Knowledge base software

Today's marketplace is all about convenience: customers want to resolve issues as soon as possible, while employees want to find important documents and information without crawling through internal databases. The key to solving both internal and external needs is a knowledge base.

Knowledge bases are libraries of information that consumers and employees can use to self-serve and boost productivity—and you can build these resources with the right knowledge base software. In this guide, we detail a handful of options on the market so you can find the best option for your needs, improve your customer experience (CX), and streamline internal processes.

More in this guide:

• What is knowledge base software?
• Why do you need knowledge base software?
• Who uses knowledge base software?
• Types of knowledge base tools
• Features of knowledge base platforms
• Benefits of knowledge base software
• The 10 best knowledge base software
• What is the difference between knowledge base software and help desk software?
• How is knowledge base software related to knowledge management software?
• How to choose the right knowledge base solution
• Frequently asked questions
• Try Zendesk knowledge base software

Knowledge base software helps teams build and manage a knowledge base. These digital libraries of information house content like how-to articles, FAQ pages, product guides, onboarding information, community forums, and other related resources.

Knowledge bases can be geared towards customers, employees, or a combination of both. The right software can make it easy to house, manage, and access this information. With it, teams can improve communication, knowledge sharing, and the overall customer experience.

You need knowledge base software because it can help you centralize information, improve efficiency, and enhance customer and employee self-service.

Businesses that don't have knowledge base software tend to be more disorganized. Their customers have no choice but to reach out to the support team whenever they have questions, resulting in more calls to service agents and potentially higher first reply times (FRT). Their employees have to haphazardly search for information through scattered documents, emails, and other internal databases.

Businesses that have comprehensive knowledge base software operate much more smoothly. They can deliver 24/7 support to customers and help them find their answers independently—resulting in a better CX and lowering the strain on support teams.

They can also empower employees to be more efficient with onboarding, knowledge sharing, internal collaboration, fact-finding, and more. Overall, knowledge base software is a powerful tool for improving information management and workflows.

Any business or customer can use knowledge base software for self-service, customer support, internal documentation, and team collaboration.

Knowledge base users can range from businesses and team members to customers:

• Customers can use knowledge bases to self-serve, talk with other product users via community forums, and more.
• Support agents use knowledge base software to streamline support processes and find information for customers quickly.
• Technical support uses knowledge bases to find internal product documentation and document bug fixes.
• Sales teams use knowledge bases to access product guides and messaging documents.
• New employees use knowledge bases to onboard and find new information while learning about the company.

No matter the industry or job title, anyone who needs a structured, easily accessible information hub can benefit from a knowledge base system.

Knowledge base tools offer different areas of focus to best fit the user’s needs. Here are a few of the most common.

Internal knowledge base

An internal knowledge base focuses on employees and the employee experience (EX). It serves as a centralized hub for internal resources like company policies, employee handbooks, training materials, and IT support documentation.

External knowledge base

An external knowledge base is a customer-facing resource that offers self-service support and helps businesses improve the customer experience. It can include how-to articles, troubleshooting guides, community forums, technical information, and more to help users resolve common issues independently.

Product/process documentation

A product or process documentation knowledge base stores detailed information about a company’s products, services, or workflows. Process documentation helps teams distribute information about the best way to resolve issues and handle tasks, while product documentation includes detailed information on the product's features, functionality, and use cases.

FAQ pages

An FAQ page serves as a simplified knowledge base, offering quick answers to common customer or employee inquiries. They are often structured in a question-and-answer format and can be found on a business website, customer portal, or internal dashboard.

Knowledge base platforms come equipped with several must-have features. When searching for a product, ensure it has the following.

AI agents

AI agents are advanced chatbots that can autonomously resolve a wide range of customer requests, from simple inquiries to complex issues. In a knowledge base, you can connect the technology to your backend systems to help your users find what they need quickly.

For example, if a customer tells an AI agent about a product problem, the agent could automatically surface a relevant how-to article to solve the customer's issue.

Search capabilities

Knowledge base platforms need comprehensive search capabilities to help users find what they need, and two such capabilities are generative and semantic search. Generative search provides users with AI-generated answers to search queries, allowing them to get quick answers without reading through documents. Semantic search captures the meaning of the user's search query, helping them find what they need even if they don't know the best way to search for it.

