11 Best Knowledge Base Software for Your Business [2024]
Table of contents
Imagine a customer of yours has a pressing question about a product or service.
- They can contact your support team for help.
- They can look up the answer online by themselves.
The issue with the first option is that it can be time-consuming. You might be put on hold or transferred to multiple agents.
The second option, however, is more efficient. All you have to do is search for the relevant question and the answer pops up.
But, there’s a catch. For customers to find solutions by themselves, companies need to know what customers are looking for and then provide access to the relevant answers.
There’s where a knowledge base software comes in handy.
Table of Contents
- What is a Knowledge Base software?
- Comparison chart of the best knowledge base software
- 11 Best Knowledge Base Software for your Business
- 1. Hiver: Best for Multichannel Customer Support
- 2. Helpjuice: Best for a Standalone Knowledge Base
- 3. Notion: Best for Company Wikis
- 4. HubSpot Service Hub: Best for Enterprise Companies
- 5. Document360: Best for Small Businesses or Teams
- 6. Jira Knowledge Management: Best for IT Support Teams
- 7. HelpScout: Best to Create Multiple Knowledge Bases
- 8. ProProfs Knowledge Base: Best for Quick Documentation
- 9. Tettra: Best for Onboarding and Training Support Agents
- 10. Heroic Knowledge Base: Best for WordPress Sites
- 11. Knowmax: Best for Improving Customer Engagement
- What are the benefits of a knowledge base?
- Essential Features of A Knowledge Base Software
- What are the different types of knowledge base software?
- How can I create a knowledge base?
- Wrapping Up
What is a Knowledge Base software?
A knowledge base software is a tool that enables teams to build and manage a central repository of tutorials and guides. It basically helps to create one central platform to store all knowledge spread across your company.
Knowledge bases have multiple uses cases:
- A retail company might use a knowledge base to keep staff updated on product specifications, inventory levels, and customer service protocols.
- In a tech company, developers might use it to document code, track changes, and store development guidelines.
- Customer service teams across various industries rely on knowledge bases to help their customers find quick answers to common queries. Say, ones on return policies or refunds.
Comparison chart of the best knowledge base software
| Software | Starting Price | Trial Period | G2 Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hiver | Free Plan , $19/user/month | 7 days | 4.6 ⭐ |
| Helpjuice | $120/month | 14 days | 4.5 ⭐ |
| Notion | $8/user/month | No trial period, but has a free plan | 4.7 ⭐ |
| HubSpot Service Hub | $18/month | No trial period, but has a free plan | 4.4 ⭐ |
| Document360 | $124/project/month | 14 days | 4.7 ⭐ |
| Jira Knowledge Management | $22.05/user/month | 7 days | 4.2 ⭐ |
| HelpScout | $20/user/month | 15 days | 4.4 ⭐ |
| ProProfs Knowledge Base | $49/user/month | 15 days trial and a free plan for 1 user | 4.6 ⭐ |
| Tettra | $4/user/month | 30 days | 4.6 ⭐ |
| Heroic Knowledge Base | $149.50/year | No free trial | N/A |
| Knowmax | $34.99/year | No free trial | 4.6 ⭐ |
11 Best Knowledge Base Software for your Business
1. Hiver: Best for Multichannel Customer Support
Hiver is the world’s first customer service platform that works within Gmail. It offers teams multiple support channels, and knowledge base is one of them.
You can setup a knowledge base in minutes, with Hiver. It’s super intuitive to add, edit, and categorize articles.
Since all your how-to guides and tutorials are neatly organized with Hiver’s knowledge base, customers can easily find what they’re looking for. This, in turn, reduces the burden on your support staff.
Pricing
Hiver has four pricing plans, which includes a free plan. It also offers a free trial of 7 days.
- Forever zero-cost plan
- Lite: $19/user/month billed yearly
- Pro: $49/user/month billed yearly
- Elite: $79/user/month billed yearly
Top Features
- Custom domain for a consistent brand experience
- SSL certification to keep your help center URL secure
- Intuitive interface for organizing articles into key categories
- Code snippets that let you integrate a chat widget or web analytics tool with your knowledge base
- Search engine optimization (SEO) to help your knowledge base articles rank on search engines
- Ticket submission for missing or unclear answers
- Search bar to filter through categories and find relevant help articles in real time
2. Helpjuice: Best for a Standalone Knowledge Base
Helpjuice assists customer support teams to build internal and customer-facing knowledge bases. While it may not be a full-fledged customer service platform, HelpJuice’s knowledge base software is easy-to-use and offers a high degree of customization.
