A Confluence alternative built on MediaWiki

Two things send teams looking for a Confluence alternative. The bill grows every time somebody joins. And Atlassian has now put an end date on self-hosted Confluence.

This page compares Confluence with ProWiki, our fully managed MediaWiki hosting. It also says plainly where Confluence is the better tool, because you will find that out anyway.

Confluence Data Center is being discontinued

Atlassian stopped supporting Confluence Server on 15 February 2024. Teams that wanted to keep running Confluence on their own hardware moved to Data Center. In 2025 Atlassian set an end date for that too.

Atlassian says it will let some customers buy multi-year extensions beyond 28 March 2029, by exception only. The dates above are Atlassian's own, from its migration timeline, read in August 2026.

The last row is the one that matters. If you run Confluence on your own servers today, your vendor decides how long that remains possible.

MediaWiki cannot be discontinued out from under you. It is GPL-licensed open source, and it runs Wikipedia. If we disappeared tomorrow your wiki would keep running, and any other MediaWiki host could take it over. We sell the hosting and the operations work. We do not own the software your knowledge sits in.

Teams that need a single-tenant server or an on-premises install can use dedicated MediaWiki hosting from Professional Wiki, on EU infrastructure, instead of our shared platform.

What ProWiki is

ProWiki is managed MediaWiki hosting, run by the people who build MediaWiki software. Professional Wiki has been building MediaWiki systems since 2009, and we maintain several of the extensions the wider MediaWiki world depends on, including Semantic MediaWiki and Maps.

You get MediaWiki, the software Wikipedia runs on, plus a visual editor, an admin panel for configuration, and about 100 bundled extensions you can switch on without touching a config file. We handle updates, backups, security and uptime. You write.

Pricing

Confluence Cloud is priced per user. As of 2026, Atlassian's pricing page lists a free plan for up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage, Standard at 6.70 USD per user per month, and Premium at 13.20 USD per user per month. Enterprise is quote only.

Every ProWiki plan includes unlimited users and unlimited pages. You pay for the plan, not for the headcount.

Put 100 people on it and the difference is easy to see. Confluence Standard costs 670 USD per month at that size and Premium costs 1,320 USD. ProWiki Business is 279 EUR per month billed yearly, and it costs the same whether five people use it or five hundred.

Atlassian's per-user rate does drop above 100 seats. The bill still grows with every hire. Ours does not.

Where Confluence is better

If your team lives in Jira, Confluence is hard to beat. Linking a page to an issue and pulling issue status into a page have no real equivalent in MediaWiki. The same goes for Bitbucket.

The Atlassian Marketplace is much larger than the MediaWiki extension ecosystem, and its paid apps come with vendor support. Confluence Premium also bundles Rovo AI credits. Our AI Assistant is a paid add-on.

Familiarity counts too. If half your new hires have used Confluence before, that is worth something real on day one. And its editor is friendlier for people who would rather never think about markup.

Where ProWiki is better

Finding things

Confluence search works with keywords and filters. Reviewers report that it gets harder as the space grows.

“Sometimes, searching for a specific document or topic is not as easy as you may think. I have had times when I need to use over 5 keywords to finally find what I was looking for, which can be time-consuming.” 5-star reviewer. Source

ProWiki search returns suggestions as you type, and MediaWiki's categories and templates give you a second way in when search alone is not enough.

Structure and reuse

Confluence has page templates. MediaWiki has templates you can call from any page, Lua modules for reusable logic, and structured data through Semantic MediaWiki or Wikibase, available from the Team plan up. With Semantic MediaWiki you store data on pages, query it, and render the result as a table, a chart or a map.

Wikitext is the other difference. Confluence has no equivalent. Technical people tend to want it, and the rest of the team never has to touch it, because the visual editor is there.

Who runs it

Confluence has grown into a big product, and some reviewers find it heavy going.