Knowledge management

Knowledge management helps teams gather, organize, update, and share information; knowledge base software offers these capabilities effortlessly. Features like article tagging, categorization, and automated content suggestions can help businesses structure their knowledge base effectively and make it as accessible as possible.

Customization features

Knowledge bases need to capture the essence of your business—otherwise, it will look out of place to your users. Platforms with customization features allow users to tailor their knowledge base to match their branding and user needs. Common features include adjusting layouts, customizing color schemes, and adding branding.

Content version control

Content version control helps teams manage content revisions, track changes, and restore previous versions if needed. This is useful for updating outdated information, collaborating on new content, and maintaining compliance if involved in a regulated industry.

Feedback and analytics

Feedback and analytics tools help businesses identify what is—and isn't—effective in their knowledge base. Users can track individual assets by monitoring comments, "likes," or view count, or they can monitor their entire knowledge base with usage analytics to identify which articles are most helpful and which areas should be reworked.

Integrations

Knowledge base platforms must integrate with the tools you use daily, like customer support software, CRM systems, and client portals. This helps teams manage content without skipping a beat and search for content in the same ecosystem.

An easy-to-use editor

Finally, easy-to-use editors can simplify content creation and management, helping teams create, update, and publish content. Features like collaborative editing, rich text formatting, and drag-and-drop functionality make it easy to maintain high-quality content without requiring technical expertise.

Knowledge base software can bring several benefits to your business. These are a few of the most impactful.

Improved customer experience

A comprehensive knowledge base empowers customers to solve their problems instantly—either by using search features or an AI agent—reducing the need to contact your support team. This increases customer satisfaction and creates a more efficient CX.

Enhanced employee experience

Employees can use knowledge bases to find product or process information, collaborate with colleagues, and streamline onboarding. This makes it easier for them to do their jobs, enhancing EX while fostering employee development.

Boosted agent efficiency

Customer support teams benefit from knowledge bases by having quick access to customer information, product details, troubleshooting guides, FAQs, and more. This reduces time spent searching for answers and allows them to resolve customer issues more efficiently.

Decreased information silos

Knowledge base software helps break down data silos by making company knowledge accessible across teams and departments. A shared knowledge base ensures everyone has access to the same up-to-date resources—rather than having critical information hidden in emails or individual files.

Now let's dive into 10 knowledge base software options. Below, we highlight each platform in detail so you can find the best option.

• Zendesk: Best for AI knowledge base for CX and internal teams
• Document360: Best for mixed uses for teams and customers
• Atlassian Confluence: Best for team-wide knowledge sharing
• Notion: Best for education
• Help Scout: Best for no-code setup
• Pro Profs: Best for ProProfs users
• Knowmax: Best for visual guides and workflows
• Zoho Desk: Best for Zoho users
• Nuclino: Best for interdepartmental communication
• Helpjuice: Best for building tutorials

1. Zendesk

Zendesk offers an easy-to-use AI-powered knowledge base suitable for CX teams, support agents, and internal employees.

Generative AI capabilities help teams transform just a few bullet points into fully-fledged articles, simplify content, and refine tone. From there, users can customize assets to match the look and feel of their brand, while managers can establish publishing schedules, approval workflows, and verification intervals to ensure content keeps coming.

An AI-powered tool capabilities use machine learning to help keep your knowledge base relevant and grow your assets. Powered by AI, this feature can automatically spotlight common trends within your support tickets and recommend new help center articles. For added insight, reporting and analytics features can inform teams what content is performing well, and what needs to be revisited.

When it's time for users to find the assets they need, comprehensive search capabilities and advanced AI agents lead the charge. Our AI-powered generative search functionality gives ChatGPT-like answers to search queries, giving users instant answers without sifting through results. Semantic search understands what the user is searching for based on similar keywords—allowing them to find what they need even if they don't know the best way to do so. Finally, teams can link Zendesk AI agents to their backend systems, allowing the advanced chatbots to resolve customer requests from start to finish. They can also surface relevant help center articles to users with easily-solvable problems.

