The best wiki software, free to non-profits

The market-leading enterprise wiki, Confluence, offers free licenses to non-profits!

A couple months ago I took upon the project of finding a wiki to use as an intranet for our non-profit (www.absoluteontheweb.com). I spent a great deal of time researching and then installing/testing a large number of different wikis (mediawiki, pbwiki, xwiki, pmwiki, wicca wiki, wikispaces, jotspot, wetpaint, etc, etc.).

I became very frustated at having so many choices for wiki software. I found that installed wiki engines (i.e. mediawiki or twiki) were far too tech-heavy to get functioning properely and not user friendly enough for non-tech users. Hosted wikis were much more user-friendly but either cost too much or lacked necessary features (google groups actually is looking really good now as a simple wiki). I had read about commercial enterprise wiki's (socialtext, confluence) that sounded wonderful, but were incredibly costly.

After pulling my hair out for far too long, I bumped across a website that mentioned free non-profit licences for Confluence (I wish that techsoup would have mentioned this!). I installed Confluence, and can safely say that is far superior in features and usability to other wikis. This recommendation is completely unsolicated, I just hope to save someone else the hassle in trying to find a great wiki engine. The only challenge with Confluence is that the install is a bit tech-heavy (setting up your own server). If you are a non-profit looking for an enterpise-level wiki/intranet though, Confluence is too good to miss out on.

Ryan W.

here are some wiki reviews, FYI:
networkcomputing.com wiki review
another review
confluence vs basecamp

Hi Ryan,

Although your post sounds a bit overly promotional for the purposes of this group, I wanted to respond to your question about techsoup not mentioning Confluence. You wrote, After pulling my hair out for far too long, I bumped across a website that mentioned free non-profit licences for Confluence (I wish that techsoup would have mentioned this!)

I am unclear about what you mean by TechSoup mentioning confluence. Do you mean in article context? On TechSOup Stock? Please clarify.

In terms of this event, I did ask Confluenece to co-host and participate in this event several times, and I didn't recieve any reply from them.

It is indeed unfortunate, as this would have beena great way for them to help spread the word abotu their product to NPOs.

-Susan

Hi Susan,

I mean mentioning in any context. Before my post, the only mention of "Confluence" from a site search was the IT support company! I rely on tech-soup as my main source of info for non-profit technology. I spent so much time researching wikis, especially in tech-soup, it would have saved me a lot of trouble if I had known that Confluence was available. I apologize that I sounded promotional - I have absolutely nothing to do with Atlassian, the only reason I took the time to post was because I don't want others to miss out on this resource. There is a great deal of talk about wiki's on this site - I just found it strange that there is no mention of this product availibilty that is (in my opinoun) the most clear-cut solution to the messy topic of wiki engines. Hope this helps get the word out a bit.

Ryan W.

Hi, Ryan,

Glad to hear about Confluence. My personal understanding of the Tech Soup forums (and I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong) is that they are primarily a way for people outside of the Tech Soup staff to post about things for interest to them in the area of Tech and non profits. So, the fact that this wiki hasn't been mentioned before would mean to me that it hasn't occured to a user to post about it. So, it is great you mentioned it.

Best wishes,

Hi Ryan,
When you talk about installing Confluence, was this on your own server, or have you found someone who will host Confluence for non-profits?

AJ

Sasha is correct. As I mentioned, I invited Confluenece to post about their product in the wiki event (this was teh first online event we have had on wikis) and they did not reply. It would have been posted sooner, if they had taken me up on my offer. However, thanks for posting abotu Confluenece. We are happy to hear of your experience with this product.

-Susan

AJ,

I setup our own server, I don't know if any of Confluence's hosting partners (they do not provide their own hosting) offer discounts to non-profits. As a accidental techie, I had never done anything like this before, and it was actually quite easy to setup a server.

The reason you want to use your own server is so that you can use Confluence as a fully functional intranet for heavy document storage. This means you have as much HD space as you want, and within your Local Area Network you will data transfer at LAN speed, not Internet speed.

Ryan W.
www.absoluteontheweb.com