XWiki vs. Confluence vs. PmWiki

General Features XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Version
16.3.1
5.2
2.3.33
Last Release Date
2024-05-09 (6 days ago)
2013-08-12 (10 years ago)
2024-04-20 (25 days ago)
Last Update here
2024-05-13 (2 days ago)
2013-08-22 (10 years ago)
2024-04-21 (24 days ago)
Author
XWiki Development Team
Atlassian
Petko Yotov (Original author: Patrick R. Michaud)
URL
Free and Open Source
Yes
No
Yes
License
LGPL + Free hosting on https://myxwiki.org for individuals/non profit
Commercial + Free personal/open source project/community use
GPL2+
Programming Language
Java
Java
PHP
Data Storage
Database, RCS
Database
Files
License Cost/ Fee
0
starting at US $10 installed (unlimited wikis)
0
Development status
Mature
Mature
Mature
Intended Audience
Enterprise, Workgroups, Developers
Enterprise + Technical Teams
All
Hosting Features XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Storage Quota
Unlimited
N/A
Bandwidth Quota
N/A
Other Limits
No
N/A
Topic Restrictions
No
N/A
Corporate Branding
Yes
Yes
N/A
Own Domain
Yes
Optional
N/A
Ads allowed
No
No
N/A
System Requirements XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Operating System
Any platform supporting Java 11 or greater
Windows, Linux and Unix variants
Linux, UNIX, Windows, MacOS X, probably others
Root Access
No
No
No
Webserver
Servlet 3.1+
Apache Tomcat
Apache, IIS, anything with PHP support. Can also be run w/o a webserver.
Other Requirements
Java 11, MySQL/MariaDB/PostgreSQL/HSQLDB/etc (JDBC Driver required)
Oracle JDK 1.6.0_4+
none
Datastorage XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Text Files
No
No
Yes
MySQL
Yes
Yes
Plugin
PostgreSQL
Yes
Yes
No
Oracle
Yes
Yes
No
SQLite
No
No
Plugin
BerkeleyDB
No
No
No
RCS
Plugin
No
Plugin
Other
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
Compressed, XML and/or ephemeral files (modules). Can provide custom data backends.
Security/Anti-Spam XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Page Permissions
Yes
Yes
Yes
ACL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Authentication Backends
XWiki, LDAP, custom (Open API), Kerberos, NTLM, Headers, PUMA, SAML, Trusted LDAP, Sun SSO
LDAP, NTLM, Siteminder, CAS and more
Internal: per page, per group, per user, per user group. External: .htpasswd, LDAP, Active Directory. Plugins: Mailman, forums w/MySQL, oAuth, custom possible.
Host Blocking
No
No
Optional
Mail Encryption
Yes
Optional
Optional
nofollow
No
Optional
Yes
Blacklist
Plugin
No
Optional
CAPTCHA
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Delayed Indexing
Yes
No
Optional
Development/Support XWiki Confluence PmWiki
# of Consultants
Preconfigured Hosting
Yes
Yes
Yes
Code Repository
Issue Tracker
Mailing List
Support Forum
Chat Channel
Stars on GitHub
N/A
N/A
N/A
Common Features XWiki Confluence PmWiki
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 XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Unicode Support
Yes
Yes
Yes
Right-to-Left Support
No
No
Optional
Interface Languages
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
38
Arabic, Bulgarian, Breton, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Lettish, Macedonian, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Albanian, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Chinese, Chinese Traditional
Email notification
Yes
Yes
Optional
Comments
Threaded
Threaded
Discussion Pages
Categories
Yes
Yes
Yes
Namespaces
Yes
Yes
Yes
Conflict Handling
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Conflict Resolution
Concurrent Editing
Plugin
Unknown
Yes
Search
Full Text
Full Text
Full Text
Wiki Farming
Yes
Yes
Yes
Structured Data
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Links XWiki Confluence PmWiki
CamelCase
Yes
Yes
Optional
Freelinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
Backlinks
Yes
Yes
Yes
InterWiki
Yes
Optional
Yes
SisterWiki
Yes
No
Plugin
Image Links
Yes
Yes
Yes
Windows Shares
Yes
Yes
Yes
Page Redirects
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Syntax Features XWiki Confluence PmWiki
HTML Tags
All
Optional
Plugin
Math formulas
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Tables
simple + complex
simple + complex
simple + complex
CREOLE support
Yes
No
Optional
Markdown Support
Yes
No
Plugin
Textile Support
No
Yes
No
BBCode Support
No
No
Plugin
Emoticon Images
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Syntax Highlighting
Yes
Yes
Optional
Footnotes
Yes
Plugin
Plugin
Quoting
