15 Best Knowledge Base Software & Tools for 2023

The preference for self-service platforms is on the rise. 

The blazing-fast speed and incredible convenience these platforms provide are just a few reasons for their increasing popularity. 

If you, too, are looking to build a self-help portal for your customers and employees, knowledge base software is your go-to tool. 

When used smartly, knowledge base software can prove to be a valuable asset for your organization. It enables you to centrally manage all company knowledge to make learning and problem-solving easier for end-users.

This comprehensive guide draws light on the essential elements of this tool and how it can be used. It also talks about the 15 leading knowledge base software that you can consider in 2023. 

Let’s go!

What Is Knowledge Base Software

Knowledge base software is a tool that helps you author, store, and publish self-service content for your customers and employees. Using this tool, you can build knowledge bases, documentation, manuals, and guides consisting of how-to articles, video tutorials, and FAQs. 

You can easily create content with a built-in editor and customize it with features like CSS and white labeling. Such tools also come with a robust reporting system that helps you unlock key insights into how your self-service content is performing. 

Types of Knowledge Bases You Should Know

Depending on your target audience – customers or employees, you can create two types of knowledge bases, such as: 

1. External Knowledge Base 

An external knowledge base is a self-help platform where customers can find all the help they need to get acquainted with your products or services and solve problems on their own. It is a hub of meaningful articles enriched with video tutorials that demonstrate how your products can be put to maximum use.

2. Internal Knowledge Base

An internal knowledge base is a storehouse of critical business knowledge meant for consumption by your employees. It comprises information on your company policies, standard operating procedures, products and services, clients, and a lot more. 

By making such critical information easily accessible, this self-help platform helps boost team productivity, employee onboarding, and overall organizational efficiency. 

Here’s a quick video that explains everything about an internal knowledge base. 

Why Is Knowledge Base Software Important for Your Business

Whether you are an e-commerce store, a growing company, or an established corporation, creating a knowledge base is a fool-proof strategy that can give your business a definite edge in the marketplace. 

Let’s explore the top benefits of knowledge base software for your customers and employees. 

1. Knowledge Base for Customers 

A knowledge base software for customer support system can bring multiple benefits to the table, such as: 

✅ Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Today’s empowered customers love to be on their own. 

Self-reliance promises better and faster solutions. It’s much more convenient for customers to solve problems independently than wait for hours on calls or emails to get basic questions answered. By delivering instant 24×7 assistance, a knowledge base ensures your customers have a satisfying experience with your brand. 

✅ Keeps Your Support Tickets Down 

It’s common to find agents being flooded with tickets, most of which are for trivial issues that can be easily handled by customers themselves. With a comprehensive knowledge base at your customers’ disposal, tickets can be substantially reduced. 

As customers start addressing challenges on their own, your agents will have to deal with lesser tickets, and they can focus their energy on more critical tasks. 

Read More: How to Reduce Support Tickets With Self-Service Knowledge Base

✅ Reduce Ticket Resolution Time 

Since common issues can now be resolved by customers, agents will have the bandwidth to focus on complex problems that require more time and effort. As the ticket queue shortens, your agents can spend more time on serious customer issues and resolve them at a much faster speed than before. This brings down the average resolution time and moves you closer to achieving customer delight. 

With such astounding knowledge base software benefits, more and more business leaders are coming forward to make huge investments in this channel. 

2. Knowledge Base for Employees 

Just like customers, your employees too can benefit from a knowledge base. Let’s see how. 

✅ Fosters a Collaborative Work Culture 

 An internal knowledge base makes business-critical information seamlessly accessible to employees. Democratizing company knowledge enables teams to quickly access the information they need and share it within their departments. 

This saves time and effort, eliminates silos, and, most importantly, lets employees work collaboratively on projects and stay on the same page. As collaboration improves, there is more innovation in product development and delivery, customer satisfaction goes up, and your sales start growing. 

Read More: Cross-Team Collaboration: Benefits, Best Practices, & Examples

✅ Helps Employees be Their Productive Best 

Productivity goes down the drain when employees have to spend hours on emails, calls, and scattered documents to get the information they need. A centralized knowledge resource takes the unnecessary to and fro out of the picture by making information access a matter of a few clicks. 

With all the help right at their fingertips, employees can stay laser-focused on the tasks at hand and work more productively.  

✅ Aids Employee Onboarding 

New employees have a hard time adjusting to new company culture and understanding the new roles and responsibilities.

