Free Confluence: Your admin doesn’t want you to read this :)
Your Confluence admin is too strict and you’re glad you can edit a page. You keep hearing about all those marvelous Confluence apps but you cannot test them. Or you’re building your own app and need to document it in an, ideally free, CMS.
Let’s explore a couple of scenarios where free Confluence really shines and grants you access to forbidden features.
Proving Grounds
Say you’re a Confluence user in a small business and you want to test an idea, try a feature, or experiment with a marketplace app. Or you are a power user who wants to try and request a new app. But responsible admins just don’t want users to fool around and ‘try things out’ on production sites.
Enter Confluence Free.
But what about a Sandbox!?
By the way, admins can benefit from free Confluence too. They can add a free Confluence site to an organization or set it up independently. The second option is handy if it’s really just to test an idea, but really, admins should use the combination of common sense and the company’s data security policy.
A free Confluence site can sub for many sandbox features and will serve well for things like Marketplace apps testing and experiments with content structures.
Schola Ludus - Learn by Playing
We’re entering the private use territory here. In your work, you’ve been using Confluence for a while now but many features are ‘forbidden’ by permissions setup. Setting up your private free Confluence site will make you an instant admin and give you the ability to learn and explore.
You will discover new features and gain a much better understanding of how Confluence works. This can open up the road towards proper Confluence certification which will not only broaden your skill set but might convince that pesky admin to expand your permissions.
Learn how to manage attachments, create databases, whiteboards, explore customizations options, and, of course, teach yourself some more advanced admin craft.
You can test Marketplace apps and see if they might help your work team.
From a Hobby to a Startup
As most people encounter Confluence at work, they tend to see it as a corporate tool. That feeling amplifies with the level of permission restrictions applied by admins. But Confluence is actually really good as a personal wiki. It’s kind of low-tech, well, it’s user friendly so even non-technical users can easily handle writing and arranging pages.
We could fill in many newsletters with free Confluence use cases so let’s just name a few:
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Internal and public documentation for startups
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Hobby clubs' documents
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Personal diaries
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Portfolios for technical and content writers
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Committees’ minutes and agendas
There are businesses such as car repair shops or artisan cafés run with a free combo of Confluence, Jira, and Trello.
They’re not only taking advantage of zero-cost Atlassian apps, they also have access to a plethora of Marketplace apps that are free for up to 10 users.
Public docs on free Confluence?
One thing that free Confluence doesn’t have is advanced permissions control. As a result, you cannot make content publicly available as there is no anonymous access.
But there is a way. You can have your free Confluence lunch and just order a dessert. With just a few clicks, Scroll Sites for Confluence builds a static website from your Confluence space. That site will be accessible to your customers even when your Confluence is closed to the public.
Disclaimer: I work for K15t, maker of the Scroll Sites app.
For the price of five coffees a month you get a great solution for startups and small teams that allows you to take advantage of most Confluence features and build a documentation center in 30 minutes.
Free Limits
Free Confluence shares most features with its paid siblings. Editor and content capabilities are identical. Of course, there are certain limits and there is an apparent feature stratification gap especially on the advanced administration level.
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Only 10 users per site.
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You are limited to 2 GB.
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No page or space permissions as all users have access to all content within the site.
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Only 10 automation rule runs per month.
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You must rely on the Atlassian Community and online documentation.
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Users are limited to only 3 active whiteboards each.
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No analytics.
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You need to use the site regularly, dormant sites are deleted after about 2 months.
What’s great about Confluence is its scalability. It can grow with your team and moving to Confluence Standard is a question of a single click. If you are a sole user, a single seat on the Standard license costs $6.80 a month. Circling back to self-learning, if your goal is a Confluence admin certification, it’s not a bad deal for being able to study at your own pace.
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Kris Klima _K15t_
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