise on your bill. eesel AI's model is a flat rate for a set number of interactions, so you always know what you're paying. Plus, you can often start with a monthly plan and cancel anytime, so you’re not locked into a long contract.

Choosing a Confluence AI bot: Convenience vs. control

When you're picking a Confluence AI bot, it really boils down to one thing: convenience versus control.

Atlassian's Rovo is convenient. It's right there in Confluence, and it’s a decent enough tool for basic internal tasks like summarizing pages, as long as you're already paying for a premium plan.

But if you need something more, a third-party app is the way to go. You get a bot that can actually talk to your customers, pull in knowledge from all over your company, and be customized to work exactly how you want. You get more say over how it works and what you pay.

If you want a Confluence AI bot you can set up yourself in a few minutes, connect to all your scattered docs, and fine-tune without ever having to sit through a sales pitch, you should give eesel AI a try.