Is it common to develop on confluence server and then migrate to cloud?

Bill OLeary

I had a confluence server where I was writing user documentation for tools I am selling.
When my harddrive crashed, I realized I had no backup and lost all of my documentation.
I thought I would have been OK if I had a cloud account instead so I went and got one.
Now it turns out the cloud doesn't support the  stepShot plugin which is invaluable for writing my documentation.

Is this a common problem?

Would it make sense to develop my documentation on my Server instance and then migrate what I produce over to my Cloud instance?

Rob Woodgate

Hi Bill,

Cloud not supporting things that the server version does is a common problem (the list of restricted Cloud functionality is here), as are addons that only work on the server version.  I don't know if it's common to develop pages on a server and keep the pages on a cloud.  My gut feeling is "No", but there are plenty of experienced consultants on here who can verify that (or not) for you.

With regard to your specific problem, you can create your own backups very easily, and Confluence creates a daily backup anyway - see here for more information.  So you may not have lost your work after all.  Paying for a server installation and a Cloud installation as well just to get limited disaster recovery backups (Atlassian only keep 7 days worth of backups for Confluence Cloud) doesn't seem good value for money to me, but only you can say if it's good value for money for you.