Does Confluence Charge Readers or Creators?

[Brady Buttrey]

We are trying to figure out if we need to purchase Confluence along with our JSM and are noticing that the price estimators for Confluence ask for the number of users. Are the "users" considered the people that are creating KBAs or both the readers and creators? 

[Kristian Klima]

Hello @Brady Buttrey 

A Confluence user is anyone with a user account = paid seat.

Implication: all your users can be creators. Which is a major advantage against other tools that limit the numbers of creators (and charge an arm and a leg for that).

Confluence was built as collaboration tool not a membership-only club :) 

It's up to you (your admin), to determine who can do what. Say you have 100 users/seats. 50 can be creators, 30 can view and comment, 20 can have zero access.

Having said that, there are tools (Confluence apps) that can make your Confluence content available to people (even your employees) who don't have a Confluence seat. For example, you can use Scroll Viewport by K15t to create an intranet site that would be accessible to anyone using your company SSO. That site would be read-only.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Brady Buttrey 

Adding to this...

You specifically mentioned Confluence in combination with JSM (Jira Service Management).

If you want to use Confluence as a knowledge base for people who are classified in JSM as Customers only, then the Customers don't need licensed user access to Confluence. 

Refer to

https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/resources/guides/extend-functionality/confluence-jsm#link-jsm-confluence