 An informative internal knowledge base, wiki, or employee handbook introduces them to your company policies and working style, so they can get up to speed faster. Every time new hires are stuck at work, this self-help resource points them in the right direction and helps them work effectively right from day one. 

✅ Improves Organizational Efficiency 

Internal knowledge base solutions promote a culture of knowledge sharing where employees can share their insights, experiences, and expertise under one roof. 

The downtime for employees to get what they need reduces drastically, which helps them perform tasks and complete projects successfully and on time. 

On top of that, it keeps your workforce up to date with the latest company news and developments. This improves the overall organizational efficiency, productivity, and quality of deliverables.

Read More: Best Knowledge Sharing Tools For 2023

How to Choose the Right Knowledge Base Software

Getting your hands on the right knowledge base software is a pivotal first step that lays a strong foundation for the rest of the process. 

Before you go on to pick a tool, there are several factors that should be considered to ensure your decision turns out right. 

1. Get Your Basics Clear

Basics related to pricing, integrations, customization, security, etc., must be crystal clear before you zero in on a tool. 

Here are some questions you should ask yourself to gain clarity about what you really need: 

• Do you want free or paid software? 
• What is your budget for the tool? 
• What kind of software integrations are you looking for? 
• Do you need a code-free tool? 
• How many customizations and security levels do you require? 
• What advanced functionalities do you need? 

Once you have the answers to these questions, you will be able to do your research right and make an informed decision. 

2. Are There Any Other Solutions for Creating a Knowledge Base? 

Ever thought that WordPress could be used for creating a knowledge base? 

It is inarguably a great tool to have in your tech stack. However, it is not a specialist tool for building a customized knowledge base with a unique domain. 

WordPress is essentially a Content Management System designed to help you build your company’s website. 

It allows you to add a knowledge base to your website using a plugin. These plugins have several limitations in terms of SEO, searchability, and access rights.

For example, you cannot keep your content private. Setting a review and approval workflow is also not possible. On top of that, managing a large quantity of content can be a big challenge with WordPress. 

If you need advanced functionalities for building a stellar knowledge base that is optimized for search engines, is highly searchable, and works across devices, then WordPress will not fit the purpose. 

You will require a specialist tool that is well-equipped with the best-in-class features that aid you across all stages of knowledge base creation, right from content authoring and designing to user management and publishing. 

3. Free Vs. Paid: Which One Is Better? 

Who doesn’t like a free tool?

Especially if you are a small business on a tight budget, you might look for cost-cutting opportunities everywhere possible. 

While free tools look attractive on the surface, they are not for the long haul. 

Most free tools out there offer limited functionalities and soon become unsuitable as your company scales and documentation needs grow. Quite early in the journey, you will realize free tools are too basic and do not really serve the purpose. 

So, next time when you come across free knowledge base software, do not get carried away. Look for the features the free version provides and assess if those functionalities will prove beneficial in the long term. 

On the contrary, paid tools are equipped with advanced features that can be instrumental in shaping your knowledge base. Most tools on the market offer multiple paid plans. As the features get more advanced with each plan, the price also goes up. 

This is where you need to jot down your requirements and map them with the paid plans available. While for some of you, a starter plan might suffice, those with a large customer or employee base might need a customized, enterprise-level plan. 

4. Open Source & SaaS Knowledge Base Software: What Is the Difference? 

Now there are two types of knowledge base software you can adopt – open source and self-hosted. 

While both these types work well for building a knowledge base, the difference lies in how they function. 

✅ Open-Source knowledge base

Self-hosted or open-source knowledge base software gives you full freedom to modify the tool to your unique needs. You own the software code, so you can alter it to create just about anything you want. 

Since this tool is self-hosted, the responsibility of its upkeep and maintenance is on your shoulders. 

Right from the hosting to domain registration and security, you have to do it all in-house, which means more reliability and flexibility. 

Self-hosted knowledge base software is a good choice for those who need affordable solutions that give you the autonomy to create a completely customized knowledge base. 

✅ SaaS Knowledge Base

SaaS knowledge base platforms are hosted and managed by a third-party vendor. Unlike open source tools, these are managed completely by software manufacturers, thus relieving you from the tedious deployment. 

Even the maintenance and security is taken care of by the vendor, so you don’t need to have a dedicated internal IT team for the same. Every time something goes wrong or a bug bothers you, SaaS solutions offer prompt support, ensuring your problems are fixed at the earliest. 

