If you’re reading this, you’re probably stuck trying to choose between the two giants of knowledge management: Atlassian’s Confluence and Microsoft’s SharePoint. It’s a classic dilemma for growing teams. Both tools are powerful in their own right, but they were built to do different things. Picking one often feels like you’re just trading one set of problems for another, like siloed information or search bars that never seem to find anything.
This guide will give you a straightforward Confluence vs. SharePoint comparison , looking at what each one does best (and not so best).
But more importantly, we’ll talk about the elephant in the room: how do you actually get the knowledge out of these platforms and into the hands of your team when they need it?
What are Confluence and SharePoint? A Confluence vs. SharePoint breakdown
Before we pit them against each other, let’s get a clear picture of what each tool is really for. They both help teams work together, but they come at it from completely different angles.
Confluence
Think of Confluence as a massive, shared digital notebook for your team. It’s a flexible space where people can create, organize, and chat about their work together. The whole system is built around "Spaces" (for different teams or projects) and "Pages" (for your documents, meeting notes, project plans, you name it).
It’s especially popular with tech teams, developers, and project managers who need an open, flexible way to document things as they go. Its biggest superpower is how well it works with other Atlassian tools like Jira. You can link your project plans in Confluence directly to your tasks in Jira, which keeps everything nicely connected. The catch? Prying that information out of Confluence to use elsewhere can still feel like a chore.
SharePoint
SharePoint is more of a traditional workhorse. It’s designed for building company intranets and securely managing documents, especially if your company already lives and breathes Microsoft. Instead of a free-flowing wiki, picture it as a super organized central library or content management system (CMS). It’s structured with "Team Sites" and "Communication Sites" that act as hubs for storing files and sharing official company news.
Big companies and organizations that are all-in on Microsoft 365 tend to lean on SharePoint. It’s great for version control, compliance, and locking down permissions on sensitive documents. And of course, it plays beautifully with Microsoft Office, Teams, and OneDrive. The downside is that it can feel a bit clunky and rigid. Because information is so neatly filed away, it often feels buried, leaving employees unable to find what they need without bugging the IT department.
Key feature comparison: Confluence vs. SharePoint
Alright, let’s get into the main event. Here’s how Confluence and SharePoint stack up on the features that matter most for managing your team’s knowledge.
| Feature | Atlassian Confluence | Microsoft SharePoint | The AI-Powered Layer (eesel AI) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Use Case | Collaborative knowledge creation (wiki-style) | Secure document storage & company intranet | Instant, unified knowledge access & automation |
| Collaboration | Live page editing, comments on the page itself | Co-authoring happens inside Office apps | Brings knowledge into tools like Slack & MS Teams |
| Integrations | Best with other Atlassian tools (Jira, Trello) | Best with other Microsoft 365 tools (Office, Teams) | Connects to everything (Atlassian, MS, Google, Help Desks) |
| Search | Basic keyword search, relies on page structure | Index-based, needs good metadata to work well | Unified, conversational AI search across every app you connect |
| Administration | Fairly straightforward, easy to get started | Can be complex, often needs IT to manage | Self-serve, one-click setup, very little overhead |
| Best For | Agile teams, project documentation | Large companies, regulated industries | Any team that wants to make their knowledge useful, not just stored |
Confluence vs. SharePoint: Content creation and collaboration
Confluence is all about creating and editing content together. Its real-time co-editing feature lets multiple people work on the same page at once, and you can leave comments right on the text you’re discussing. It feels like a living, breathing document.
SharePoint, on the other hand, is more focused on storing and organizing files you’ve already created, like Word docs or Excel sheets. The collaboration part happens inside those apps, and SharePoint just acts as the central hub where the latest version is always saved.
With both platforms, the big limitation is that knowledge tends to get stuck inside them. If you need to grab a snippet for a customer email or a Slack message, you’re usually stuck with the old copy-and-paste routine.
Integrations and lock-in concerns
This is where you can get into trouble. Both platforms are at their best when you stick to their "family" of products. Confluence is a dream when you pair it with Jira and Trello. SharePoint fits like a glove with Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and the rest of Office 365. But what about the 99% of companies that use a mix of tools? That’s when the headaches start.
This is why having a unifying layer on top is so helpful. An AI platform like eesel AI doesn’t make you pick a side. It plugs into both Confluence and SharePoint, along with dozens of other apps like Google Docs and Notion, creating one source of truth that an AI assistant can use to find answers.
The searchability problem in Confluence vs. SharePoint
Let’s be honest, this is the biggest frustration with both platforms. Search just isn’t very good. Users often complain that Confluence search is confusing and doesn’t pull up the right document. SharePoint’s search is powerful, but only if an admin has perfectly tagged everything with the right metadata, and let’s face it, that rarely happens.
