Plain vs Confluence.
Confluence is the wiki you get when you are already an Atlassian shop. It pairs naturally with Jira and with little else: the editor is dated, search is its own adventure, and the page describing your architecture has no idea what your architecture is. Plain Docs lives next to the code, versioned with every release.
// Coverage
Confluence does one job. Plain is the whole setup.
Seven surfaces every software team ends up paying for, one way or another. Here is what each product actually covers.
| Surface | Confluence | Plain |
|---|---|---|
| Code hosting | Not included | Included |
| Issue tracking | Not includedthat is Jira, sold separately | Included |
| Docs & wiki | Included | Included |
| Team chat | Not included | Included |
| CI / CD | Not included | Included |
| Packages | Not included | Included |
| AI agents | PartialAtlassian Intelligence | Included |
Confluence fully covers 1 of the seven surfaces. Plain covers all seven on one seat.
// Credit where due
Where Confluence is genuinely good.
- The Jira integration is genuinely deep. If your process lives in Jira, Confluence is the path of least resistance for documents.
- Permissions and compliance are enterprise-grade, which is exactly what some organisations are buying.
- Templates and spaces impose enough structure that large wikis stay navigable.
The catch.
Confluence is a destination wiki: you go there, separately from your work, to read pages that were accurate when written. Keeping it current is a chore precisely because it is disconnected from the systems it documents. Plain Docs are backlinked to issues, code, and builds and versioned alongside releases, so a doc is part of the work rather than a report about it.
// Pricing
One seat price vs a stack of them.
Confluence
$6.05/ user / mo
Covers docs. The other surfaces are other tools, other invoices.
Confluence Standard, annual billing. Jira, chat, code, and CI are separate subscriptions.
Plain Pro
$24/ user / mo
Code, issues, docs, chat, CI, packages, and AI agents on every seat. One bill, one search index, one source of truth.
// FAQ
Common questions.
- Is Plain a Confluence alternative?
- Yes. Plain Docs is a modern block editor with versioning, backlinks to issues and code, and search that spans the whole platform rather than one product.
- Can I import Confluence spaces into Plain?
- Yes. Plain imports Confluence spaces and pages with hierarchy and attachments preserved.
- How does Plain pricing compare to Confluence?
- Confluence Standard is $6.05 per user per month for the wiki alone, typically alongside Jira, Slack, a Git host, and CI. Plain Pro is $24 with all seven surfaces in one seat.
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