“It is difficult to navigate as some users complain that confluence is difficult to learn right away.” 5-star reviewer. Source

“Honestly, so confusing that I avoid it at all costs.” 1-star reviewer. Source

“Most irritating product you can ever use with zero support” 1-star reviewer. Source

With ProWiki you are talking to the small team that builds and operates it. Support is included on every paid plan, and Business and Enterprise get priority support. We set the wiki up, keep it patched, and answer when something is wrong.

Side by side

Migrating from Confluence

We move Confluence content into MediaWiki as a paid service. That means exporting your spaces, converting pages to wiki pages, mapping your space and page tree onto namespaces and categories, and bringing attachments across.

Nobody should promise you a fully automatic conversion. Macros and embedded Jira content need decisions, and we would rather make those with you than guess. So we scope the work first and tell you what will be converted, what will be rebuilt by hand, and what is not worth carrying over.

Tell us your rough page count and we will come back with what it takes.

Which one to pick

Stay on Confluence if you

• Run Jira or Bitbucket and want the Confluence integration
• Have 10 users or fewer and the free plan covers you
• Need an app from the Atlassian Marketplace that has no MediaWiki equivalent

Move to ProWiki if you

• Are tired of a bill that grows with every new colleague
• Want software that no vendor can retire, hosted by a team that knows it
• Need structured data, queries and visualizations inside your wiki
• Want your knowledge stored and processed in Germany

If you are undecided, see what a company wiki on ProWiki looks like, or ask us about your situation. We will tell you if we are the wrong fit.

Questions we get asked

Is Confluence being discontinued?

Confluence Cloud is not. Self-hosted Confluence is. Atlassian ended support for Confluence Server on 15 February 2024, and has set 28 March 2029 as the end of life for Confluence Data Center. If you use Confluence Cloud today, nothing is being taken away from you.

What is happening to Confluence Data Center?

Atlassian has published a four-step timeline. No new Data Center apps on the Marketplace from 16 December 2025. No license sales to new customers from 30 March 2026. No license sales to existing customers from 30 March 2028. End of life on 28 March 2029, when support and bug fixes stop.

Can I still self-host Confluence?

Until 28 March 2029, if you already hold a Data Center license. Sales to new customers ended on 30 March 2026. Existing customers can keep renewing until 30 March 2028, no renewal may run past the end-of-life date, and Atlassian allows extensions beyond it by exception only. After that, instances become read-only.

What is a good self-hosted alternative to Confluence?

We would pick MediaWiki, and we are not neutral about it: we have built MediaWiki systems since 2009. It is open source and runs Wikipedia at a scale no company wiki will reach, so no vendor can end its life. DokuWiki suits small teams. XWiki is the closest structural match to Confluence.

Is there a free Confluence alternative?

MediaWiki itself is free. Download it, install it on a server you control, and pay nothing for the software, ever. What is not free is running it: updates, backups, security patches, spam, and the hours somebody on your team spends on all of that. ProWiki is that work, done by us, for a monthly fee.

Is ProWiki cheaper than Confluence?

It depends on how many people you have. With 10 users or fewer, the Confluence free plan costs nothing and we cannot beat that. At 100 users, Confluence Standard is 670 USD per month and Premium is 1,320 USD per month, against 279 EUR per month for ProWiki Business billed yearly. The gap widens as you hire.

How hard is migrating from Confluence to a wiki like MediaWiki?

Page content converts well, and attachments come across with it. The work sits in the parts Confluence does its own way: macros, embedded Jira content, space structure and permission schemes. A few hundred pages is a matter of days rather than months. We do these migrations as a paid service and scope them before quoting.

Does ProWiki work as an internal company wiki?

Yes. Private wikis, namespace-level permissions, edit approvals and single sign-on with Microsoft, Google, Okta and others are all available, depending on the plan. Data is stored and processed in Germany. Every plan includes unlimited users, so nobody has to decide who gets an account based on cost.