With SaaS knowledge base software, there is little room for experimentation. However, the best part is you can get started with the tool right from the minute you sign up. In exchange for an yearly subscription fee, you get top-notch security, maintenance, and support. 

Another interesting element of SaaS tools is that they scale as the number of users increases and require no on-premise installation or regular maintenance. 

5. Infrastructure for Designing a Knowledge Base 

Another crucial factor to consider while choosing knowledge base software is whether or not it supports the infrastructure to design your help sites. 

Some of the top knowledge base software out there are loaded with engaging templates that help you kick-start the journey on the right foot. 

These templates are 100% customizable, which means they can be tailored to match your company’s branding. They are also well-equipped with a pre-designed: 

• Home page to give a bird’s eye view of your knowledge base content
• Table of contents that systematically lists all topics and pages 
• Search bar at the top to help readers get prompt access to information

Besides templates, an ideal knowledge base tool should offer robust customization features such as CSS, white-labeling, and a range of formatting options that help bring your content to life.

Key Features to Look for When Choosing Knowledge Base Software 

Finding the perfect knowledge base software from a sea of tools available online is a mountain-sized challenge. 

It is akin to looking for a needle buried deep inside a haystack. 

However, there is an easy way out.  If you know the key knowledge base features to look out for, you will be able to filter the tools and find the one that best aligns with your needs.

Here are some of the vital features that your knowledge base software must have: 

1. Expert-Designed Templates

As discussed in the previous section, ready-made knowledge base templates are crucial for creating a help page. They present you with a ready-made structure, so you can be completely focused on doing what really matters – creating useful knowledge base content. 

2. Access Rights & Permissions

This is a key feature that allows you to set access rights and permissions of users. You get full control over who can and cannot view, edit, or contribute to your knowledge base. 

3. Built-in Reports

A knowledge base software with analytics and reporting gives keen insights into how your help center is performing, which articles are helpful, and which are not, what new content to add or delete, etc. This data can be leveraged to make meaningful decisions for knowledge base improvement. 

4. SEO Capabilities

The best knowledge base software helps you build SEO-friendly content that can be easily crawled and indexed by search engines. This is an essential feature for improving your knowledge base traffic and ranking. 

5. Review Workflow

The knowledge base tool you choose should allow you to set up a review workflow for all articles, so they can be easily tracked right from the time they are written till they finally get published. 

6. Third-Party Integrations

Knowledge base software with powerful external integrations pack a punch, ensuring enhanced performance. Look for software that plays well with the leading ticketing, collaboration, and analytics tools. 

Watch this video to learn more about how to choose the right knowledge base software. 

15 Best Knowledge Base Software for 2023

After rigorous research and scrolling through hundreds of websites, we have curated this comprehensive list of the best knowledge base tools, so you can make a well-informed decision. 

1. ProProfs Knowledge Base

ProProfs Knowledge Base is a simple, feature-rich tool that helps you create both public and private knowledge bases with absolute ease. In addition to knowledge base, you can create network documentation, FAQs, manuals, user guides, and much more. 

Customizable and easy to use, the tool comes loaded with stellar features that aid content authoring, designing, and publishing. Besides third-party platforms, ProProfs Knowledge Base also plays nicely with sibling tools – ProProfs Help Desk and Live Chat, helping you provide 360° support to customers. 

Key Features

• Easy to use editor for content authoring and publishing
• Insightful reports to measure and improve your knowledge base performance
• Granular roles and permissions to manage user access
• SEO functionality to boost knowledge base traffic and visibility

Pros

✅ The tool is easy to use and can be set up in minutes

✅ Simple and straightforward pricing structure with no hidden fees or month-end surprises

Cons

❌ At times, the tool lags in speed

❌ The tool doesn’t allow internal comments on articles

Choose it for: An affordable knowledge base software with advanced search features, beautifully designed templates, enterprise-grade security, no-code functionality.

Pricing: Starts at $49/month.

2. Guru

If you are specifically looking for a company wiki solution, then Guru is a great bet. 

It is one of the best internal knowledge base software options out there that allows you to capture information from the tools your team frequently uses, such as Google Docs, Slack, email, and CRM. This knowledge can then be stored in “Cards” to make it instantly accessible for your teams. 

Although Guru is designed mainly for internal use, you can also publish content externally through its APIs. 

