Stack replacement
Replacing Confluence and Notion
Two subscriptions for writing things down, which almost always means one migration that never got finished.
What the move costs
A team paying for both Confluence and Notion is usually mid-migration, with old documentation in one and new documentation in the other and no rule about which is authoritative. Notion pages import into Polaris Docs within fixed caps. Confluence has no importer and no connector, so its spaces export as XML, HTML or PDF and living pages get rewritten rather than converted.
- Notion
- Imports, within caps
- Confluence
- No importer. Export or rewrite
- Real gap in this stack
- No tracker at all
Nobody chooses two documentation tools
This combination is almost never a decision. It is a state. Either engineering was on Confluence and a newer team started in Notion, or a migration to Notion was announced, got two thirds done, and then the person driving it changed jobs.
The result is a documentation estate with no authoritative half. New people are told the handbook is in Notion and the technical documentation is in Confluence, which is true until it is not. Search has to be run twice. Links point across a boundary that neither product knows exists.
The important observation about this stack, though, is what is not in it. There is no tracker. Two writing tools and nothing that holds a task with an owner and a date, which means the work items are scattered through page bodies as checkboxes nobody reviews.
Finishing the migration you already started
Three decisions, in this order.
Decide which half is dead
Sort both estates by last edit date. Pages untouched for a year are archive, not documentation, and archive does not need to be migrated anywhere. In most stalled migrations this is well over half of the total and finishing suddenly looks achievable.
Import the Notion half and rewrite the Confluence half
Notion has an importer and Confluence does not, so the effort is asymmetric. Notion pages come across at twenty-five per run with sub-pages three levels deep, capped at sixty pages and fifteen hundred blocks. Confluence spaces export to XML, HTML or PDF for the archive, and the pages people still open get rewritten by hand.
Add the thing neither tool was
The checkboxes buried in page bodies become tasks with an owner and a date, in a workstream, with the Focus lane holding whatever must not slip. This is the part that changes how the team works, and it is available only because the consolidation went to a product that holds both docs and tasks.
What each source gives you
The asymmetry between these two is the planning constraint.
| Source | Path into Polaris | What is lost |
|---|---|---|
| Notion pages | Direct import, 25 per run | Images, tables, databases, embeds, properties, comments |
| Notion sub-page trees | Import to three levels deep | Anything nested deeper than three levels |
| Confluence pages | Manual rewrite | Everything not retyped, so choose carefully |
| Confluence space exports | XML, HTML or PDF archive | Not an import path. Storage only |
| Confluence page restrictions | No equivalent | The whole restriction model |
| Confluence templates and blueprints | No equivalent | Rebuild as a doc you copy |
Read next
A Confluence alternative for documentation that maintains itself
The wiki is not out of date because the tool is bad. It is out of date because updating it is nobody's actual job.
A Notion alternative for teams tired of maintaining the database
Notion is the best place to write the plan. The question is who executes it once the page is written.
Notion vs Confluence
A documentation tool people enjoy against a documentation tool people comply with.
Confluence pricing, checked August 2026
Priced by a function rather than a number, and bundled with the rest of Atlassian by design.
Notion pricing, checked August 2026
Two seat prices and a second meter for AI, which is the part that surprises people on renewal.
Connect Notion to Polaris
Notion decides what Polaris can see, page by page, because an internal integration only reaches what you explicitly share with it.
Replacing Confluence and Jira
An Atlassian estate has administrators, permission schemes and an auditor, and none of those are content problems.
Questions people ask
+Can Confluence pages be imported into Polaris?
No. Confluence has no Polaris importer and is not in the connection catalog. Confluence exports a space as XML, HTML or PDF, which is an archive rather than an import path. Pages people still read get rewritten by hand, which for a stalled migration is usually a smaller set than anyone expects.
+How much of Notion comes across?
Paragraphs, three heading levels, bulleted and numbered lists, to-dos with their checked state, quotes, code, callouts, dividers and toggles, plus sub-pages three levels deep. Images, files, embeds, tables, databases, synced blocks and columns are skipped and counted. Page properties, comments and version history do not come across at all.
+Which tool should we stop writing in first?
Both, on the same day. The failure mode in this stack is a phased approach where new writing continues in one old tool while history moves out of the other, which produces three destinations instead of two. Freeze new page creation in both, then move history at whatever pace suits you.
+We use Jira with Confluence. Does that change the plan?
Substantially, because a Confluence page that renders a live Jira issue table is a query rather than a document and will not survive an export as living data. If Jira is in your stack, read the Confluence and Jira plan first, since the macro inventory has to happen before anything else.
+What does one workspace cost compared to two documentation subscriptions?
Confluence and Notion are both per-seat and you are currently paying both for the same job. Polaris software is free with no seat count, and bills roughly two dollars per human-equivalent hour when an AI worker delivers work. For a team paying twice to write things down, the subscription line goes to zero.
Related
A Confluence alternative for documentation that maintains itself
The wiki is not out of date because the tool is bad. It is out of date because updating it is nobody's actual job.
A Notion alternative for teams tired of maintaining the database
Notion is the best place to write the plan. The question is who executes it once the page is written.
Notion vs Confluence
A documentation tool people enjoy against a documentation tool people comply with.
Confluence pricing, checked August 2026
Priced by a function rather than a number, and bundled with the rest of Atlassian by design.
Notion pricing, checked August 2026
Two seat prices and a second meter for AI, which is the part that surprises people on renewal.
Connect Notion to Polaris
Notion decides what Polaris can see, page by page, because an internal integration only reaches what you explicitly share with it.
Replacing Confluence and Jira
An Atlassian estate has administrators, permission schemes and an auditor, and none of those are content problems.
Replacing Notion and Jira
The spec lives in one product, the work lives in another, and the two stop agreeing about four days in.