It allows 12+ branding/customization themes. You can also add articles to one or more categories – enabling teams to create a rich content library.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: 14 days
- Starter: $120/month
- Run-Up: $200/month
- Premium Limited: $289/month
- Premium Unlimited: $499/month
Top Features
- Easy authoring and content formatting for creating help articles
- Intelligent analytics to see what users search for and measure articles’ impact
- Customization that allows teams to choose from multiple themes
- Instant Google-like searchability, including ability to present content in images or as PDF attachments.
- Integrations. Connects easily with Slack, Google Chrome, Salesforce, and more tools.
3. Notion: Best for Company Wikis
Notion lets you create documents, and manage projects. With its Microsoft Word-like editor, advanced views, and countless templates, Notion is perfect for building in-depth company wikis — organized team knowledge that anyone with access can view, comment on, or edit.
Notion is a great tool, but it does not offer much value to support teams beyond knowledge sharing. So, it tends to silo team knowledge while customer conversations happen elsewhere.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: No free trial but a limited, forever free plan for individuals
- Plus: $8/user/month billed yearly
- Business: $15/user/month billed yearly
- Enterprise: Contact sales
Top Features
- Advanced document editor for creating articles and building workflows.
- Templates for multiple use cases, like “installing a software”, “deleting a software”, “updating address in a software”, and so on.
- Integrations. Connects seamlessly with GitHub, Asana, Google Drive, and more workplace apps.
- Workflow automations via Zapier, Make, or Tray.io.
- Global creator community for inspiration on how others are using the app.
Recommended read: How to Create Great Knowledge Base Articles: Tips & Templates
4. HubSpot Service Hub: Best for Enterprise Companies
HubSpot Service Hub offers a knowledge base feature — along with an email ticketing system, live chat widget, social media channel, and more.
HubSpot’s knowledge base tool is intuitive, but it is only available on the platform’s Professional or Enterprise plans. The pricing is a bit steep for smaller teams, so it’s mostly suitable for large companies with bigger budgets.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: Free plan with basic features
- Starter plan: $18/month billed yearly
- Professional: $450/month billed yearly
- Enterprise: $1,200/month billed yearly
Features
- Help articles library for customer self-service
- Knowledge base analytics to measure impact
- Content editor and organizer for building out help articles/pages
- Customizable user interface for an on-brand look and feel
- SEO functionality to improve rankings on Google and other search engines
5. Document360: Best for Small Businesses or Teams
Document360 allows businesses to create internal knowledge bases, customer-facing help centers, and standard operating procedure documents. The knowledge management software is cost-effective, making it a solid choice for smaller teams.
For example, Document360’s free plan covers the basic knowledge management needs of a startup — a public help site, a 50-article limit, custom branding, and more. Document360 is not suitable for those who require a more comprehensive support platform that includes features such as email ticketing and chatbots, in addition to the knowledge base function.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: 14 days and a limited, forever free plan
- Standard: $124/project/month billed yearly
- Professional: $248/project/month billed yearly
- Business: $331/project/month billed yearly
- Enterprise: $497/project/month billed yearly
Features:
- Branding and customization for a consistent user experience
- AI-powered search functionality beyond article titles and headings
- Responsive design for accessibility across devices
- Tree-view navigation to help readers easily move from one section to the next
- Ratings and feedback, so that readers can rate knowledge base content or drop reviews
6. Jira Knowledge Management: Best for IT Support Teams
Jira offers a knowledge management feature hosted on Confluence, another Atlassian product that specializes in company documentation.
Note: IT support teams can use Confluence knowledge base as a standalone software, but they will not have access to Jira’s other ITSM features like request, incident, problem, and change management.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: 7 days and a limited, forever free plan
- Standard: $22.05/agent/month
- Premium: Starts at $49.35/agent/month
- Enterprise: Contact sales
Features
- Editing and formatting via Confluence
- Viewing permissions to make an article private or public
- Insights that reflect content gaps and high-performing help articles
- Integration with leading tools like Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Machine learning-powered search for surfacing relevant knowledge base content
7. HelpScout: Best to Create Multiple Knowledge Bases
HelpScout is a customer service platform that offers several support channels, one of which is a knowledge base software – named Docs. Docs is user-friendly software for creating help and FAQ articles quickly. It comes with a text editor that offers various formatting options.
