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After listening to in-person talks from Atlassian in the past, I got the impression of them having a smugness from being a big fish in a small pond (Australian

After listening to in-person talks from Atlassian in the past, I got the impression of them having a smugness from being a big fish in a small pond (Australian tech.) Their original and early Jira product was great and put them out in front, but I couldn’t name any other product of theirs except Bitbucket which is very much a second place competitor in their market. Jira itself has faded and been caught up with too. Reading through the post and seeing the level of support some people on Twitter have been tweeting about, I would take this as a great time to look at other offerings out there.

jeffybefffy519 5y ago
I think Confluence is a genuinely good product. Its nice to see that even Atlassian struggle with day to day sysadmin of Atlassian tools
- karmakaze 5y ago
  A lot of people look down on Jira. My experience was that Confluence was much worse. It turns writing a couple technical notes into a publishing journey with missteps and failures along the way.
  - VTimofeenko 5y ago
    For me Confluence dramatically improved in experience when I learned that it's possible to write files locally using $FAVORITE_EDITOR in confluencewiki format (or markdown if you don't care about macros) and post them through API.
    - clhodapp 5y ago
      Can you share anything more about your technique? As far as I know, Confluence hasn't supported a markup format natively for several years. I've found some tricks to allow me to author stuff in Markdown but it seems to come with a lot of limitations which ultimately mean that I have to start using the web editor as soon as I want to start collaborating with others.
      - DocTomoe 5y ago
        In Confluence Editor, under the Macro "Plus" button, you should find an entry called "Markup" pretty far up the list, which accepts "Confluence Wiki" Markup (which is just Markdown + Macros). This works for both on-premise as well as cloud instances.
      - VTimofeenko 5y ago
        I wrote a tool that automates the posting part[1]. Unfortunately I could not solve the collaboration problem either. Setting the body of the page overwrites it. I did see some examples of editing HTML through similar approach but never tried it myself. [1]: https://github.com/VTimofeenko/confluence_poster https://github.com/VTimofeenko/confluence_poster
- RexM 5y ago
  I read somewhere recently that confluence is write-only because search is so bad nobody will ever find what your write. I haven’t used it in years, but that seems accurate. I could never find anything unless I knew exactly how it was worded in what I’m looking for.
  - djbusby 5y ago
    Putting markdown text into SQLite with FTS5 works amazingly well for search. How come they couldn't just bolt that in?
  - wink 5y ago
    Yes, it's actually so bad that you wonder what part of the picture we're missing.
  - xen0 5y ago
    My experience with Confluence's search was that it's a mistake the press Enter. That is, the pop-up results that appear as I typed where significantly better than the actual "search results" page.
    - junon 5y ago
      I also vaguely remember this being the case. Confluence always felt so bloated to me.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  When they first acquired confluence it was great. Now I can’t stand it. Is so slow now. So clunky.
jay_kyburz 5y ago
I had Jira inflicted on me before Atlassian was big and Jira was terrible back then too. I always liked FogBugs.
- macspoofing 5y ago
  >I always liked FogBugs You lost me there. In no way was FogBugz a better product. It was at best mediocre by 2010.
  - LilBytes 5y ago
    Current user of FogBugz, and prior user of JIRA. Jira is much better. We also use SharePoint and Confluence is so much better. Honestly I get the criticism of both JIRA and Confluence but till you've used the other big names in that space you don't realise how bad it can get.
    - jay_kyburz 5y ago
      Fogbugz was on the downhill as early as 2010. I always assumed that when Fogcreek started working on Trello they pulled the A team off Fogbugz.
    - macspoofing 5y ago
      >Current user of FogBugz I'm so sorry. Fogbugz has been in maintenance mode for years now, stuck in the middle of a half-finished redesign.
synicalx 5y ago
Having dealt with the pre and post sales support quite extensively over the years, I always got the impression they were a big fish in way over it's head, and with a tail that didn't work so good.
lbotos 5y ago
Bitbucket was also an acquisition (Most of their offerings were acquisitions). https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-project-hosting-site-bitbucket/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-p...
zeckalpha 5y ago
Trello? OpsGenie? Statuspage?
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Maybe it is my enterprise hat, but they always seem to miss something.
- aunty_helen 5y ago
  I don't think you could attribute Trello to Atlassian. Maybe all the junk they've added to it. The other two I've honestly never heard of but that says nothing about them as products except they don't get talked about. Funny edit, Atlassian actually made a plugin for Jira called greenhopper that was very much like trello. But they discontinued it only to realise a few years later that they liked trello and paid a massive amount of money for it. If that doesn't exemplify incompetence of a companies strategy / directorship, then I don't know what does.
pleb_nz 5y ago
What caught up with JIRA I have yet to find something as good, even with all of JIRAs pain points
- pas 5y ago
  Asana. It has its own idiosyncrasies, but it's faster, cleaner, supports things out of the box that I just gave up on in JIRA...
  - byefruit 5y ago
    Having used Asana in several organisations, I think it being a suitable replacement for JIRA says more about how poor a choice JIRA was for situation than anything about Asana.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    I've tried it before, it's just as bloated as Jira and performance suffers as a reason. If I'm going to suffer slowness anyway I might as well stick with Jira.
  - pleb_nz 5y ago
    Ive tried Asana breifly a few years agoand it didn't seem to have enough to make it worth the effort to swap. Maybe I should check it out again
    - pas 5y ago
      I don't recommend anyone to swap from JIRA. Stability is probably more important for a PM tool, but for new projects trying out something new makes sense.
- Tehchops 5y ago
  We've been using https://linear.app/ https://linear.app/
BlargMcLarg 5y ago
>Jira itself has faded and been caught up with too. Tell this to all the big corps still running a slow, bureaucratic JIRA system demanding one to update multiple tickets multiple times.

