Confluence anonymous access vs public links: clearing up the confusion

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We’ve lost count of the number of times Atlassian Community users have asked whether they should use Confluence’s anonymous access feature or Confluence’s public links feature to share content externally.

The truth is that although there are some overlaps, the two features are very different and have different purposes.

So let’s clear up some of the confusion.

Comparing Confluence anonymous access and Confluence public links

Public links and anonymous access are two different methods for sharing content with users who do not have access to Confluence or an Atlassian account.

Let’s dig into the differences.

	Anonymous access	Public links
You can share individual pages only	No	Yes
You can share a whole space	Yes	No
Confluence blogs and databases are shareable	Yes	No
You can grant all the same permissions as a regular user to an external user	Yes. Although it is recommended that you only grand anonymous users the View permission.	No
External users can see all native Confluence macros	Yes	No. Most macros are hidden, apart from status, table of contents, panels, excerpt, and a few others.
External users can see 3rd-party macros	Yes	No
External users can see the page tree and breadcrumbs	Yes	No
External users can see the Confluence navigation bar	Yes	No
External users can see the Confluence search bar	Yes	No
Comments are visible to external users	Yes	No
Page restrictions matter	Yes. Page restrictions are a way of hiding content in an otherwise public Confluence space.	No. Public links override all restrictions but will still only show the external user a safe, stripped-back version of the page.
Ideal for sharing a single piece of content with an external user as a one-off	No	Yes
Ideal for publicly sharing lots of pages like product documentation	Yes	No
Any Confluence user can share content externally	No. Only a space admin can make a space public, and only if anonymous access has been granted at the global level by a Confluence admin.	Yes
Public sharing is turned on by default	No	Yes
Public pages are given a different URL	No	Yes. The public link is different from the URL for the live page.
Public pages are indexed by Google and therefore searchable	Yes	No

What method should you use to share Confluence content externally?

That largely depends on three things:

How much content you want to share externally
Who you want to share it with
How much control you want over what content is seen

If you want to share lots of content with the public at large, and you’re less concerned about what people see, you should allow access to your whole space using the anonymous access feature. The public will then be able to see all the content within the space. You can even collaborate with the public by granting anonymous users all the same permissions as regular users, such as the ability to create/edit pages and leave comments (although there are very few scenarios where this would be appropriate).

If you only want to share specific content with select audiences, and you want more control over what they see, public links are better. Public links are not indexed by Google, so you can only access them if you have the URL. By contrast, a public space can be found through searching. Also, public links hide a lot of content, including the page tree, the Confluence navigation bar, the search bar, the Create button, most native macros, all 3rd-party macros, and comments.

What are the security implications?

Public links are lower risk because only a single page at a time gets shared, and because the public user only sees a very limited read-only version of the real page.

Anonymous access is higher risk because it exposes an entire space and therefore needs to be managed carefully. If you don’t want the public reading your page comments, you have to delete them. If you don’t want the public to access a specific page, you have to restrict the permissions on that page.

The different levels of risk are the reason why public links are enabled by default, and anonymous access isn’t. Any Confluence user can create a public link unless a space admin has disabled them. Anonymous access is the other way around. A Confluence admin has to allow anonymous access at the global level before a space admin can make a space public (and only a space admin can make a space public).

If you’re still unsure which to choose, here’s a handy flowchart

confluence-anonymous-access-vs-public-links-flowchart-choice

What if you want the middle ground between public links and anonymous access?

The two methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

Anonymous access provides public access to a whole space, so if you’re creating product documentation for customers, public links wouldn’t work. You’d want your customers to be able to access all the pages and see all their content, including charts, attachments, excerpts from other pages, lists of related pages, and 3rd-party content. You’d also want them to navigate their way through the space via the page tree and search bar. This is why anonymous access is better for this purpose.

However, the advantage of public links that certain things that you don’t want customers to see are already hidden. These include the Confluence navigation bar, breadcrumbs, page extensions, page history, the Create button, and comments. With anonymous access, all of these things remain accessible.

There are a lot of Community users who want to provide anonymous access to a space but hide certain Confluence elements in the way public links do. They want the middle ground between both features.

That middle ground is Spacecraft. Spacecraft is an Atlassian Marketplace app that turns a public Confluence space into a slick website with a customized theme, and removes all the Confluence bits and pieces you don’t want customers to see.

Certain native Confluence elements are automatically removed by Spacecraft, such as the Confluence navigation bar, the Create button, space settings, and the more actions dropdown that allows access to things like page history. Other Confluence elements you can choose whether to show or hide. These include page contributors, comments, and the page title.

It means that Spacecraft offers more control over hiding page information than public links. With public links, you can still see the page author (although their licensed status is hidden) and the last-updated date. But you don’t necessarily want external users to have this information.

So, if you’ve been looking to make sure certain Confluence information remains internal and private and wondering if public links are the answer, wonder no more and try Spacecraft.