Can Stride replace Confluence?

Not as a company wiki, and Stride is our own product. Stride keeps the documents a software team writes for its delivery work, such as product requirements, architecture decisions and runbooks, linked to the stories, tests and releases they describe. It has no Confluence importer and does not try to replace a wiki of team pages, policies and how-tos. If that is most of your Confluence, choose from the list above.

What does Atlassian's migration assistant leave behind?

Global settings and permissions, application links, personal drafts, audit logs and watchers. Users keep their accounts but reset their passwords unless you use single sign-on, user-created macros have to be rebuilt as cloud apps, and app data comes across only where the app's vendor provides a migration path. List what you depend on in each of those before you schedule the move.

Do Confluence macros survive a migration?

Partly, and less the further you move from Atlassian. In Confluence Cloud, built-in and Marketplace macros can carry over, though some behave differently and some legacy ones do not, and user-created macros have to be rebuilt as cloud apps. Elsewhere a macro survives only where the importer maps it: XWiki's migration toolkit converts common ones such as code, excerpts, page trees, Gliffy and draw.io; BlueSpice maps a growing list and leaves the rest as HTML comments; Notion flattens most into text, images or links.

All comparisons

Roundup

The best Confluence Data Center alternatives for 2026

Eight options for teams leaving Confluence Data Center before it turns read-only on March 28, 2029, ranked by how much of your wiki comes across and where each one can run.

How we picked

Atlassian is ending Data Center, and Confluence goes with it. New customers could not buy Confluence Data Center after March 30, 2026, existing customers cannot buy new subscriptions or expand them after March 30, 2028, and on March 28, 2029 every subscription expires and Confluence turns read-only: you can still view pages, but no one can create or edit them. Every team running Confluence on its own servers has to decide where its wiki goes next.

Atlassian's answer is its cloud, which carries the most across: its migration assistant moves spaces, pages with their history and comments, blog posts, attachments, page restrictions, users and groups. For teams that chose Data Center to keep their documentation on their own servers, the cloud is the one thing they cannot accept.

The eight tools below are the options worth evaluating. We ranked them on three things, in this order: how much of a Confluence Data Center site comes across, meaning the page tree, attachments, comments, history, blog posts and permissions; whether the tool can run on your own servers; and how much work the move is for the people running it. Much of the first depends on the export an importer reads. Confluence's XML export carries every page, comment and attachment, while its HTML export leaves out blog posts and some comments, which is why importers that read XML, such as XWiki's and BlueSpice's, keep more than those that read HTML, such as Slite's.

Stride, our own product, is not on this list. It keeps delivery documents such as requirements, architecture decisions and runbooks linked to the stories and tests they describe, but it is not a wiki and has no Confluence importer, so it is not an answer to this question.

Every fact about the tools was checked on each vendor's own site in November 2026. Where a vendor does not say what its importer carries, the entry says so, and either way the advice is the same: run a trial import of one real space before you commit.

At a glance

The best Confluence Data Center alternatives for 2026: ranked picks with the best fit for each tool
Rank	Tool	Best for
1	Confluence Cloud	The least disruptive move: Atlassian's free migration assistant carries the most across, and your teams keep the wiki they know. The price is the cloud itself.
2	XWiki	The most complete self-hosted route: XWiki reads a Confluence XML export and keeps the page tree, comments, history, blog posts, users, groups and permissions.
3	BlueSpice	Wikipedia's engine packaged for companies, with an open-source migrator that brings pages, blog posts, revision history, comments and attachments across.
4	Notion	The best importer of the cloud-only tools after Atlassian's: it connects to Confluence directly and keeps comments and user mapping, though not permissions.
5	Outline	A fast, source-available knowledge base you can host yourself, though the self-hosted edition imports Confluence only on its paid plans.
6	Docmost	An open-source wiki built as a Confluence alternative, with spaces, nested pages and comments, and a Confluence importer in its paid editions.
7	Slite	A clean hosted knowledge base with AI answers built in, for teams that can leave comments and blog posts behind.
8	BookStack	The simplest wiki to run yourself, and entirely free, but with no Confluence importer, so the move is yours to script.

Quick answers

What happens to Confluence Data Center on March 28, 2029?

Every Confluence Data Center subscription expires and Confluence turns read-only: you can view pages but not create or edit them. Support and security fixes stop, so Atlassian advises against keeping an expired instance on the internet. New customers could not buy Data Center after March 30, 2026, and existing customers cannot buy new subscriptions or expand them after March 30, 2028.

Data Center end of life: the full guide

Can we keep Confluence on our own servers after 2029?

Only by exception: Atlassian's paid Extended Maintenance Program supports some customers past March 28, 2029, and its standard routes are all cloud editions it runs itself. To keep a wiki on your own servers, move to a tool with a self-hosted edition: XWiki, BlueSpice, Outline, Docmost or BookStack. XWiki and BlueSpice import a Confluence XML export in the most detail; Outline and Docmost import Confluence only on paid plans, and BookStack has no importer.