The result is always the same: you know the document exists somewhere, but no one can find it. This adds up to hours of wasted time, a lot of frustration, and people asking the same questions over and over again.
AI accessibility to knowledge bases
The whole Confluence vs. SharePoint debate misses the real problem. It’s not about where you store your information; it’s about how you retrieve it. Instead of making your team hunt for answers across different apps, a better approach is to use AI to bring the answers directly to them, right where they’re working.
From manual search to conversational answers
Imagine asking a question in Slack or MS Teams and getting an instant, accurate answer pulled from all your company’s documents. It wouldn’t matter if the original info was on a Confluence page, in a SharePoint folder, or buried in a PDF somewhere.
This is what eesel AI’s Internal Chat does. It’s like having an AI assistant that has read every single document your company owns. It means your team no longer has to remember where something is saved, which finally breaks down the walls between Confluence and SharePoint.
Pro Tip: By connecting to chat tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams, you can answer questions right where they pop up. This cuts down on a ton of context-switching and helps everyone stay focused on their work.
Beyond storage for support teams
For customer support and IT teams, knowledge that’s just sitting in a database is pretty much useless. It needs to be put to work solving tickets quickly and correctly. Both Confluence and SharePoint are passive storage lockers; they hold the info but don’t actively help your agents get their job done.
Turning Confluence vs. SharePoint documentation into automated resolutions
Most support agents live in a state of constant tab-switching. They jump from their help desk to Confluence or another knowledge base, searching for the right article to copy and paste into a reply. It’s slow and easy to make mistakes.
AI can fix this for good. An AI layer can read all your help articles, macros, and past tickets from sources like Confluence and then use that knowledge right inside your help desk software.
eesel AI’s AI Agent and AI Copilot connect directly with tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and Intercom to:
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Draft accurate replies for your agents in seconds, citing the exact source material from your knowledge base.
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Automate the answers to common questions, freeing up your team to handle the trickier issues that need a human touch.*
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Simulate how it would have performed on past tickets before you even turn it on, so you can see the potential impact and spot any gaps in your documentation.
Confluence vs. SharePoint: So, which one is right for you?
Even if you use an AI layer on top, you still need a home for your knowledge. Here’s a simple way to look at it.
Choose Confluence if: Your company runs on agile workflows, you’re already using other Atlassian tools, and you want a space for real-time, collaborative writing.
Choose SharePoint if: You’re a larger company that needs tight integration with Microsoft 365, and you have strict requirements for document security, permissions, and compliance.
The Real Answer: Don’t let your choice of storage tool bottleneck your team. The smarter move is to pick the platform that works for how you create and store documents, and then add an AI platform like eesel AI to make all that knowledge easy to find and use.
Stop choosing between Confluence vs. SharePoint, start unifying
Honestly, the whole Confluence vs. SharePoint debate focuses on the wrong thing. Both are decent at storing information, but both fall short when it comes to making that information accessible when it actually counts.
The future of knowledge management isn’t about picking the perfect silo; it’s about tearing them all down. By adding an intelligent AI layer like eesel AI, you get more value out of the tools you already pay for and give your team the gift of instant, accurate answers, no matter where the original document lives.
Ready to unlock the knowledge trapped in Confluence and SharePoint? You can start a free trial of eesel AI or book a demo to see how you can give your team a single, unified source of truth today.
Frequently asked questions
Not at all. It’s very common for technical teams to prefer Confluence while business teams use SharePoint, which is why knowledge becomes siloed. Instead of forcing everyone onto one platform, a better solution is using a tool like eesel AI that unifies both, so information is easy to find no matter where it’s stored.
Think about your primary need. Confluence is excellent for collaborative writing and brainstorming in real-time, like drafting a campaign brief together. SharePoint is stronger for storing and organizing final assets with version control, like approved ad creatives or official brand guidelines.
SharePoint generally has the edge for companies with strict compliance and security needs. It’s built with granular permissions and enterprise-level controls as a core part of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Confluence has robust security, but SharePoint is often the default choice for highly regulated industries.
Migrating is a huge undertaking that can disrupt workflows for months. A more modern approach is to address the real problem, poor knowledge access, by adding an AI layer on top of your existing system. This solves the search problem without the headache of a full platform migration.
Honestly, both have well-known search limitations that frustrate users. Confluence search can struggle to surface the right document, while SharePoint’s search is only as good as the metadata and tags admins set up. This is why a unified AI search that works across all your apps is a more effective way to ensure people can actually find what they need.