Key features:

• Organize information in collections and boards
• Track duplicate content in your wiki and take immediate action
• Gain deep insights into what content your team is using
• Set custom knowledge trigger and make information search easier

Pros:

✅ Knowledge can effortlessly be captured via Slack and converted into Cards

✅ Powerful integrations with tools like Confluence, Slack, and Zendesk

Cons:

❌ Adding videos to Cards can be cumbersome

❌ Search can be slow at times

Choose it for: Internal communications, native Slack integration, browser extensions

Pricing: Starts from $6/month (3 Users)

3. Nuclino

Nuclino is another great knowledge base platform that designed mainly for internal use, it gives your teams a fast and seamless way to collaborate. They can manage projects and share knowledge easily in one unified space, which helps prevent silos and context switching. 

Nuclino is quick to set up, easy to search, and works beautifully with over 40 popular platforms like Slack, Figma, and Google Drive, among others. 

Key features:

• Create content quickly with drag and drop editor
• Restore document versions and undo unwanted changes
• Explore content as PDF and Word documents
• Drag and drop media to your documents

Pros:

✅ Dedicated mobile and desktop apps for Android and iOS

✅ Teams can use internal comments to collaborate on documents

Cons: 

❌ More formatting options can be added

❌ UX could use improvement

Choose it for: Real-time collaboration, views and visualizations

Pricing: Starts from $6/user/month

Read More: Top 10 Nuclino Alternatives & Competitors 2023

4. Zoho Desk

Zoho is a popular omnichannel customer service software that comes equipped with a help desk, self-service, and AI capabilities. Zoho Desk offers the knowledge base as part of its customer support suite. 

What’s interesting about its knowledge base software that in addition to help centers, it also helps you build forums and communities for your customers to discuss problems and get instant answers. For a more elaborate solution, customers can submit tickets right from the help center and even track their status. 

Key features: 

• Set up fully customized, multi-brand help centers 
• Create a help center that is optimized for search engines
• Track customers’ engagement and self-service usage with reports
• Extract relevant articles from help centers and resolve tickets faster.

Pros:

✅ Customers can submit tickets or even respond to comments right from the help center

✅ Customers can chat with your support agents from the same interface

Cons:

❌ The knowledge base is not offered as a standalone solution. This means you have to pay for the entire package even if all you need is their knowledge base. 

❌ The tool’s search system lacks efficiency

Choose it for: Multi-brand help center, forums and communities, SEO capabilities Pricing: Starts at$16.28/agent/month

5. Confluence

For businesses looking for the best internal knowledge base tool that is reliable and has a good reputation in the market, Confluence is a good choice. This tool comes with a freemium plan to get started with.

It offers cloud-based knowledge base software for remote teams where your employees can manage knowledge, collaborate on projects, and also stay connected with their colleagues. Teams can pick one of their templates and start creating a knowledge base in no time. 

The best part is you can extend Confluence’s capabilities by integrating it with over 3000 apps including Slack and JIRA. 

Key features: 

• Best practice templates to help you kick-start the process with ease
• Organize your business knowledge in well-structured pages and spaces
• Send real-time notifications and keep teams updated
• Secure your knowledge base with advanced roles and permissions

Pros:

✅ It’s easy to stay updated on recent activities and ongoing work with a personalized home page

✅ Dedicated mobile apps for iOS and Android

Cons:

❌ As per some users, the tool has a steep learning curve

❌Online reviews state that its search system is not that impressive

Choose it for: Remote-friendly workspace, project collaboration, best-practice templates 

Pricing: Starts at$5.50/user/month

Read More: 10 Best Atlassian Confluence Alternatives for 2023

6. Zendesk Guide

As one of the oldest and most popular knowledge base tools, Zendesk focuses on providing conversational and connected experiences across channels. Its knowledge base software, popularly known as Zendesk Guide, is offered as a part of the tool’s customer support suite. 

As one of the best knowledge base systems, Zendesk Guide also provides contextual self-service right inside your product for an exceptional customer experience. What more? Personalize your knowledge base just as you like, localize it in over 40 languages, and take your customer support to a whole new level. 

