The demand for self-serve information is at an all-time high. The value of the customer self-service market is expected to reach $35.90 billion by 2028, and end-users are driving that demand.
The need for knowledge base software has spread across all industries as organizations look to strengthen their internal and external knowledge management strategy.
In response, there is now an abundance of tools offering solutions. Since every company has a different set of needs in terms of answering questions about their product and processes, each tool tailors its software to meet specific needs.
What are the best knowledge base software platforms in 2024?
- Zendesk
- Atlassian
- Guru
- Wix Answers
- Bloomfire
- Document360
- Helpcrunch
- Tettra
- Helpjuice
- KnowledgeBase
- Hubspot Service Hub
- Slite
- ServiceNow
- ProProfs Knowledge Base
- Intellum Platform
- Notion
- Whatfix
What Is a Knowledge Base?
A knowledge base is a centralized repository that stores information and content about a particular subject or topic, typically a product. Companies produce this informational content to help customers and employees find answers in a searchable online database – without picking up the phone, waiting for an email response, or bugging someone around them.
Above you can see an example of our own customer support knowledge base here at Whatfix.
A knowledge base can exist on its own as software, live on a website, or integrate directly into other systems such as a CRM or help desk ticketing system to provide on-demand product support, answers to FAQs, and process documentation for routine tasks.
Types of Knowledge Base Software
- Customer Knowledge Base – Customer-facing knowledge bases include information, guides, and answers to assist customers in making better use of a product or service. They also give prospective customers an in-depth look into the challenges a product or service solves. You can see this in action in our article on the the best knowledge base examples.
- Internal Knowledge Base – These internal knowledge bases serves employees, not customers. These knowledge bases aren’t shared outside of the company and include information about company policies, guides explaining company software and processes, and anything else that helps employees do their job.
What Is Knowledge Base Software?
Knowledge base software is a specific type of knowledge management platform for storing and sharing self-serve information and can be cloud-based, self-hosted, or hosted by a third party.
Above you can see an example of Guru’s dashboard, where an organization is able to write, store, document, and share knowledge and processes from across the organization.
This category of software empowers organizations to create and publish searchable, easy-to-maintain knowledge bases, with some including extra features such as FAQs pages, interactive tutorials, and internal wiki pages.
Features of Knowledge Base Software
Let’s discuss some of the most highlighting features of knowledge base software.
One of the most important features of an effective knowledge base software is the search box. These enable users to search for articles and guides in the knowledge base to find solutions to their problems.
Through feedback mechanisms and content analytics, knowledge base software helps understand how customers use your product and improve the knowledge base content and customer service over time.
You can create content, categorize articles, and manage all your content easily with a knowledge base software.
Without a self-service portal, your support staff is forced to answer and deal with minor issues that can easily be resolved by the user. A knowledge base software with a self-service portal helps save time and enhance your services.
Many knowledge base software offer a self-service portal in multiple languages to cater to your global workforce and customer base.
Built-in reports help track multiple metrics such as failed searches, top and worst-performing content, etc. This gives you a transparent picture of what content needs to be added or updated in your knowledge base.
The top knowledge base software offers numerous integrations with popular ticketing, chat, survey, and analytics tools. Such integrations help provide holistic, 360° support to your users.
Benefits of Knowledge Base Software
Here are a few benefits of implementing a knowledge base software.
Customers value self-service as an essential component of a good customer experience. They prefer to self-serve for simpler tasks, such as updating their passwords, fetching reports, etc. A knowledge base software provides self-service guidance flows for customers to navigate their daily tasks quickly, thereby directly improving the customer experience.
A good knowledge base software helps you avoid answering the same questions again and again and just directs the customers automatically to the right tutorial or guide.
With support tickets being deflected to the correct answers in the knowledge base, your support agents get more time to answer number of requests, thus bringing down the resolution time.
Since a knowledge base is always on, you can provide users with any information they want, when and where they want it. This enables users to get 24*7 help and support even during holidays and off-hours, which improves productivity and efficiency.
A comprehensive knowledge base and 24*7 support helps reduce the wait time for resolutions vastly. When your customers get their queries answered in no time, they are happier and more satisfied with your services.
16 Best Software to Create a Knowledge Base in 2024
There are quite a few popular knowledge base creation software tools.
The 16 best knowledge base software tools create, publish, and share informative self-serve content for employees or customers in 2024 are:
1. Zendesk
Zendesk is one of the earliest but still popular customer service tools on the market. It offers a knowledge base that can target employees or customers, and its software integrates with many different applications.
Its list of knowledge base features includes customizable branding, content management, analytics, customer feedback, and full-text search. Zendesk also offers a community forum option so you can create a place for your customers to connect.
2. Confluence
Software company Atlassian offers robust knowledge base software called Confluence. Atlassian describes its software as a team workspace that delivers dynamic pages to allow teams to collaborate on projects.
It works for teams of all sizes, and it’s available on the cloud, through the Confluence data center, or you can set it up on your own server. If you require a high level of security for your documents and have your own development team, Confluence is a good option.
3. Guru
Guru is a low-cost knowledge base platform for internal use that lets you combine existing internal and external knowledge bases. It can capture information from Slack or the internet and convert that information into “cards” that are accessible by other team members.
Guru’s most unique feature is an AI that will help you find people within your company who are most likely to have the answer to a question.
4. Wix Answers
Customer support solution Wix Answers includes knowledge base software that lets you create a self-service center for your customers, an internal knowledge base tool for your customer support repositories, and content hubs.
With Wix Answers, you can create help widgets and embed them anywhere inside your product. An interesting feature is the ability to help customers describe their own issues through the use of custom fields and predefined options that give support reps the information they need to provide quick answers.
