TWiki vs. Confluence vs. Foswiki

General Features TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Version
TWiki-6.1.0
5.2
2.1.8
Last Release Date
2018-07-15 (5 years ago)
2013-08-12 (10 years ago)
2023-08-05 (7 months ago)
Last Update here
2019-07-19 (4 years ago)
2013-08-22 (10 years ago)
2023-10-16 (5 months ago)
Author
Peter Thoeny, TWiki community
Atlassian
Foswiki Community
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
No
Yes
License
GPL
Commercial + Free personal/open source project/community use
GPL
Programming Language
Perl, JavaScript
Java
Perl
Data Storage
Files, RCS
Database
Files, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
N/A
starting at US $10 installed (unlimited wikis)
$0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Large enterprise; small to medium businesses
Enterprise + Technical Teams
Enterprise, Corporate, Business, Intranets, Personal use, Community building, Educational, Intranet, Extranet
Hosting Features TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Storage Quota
N/A
Unlimited
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
No
N/A
Topic Restrictions
N/A
No
N/A
Corporate Branding
N/A
Yes
N/A
Own Domain
N/A
Optional
N/A
Ads allowed
N/A
No
N/A
System Requirements TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Operating System
Linux, Windows, OS-X and other
Windows, Linux and Unix variants
Linux, Windows, OS-X and others
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Almost any webserver, typically Apache and Ngnix
Apache Tomcat
Apache, Lighttpd, Nginx, or any other supporting (F)CGI
Other Requirements
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
Oracle JDK 1.6.0_4+
RCS (optional), cron/scheduler, fgrep, egrep; Plugins may have additional dependencies
Datastorage TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Text Files
Yes
No
Yes
MySQL
No
Yes
No
PostgreSQL
No
Yes
No
Oracle
No
Yes
No
SQLite
No
No
No
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
RCS
Yes
No
Yes
Other
RcsLite Perl library for version control without external RCS; backend API for other storage
caching of content into database using plugins
Security/Anti-Spam TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
LDAP, NTLM, Siteminder, CAS and more
Internal authentication; anything Apache supports such as LDAP, NIS, AD, Kerberos
Host Blocking
Plugin
No
Plugin
Mail Encryption
Yes
Optional
Yes
nofollow
Plugin
Optional
Yes
Blacklist
Plugin
No
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
Plugin
No
Plugin
Development/Support TWiki Confluence Foswiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
97 ⭐
Common Features TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Preview
Yes
Yes
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page History
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Revisions
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
Revision Diffs
Between all
Between all
Between all
Sitemap
Yes
Yes
Yes
Plugin System
Yes
Yes
Yes
Special Features TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
No
No
Interface Languages
19
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
15
Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
22
Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
Email notification
Yes
Yes
Yes
Comments
Threaded
Threaded
Plugin
Categories
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Unknown
No
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Optional
Yes
Plugin
Structured Data
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Links TWiki Confluence Foswiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Optional
Plugin
SisterWiki
Plugin
No
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Page Redirects
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Syntax Features TWiki Confluence Foswiki
HTML Tags
All
Optional
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
No
Plugin
Markdown Support
No
No
Plugin
Textile Support
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
BBCode Support
No
No
Plugin
Emoticon Images
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Footnotes
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
Yes
Yes
Scripting
TWiki Markup Language, TWiki variables, JavaScript, extensive API
Macros, plugins, widgets, JavaScript and more
JavaScript; Topic Markup Language
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Usability TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Section Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Plugin
No
Plugin
Toolbar
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
No
Yes
Statistics TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
No
Yes
No
Orphaned Pages
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Plugin
No
Plugin
Analysis
Yes
Yes
Yes
Output TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Printer Friendly
Print View
Print CSS
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
Abbreviations
Plugin
No
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
PDF Export
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Media and Files TWiki Confluence Foswiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Embedded Video
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Image Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Contents
Contents
Extras TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
No
Syntax Examples TWiki Confluence Foswiki
Internal Link
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
[Page Title]
[Link Title|Page Title#anchor]
[~username]
[^attachment.doc]
WikiWord autolink
Otherweb.WikiWord
[[Spaced text]]
[[WikiWord][label]]
External Link
http://twiki.org/ autolink
[[http://twiki.org/][label]]
[http://www.example.com]
[Link Title|http://www.example.com]
[Shortcut Link|PageName@otherwiki]
External Link
http://foswiki.org/ autolink
[[http://foswiki.org/][label]]
Headlines
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
h1. Top Level Heading
h2. Smaller Heading
h6. Smallest Heading
---+ Level 1
---++ Level 2
---+++ Level 3
---++++ Level 4
---+++++ Level 5
---++++++ Level 6
Bold Format
*bold*
*bold*
*bold*
Italics Format
_italic_
_italics_
_italic_
Underline Format
<u>underline</u>
+underline+
<u>underline</u>
Monospace Format
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
{{monospace}}
=monospaced text= and
<verbatim>
multi line text
</verbatim>
Strikethrough Format
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
-strikethrough-
<strike>strikethrough</strike>
Superscript Format
<sup>superscript</sup>
^superscript^
<sup>superscript</sup>
Subscript Format
<sub>subscript</sub>
~subscript~
<sub>subscript</sub>
Images
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%ATTACHURL%/image.png
http://any.domain/image.png
%IMAGE{"image.png"}%
Aligning Text
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
| left |   center   |   right |
or HTML
or CSS
Text Indentation
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
multi line text
</blockquote>
Bulleted Lists
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
* one
** one-two
* two
* three
* Item 1
* Item 1.1
* Item 2
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
# one
## one-two
# two
# three
1. Item 1
a. Item 1.a
1. Item 2
Definition Lists
$ Term: Definition
$ Term: Definition
Horizontal Rule
---
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remove TWiki remove Confluence remove Foswiki