Confluence vs. Instiki vs. XWiki

General Features Confluence Instiki XWiki
Version
5.2
0.30.0
18.3.0
Last Release Date
2013-08-13 (12 years ago)
2019-03-01 (7 years ago)
2026-04-27 (3 days ago)
Last Update here
2013-08-22 (12 years ago)
2019-03-04 (7 years ago)
2026-04-28 (2 days ago)
Author
Atlassian
David Heinemeier Hansson, Jacques Distler, Matthias Tarasiewicz
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
No
Yes
Yes
License
Commercial + Free personal/open source project/community use
Ruby's
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
Java
Ruby on Rails
Java
Data Storage
Database
Database
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
starting at US $10 installed (unlimited wikis)
0
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise + Technical Teams
general, education
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features Confluence Instiki XWiki
Storage Quota
Unlimited
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
Other Limits
No
N/A
Topic Restrictions
No
N/A
Corporate Branding
Yes
N/A
Yes
Own Domain
Optional
N/A
Yes
Ads allowed
No
N/A
No
System Requirements Confluence Instiki XWiki
Operating System
Windows, Linux and Unix variants
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache Tomcat
Thin (included), or Apache/NGinx (via Passenger)
Servlet 5.0+
Other Requirements
Oracle JDK 1.6.0_4+
Ruby 2.0-2.6
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage Confluence Instiki XWiki
Text Files
No
No
No
MySQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
PostgreSQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Oracle
Yes
Plugin
Yes
SQLite
No
Yes
No
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
RCS
No
No
Plugin
Other
Any Rails-compatible back-end datastore can be used.
JDBC Databases and in general any database supported by Hibernate; any custom implementation, as the storage is pluggable. Attachments can be saved on the filesystem
Security/Anti-Spam Confluence Instiki XWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
No
Yes
Authentication Backends
LDAP, NTLM, Siteminder, CAS and more
XWiki, OpenID Connect, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
Host Blocking
No
Yes
No
Mail Encryption
Optional
Unknown
Yes
nofollow
Optional
Unknown
No
Blacklist
No
Yes
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Yes
Unknown
Yes
Delayed Indexing
No
Unknown
Yes
Development/Support Confluence Instiki XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
No
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
506 ⭐
N/A
Common Features Confluence Instiki XWiki
Preview
Yes
No
Yes
Minor Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Change Summary
Yes
No
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
No
Yes
Special Features Confluence Instiki XWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
Yes
No
Interface Languages
15
Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
1
English
40
Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Persian, French, Galician, Hindi, Croatian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Cambodian, Kannada, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Marathi, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhalese, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Uighur, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
Email notification
Yes
No
Yes
Comments
Threaded
No
Threaded
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
No
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Page Locking
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Plugin
No
Yes
Links Confluence Instiki XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Optional
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Optional
Yes
Yes
SisterWiki
No
No
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
No
Yes
Page Redirects
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Syntax Features Confluence Instiki XWiki
HTML Tags
Optional
All
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
No
Yes
Markdown Support
No
Yes
Yes
Textile Support
Yes
Yes
No
BBCode Support
No
No
No
Emoticon Images
Yes
No
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Footnotes
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Yes
No
Plugin
Scripting
Macros, plugins, widgets, JavaScript and more
None
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
No
Yes
Usability Confluence Instiki XWiki
Section Editing
No
No
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
No
Yes
Double-Click Edit
No
No
No
Toolbar
Yes
No
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
No
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
No
Yes
No
Statistics Confluence Instiki XWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
No
Yes
Recent Visitors
No
No
Yes
Analysis
Yes
No
Yes
Output Confluence Instiki XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print View
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
No
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
No
Yes
ATOM Feeds
Yes
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
No
Yes
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
Yes
No
Yes
PDF Export
Yes
No
Yes
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files Confluence Instiki XWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
No
Yes
Embedded Flash
Yes
No
Yes
Embedded Video
Yes
Yes
Yes
Image Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
MindMap Editing
Plugin
No
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
No
Contents
Extras Confluence Instiki XWiki
Calendar
Plugin
No
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
No
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
No
Plugin
Blogs
Yes
No
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
No
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples Confluence Instiki XWiki
Internal Link
[Page Title]
[Link Title|Page Title#anchor]
[~username]
[^attachment.doc]
[[Some Page]]
[[Some Page|anchor text]]
[[Some Page#anchor]]
[[Some Page#anchor|anchor text]]
XWiki supports 16+ input syntaxes (e.g. confluence, twiki, docbook, mediawiki, xwiki, markdown, etc), see http://rendering.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome#HSupportedSyntaxes for details.

The syntax documented below is XWiki Syntax 2.1 (http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/XWikiSyntax).

[[wiki syntax here>>Space.Page]]
[[Space.Page]]
(Space is optional and is the current space if not specified)
External Link
[http://www.example.com]
[Link Title|http://www.example.com]
[Shortcut Link|PageName@otherwiki]
[another site](http://example.com)
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
h1. Top Level Heading
h2. Smaller Heading
h6. Smallest Heading
#Level 1#
##Level 2##
###Level 3###
####Level 4####
#####Level 5#####
######Level 6######
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
*bold*
**bold**
**bold**
Italics Format
_italics_
_italic_, *italic*
//Italics//
Underline Format
+underline+
underlined
{: style='text-decoration:underlined'}
__underline__
Monospace Format
{{monospace}}
`monospace`
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
-strikethrough-
<del>strikethrough</del>
strikethrough
{: style='text-decoration:line-through'}
--Strike--
Superscript Format
^superscript^
<sup>superscript</sup>
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
~subscript~
<sub>subscript</sub>
,,subscript,,
Images
![alt text](http://ex.com/image.jpg),
[[image.jpg|alt text:pic]]
image:img.png
image:Space.Page@img.png
[[image:img.png||width="25" height="25"]]
image:http://some/url/img.png

Starting with the xwiki/2.1 syntax, also:
image:icon:cancel
Aligning Text
p{: style='text-align:left'}
p{: style='text-align:right'}
p{: style='text-align:center'}
p{: style='text-align:justify'}
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
p
{: style='margin-left:3em'}

> blockquote
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

(% style="... css here..." %)multi line text

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
Bulleted Lists
* one
** one-two
* two
* three
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
* List
** list
*** list
Numbered Lists
# one
## one-two
# two
# three
1. Item 1
1. Item 1.1
2. Item 2
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
Definition Lists
term
: definition
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
----
***
----
remove Confluence remove Instiki remove XWiki