PhpWiki vs. Confluence vs. XWiki

General Features PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Version
phpwiki-1.3.14
5.2
18.2.1
Last Release Date
2007-07-01 (18 years ago)
2013-08-13 (12 years ago)
2026-04-09 (8 days ago)
Last Update here
2009-04-03 (17 years ago)
2013-08-22 (12 years ago)
2026-04-09 (8 days ago)
Author
Steve Wainstead, Jeff Dairiki, Reini Urban, Carsten Klapp, Marc-Etienne Vargenau
Atlassian
XWiki Development Team
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
No
Yes
License
GPL
Commercial + Free personal/open source project/community use
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Programming Language
PHP
Java
Java
Data Storage
Database, Files, RCS
Database
Database, RCS
License Cost/ Fee
0
starting at US $10 installed (unlimited wikis)
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Any
Enterprise + Technical Teams
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Hosting Features PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Storage Quota
N/A
Unlimited
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
Other Limits
N/A
No
Topic Restrictions
N/A
No
Corporate Branding
N/A
Yes
Yes
Own Domain
N/A
Optional
Yes
Ads allowed
N/A
No
No
System Requirements PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Operating System
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Windows, Linux and Unix variants
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support
Apache Tomcat
Servlet 5.0+
Other Requirements
various opt. helpers
Oracle JDK 1.6.0_4+
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Datastorage PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Text Files
Yes
No
No
MySQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
PostgreSQL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Oracle
Yes
Yes
Yes
SQLite
Yes
No
No
BerkeleyDB
Yes
No
No
RCS
Yes
No
Plugin
Other
gdbm, cvs, MSSQL, ... (ADODB, PearDB)
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 PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
db, session, pop, imap, ldap, file, webserver
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
No
No
Mail Encryption
No
Optional
Yes
nofollow
Yes
Optional
No
Blacklist
Yes
No
Plugin
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Delayed Indexing
No
No
Yes
Development/Support PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
No
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
#phpwiki
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
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 PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
No
No
Interface Languages
9
German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Swedish, Chinese Traditional
15
Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
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
Yes
Yes
Comments
Plugin
Threaded
Threaded
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
No
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Patch
Plugin
Yes
Links PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Optional
Yes
SisterWiki
No
No
Yes
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
HTML Tags
Some
Optional
All
Math formulas
Plugin
Plugin
Yes
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
No
Yes
Markdown Support
No
No
Yes
Textile Support
No
Yes
No
BBCode Support
No
No
No
Emoticon Images
No
Yes
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Footnotes
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
No
Yes
Plugin
Scripting
plugins, templates, PHP
Macros, plugins, widgets, JavaScript and more
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Yes
Yes
Usability PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Section Editing
No
No
Yes
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
Optional
No
No
Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Yes
WYSIWYG Editing
Patch
Yes
Yes
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
Yes
No
No
Statistics PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Yes
No
Yes
Analysis
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Output PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
No
Plugin
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
No
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
No
No
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Yes
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
No
Yes
Yes
PDF Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Office Export
Unknown
Unknown
Yes
Media and Files PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Yes
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Flash
Yes
Yes
Yes
Embedded Video
Yes
Yes
Yes
Image Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
MindMap Editing
No
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
No
Contents
Contents
Extras PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Yes
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Ticket System
No
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Unknown
Plugin
Syntax Examples PhpWiki Confluence XWiki
Internal Link
WikiWord or [somelink]
[ desc | pagename ]
[Page Title]
[Link Title|Page Title#anchor]
[~username]
[^attachment.doc]
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://someserver/someurl
[ desc | exturl ]
[http://www.example.com]
[Link Title|http://www.example.com]
[Shortcut Link|PageName@otherwiki]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
Headlines
!!!Headline1
!!Headline2
!Headline3
h1. Top Level Heading
h2. Smaller Heading
h6. Smallest Heading
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
Bold Format
*bold* or
<strong>bold</strong>
*bold*
**bold**
Italics Format
_italics_ or 
or
<em>italics</em>
_italics_
//Italics//
Underline Format
<u>underlined</u>
+underline+
__underline__
Monospace Format
<tt>monospace</tt>
<code>code</code>
<pre>preformatted</pre>
<verbatim>
unparsed text</verbatim>


{{monospace}}
##monospace##
Strikethrough Format
<strike>striked through</strike>
-strikethrough-
--Strike--
Superscript Format
<sup>above</sup>
^superscript^
^^superscript^^
Subscript Format
<sub>below</sub>
~subscript~
,,subscript,,
Images
[ http://foo.org/1.jpg size=30%] 
external image
[Upload:view.jpg align=right size=50x40] 
view uploaded image
[Upload:view.jpg | http://server/external-linkjpg ] 
view and link to another image
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
<?plugin RawHtml <span align="right"> ?>right<?plugin RawHtml </span> ?>
or <div align="right"> right </div>

(% style="... css here..." %)Text
Text Indentation
;: left indent
;;: more left indent

or 
paragraph
and another level 
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

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