User reviews

• “All in One tool to support our clients in different channels.”
• “Zendesk Support Suite: Facilitating Smooth Customer Support.”
• “Zendesk is great.”
• “Likely the coolest support tool ever!!!”

Pricing: Plans start at $55 per agent/month. 14-day free trial available

Explore more Zendesk pricing plans.

2. Document360

Best for: Mixed uses for teams and customers

Document360 is a knowledge base software suitable for both internal and external needs. Users can establish a public help center to house how-to guides, FAQs, and troubleshooting guides, a private resource filled with user guides, onboarding documents, and other internal documentation, or a mixed help center that includes both. The platform also includes Eddy, a ChatGPT-like AI search assistant that can help users find answers and surface relevant articles.

User reviews

• “Powerful solution and a fantastic support team.”
• “Good tool.”
• “This product creates a sleek-looking Knowledge Base, but its content editor needs to be more robust.”

Pricing: Contact Document360. A 14-day free trial is available.

3. Atlassian Confluence

Best for: Team-wide knowledge sharing

Atlassian Confluence is a knowledge base platform that focuses on reducing information silos and sharing content across teams. Businesses can use the pages feature to take notes, plan projects, or create new documents—or use AI to create the content for them.

Whiteboard capabilities allow teams to create flowcharts and collaboratively brainstorm, while databases help users categorize, tag, and organize assets. Teams can also use the spaces feature to structure projects and establish customizable permissions and other security features.

User reviews

• “Great Tool for Knowledge Management, Collaboration, and Project Scoping.”
• “Confluence is Convoluted but can be Complexly Powerful.”
• “Confluence needs to improve.”

Pricing: Paid plans start at $6.40 per user/month for up to 100 users. A free plan and a seven-day free trial are available.

4. Notion

Best for: Education

Notion is a tool that helps businesses, teams, teachers, and creators organize content and boost workflows. The platform focuses on three core areas: projects, wikis, and docs. The projects tab is a complete overview of tasks and other to-dos that teams can use to assign work, or educators to assign lesson plans or assignments.

Wikis are organized databases that house similar types of information, and docs are individual documents that users can create from scratch or via a template. Notion also includes AI and automation capabilities to help users create, organize, and improve assets and workflows.

User reviews

• “Notion: My second brain.”
• “Pretty good on the whole.”
• “Good tool but sometimes hard to use.”

Pricing: Paid plans start at $10 per seat/month, billed annually. A free plan is available.

5. Help Scout

Best for: No-code setup

Help Scout is a shared inbox, help center, and live chat software provider that offers knowledge base capabilities. With it, users can create branded content via a no-code interface. AI capabilities can help writers self-edit a document, expand thoughts, or translate into different languages, while security features allow users to restrict access to that document via an API or make the asset public. Analytics capabilities can alert businesses to visitor numbers, trending topics, article rankings, and knowledge gaps.

User reviews

• “Down-to-earth product that works.”
• “Entry-level customer care platform.”
• “What you want vs. what you get.”

Pricing: Paid plans start at $50 per month for up to 100 contacts, billed annually. A free plan and a free trial are available.

6. ProProfs

Best for: ProProfs users

ProProfs is a help desk software that offers knowledge base capabilities. Businesses can choose to create assets from scratch or use a variety of templates that they can customize with a logo and color scheme to match branding. Once users establish the virtual space, they can upload files like Word documents, images, videos, and PDFs. The knowledge base also integrates with ProProfs Live Chat, ProProfs Help Desk, and ProProfs Survey Maker—so teams can link their systems if they are already a ProProfs user.

User reviews

• “Easy Publishing.”
• “Great tool for creating interactive user manuals.”
• “In the early stages of testing”

Pricing: Paid plans start at $49 per author/month, billed annually. A free plan and a free trial are available.

7. Knowmax

Best for: Visual guides and workflows

Knowmax is a knowledge management product that can help businesses create internal and external knowledge bases. When building content, users can either upload articles or create new ones directly on the platform. Authors can create categories, establish keywords, embed relevant files and URLs directly on the page, and interlink any content previously published on Knowmax. Teams can also create FAQs and visual guides to better assist customers, and decision trees that can convert internal SOPs into guided workflows.

User reviews

• “Knowmax is a solid choice for any growing (or already well-established) business.”
• “Single platforms for knowledge base and customer service.”
• “It is a good tool. Needs more effective utilization.”

