PhpWiki vs. XWiki vs. Confluence

General Features PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
Version
phpwiki-1.3.14
18.1.0
5.2
Last Release Date
2007-07-01 (18 years ago)
2026-02-23 (8 days ago)
2013-08-13 (12 years ago)
Last Update here
2009-04-03 (16 years ago)
2026-02-23 (8 days ago)
2013-08-22 (12 years ago)
Author
Steve Wainstead, Jeff Dairiki, Reini Urban, Carsten Klapp, Marc-Etienne Vargenau
XWiki Development Team
Atlassian
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
Yes
No
License
GPL
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Commercial + Free personal/open source project/community use
Programming Language
PHP
Java
Java
Data Storage
Database, Files, RCS
Database, RCS
Database
License Cost/ Fee
0
0
starting at US $10 installed (unlimited wikis)
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Any
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Enterprise + Technical Teams
Hosting Features PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
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
Yes
Optional
Ads allowed
N/A
No
No
System Requirements PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
Operating System
UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Any platform supporting Java 17 or greater
Windows, Linux and Unix variants
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support
Servlet 5.0+
Apache Tomcat
Other Requirements
various opt. helpers
Java 17, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Oracle JDK 1.6.0_4+
Datastorage PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
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
Plugin
No
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 XWiki Confluence
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
db, session, pop, imap, ldap, file, webserver
XWiki, OpenID Connect, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
LDAP, NTLM, Siteminder, CAS and more
Host Blocking
No
No
No
Mail Encryption
No
Yes
Optional
nofollow
Yes
No
Optional
Blacklist
Yes
Plugin
No
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Delayed Indexing
No
Yes
No
Development/Support PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
# 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 XWiki Confluence
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 XWiki Confluence
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
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
15
Danish, German, Greek, English, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, 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
Yes
Unknown
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Patch
Yes
Plugin
Links PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Yes
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Yes
Optional
SisterWiki
No
Yes
No
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Features PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
HTML Tags
Some
All
Optional
Math formulas
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
No
Yes
No
Markdown Support
No
Yes
No
Textile Support
No
No
Yes
BBCode Support
No
No
No
Emoticon Images
No
Yes
Yes
Syntax Highlighting
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Footnotes
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Internal Comments
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
No
Plugin
Yes
Scripting
plugins, templates, PHP
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Macros, plugins, widgets, JavaScript and more
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Yes
Yes
Usability PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
Section Editing
No
Yes
No
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 XWiki Confluence
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Yes
Yes
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
Yes
Recent Visitors
Yes
Yes
No
Analysis
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Output PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print CSS
Mobile Friendly
No
Yes
Plugin
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Yes
ATOM Feeds
No
Optional
Yes
Abbreviations
No
Plugin
No
Auto-TOC
Yes
Optional
Yes
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
XML export
No
Yes
Yes
PDF Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
Office Export
Unknown
Yes
Unknown
Media and Files PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
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 XWiki Confluence
Calendar
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Yes
Yes
Presentations
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Forums
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Ticket System
No
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Unknown
Plugin
Unknown
Syntax Examples PhpWiki XWiki Confluence
Internal Link
WikiWord or [somelink]
[ desc | pagename ]
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)
[Page Title]
[Link Title|Page Title#anchor]
[~username]
[^attachment.doc]
External Link
http://someserver/someurl
[ desc | exturl ]
[[wiki syntax here>>http://www.xwiki.com]]
http://www.xwiki.com
[http://www.example.com]
[Link Title|http://www.example.com]
[Shortcut Link|PageName@otherwiki]
Headlines
!!!Headline1
!!Headline2
!Headline3
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
h1. Top Level Heading
h2. Smaller Heading
h6. Smallest Heading
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>
--Strike--
-strikethrough-
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
* List
** list
*** list
* one
** one-two
* two
* three
Numbered Lists
# list
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
# one
## one-two
# two
# three
Definition Lists
Term:<def>
def
; term
: definition
Horizontal Rule
----
----
----
remove PhpWiki remove XWiki remove Confluence