The software lets agents quickly send helpful articles to customers via email without having to copy and paste content. This simplifies the process of finding solutions and reduces response time.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: 15 days
- Standard: $20/user/month billed yearly
- Plus: $40/user/month billed yearly
- Pro: $65/user/month billed yearly
Features
- Branding with color and formatting options or custom CSS
- Knowledge base reports to track search trends and page reads
- Content editor for adding text, visuals, and SEO details
- Content organizer that helps you categorize help articles by topic
- Embed help articles in a chat box, popup modal, or sidebar
Recommended read: Help Scout Pricing: Does it offer value for money?
8. ProProfs Knowledge Base: Best for Quick Documentation
ProProfs Knowledge Base helps teams create internal knowledge bases, user manuals, wikis, and other forms of documentation. It has a friendly user interface and many base templates to get you started quickly.
ProProfs Knowledge Base is just one product, but you can combine it with ProProfs’s full support suite — including chat, helpdesk, and survey tools. Note: You’ll have to pay more to access each extra tool.
Pricing
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: 15 days trial; and a free plan available for 1 author and up to 25 pages
- Business: $49/author/month; billed annually
Features
- Branding and customization for a visually-appealing, on-brand knowledge base
- Article translation into 90+ languages for a broader reach
- Reporting and analytics to track popular articles, author activity, and broken links
- Integrations. Connects seamlessly with Google Workspace, Olark, Jira, and more tools.
9. Tettra: Best for Onboarding and Training Support Agents
Tettra is a knowledge management tool built to help companies centralize team information scattered across several docs. Since Tettra is a standalone tool that does not include other customer service channels, it is best for organizing internal company knowledge, like agent onboarding and training guidelines.
Tettra is not an exhaustive support solution, but combining it with a multi-channel helpdesk will help you serve customers across different touchpoints. Say you build out onboarding and training materials on Tettra. Your agents can learn/upskill through these resources, enabling them to handle support requests (on your customer service platform) more efficiently.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: 30 days trial
- Basic: $4/user/month billed yearly
- Scaling: $8/user/month billed yearly
- Professional: $12/user/month billed yearly
Features
- A simple editor to create answers to repetitive questions
- Content suggestions that help you find relevant answers
- Private categories to restrict permissions for certain articles
- Integrations. Connects seamlessly with Google Workspace, Zapier, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.
10. Heroic Knowledge Base: Best for WordPress Sites
Heroic Knowledge Base (KB) is a plugin that lets you customize a searchable help center on your WordPress-based website. While other knowledge base plugins can work on WordPress sites, Heroic KB offers a high degree of customization to align with your brand guidelines.
Owned by HeroThemes, Heroic KB is one of the most popular knowledge base plugins on WordPress.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: Not available
- Pro: $239.70/year
- Plus: $159.60/year
- Essential: $149.50/year
Features
- User restrictions. Make individual pages and categories privately or publicly accessible
- Article attachments. In-built support for adding downloadable files to help articles
- Table of contents for easy reader navigation
- Setup Assistant. Placeholder templates to guide your knowledge base creation process
- Revision history so you can view or restore old article versions when necessary
11. Knowmax: Best for Improving Customer Engagement
Knowmax is a CX-first Knowledge management platform that helps you create a single source of truth for your organization-wide knowledge. It is a DIY ( do-it-yourself) tool to help you turn complex customer service SOPs into easily consumable formats like next best action workflows, visual how-to guides, articles & FAQs.
Your agents can easily access guided and contextual knowledge within their workflow with Knowmax’s seamless integration into your everyday CX tools. With an intuitive knowledge base interface, agents can bookmark their favorite content, share content feedback, and stay up-to-date with daily updates.
Additionally, the micro-segmented analytics that are already integrated offer significant benefits by providing insights into user search activity, content performance, and the time spent on each piece of information. This information can be used to make data-driven decisions.