Pricing: Contact Knowmax.

8. Zoho Desk

Best for: Zoho users

Zoho Desk is customer service help desk software with external-facing knowledge base capabilities. Businesses can create knowledge bases by brand and further categorize them by sub-categories and brand-specific topics. Teams can analyze support tickets and common search queries to determine what topics are important to their customers and create content surrounding those queries.

Once established, users can evaluate views, likes, dislikes, article usage metrics, and customer feedback to determine how effective their content is. The Zoho knowledge base capabilities also integrate with Zoho CRM, Mail, Projects, and the rest of the Zoho ecosystem, allowing Zoho users to link all features into one ecosystem.

User reviews

• “A single solution for all of our requirements.”
• “Decent Knowledge base platform.”
• “Functional but poor user interface.”

Pricing: Plans start at $7 per user/month, billed annually. A 15-day free trial is available.

9. Nuclino

Best for: Interdepartmental communication

Nuclino is a knowledge management software that focuses on internal collaboration between departments like HR, sales, marketing, and IT. The product features a blog-style editor that allows users to create articles, embed links, categorize content, and more directly on the platform.

Teams can structure the knowledge base by creating collections and sub-collections that are relevant for each internal department and end user. Beyond articles, businesses can also build diagrams, flowcharts, and custom boards. Generative search functionality can answer questions directly from the search bar or surface relevant content.

User reviews

• “Excellent tool for online editing.”
• “Very fluent handling of markdown for a scaling personal knowledge system.”
• “Disappointing Experience with Nuclino for Document Hosting and Team Collaboration.”

Pricing: Paid plans start at $6 per user/month, billed annually. A free plan and a 14-day free trial are available.

10. Helpjuice

Best for: Interdepartmental communication

Helpjuice is a product that helps users create and manage a knowledge base. It features a rich text editor that allows users to build, edit, and customize content directly on the platform. Once teams create resources, they can categorize them with unlimited folders and tags to best fit their needs.

AI-powered search functionality helps users find the articles and resources they need, while the AI chatbot can communicate directly with employees to find answers and surface relevant content. The Wizardshot feature allows teams to create AI-powered video tutorials in which they can record their screen or further explain a topic to future readers.

User reviews

• “A powerful and intuitive solution for knowledge bases.”
• “Some technical aspects of managing with Helpjuice.”
• “An excellent frontend customization experience ruined by intransparent backend development.”

Pricing: Plans start at $120 per month for up to 4 users. A free trial is available.

Knowledge base software and help desk software are related but have a few key differences. Knowledge base software is a library of information designed to help users solve problems independently, reducing the need for direct support. Help desk software, on the other hand, empowers support agents to resolve customer requests more efficiently and can manage and track support tickets. In short, knowledge base software is better for facilitating self-service support, while help desk software is better suited for providing direct customer support.

Knowledge base software is a subset of knowledge management software. Knowledge management is the broader discipline of creating, sharing, and managing an organization's collective knowledge.

Knowledge base software is a key component of a knowledge management strategy, acting as the central hub for accessible and usable information.

Choosing the right knowledge base solution depends on your organization's specific needs, budget, and long-term goals. To make the best choice, consider the following key factors:

• Define your goals: Start by identifying why you need a knowledge base—you may want an external knowledge base to help customers or an internal option to aid your employees. Understanding your primary objectives will help you choose a solution that aligns with your business needs.
• Weigh integration options: Your knowledge base should effortlessly integrate with the tools you use every day, such as customer self-service software or knowledge management tools.
• Consider scalability: As your business grows, your knowledge base should be able to scale with you. Choose a solution that can handle increasing content, users, and evolving business needs without compromising performance.
• Prioritize data security: Knowledge bases often store sensitive business and customer information, so security is critical. Look for features like role-based access control, encryption, and compliance with industry regulations to protect employee and customer data.
• Contemplate time to value: The right knowledge base should be easy to implement and adopt, minimizing downtime and training requirements. Additionally, you should be able to get up and running quickly to realize the value of your investment as soon as possible.

By carefully evaluating these factors, you can select a knowledge base solution that meets your current needs while supporting future growth.