Confluence alternative for sharing HTML artifacts
Confluence is a documentation platform. It edits and stores structured content. When you paste or upload HTML into Confluence, it strips the JavaScript and CSS – the parts that make modern HTML valuable. display.dev doesn't edit your content. It publishes it. Exactly as created, behind company auth.
What happens when you put HTML in Confluence
Confluence's editor works on structured wiki content. When engineers try to embed HTML artifacts:
- Paste HTML → Confluence strips
<script>and<style>tags. Inline CSS is partially preserved but inconsistently. Interactive elements stop working. - HTML macro → Renders a subset of HTML inside an iframe – but CSP restrictions block most external dependencies and inline scripts.
- Attachment → Downloads the file. Doesn't render it. Viewers open it locally.
- iFrame embed → Works if the source is already hosted somewhere. You still need a host.
The artifact that took minutes to create – the D3 chart, the interactive architecture diagram, the responsive dashboard – renders as broken HTML or doesn't render at all.
display.dev vs. Confluence for internal HTML artifacts
| display.dev | Confluence | |
|---|---|---|
| Renders full HTML/JS/CSS | ✅ | ❌ (strips scripts) |
| Publish time | 15 seconds | N/A (can't publish HTML as-is) |
| Google Workspace SSO | ✅ Included | ✅ (requires Premium/$11.55/user/mo) |
| Microsoft 365 SSO | ✅ Included | ✅ (Premium) |
| Viewers need Confluence account | ❌ | ✅ |
| Persistent URL | ✅ | ✅ (Confluence page URL) |
| CLI publish | ✅ (dsp publish) | ❌ |
| MCP for Claude Desktop | ✅ | ❌ |
| Flat pricing (unlimited viewers) | ✅ (€49/mo) | ❌ ($6.05–$11.55/user/mo) |
| Purpose | Publish artifacts | Edit documentation |
The pricing difference
Confluence Cloud Standard costs $6.05/user/month (minimum 10 users = $60.50/month). For visitor auth (SSO), you need Premium at $11.55/user/month.
For 100 users: Confluence Premium = $1,155/month.
display.dev Pro: €49/month flat, unlimited viewers, Google + Microsoft SSO included.
Confluence is a full documentation platform with many capabilities. If you're already paying for it, use it for what it does well. But using Confluence just for HTML sharing costs 20× more than display.dev for the same job.
Confluence is excellent – for structured documentation
Confluence is the right tool when you need:
- Collaborative wiki editing by multiple authors
- Structured knowledge base with templates and spaces
- Integration with Jira for project/issue linkage
- Searchable documentation that teams maintain over time
- Page hierarchies, version history, and comment threads
If your use case is "create and maintain team documentation collaboratively," Confluence is built for that.
What Confluence can't do
Confluence cannot render an HTML file that Claude Code generated this morning. It cannot display a multi-page agent-authored research dossier as an interactive site. It cannot serve an architecture diagram with animated D3 transitions or a dashboard with sortable columns.
These artifacts are applications, not documents. They need a web server, not an editor.
display.dev workflow for HTML artifacts
dsp publish ./architecture-diagram.html --name arch-q2
Viewers click the link, authenticate with their company Google or Microsoft account once, and see the full interactive artifact. No Confluence account required. No page templates. No markup stripping.
Publish your first artifact free →
Features
Viewers click a link and sign in with their Google or Microsoft account, or a one-time password. No app to install. No account to create. No IT ticket.
Inline comments on every artifact. Your agent reads them via MCP, fetches the current version, republishes with short_id and base_version, and resolves the thread. The artifact stays a living document, not a one-shot screenshot.
dsp publish ./file.html from your terminal, or one sentence in Claude Desktop. No git repo, no deploy pipeline, no project to configure.
Every artifact gets a URL that keeps working. Share in Slack, link in Notion, paste in email. It still works six months later.
No per-seat pricing at any tier. Share with your PM, exec, legal team, or designer for the same flat price.
Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor all work, along with anything else that creates HTML or Markdown output.
Common questions.
Can I use display.dev alongside Confluence?
Yes – and this is the common pattern. Use Confluence for structured documentation your team edits collaboratively. Use display.dev for HTML artifacts (AI outputs, agent-authored research, dashboards, multi-page reports) that need to be served as interactive web pages. Link from Confluence to display.dev URLs.
What about Confluence's HTML macro?
Confluence's HTML macro renders a limited subset of HTML in a sandboxed iframe. It blocks inline scripts, many external CSS frameworks, and complex JS. It works for trivial HTML snippets – not for AI-generated artifacts, D3 visualizations, or interactive reports.
Do viewers need a display.dev account?
No. Viewers authenticate with their company Google or Microsoft email – the same account they use for everything else. They don't create a display.dev account or install anything.
Can I embed display.dev artifacts inside Confluence pages?
Yes. Paste a display.dev URL into a Confluence page. Confluence will render it as a link or a preview tile depending on your setup. For full interactive rendering, link out to the display.dev URL.
Is there a Confluence integration or plugin?
Not yet. The link-embed pattern (Confluence page → display.dev URL) is the current workflow. A Confluence plugin is on the roadmap.
Can I see who published each version, human or agent?
Yes. display.dev attributes every version and comment to the agent and the human it acted for, in the comment thread and the audit log. See how identity works.
Publish your first artifact in 15 seconds.
Free tier. No credit card. One-time password auth on free, Google + Microsoft SSO on Pro (€49/month flat).