5. Bloomfire
Bloomfire is a knowledge-sharing platform designed to assist employees in quickly finding the information they need. A unique feature of its software is its AI-powered search engine that can index every word in the system and transcribe videos. You can also create custom questions and answers then turn both into searchable content.
6. Document360
Unlike many of the other tools on this list, Document360’s specialty is knowledge bases. It offer plans for small teams up to enterprises, and its software provides a robust file comparison tool for viewing older drafts against current versions. If your team has several people accessing the content, you can see which version is the most recent and who edited that version.
Its software is known for being user-friendly and having powerful features that need little to no customization.
7. HelpCrunch
HelpCrunch is a customer communication platform that offers a knowledge base as part of its suite of tools. Its search function automatically suggests relevant articles based on keywords, and you can include a live chat widget on knowledge base pages to provide additional customer support.
It also offers the ability to code in custom images and include CTA buttons using CSS and JS.
8. Tettra
Tettra is an internal knowledge management solution. Users appreciate its simple interface, and the Q&A feature with content verification to ensure up-to-date knowledge.
It integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams, making accessing those platforms easily. One notable feature is the ability to designate “knowledge experts” for specific topics.
9. Helpjuice
Helpjuice is a cloud-based knowledge base software used for both in-house and external solutions. It’s a popular choice for teams with limited developer support because it offers dozens of pre-made themes, and they will customize templates for you at no extra cost.
One unique feature of Helpjuice is its analytics feature, which will display what your users are searching for and not finding, show you who is searching, and offer suggestions for improving content.
10. KnowledgeBase
KnowledgeBase provides a user-friendly solution for businesses to organize their informational content and knowledge, perfect for customer support and internal knowledge use cases. Using AI, it simplifies the creation of knowledge base articles and topics. Its design is intuitive and straightforward, making it easy for even non-technical use.
This knowledge base tool offers separate workspaces for internal teams and the public audience. A useful feature is the ease of customizing the help center’s branding without needing developers. The platform has a media-enhanced editor and an almost ready-to-go self-service help center. At $59/month, KnowledgeBase is a sensible option for startups and small to medium-sized businesses.
11. HubSpot Service Cloud
HubSpot Service Hub is well-known for its customer service software, including a knowledge base tool that brings all your customer service data together if you are already using their CRM. With Service Hub, you can convert any frequently asked questions into a searchable library of help articles and even include video in your articles.
In addition, its built-in reporting dashboards provide information on terms your customers are searching for, and a critical feature for international teams is its support for multiple languages.
12. Slite
Slite is knowledge base software that lets teams share and collaborate on tutorials, meeting notes, internal processes, training manuals, and more. It has many features that are helpful for customer support and customer success teams, including collaborating with people outside your team.
For example, you can create documents, share them with your clients, and invite them to a channel. It’s also enterprise security-ready because it’s compliant with Google and Slack SSO, OAuth, OKTA, and OpenID.
13. ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a more traditional solution that offers both team and customer-facing knowledge bases.
It integrates with Microsoft Word Online to give team members a familiar feel, and you can create reusable content blocks for articles to speed up productivity. Additionally, for organizations that require KCS validation of their knowledge base, ServiceNow will fulfill that need.
14. ProProfs Knowledge Base
ProProfs knowledge base is another suite of tools that includes a knowledge base where teams can create secure internal resource centers and customer-service help options.
ProProfs state its software will let you create a knowledge base in minutes using their templates or from scratch. In addition to knowledge base creation, you can use ProProfs to design training manuals and product guides.
15. Intellum Platform
The Intellum Platform provides tools to create highly-personalized learning experiences for both customers and employees.
While it is first and foremost a learning management system, it offers a knowledge management platform as part of its toolset. This platform is best suited for large enterprises that want to reach 10,000 or more customers or employees.
16. Notion
Notion calls itself “the all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.” The platform offers a collaborative workspace that includes customizable components that connect to create a knowledge management system.
Notion’s flexibility makes it popular for creating internal-facing wikis and knowledge systems, and they offer certified consultants who can help you set up your knowledge base.
17. Whatfix
Okay, Whatfix is not a traditional knowledge base software.
Whatfix is a robust Digital Adoption Platform that includes native integrations with your organization’s knowledge base systems, intranet, and other knowledge repositories, which enables you to embed your company’s documentation and knowledge directly into its applications and digital workplaces.
The platform offers a unique feature that lets you aggregate your existing knowledge base by displaying your documentation in a self-help widget – allowing users to search for questions to their product support directly in the app.
For example, if you have your help content in Freshdesk, and your application is Microsoft Teams, the Freshdesk articles can be shown as links in the Self Help that appears in Microsoft Teams.
Above: Example of contextual help and user support built with a Digital Adoption Platform.
Whatfix’s Self-Help overlays on to any web application, desktop application, mobile app, or website. It provides contextual help to users and integrates with your FAQs, support center, LMS, user documentation, and more. Users are presented with common issues and help content for their contextual area in the application, or they can use an open-ended search to find the specific help content they’re looking for. These help support cards often prompt in-app guidance, walking users through the specific workflow they need help on.
According to Gartner, many self-service flaws trace back to three points of failure:
- external search
- site navigation
- self-service capabilities
Make sure customers can easily find your knowledge base when they land on your website from an external search so they don’t tie up your customer support team with calls or tickets. A good rule of thumb is to place the link to your knowledge base in your top-level navigation.
In addition, your knowledge base needs to be genuinely self-serve — audit your content regularly to confirm it is comprehensive and includes every single step your customers need to resolve issues on their own.
Request a demo to see how Whatfix empowers organizations to improve end-user adoption and provide on-demand customer support with in-app knowledge management.