Key features: 

• Translate your knowledge base in over 40 languages
• Share article recommendations inside customer support tickets
• Manage reusable content and update it across articles
• Let agents keep your help center updated with team publishing options

Pros:

✅ You can preview the customizations before final publishing

✅ It offers an answer bot for super quick and 24×7 self-service

Cons:

❌ Only one help center can be created in its basic plan

❌ It doesn’t offer a knowledge base as a standalone solution

Choose it for: In-context self-service, team publishing, multiple language support

Pricing: Starts at $49/agent/month

Read More: 10 Best Zendesk Alternatives & Competitors for 2023

7. HelpCrunch

An all-in-one customer support platform, HelpCrunch is one of the best knowledge base software for small, medium, and growing businesses. It helps you provide 24×7 multichannel customer support via chat, email, and self-service. This knowledge base tool offers various features, which makes it a popular knowledge base among small businesses. 

With a powerful editor and well-structured hierarchies, HelpCrunch makes content authoring a breeze. Its search function automatically suggests keyword-relevant answers and provides customers with a top-notch information-gathering experience. 

Key features:

• The track failed searches and customer reactions with built-in reports
• Make your knowledge base easy to discover with search engine optimization
• Provide customers with self-service articles in the chat widget
• Set up a custom domain and give it a unique touch

Pros: 

✅ Simple to set up and use

✅ Cost-effective tool for growing businesses

Cons: 

❌ Its reporting system lacks depth

❌ You cannot translate your knowledge base into multiple languages

Choose it: FAQ chatbot, search engine optimization, real-time support

Pricing: Starts at $12/month

8. Notion

Notion is another knowledge base software worth considering in 2023. If building an internal knowledge base platform for your employees is your top priority, Notion can be a great choice. The tool helps you create a unified workspace where teams can collaborate to manage projects, maintain documents, and stay updated. 

Notion is a highly flexible tool as it combines the capabilities of both project and document management. You can customize the platform with the drag-and-drop interface and get started quickly with its extensive library of pre-designed templates. 

Key Features: 

• Thousands of pre-built templates to kickstart content creation
• Built-in co-editing and internal comments for team collaboration
• Fully control user access with customizable permissions
• Manage projects and tasks with Gantt Chart and Kanban Board

Pros:

✅ Provides the best of project and document management in one intuitive platform

✅ Fully-functional mobile app for on-the-go access

Cons:

❌ Steep learning curve

❌ Lacks detailed reports & analytics

Choose it for: Advanced permissions, community forums, 24×7 support

Pricing: Starts at $4/month. 

Read More: Top 10 Notion Alternatives & Competitors

9. Bloomfire

Bloomfire is another knowledge base solution designed for internal knowledge sharing and employee onboarding. It provides one unified and searchable space for your teams to share knowledge and collaborate on tasks. 

Its AI-powered search works at lightning speed, pulling out accurate answers in an instant. Customizable filters and automated tagging further make the search process more seamless. 

What’s unique about Bloomfire is that it allows employees to stay engaged via comments, likes, and personalized feeds. The tool also offers built-in analytics to track search trends and measure knowledge base performance. 

Key features: 

• Tailor your knowledge base with custom branding and white labeling 
• Create groups across departments and define their permission levels
• Share knowledge with employees through easy publishing options
• Identify knowledge gaps with built-in analytics

Pros: 

✅ Offers file syncing integrations with tools like Google Drive and OneDrive

✅ Important information can be bookmarked for easier access

 Cons: 

❌ Offers limited choice in terms of its price plans

❌ The search system shows unrelated posts at times as per some online reviews

Choose it for: AI-powered search, personalized feed, rich publishing

Pricing: Connect with Company

10. Whatfix

Whatfix is a reliable digital adoption platform that provides users with step-by-step instructions on how to use your software. It offers a contextual support experience, helping users navigate through the application seamlessly. 

Along with popups, beacons, and task lists, Whatfix provides a self-help knowledge base right within the application, so users do not have to go from pillar to post to find the help they need. Additionally, the tool’s in-app guidance aids user onboarding and accelerates product adoption. 

Key Features:

• Uncover actionable insights into user behavior and feedback
• Capture users’ feedback on your help widgets in real-time
• Create interactive help content without coding knowledge
• Tailor the content to your liking with advanced customization

Pros:

✅ Engage with users across multiple touchpoints such as widgets and popups

✅ Smart targeting for user-level segmentation

Cons:

❌ Programming knowledge is required for complex tasks like adding a popup in the middle of a flow

❌ Reporting can be glitchy at times

Choose it for: Omnichannel adoption, no-code functionality, advanced customization 

Pricing: Connect with Company

11. HelpScout

HelpScout is one of the best knowledge base software for startups that scale as your business grows. The tool offers a knowledge base as a part of its customer support solution that also includes live chat and a help desk. Its self-service tool, popularly known as Docs, helps you create both an internal and external knowledge base with ease. 