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Internal Comments
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Custom styles
Yes
Yes
Yes
FAQ Tags
Plugin
Yes
Yes
Scripting
velocity, groovy, ruby, jython, generic JSR223 & very powerful API
Macros, plugins, widgets, JavaScript and more
MarkupExpressions (core, many add-ons). PageLists with templates (core structured data scripting). WikiSh (plugin), Data forms (optional)
Content Includes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Feed Aggregation
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Usability XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Section Editing
Yes
No
Plugin
Page Templates
Yes
Yes
Yes
Double-Click Edit
No
No
Plugin
Toolbar
Yes
Yes
Optional
WYSIWYG Editing
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Access Keys
Yes
Yes
Yes
Auto Signature
No
No
Yes
Statistics XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Recent Changes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Wanted Pages
Yes
Yes
Optional
Orphaned Pages
Yes
Yes
Optional
Most/Least Popular
Yes
Yes
No
Recent Visitors
Yes
No
Plugin
Analysis
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Output XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Printer Friendly
Print CSS
Print CSS
Print View
Mobile Friendly
Yes
Plugin
Yes
Themes & Skins
Yes
Yes
Yes
RSS Feeds
Yes
Yes
Optional
ATOM Feeds
Optional
Yes
Optional
Abbreviations
Plugin
No
Plugin
Auto-TOC
Optional
Yes
Optional
Raw Export
Yes
Yes
Yes
HTML Export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
XML export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
PDF Export
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Office Export
Yes
Unknown
Plugin
Media and Files XWiki Confluence PmWiki
File Attachments
Yes
Yes
Optional
Media Revisions
Yes
Yes
Optional
Embedded Flash
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Embedded Video
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Image Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
SVG Editing
Plugin
Plugin
No
MindMap Editing
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Media Search
Contents
Contents
Filenames only
Extras XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Calendar
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Image Galleries
Yes
Yes
Plugin
Presentations
Plugin
Unknown
Plugin
Forums
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Blogs
Plugin
Yes
Plugin
Ticket System
Plugin
Plugin
Plugin
Chat
Plugin
Unknown
No
Syntax Examples XWiki Confluence PmWiki
Internal Link
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]
[[page name]]
[[page name | link text]]
[[link text -> page name]]
[[#anchor]]
[[#anchor|link to anchor]]
[[page name #anchor]]
External Link
[[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]
http://....
[[http://... | link text]]
[[link text -> http://...]]
Headlines
= Headline
== Subheadline
=== Sub-subheadline
==== etc..
h1. Top Level Heading
h2. Smaller Heading
h6. Smallest Heading
! Level 1
!! Level 2
!!! Level 3
Bold Format
**bold**
*bold*
'''bold'''
Italics Format
//Italics//
_italics_
''italic''
Underline Format
__underline__
+underline+
{+underlined+}
Monospace Format
##monospace##
{{monospace}}
@@monospace@@
Strikethrough Format
--Strike--
-strikethrough-
{-strikethrough-}
Superscript Format
^^superscript^^
^superscript^
'^superscript^'
Subscript Format
,,subscript,,
~subscript~
'_subscript_'
Images
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
https://foo.bar/foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg
Attach:foo.jpg"alt/title text" | Caption
Aligning Text
(% style="... css here..." %)Text
%center% centered text
%right% right aligned
%lfloat% left floating text
%rfloat% right floating text
%rframe% right floating frame
%lframe% left floating frame
Text Indentation
Non-semantic text indentation through styling:

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

Quotes:

> This is a quoted text
-> indented text
--> more indentation
-< hanging text
--< more indentation
Bulleted Lists
* List
** list
*** list
* one
** one-two
* two
* three
* Item 1
** Item 1.1
* Item 2
alternatively, indented:
* item 1
* item 1.1
* item 2
Numbered Lists
1. Item 1
11. Item 2
111. Item 3
1. Item 4
# one
## one-two
# two
# three
# Item 1
## Item 1.1
# Item 2
alternatively, indented:
# Item 1
# Item 1.1
# Item 2
Definition Lists
; term
: definition
: term : definition
Horizontal Rule
----
----
----
remove XWiki remove Confluence remove PmWiki