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 doesn't edit your content. It publishes it. Exactly as created, behind company auth.
Confluence's editor works on structured wiki content. When engineers try to embed HTML artifacts:
<script> and <style> tags. Inline CSS is partially preserved but inconsistently. Interactive elements stop working.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 | 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 |
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 Teams: $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 for the same job.
Confluence is the right tool when you need:
If your use case is "create and maintain team documentation collaboratively," Confluence is built for that.
Confluence cannot render an HTML file that Claude Code generated this morning. It cannot display a Playwright test report as an interactive page. 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.
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 →
Yes — and this is the common pattern. Use Confluence for structured documentation your team edits collaboratively. Use Display for HTML artifacts (AI outputs, reports, dashboards, Playwright reports) that need to be served as interactive web pages. Link from Confluence to Display URLs.
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.
No. Viewers authenticate with their company Google or Microsoft email — the same account they use for everything else. They don't create a Display account or install anything.
Yes. Paste a Display 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 URL.
Not yet. The link-embed pattern (Confluence page → Display URL) is the current workflow. A Confluence plugin is on the roadmap.
Free tier. No credit card. One-time password auth on free, Google + Microsoft SSO on Teams ($49/month flat).