Refined Sites for Confluence (Intranets, Documentation, KBs)

Refined Sites has been a great fit for our Confluence-based documentation and KB sites. The theming and layout tools let us match our site's look and feel to our main company website, so users get a consistent, on-brand experience whether they're on our marketing site or digging through docs. It's made our Confluence content feel like a polished, purpose-built resource rather than a generic wiki. Highly recommend for any team that wants their Confluence content to actually look and feel like part of their product.

We recently migrated from Confluence Data Center to Confluence Cloud and implemented Refined for our customer-facing documentation—and the experience has been great. Refined stands out for its intuitive design, ease of setup, and rich feature set, making it incredibly simple to create clean, professional, and user-friendly documentation portals. A special shoutout to the Refined product and support teams—their responsiveness and customer-first approach truly set them apart. They were always available to jump on calls, understand our challenges, and provide thoughtful, effective solutions. What impressed us most was their openness to feedback and their genuine effort to continuously enhance the user experience. Overall, Refined is a powerful and reliable solution, backed by a team that truly cares about its customers.

For years, Refined has been the go-to solution for making the "clinical" look of Confluence presentable for public-facing support sites. However, their recent pricing strategy overhaul has turned what was once a premium but fair tool into an unjustifiable corporate tax. The biggest issue remains the rigid, tier-based pricing model. If you have a small team of 15 people but your Confluence license sits in the "up to 100 users" bracket, Refined forces you to pay for the full 100-user seat count. For an independent app developer or a small support team, you are effectively paying a "success tax" on seats you aren't even using. Recent "adjustments" have seen these costs skyrocket, in some cases doubling or tripling the monthly overhead without adding a single new core feature to justify the leap. Value vs. Cost Disconnect While the UI skins are polished, at its core, Refined is a layout engine. When the cost of the nice skin starts to rival or exceed the cost of the data hosting (Confluence itself), the value proposition falls apart. For businesses running help centers for niche products - like my own network monitoring app - every overhead dollar matters. Refined seems to have pivoted their strategy to focus exclusively on enterprise whales, leaving the small-to-medium businesses that helped build their reputation out in the cold. The Verdict It’s a beautiful product, but the current pricing is predatory for smaller shops. If you are a small team, you are better off migrating your documentation to a dedicated SaaS like Document360 or a static generator like Docusaurus. You’ll save thousands a year and won't be held hostage by a marketplace vendor that has lost touch with "reasonable" pricing. Pros: Great templates, easy Confluence integration. Cons: Extortionate price hikes, no granular per-user billing, ignores the needs of small businesses.

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  Refined

  Hi Edward,

  Thanks for the thoughtful and honest review. We really appreciate the years you’ve spent using Refined and the recognition of the value it brings.

  We understand the frustration around pricing, especially for smaller teams whose Confluence license tier doesn’t reflect their actual number of users. As with all Atlassian Marketplace apps, our pricing is tied to Atlassian’s tier-based licensing model, which can unfortunately create situations like the one you describe.

  We do make pricing updates from time-to-time. Our most recent ones were driven by continued investment in the platform — including performance, security, and long-term product sustainability.

  Feedback like yours is important to us, and we do take it seriously when reviewing our pricing and packaging. If you’re open to it, our team would be happy to discuss your setup or explore possible options — you can contact us directly at https://help.refined.com/page/contact-us.

  All the best,

  Team Refined

This app is for us a game changer: a 'single source of truth' for all our inforrmation (internal & external). Great functionalities, intuitive configuration and good support. Seamless integration with the JSM app.

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  Refined

  Hi Mathieu,

  Thank you for sharing your experience! We’re delighted to hear that Refined has become a game changer for your team. It’s great to know the functionality, support, and JSM integration are all working well for you.

  If you have any questions or further feedback, feel free to contact us.

  All the best,

  Team Refined

Refined's support has been a great help—very responsive and also open to hearing out ideas for improvements.

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  Refined

  Hi Samuel,

  Thanks for the 4-star review! Feedback means a lot to us, and we’re always working to make Refined Sites even better.

  If you ever have questions or more feedback, feel free to contact us.

  Kind regards,

  Team Refined