Which Confluence alternative keeps the most content?

Confluence Cloud, through Atlassian's free migration assistant, which moves spaces, pages with their history and comments, blog posts, attachments, page restrictions, users and groups. Of the tools you can host yourself, XWiki keeps the most: its import reads Confluence's XML export and carries history, blog posts, users, groups and permissions. BlueSpice brings pages, blog posts, history, comments and attachments but no user accounts, and Notion keeps comments only through its API importer.

How do you back up Confluence Data Center before it goes read-only?

Export each space to XML, which carries every page, comment and attachment; the HTML and PDF exports leave out blog posts and some comments and attachments, and any export needs the Export Space permission. For the whole site, Atlassian recommends your database's native backup plus a copy of the home directory, where attachments are stored by default, over Confluence's own XML backup. Keep both, whichever tool you move to.

Is there a free, self-hosted alternative to Confluence?

Yes. XWiki and BookStack are open source and free to run yourself, BlueSpice has a free edition, and Outline and Docmost have free community editions. The catch is the move: Outline and Docmost keep their Confluence importers for paid plans, BookStack has none, and BlueSpice's free migrator is a command-line tool. XWiki's free importer is the most complete of the free routes.

The ranking

1
Confluence Cloud
The least disruptive move: Atlassian's free migration assistant carries the most across, and your teams keep the wiki they know. The price is the cloud itself.
Confluence Cloud is where Atlassian wants every Data Center customer to go, and its free Confluence Cloud Migration Assistant moves more than any other route here: spaces with their blog posts and page restrictions, pages with their history, labels and comments, attachments, users and groups, and app data where the app's vendor provides a migration path. It leaves behind global settings and permissions, application links, personal drafts, audit logs and watchers, and user-created macros have to be rebuilt as cloud apps. The trade-offs: it cannot run on your servers, Atlassian itself says cloud costs more per user than Data Center, and the move is one-way, because a Data Center site restore accepts only XML and Atlassian ends XML export in Confluence Cloud on December 1, 2026.
By Atlassian · Atlassian-hosted, with Isolated Cloud and Government Cloud for stricter needs · Free for up to 10 users, then per user
2
XWiki
The most complete self-hosted route: XWiki reads a Confluence XML export and keeps the page tree, comments, history, blog posts, users, groups and permissions.
XWiki is an open-source enterprise wiki you can run on your own servers or buy as a hosted service from XWiki SAS, the company behind it. Its Confluence import reads the XML export and maps each element to its nearest XWiki equivalent: pages keep their tree, comments and attachments, page history comes across by default, blog posts become XWiki blog posts, users and groups are created, and space and page permissions are reproduced. XWiki SAS's Confluence migration toolkit, included free with its Business and Enterprise plans, converts more macros, among them code, excerpts, page trees, Gliffy and draw.io. The trade-offs: a self-hosted XWiki is a Java application your team has to run and upgrade, its AI integration is a beta on the Enterprise plan only, and macros outside the toolkit's list need rework.
Open source (LGPL 2.1) · Self-hosted, or hosted by XWiki SAS · Free to run yourself; the Business and Enterprise plans include its Confluence migration toolkit
3
BlueSpice
Wikipedia's engine packaged for companies, with an open-source migrator that brings pages, blog posts, revision history, comments and attachments across.
BlueSpice packages MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia, as an enterprise wiki, with a free edition to run yourself and paid editions from €4.50 per user a month. Hallo Welt!, which makes it, maintains migrate-confluence, an open-source command-line tool that converts a Confluence XML export for a MediaWiki or BlueSpice installation: pages with their child-page tree, blog posts, revision history, page comments, and images and attached files with their revisions. The trade-offs: user identities do not come across (the tool writes a file to help administrators recreate accounts), unsupported macros land in the page as HTML comments, some converted content relies on extensions that BlueSpice Pro already includes, and the migration itself is a staged command-line job.
By Hallo Welt! · An enterprise wiki built on MediaWiki · Free edition to run yourself; paid editions from €4.50 per user a month
4
Notion
The best importer of the cloud-only tools after Atlassian's: it connects to Confluence directly and keeps comments and user mapping, though not permissions.
Notion imports Confluence two ways. Its API importer connects to your Confluence site, cloud or self-managed, and keeps comments and user mapping, but takes the entire workspace at once, up to 30 GB; its ZIP importer takes part of a workspace from an export of up to 5 GB, without comments. Bringing several spaces in at once needs the Business or Enterprise plan. The trade-offs: Notion is cloud-only; permissions do not come across, so imported pages start private to the person who imported them and access has to be rebuilt; most macros flatten into text, images or links; and Notion warns that the page tree is not always fully preserved.
For teams ready to graduate from Notion-as-PM-tool.
Stride vs Notion
5
Outline
A fast, source-available knowledge base you can host yourself, though the self-hosted edition imports Confluence only on its paid plans.
Outline is a clean, fast knowledge base with strong search and AI answers drawn from your documents, sold as a hosted service priced per team, from $10 a month for up to 10 people, or as software you run yourself. Run yourself, its Confluence importer, which brings whole spaces across, comes only with the Business plan, at $4 per user a month billed annually with a 10-user minimum, and Enterprise, at $5 with a 100-user minimum; the free Community Edition leaves it out. The trade-offs: Outline's pricing page says only that it imports Confluence spaces, so test it on one space first, and the code is source-available under the Business Source License rather than open source.
Connected delivery, not just a fast wiki.
Stride vs Outline
6
Docmost
An open-source wiki built as a Confluence alternative, with spaces, nested pages and comments, and a Confluence importer in its paid editions.
Docmost is a self-hosted wiki that describes itself as an alternative to Confluence and Notion: spaces, nested pages, real-time collaborative editing, comments and page history, on your own infrastructure. Its core is AGPL-3.0 and free in the Community edition; the Confluence importer, AI and MCP access come with Business, at $6 per seat a month billed annually with a 10-seat minimum, and with Enterprise. The trade-offs: Docmost is young, its versions still numbered below 1.0 and its Confluence importer added only in mid-2025; its paid features sit under a separate enterprise licence; and its pricing page does not say what the importer carries, so run a trial import of one space first.
Open-source core (AGPL-3.0) · Self-hosted · Community edition free; Business $6 per seat a month billed annually, 10-seat minimum
7
Slite
A clean hosted knowledge base with AI answers built in, for teams that can leave comments and blog posts behind.
Slite imports a Confluence space from its HTML export and keeps the page structure, formatting, tables and images. Comments, blog posts and whiteboards stay behind, because Confluence's HTML export does not include them. Basic includes AI answers across your docs, and Pro adds the Slite agent, which keeps docs in step with tools such as Slack, GitHub and Linear. There is no free plan: Basic is $10 and Pro $20 per user a month, billed yearly, after a 14-day trial. The trade-off: it is cloud-only, so it does not suit a team that chose Data Center to keep its data on its own servers.
Software delivery context, not just docs.
Stride vs Slite
8
BookStack
The simplest wiki to run yourself, and entirely free, but with no Confluence importer, so the move is yours to script.
BookStack organises documentation as shelves, books, chapters and pages, a fixed structure that is quick to learn but flattens Confluence's deeper page trees. It is MIT-licensed, self-hosted only and free, with page revisions, role-based permissions, single sign-on through SAML, OpenID Connect or LDAP, and a REST API. The trade-off is the move itself: BookStack has no official Confluence importer, so a migration means community scripts or your own code against that API, and whatever those do not carry stays behind.
Open source (MIT) · Self-hosted only · Free

