Confluence Cloud and Confluence Data Center: What's the difference in 2025?

Picking a knowledge management platform feels like a huge decision, right? Especially with Atlassian pushing everyone toward the cloud. Trying to choose between Confluence Cloud and Data Center isn't just about the cool new features. It’s a bigger choice about your infrastructure, your team's workload, and how you plan to manage your company's collective brain for the future.

Now that Confluence Server officially bowed out in February 2024, Data Center is the last option standing for self-hosting, and let's be honest, its days seem numbered too. This guide will help you cut through the noise with a straightforward comparison of hosting, features, price, and the actual user experience, so you can make the right call for your team.

What is Confluence Cloud?

Confluence Cloud is Atlassian’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. Basically, it's Confluence on demand. Atlassian handles all the complicated backend stuff, like hosting, server maintenance, and security patches, so you don't have to. It all happens automatically.

This means your team gets the newest features the moment they’re released and can get into your knowledge base from anywhere with an internet connection. It’s built for teams that want to reduce their IT headaches, get the latest tech, and grow without ever worrying about hardware. You can learn more over at the official Confluence Cloud page.

What is Confluence Data Center?

Confluence Data Center is the self-managed, enterprise version of Confluence. This is the one you pick when you need to be in complete control. You can host it on your own servers at the office or in a private cloud environment like AWS or Azure.

This approach gives you total say over your data, security settings, and how you meet industry regulations. It's designed for large companies that can't compromise on uptime and performance, particularly those in regulated fields like finance or healthcare that have strict rules about where their data can live. For all the nitty-gritty details, check out the official Confluence Data Center page.

Confluence Cloud and Data Center: A feature-by-feature breakdown

The choice between Cloud and Data Center is about more than just where your servers are located. The differences really change how your team works day-to-day and what your long-term strategy looks like. Let's get into the key distinctions.

Deployment, maintenance, and security

How you set up and manage Confluence is probably the single biggest difference between the two versions.

With Confluence Cloud, everything is hands-off. Atlassian takes care of the servers, the network, and all the infrastructure behind the scenes. For Data Center, it's all on your team. You're responsible for setting up and looking after the servers, whether they're in your own building or hosted with a service like AWS.

When it comes to updates, Cloud users get new features and security patches rolled out continuously, without having to do a thing. Data Center upgrades are a whole different story. They're a manual job that requires planning, testing, and scheduling downtime, which can be a real pain for IT departments.

On the security front, the Cloud uses a shared model. Atlassian secures the platform, and you control who gets access to what. In Data Center, security is 100% your responsibility, from firewalls and data encryption all the way to managing vulnerabilities.

Core features and user experience

This is where your team will feel the difference the most. The Cloud experience is just more modern, and it's clearly where Atlassian is putting all of its creative energy.

The editor in Confluence Cloud is clean, intuitive, and miles ahead of the clunky, legacy editor in Data Center. Cloud users also get handy perks like live macro previews, so you can see exactly how your page will look while you're still building it. You also get a ton more templates to start with and the ability to drop in comments while editing, which makes working together a lot less chaotic.

But the features that are only on the Cloud are what really set it apart:

• Atlassian Intelligence: This is Atlassian's built-in AI, and you can only get it on Cloud plans. It can summarize long articles, draft new content from a simple prompt, and make the search function a bit smarter. It’s a decent starting point if your team lives and breathes Atlassian tools.

• Whiteboards & Databases: Confluence Cloud comes with its own whiteboards for brainstorming and databases for organizing information neatly, all without leaving your knowledge base.

Here’s the catch with Atlassian Intelligence, though: it has a big blind spot. It can only see information inside your Atlassian products. That means it completely misses all the useful knowledge hiding in your helpdesk, random Google Docs, and old Slack threads. For teams that actually want a single source of truth, an external tool like eesel AI connects to everything, including Confluence, to provide answers based on the whole picture.

