Who wins: Coda tables vs. Confluence databases

A detailed framework comparing Confluence databases and Coda tables to help you decide which fits best for your needs and workflow.

Todd Cranston-Cuebas

Solutions Architect at Coda

Who wins: Coda tables vs. Confluence databases

By Todd Cranston-Cuebas

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Product teams · 10 min read
I probably don’t need to tell you that the SaaS world moves fast. Isn’t that one of the things we love about it? In my role, I'm often asked what distinguishes Coda and its capabilities from other workspace tools. Today, I will walk you through the differences between Coda's tables and Confluence's databases. But before we dive into that, I want to provide some context on my process. This approach can also help you determine what best suits your needs and those of your team. Through the years, the rapid emergence of new tools is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. What I've noticed is that trying every new tool for minor time savings can often lead to decision fatigue without clear evaluation criteria. In an effort to remedy this, I've developed specific comparison points to help me focus on different SaaS platforms' functionalities. Let's get started!

Meet the process.

 Implementing this process won't be as intimidating as meeting the parents as you've seen in a fast-paced comedy film. (At least, I hope not!) But then again, there are some similar elements—like first having a proper introduction, followed by a getting-to-know-you moment, and then, familiarizing yourself with the platform (or parent). When comparing platforms, I focus on three categories: power, connectivity, and ease of use. I encourage you to start here and try it for yourself based on what you're looking for and what will help you be more productive in your role. Here are some important questions to start.
Power: What are its capabilities?
Ask questions about what the database can actually handle. This evaluation encapsulates everything related to a tool’s ability to support varied, complex use cases, which I break into several subcategories.
  • Data types. What types of data can the database store, process, and format?
  • Formulas. Does it run calculations or perform different tasks for the end user? How flexible and intuitive is the formula language?
  • Display views. Can you visualize your dataset in charts? Can a database of active tasks become a linked project tracker?
  • Interactivity. How easy is it to add buttons, comments, reactions, and other interactive elements that enable instant collaboration?
  • Customization. How flexible is the finished database and its customization features?
Connectivity: Does it play well with other tools?
These questions will help get you helpful information on capabilities within the tool or platform. As you'll see with the points below, the main questions here should be around connecting and integrating with other tools.
  • Can the database connect to other tools?
  • How easy is it to set up an integration?
  • Are your most-used tools available for integration?
  • For the tools you wish to connect, are there any significant limitations to note?
  • How powerful are those integrations, and how easy is it to extend the functionality of the database through other forms or automations?
Ease of Use: How simple is it to onboard and navigate?
It’s also important to consider the end-to-end user experience of a database.
  • Namely, how easy is it to use a specific database?
  • How does it look and feel, and how does a given database show up in the end product?

Meet the Confluence Database.

 Let's talk Confluence for a moment. For some context, Confluence was originally created as a wiki for teams using the broader Atlassian suite. The idea was that teams could house static information like vacation policies and onboarding documentation in one place and know that it would be accessible to the entire company. The program specialized in hosting static unstructured data. In 2024, Atlassian launched Confluence databases, which allow users to link blocks of structured data, like databases of customer information or tables of active projects, with unstructured data, like meeting notes or messaging drafts. Now that Confluence is getting up to speed with market expectations and the likes of Coda and Notion, I’ve been getting new questions from teams looking to organize their information. So, with our question process in mind—noting power, connectivity, and ease of use—here is how I break down the differences between Confluence databases and Coda tables.

On Power: How powerful are Coda tables and Confluence databases?

 This category covers the most important differences between these two tools. A database’s power and agility determine whether a platform can truly serve as an “all-in-one” workspace or whether your team will need another tool to manage your structured data. In my opinion, the difference is clear: Confluence databases lack the power to handle complex tasks. Setting up everyday processes like project trackers or roadmaps requires an additional tool.

Confluence

Coda

Confluence databases have several limitations. They only support basic data types—text and numbers—and offer limited display options, which hampers the creation of intuitive dashboards. Most critically, Confluence lacks formulas, restricting users from performing even basic calculations, such as summing values in a column or row. In contrast, Coda’s tables are driven by formulas that empower users to perform various calculations like SUM, PRODUCT, and AVERAGE and engage in complex actions. Formulas in Coda facilitate the creation of project trackers and roadmaps, automatically update data, trigger actions, and even change external services. This capability bridges the gap between data storage and actionable insights, allowing for the development of powerful internal apps. Unfortunately, Confluence’s lack of formulas severely limits its power.

Formulas give Coda tables their power.