Honourable mentions

Wiki.jsOpen source (AGPL-3.0) and self-hosted, with Markdown editing and Git-backed storage, but no Confluence importer, so a move means converting pages yourself.
YouTrackJetBrains' tracker imports Confluence spaces into its knowledge base with their articles, comments, users and groups, so one self-hostable tool can take your Jira projects and your wiki; free for up to 10 users.
PlaneIts Business plan imports Confluence pages into Plane's wiki from an XML export, keeping subpages, but attachments become links and comments do not come across.
GitBookBuilt for published product documentation more than an internal wiki, and its Confluence import takes 20 pages and 20 files at a time; bigger moves go through Markdown and Git Sync.

FAQ

Can Stride replace Confluence?: Not as a company wiki, and Stride is our own product. Stride keeps the documents a software team writes for its delivery work, such as product requirements, architecture decisions and runbooks, linked to the stories, tests and releases they describe. It has no Confluence importer and does not try to replace a wiki of team pages, policies and how-tos. If that is most of your Confluence, choose from the list above.
What does Atlassian's migration assistant leave behind?: Global settings and permissions, application links, personal drafts, audit logs and watchers. Users keep their accounts but reset their passwords unless you use single sign-on, user-created macros have to be rebuilt as cloud apps, and app data comes across only where the app's vendor provides a migration path. List what you depend on in each of those before you schedule the move.
Do Confluence macros survive a migration?: Partly, and less the further you move from Atlassian. In Confluence Cloud, built-in and Marketplace macros can carry over, though some behave differently and some legacy ones do not, and user-created macros have to be rebuilt as cloud apps. Elsewhere a macro survives only where the importer maps it: XWiki's migration toolkit converts common ones such as code, excerpts, page trees, Gliffy and draw.io; BlueSpice maps a growing list and leaves the rest as HTML comments; Notion flattens most into text, images or links.