This infographic from eesel AI shows how knowledge is integrated from various sources, a key aspect in the Confluence Cloud vs. Confluence Data Center discussion.::

Feature	Confluence Cloud	Confluence Data Center
Editor	Modern, intuitive editor with live macros	Legacy editor, less user-friendly
Atlassian Intelligence	Yes (AI summaries, search, content)	No
Whiteboards	Yes (Unlimited on Premium/Enterprise)	No
Databases	Yes (Native)	No
Page Archiving	Yes (Built-in)	No
Automation	More powerful, broader rule library	Basic automation

This video provides a detailed overview of the feature differences between Confluence Cloud and Data Center.

Integrations and the app ecosystem

Both platforms have the Atlassian Marketplace, but the apps you can get are pretty different. Confluence Cloud has more modern, slick integrations with the SaaS tools your team is likely already using, like Slack, Google Drive, and Microsoft 365.

One of the biggest headaches people face when moving from Data Center to Cloud is app compatibility. A lot of Data Center apps just don't have a Cloud equivalent, which can force teams to completely change how they work.

But the problem goes deeper than just apps. It’s about knowledge being stuck in different places. Information gets trapped in Confluence, old support tickets from platforms like Zendesk, and dozens of other documents. A tool like eesel AI fixes this by connecting directly to all your important apps. It creates a unified knowledge layer that can power your AI support agents without making you go through a risky and complicated data migration.

Pricing breakdown for Confluence Cloud and Data Center

The way you pay for Cloud and Data Center is totally different, and it's important to think about the total cost of ownership for both.

Confluence Cloud pricing plans

Confluence Cloud is a subscription where you pay per user, per month. The price changes based on how many users you have and which feature plan you pick.

Plan	Price (Per User/Month, Billed Annually)	Key Features
Free	$0	Up to 10 users, 2 GB storage, basic features
Standard	~$5.16	Up to 150,000 users, 250 GB storage, advanced permissions
Premium	~$9.73	Everything in Standard + unlimited storage, analytics, 99.9% uptime SLA
Enterprise	Contact Sales (Billed Annually)	Everything in Premium + multiple sites, Atlassian Guard, 99.95% uptime SLA

Heads up: these prices are based on the smallest user tiers and might go down as you add more people. For the latest numbers, always check the official Confluence Cloud Pricing page.

Confluence Data Center pricing

Confluence Data Center is an annual license based on user tiers. You pay one flat fee for the year that covers a certain number of users.

Here are a few examples of what that looks like annually:

• 500 users: $28,000 per year

• 1,000 users: $50,000 per year

• 5,000 users: $231,000 per year

The big thing to remember with Data Center is all the hidden costs. That license fee is just where it starts. The real cost includes the server hardware, ongoing maintenance, the salaries of the people managing it all, and any extra security tools you need. These expenses can pile up fast and often make Data Center the pricier option in the long run. You can figure out your exact cost on the Confluence Data Center Pricing page.

Unify your knowledge beyond Confluence

Here's the reality: no matter which platform you go with, your company's knowledge is never going to live just in Confluence. It’s going to be spread across support tickets, internal wikis, Slack DMs, and shared drives. This scattered information is the biggest roadblock to providing fast support and keeping internal work running smoothly.

This is where eesel AI can help. It acts as a smart layer that connects all those disconnected sources. eesel AI learns from your Confluence instance, whether it's Cloud or Data Center, along with everything else.

The result? You can set up powerful AI Agents and Copilots that give your support team instant, accurate answers pulled from all of your company’s knowledge. Best of all, eesel AI is designed to be self-serve, so you can get it up and running in minutes. It works with the helpdesk you already have, so you don't have to rip everything out and start over just to get immediate value.

Final verdict: Confluence Cloud vs. Data Center

So, what's the verdict? Choosing between Confluence Cloud and Data Center is really a trade-off. You have to weigh the modern features and convenience of the Cloud against the total control and compliance you get with Data Center.

But with Atlassian betting so heavily on a cloud-first future, it’s pretty clear which way the wind is blowing. The next big challenge isn't just picking a platform, it’s figuring out how to break down the knowledge silos that exist across your entire company.

Ready to give your support team the power of truly unified knowledge? Get started with eesel AI for free.