Pricing
- Free trial/plan: Not available
- Basic: $34.99/year
- Advanced: contact [email protected] for pricing
Features
- Built-in micro-segmented analytics to optimize knowledge health
- DIY content creation.
- Comes with an intuitive knowledge base interface.
- No code, cognitive decision trees for SOP adherence
- Picture guides for step-by-step resolution through visual support.
What are the benefits of a knowledge base?
A knowledge base adds value to your user experience in many ways. It enables agents to provide faster answers or resolutions. It also helps customers find answers to their most pressing questions — without having to wait to speak to an agent.
A well-arranged and optimized knowledge base contributes to:
- Easy/quick access to information
- Consistent support experiences
- Proactive customer service
- Reduced phone calls or support tickets
- Improved search engine rankings
Essential Features of A Knowledge Base Software
The right set of features in a knowledge base can make it easier for customers to find answers to their queries by themselves. So, what do you look for in a knowledge base?
- User-Friendly Interface: The software should have an intuitive design that makes it easy for both employees and customers to navigate and find information. A clean layout with a robust search function can significantly enhance user experience.
- Content Management Tools: The ability to easily create, edit, and organize content is vital. This includes rich text editors, options for embedding images and videos, and a straightforward way to categorize and tag articles for better organization.
- Accessibility and Mobile Responsiveness: The knowledge base should be accessible from various devices, including smartphones and tablets, ensuring that users can find information anytime, anywhere.
- Permission and Access Control: Different levels of access might be necessary to ensure that sensitive information is only available to authorized personnel. For instance, some documents might be for the internal access only, while others can be public-facing.
- Analytics and Reporting: Insights into how the knowledge base is being used can be incredibly valuable. This might include data on the most searched terms, frequently accessed articles, and user feedback on content usefulness.
- Integration Capabilities: The software should seamlessly integrate with other business tools, such as CRM systems, help desk software, or internal communication platforms, to ensure smooth information flow across the organization.
- Feedback Mechanisms: Allowing users to provide feedback on articles helps maintain the accuracy and relevance of the content. This can include simple upvote/downvote systems, comment sections, or rating scales.
- Version Control: In certain industries, you might have to update/change content regularly. Having a version control system ensures that users can track changes over time and refer to previous versions of documents if needed.
- Multilingual Support: For global businesses, offering content in multiple languages is essential to ensure that all employees and customers can access information in their preferred language.
What are the different types of knowledge base software?
Depending on your target audience, a knowledge base can either be internal or external. An internal knowledge base is for your team, while an external knowledge base is for your customers.
When building out either one or a combination of both, consider these common types of knowledge base softwares and choose the best fit:
- Intranet software are private social networks typically used for team-wide communication and collaboration.
- Wikis are documentation platforms that let either employees or customers author searchable libraries of help articles, similar to community forums.
- Open-source knowledge base software are tools with source codes that anyone can check, edit, or upgrade to meet their specific team needs.
- Standalone knowledge base software are dedicated tools for writing, organizing, and sharing product or company knowledge.
- Knowledge base software integrations include plugins or add-on tools that come together — or connect easily — with your core customer service platforms to enable multichannel support experiences.
How can I create a knowledge base?
Once you’ve decided who you’re creating for and the software tool to use, it’s time to set up your knowledge base. Though the process will vary across different team sizes and structures, these tips will give you a good sense of direction:
- Put one team member in charge of knowledge base permissions and content management.
- Create a guide for classifying issues that deserve a help page.
- Assign members of your team to be knowledge base writers so that every help article has a dedicated owner.
- Create help article templates for uniformity and speed.
- Create a glossary of key terms for knowledge base readers.
- Identify one or more subject matter experts to review articles for tone and accuracy.
Recommended read: How to Create a Knowledge Base in 8 Easy Steps!
Wrapping Up
Agents need to know about your products and services, and customers like to find their own answers. That’s where a knowledge base can help.
But, choosing the right knowledge base can be a big decision. We made a list of the 10 best ones, but you need to pick the one that works best for your business.
Tip: Figure out your needs and goals beforehand. Understand the features and benefits of all the software. If you want to make things easier, try a demo of the tools you like the most.
On that note, Hiver offers a 7-day free trial. You can use this trial to setup your Knowledge Base software (in minutes) and get a feel of how intuitive the whole experience is – for your team and the end customer.