jeffybefffy519 5y ago

I think Confluence is a genuinely good product. Its nice to see that even Atlassian struggle with day to day sysadmin of Atlassian tools

karmakaze 5y ago
A lot of people look down on Jira. My experience was that Confluence was much worse. It turns writing a couple technical notes into a publishing journey with missteps and failures along the way.
- VTimofeenko 5y ago
  For me Confluence dramatically improved in experience when I learned that it's possible to write files locally using $FAVORITE_EDITOR in confluencewiki format (or markdown if you don't care about macros) and post them through API.
  - clhodapp 5y ago
    Can you share anything more about your technique? As far as I know, Confluence hasn't supported a markup format natively for several years. I've found some tricks to allow me to author stuff in Markdown but it seems to come with a lot of limitations which ultimately mean that I have to start using the web editor as soon as I want to start collaborating with others.
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      In Confluence Editor, under the Macro "Plus" button, you should find an entry called "Markup" pretty far up the list, which accepts "Confluence Wiki" Markup (which is just Markdown + Macros). This works for both on-premise as well as cloud instances.
    - VTimofeenko 5y ago
      I wrote a tool that automates the posting part[1]. Unfortunately I could not solve the collaboration problem either. Setting the body of the page overwrites it. I did see some examples of editing HTML through similar approach but never tried it myself. [1]: https://github.com/VTimofeenko/confluence_poster https://github.com/VTimofeenko/confluence_poster
RexM 5y ago
I read somewhere recently that confluence is write-only because search is so bad nobody will ever find what your write. I haven’t used it in years, but that seems accurate. I could never find anything unless I knew exactly how it was worded in what I’m looking for.
- djbusby 5y ago
  Putting markdown text into SQLite with FTS5 works amazingly well for search. How come they couldn't just bolt that in?
- wink 5y ago
  Yes, it's actually so bad that you wonder what part of the picture we're missing.
- xen0 5y ago
  My experience with Confluence's search was that it's a mistake the press Enter. That is, the pop-up results that appear as I typed where significantly better than the actual "search results" page.
  - junon 5y ago
    I also vaguely remember this being the case. Confluence always felt so bloated to me.
philliphaydon 5y ago
When they first acquired confluence it was great. Now I can’t stand it. Is so slow now. So clunky.

jay_kyburz 5y ago

I had Jira inflicted on me before Atlassian was big and Jira was terrible back then too. I always liked FogBugs.

macspoofing 5y ago
>I always liked FogBugs You lost me there. In no way was FogBugz a better product. It was at best mediocre by 2010.
- LilBytes 5y ago
  Current user of FogBugz, and prior user of JIRA. Jira is much better. We also use SharePoint and Confluence is so much better. Honestly I get the criticism of both JIRA and Confluence but till you've used the other big names in that space you don't realise how bad it can get.
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    Fogbugz was on the downhill as early as 2010. I always assumed that when Fogcreek started working on Trello they pulled the A team off Fogbugz.
  - macspoofing 5y ago
    >Current user of FogBugz I'm so sorry. Fogbugz has been in maintenance mode for years now, stuck in the middle of a half-finished redesign.

synicalx 5y ago

Having dealt with the pre and post sales support quite extensively over the years, I always got the impression they were a big fish in way over it's head, and with a tail that didn't work so good.

lbotos 5y ago

Bitbucket was also an acquisition (Most of their offerings were acquisitions). https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-project-hosting-site-bitbucket/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-p...

zeckalpha 5y ago

Trello? OpsGenie? Statuspage?

pjmlp 5y ago
Maybe it is my enterprise hat, but they always seem to miss something.
aunty_helen 5y ago
I don't think you could attribute Trello to Atlassian. Maybe all the junk they've added to it. The other two I've honestly never heard of but that says nothing about them as products except they don't get talked about. Funny edit, Atlassian actually made a plugin for Jira called greenhopper that was very much like trello. But they discontinued it only to realise a few years later that they liked trello and paid a massive amount of money for it. If that doesn't exemplify incompetence of a companies strategy / directorship, then I don't know what does.

pleb_nz 5y ago

What caught up with JIRA I have yet to find something as good, even with all of JIRAs pain points

pas 5y ago
Asana. It has its own idiosyncrasies, but it's faster, cleaner, supports things out of the box that I just gave up on in JIRA...
- byefruit 5y ago
  Having used Asana in several organisations, I think it being a suitable replacement for JIRA says more about how poor a choice JIRA was for situation than anything about Asana.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  I've tried it before, it's just as bloated as Jira and performance suffers as a reason. If I'm going to suffer slowness anyway I might as well stick with Jira.
- pleb_nz 5y ago
  Ive tried Asana breifly a few years agoand it didn't seem to have enough to make it worth the effort to swap. Maybe I should check it out again
  - pas 5y ago
    I don't recommend anyone to swap from JIRA. Stability is probably more important for a PM tool, but for new projects trying out something new makes sense.
Tehchops 5y ago
We've been using https://linear.app/ https://linear.app/

BlargMcLarg 5y ago

>Jira itself has faded and been caught up with too. Tell this to all the big corps still running a slow, bureaucratic JIRA system demanding one to update multiple tickets multiple times.