Is there a way of having page admins approve a change to the page before they are fully published?

[Takura]

Hi there, was editing a confluence page and was wondering if there was any way of setting up an approval system where the admin will have to check and approve changes made to the page before they are fully published. I have seen that there is a feature to allow a select few to edit the page but its not exactly what I'm looking for.

An example of this would be if a change was made to the page , the editor would click "publish", this would then leave the change pending approval from the admin. At this point in time , anyone viewing the page would not be able to see the recent changes as they have not been approved. After the admin has approved these changes then the changes would be automatically implemented and outside viewers would be able to see the changes.

Is there any features or plugins that can make this possible? 

Thank you 

[Steve Long -Evelon- · Accepted solution]

Hi @Takura

The quick answer is unfortunately no, not as part of the standard functionality.

However, you should probably check out Comala Document Management - it's a popular plugin for Confluence that should achieve just this.

Hope that helps - Steve.

[Takura]

Great , this looks like exactly what I'm looking for! thank you.

[Flowdence]

Hi @Takura ,

This is one of the most common requests from Confluence Cloud teams — the ability to review and approve page changes before they go live. As noted in the other answers, Confluence doesn't include this natively, so marketplace apps are the way to go.

When evaluating approval apps for this use case, the key thing to look for is version-aware approvals Here's why it matters:

Most approval tools track whether a page is "approved" or "not approved" as a binary status. The problem is that once a page is approved, if someone edits it, many tools still show it as "Approved" — even though the content has changed since the approval. This means viewers might be reading content that was modified after sign-off without realizing it.

A better approach is to bind the approval to the specific page version number. That way:

- Version 5 gets approved → status shows "Approved"

- Someone edits the page, creating Version 6 → status automatically shows "Approved — Stale" (or similar)

- The admin immediately knows that the current version has not been reviewed

We built ApprovalFlow for Confluence specifically around this version-aware model. When an editor makes changes and submits for approval, the workflow tracks exactly which version is being reviewed. Approvers see the pending request in their approval queue, can approve or reject with comments, and the byline status on the page reflects the current approval state.

It runs on Atlassian Forge, so all data stays within Atlassian infrastructure — no external servers. Free for teams up to 10 users, with a 30-day free trial on all paid plans.

A few resources that go deeper:

- Version-Aware Approvals in Confluence — explains how version tracking works in practice

- The Complete Guide to Confluence Approval Workflows — covers different approaches to setting up approval gates

Happy to answer any questions.

*Disclosure: I am from Flowdence, the team behind ApprovalFlow for Confluence.*

Regards,

Flowdence Team