Another way to look at a database’s power is to consider whether or not it facilitates collaboration. The purpose of these tools is, after all, to help you and your team work together. In Coda, it’s easy to add buttons and reactions to tables which enable you to send a teammate a Slack message, open an external link, or signal your vote of support without leaving the doc. This interactivity may seem more like icing on the cake than a core requirement, but I encourage you to try it out. The collaborative nature of Coda’s tables enables easy alignment tools like Dory/Pulse, where teams collect questions about a project and vote on the most important issues raised, or a prioritization exercise like $100 voting, which enables your team to vote on a table of options with an imaginary $100. These are great examples of how tables with the right amount of power can be active parts of your workflow instead of simple data storage spaces.
Confluence
  • Supports text, numbers, dates, select lists, users, relations, images, and attachments in databases
  • Supports 3 displays: tables, cards, and boards
  • No calculated column values
  • No formulas
  • No buttons or interactivity
  • Sort and filter enabled
Coda
  • Supports text, numbers, dates in multiple formats, select lists, users, relations, images, and attachments
    • Also offers checkboxes, canvas columns, reactions, buttons, formulas, and links in tables
  • Supports 9 table types, including forms, charts, calendars, and custom detailed views
  • Powerful formula language can take action for you
  • Buttons and interactivity make tables collaborative
  • Highly customizable views available, including personal filters and conditional formatting
  • Powerful automations take action for you

On Connectivity: How well do Coda and Confluence connect to other tools?

 When it comes to structured data, connectivity is critical, especially for midsize and large teams that operate across many tools. Why waste time copy/pasting or importing snapshots from one program to another, when a constant stream of data straight from one tool to another could keep everything automatically updated? With Coda, tables can sync data from hundreds of different applications. But right now, Confluence only integrates with Jira, and even that integration is extremely limited. The Confluence Jira integration is one-way—meaning you can pull data from Jira into Confluence, but not vice versa. So, if you’re in Confluence and want to edit a task in Jira, you must go back into Jira to make the update. That partially defeats the purpose of these integrations. Sure, it’s nice to be able to see Jira data without switching tabs, but it’s just another element of static, uneditable data in a Confluence database.

Confluence

Coda

Coda tables have a two-way integration with Jira and dozens of other applications. You can virtually sync most fields from Jira or these other apps into your Coda table and trust that the data will always be fresh. But you can also edit Jira data from within Coda. You can even take action on them with Coda’s formulas or set up automations that take action for you. That way, when something changes in your table, it can trigger a series of updates in other parts of your doc. Simply put, Confluence databases lack the connectivity that teams need to stay aligned or work more efficiently across tools. Coda not only brings information from virtually any other tool or program into a central place, it also allows you to actually take action on that data. In fact, if an integration with a tool or platform does not exist, Coda’s Pack Studio gives you or your team’s engineers the ability to extend Coda even further.
Confluence
  • Only integrates with Jira
  • View-only integration with Jira
  • Sync limited number of fields from Jira
  • Limited connection to automations
Coda
  • Connects to hundreds of different apps through Packs
  • Two-way integration with Jira and dozens of others let users take action on other apps from tables
  • Sync nearly all Jira fields into Coda
  • Trigger or accept actions from automation

On Ease of Use: How do Coda and Confluence compare in user experience?

 What good is your data if your team hates using it? Or if they can’t find it to begin with? User experience is a bit more subjective than the other two evaluation criteria, so again I encourage you to try both platforms for yourself. That said, here are the facts as I see them. Confluence databases can’t live side-by-side with text like tables do in Coda. When added to a page with unstructured data, these tables render as very limited “embeds” rather than acting as a native part of the page. These embeds only show the first several rows, forcing you to scroll to see the rest of your dataset, and aren’t interactive, meaning you can’t engage with the dataset without toggling to the original database. This is the exact behavior an “all-in-one” doc should prevent.

Confluence

Coda

One of the powerful characteristics about Coda tables is that you can take a table and create many different views from it. Customized table views can be placed in any page within your doc, and these views include all rows necessary. It’s easy to break out a table view that shows a subset of any data—like only showing tasks you’re responsible for—or one that visualizes data in a different way to support a report. Confluence, on the other hand, houses “views” as tabs within a database. While filters, sorting, and the selected view can be set as a default for each embed, the table embed feels foreign to the rest of the page. In addition to these clear limitations, I personally find Confluence tables clunky to set up and interact with. Adding columns requires too many clicks which overall takes away from the experience. It might be nit-picky, but it’s hard to ignore small issues when you don’t actually have to settle. And when you’re leveraging these tools every day, these paper cuts add up. Overall, the inability to bring text and data side-by-side within a one-page view and the friction of setting up and interacting with Confluence databases make it difficult to believe that teams are leveraging Confluence databases for meaningful use cases.
Confluence
  • Databases exist within the limited frame of an embed, separate from text and other data
  • Databases lack customization to view or modify data
  • Database views show truncated display of the table
  • No native form capabilities
Coda
  • Tables live side-by-side with text in your doc
  • Table views let you see different cuts of data
  • Native forms collect data and format in tables

Ready to decide for yourself?

 I hope this framework helps you compare Confluence databases and Coda tables, but even more foundationally, it helps you build your framework to compare tools in the years to come. I developed these criteria based on my needs and workflow. It’s very possible yours are different. At this point, my opinion should be clear. Confluence’s new databases are a decided step forward for the platform as a whole, but—based on their lack of power, one integration, and unintuitive user experience—they don’t measure up to other options. I absolutely encourage you to evaluate the tools based on your needs. If you need to look at other aspects of the programs, we have even more Confluence vs. Coda breakdowns and evaluation guides. And if your team’s workflows are anything like mine, I hope you give Coda a try.

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