Why migrate now, not in 2028
Atlassian has published two dates every agency managing Confluence Data Center must know. March 30, 2026: Atlassian ceased selling new Confluence Data Center licenses (source: falconer.com). March 28, 2029: all existing instances will become read-only (source: docmost.com/blog). March 30, 2028: existing customers lose the ability to renew or expand licenses.
In practice, an enterprise wiki migration takes between four and twelve weeks depending on the size of the instance.
Six reasons to migrate to Docmost rather than wait
- Hard, documented deadline — March 28, 2029: no new pages, no edits, no revisions.
- End of security patches — read-only mode means no Confluence DC patches.
- Real-time collaborative editing — live co-editing with live cursors and instant synchronisation.
- Native diagrams — Mermaid, Draw.io and Excalidraw integrated without extra configuration.
- Predictable cost — open source, infrastructure you control, no per-user pricing.
- Markdown and HTML export — simplify backups, vendor-independent migrations.
- Three-container Docker deployment —
docmost,dbandredis, official compose file, up in under an hour.
The Confluence importer — what it preserves, what it does not
Docmost provides a native Confluence importer in the Enterprise edition. It preserves Confluence spaces, page hierarchy, attachments, internal links, and draw.io diagrams.
What is not preserved: layout macros lose their formatting, dynamic content macros are not reproduced, dashboard macros disappear, and third-party macros are not migrated.
Without Enterprise: migration is manual — export HTML from Confluence, recreate structure in Docmost page by page.
Breaking the migration into sprints
Sprint 0 — space inventory and triage (1-2 days). Sprint 1 — pilot space (3-5 days). Sprints 2 to N — spaces in batches (1 week per batch). Final sprint — cutover and archiving.
Practical rule: never migrate all of a client spaces in a single import. Batches of 200-300 pages per sprint.
Measured prerequisites before you start
Docmost deploys with three Docker containers: docmost (main application), db (PostgreSQL 18) and redis (Redis 8). For production use with 10-50 users, a VPS with 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM and 40 GB storage is a reasonable baseline.
Step-by-step migration procedure
Export spaces from Confluence
Administration general -> Backup Manager. Per-space export with attachments. Verify archive size.
Deploy Docmost on the VPS via Docker
Official docker-compose.yml + .env with APP_URL, APP_SECRET, DB_URL. Launch with docker compose up -d. Configure Nginx + Certbot.
Create destination spaces in Docmost
Create a space for each Confluence space to migrate, keeping the same names.
Run the Confluence importer (Enterprise edition)
Space settings -> Import -> Confluence format. Upload the ZIP archive. Without Enterprise, copy content page by page.
Validate imported pages and handle degraded macros
Browse a representative sample. Apply standard treatment from your reference grid. Assign corrections to page owners.
Configure users and permissions
RBAC by spaces and groups. Enterprise edition includes SSO via SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect, and LDAP.
Configure backups and monitoring
Daily pg_dump + archive the Docker volume to off-VPS storage. Configure an availability alert.
What Docmost does not carry over from Confluence
Dynamic macros, full version history, Confluence blog pages, page templates and Jira integrations are not transferred. Document this explicitly before announcing the migration to clients.
Always export a test space to XML and open it in a text editor before launching a production import. Search for <ac:structured-macro ac:name="..."> tags. In ten minutes, you have the exact list of macros to handle manually.
Docmost on VPS — a clean exit from Confluence Data Center
Migration from Confluence Data Center is not a multi-month project if approached with progressive sprints. A prioritised space inventory, a pilot sprint to calibrate macro handling, and Docmost Confluence importer (Enterprise edition) are sufficient to transfer hierarchy, attachments, and internal links without structural loss.