You can create knowledge-based articles and embed them anywhere on your website as a sidebar, popover, or modal. The tool’s auto-generated sitemap and SEO capabilities are good for optimizing these articles for search engines. 

Key features: 

• Get real-time collision detection alerts and avoid redundant work on articles
• Customize your knowledge base with custom CSS
• Track what your customers are looking for but not finding with Docs report
• Create private collections and allow access to only authorized users

Pros:

✅ You can add hyperlinks, tables, videos, and much more to articles

✅ Agents can share knowledge base article links in ticket responses

Cons:

❌ The tool can be costly for those looking only for specialized knowledge base software

❌ Only one Docs site is offered in the standard plan

Choose it for: Help widget, collision detection, collaborative editing

Pricing: Starts from $25/user/month

12. Slite

Slite provides a centralized home to all your company knowledge. It helps you create structured documents with its fast and flexible editor. The tool also offers ready-made templates that can help set up your documentation quickly. Each article can have a separate workflow that shows its progress from the time it is created until it gets published. 

Slite comes with both desktop and mobile apps so your teams can document information, collaborate on ideas, and share knowledge on the go. You can also plug in content by integrating Slite with tools like Trello, Loom, Slack, and the like. 

Key Features: 

• Write, edit, and style your content using an online editor
• Kickstart document creation quickly with pre-designed templates
• Keep teams on the same page with notifications 
• Foster collaboration with comments and mentions

Pros: 

✅ A vast range of templates 

✅ Intuitive UI and short learning curve

Cons: 

❌ Limited options for importing and exporting

❌ Navigation gets a little complex on mobile phones

Choose it for: Ready-to-use templates, collaborative editing, external integrations

Pricing: Starts from $6.67/member/month

Checkout: Top 10 Slite Alternatives for 2023

13. ServiceNow

ServiceNow’s knowledge management tool helps you offer self-service support to both customers and employees. Using this tool, you get a familiar writing experience similar to MS Word. You also get comprehensive analytics to monitor knowledge base usage, gaps, timelines, and feedback. Such insights can be harnessed to fine-tune your content and boost its performance. 

Furthermore, the built-in community gives customers and employees a shared space to crowdsource answers and get personalized support. 

Key Features: 

• Monitor KPIs to track user engagement and self-service performance
• Post content types of different formats including images and videos
• Encourage user engagement through gamification 
• Integrate with all channels so users can get a unified search experience

Pros:

✅ Handle and schedule IT requests across departments

✅ Fully customizable and highly scalable 

Cons: 

❌ The tool is not beginner-friendly

❌ Its mobile app is complex to set up

Choose it for: Actionable self-service insights, built-in community, guided setup

Pricing: Contact the company for a quote

14. HubSpot

HubSpot is another popular software that offers a suite of marketing, sales, service, and CMS solutions. Its knowledge base tool comes as a part of the service hub and offers top-notch features to help you create delightful self-service experiences. 

One of the most fascinating features of this tool is that it plays nicely with HubSpot’s CRM. Articles viewed by customers are automatically recorded in the CRM to ensure agents don’t share duplicate content in their ticket responses. 

Key Features: 

• Customize your knowledge base to your company’s branding
• Organize all articles into categories for seamless browsing
• Measure the impact of your knowledge base to elevate performance
• Capture feedback to get a pulse on customer and employee happiness

Pros: 

✅ Create knowledge base in a language your audience prefers

✅ All HubSpot solutions work in sync with each other

Cons: 

❌ Search can be little slow at times

❌ Lacks knowledge base templates

Choose it for: Conversational bots, in-depth reporting, omni-channel messaging

Pricing: Starts from $45/month

15. LiveAgent

LiveAgent is an all-in-one tool that provides ticketing, knowledge base, live chat, and social media solutions. Using its knowledge base system, you can provide self-service support in multiple languages to cater to a diverse audience. 

With a powerful search engine, discussion boards, and custom themes, LiveAgent promises a stellar self-help experience for your end users. You can also create an internal forum where employees across departments can exchange ideas, share experiences, and collaborate with each other. 

Key Features: 

• Find answers to questions swiftly using an advanced search widget
• Create well-defined categories so users do not get lose in the content
• Create, design, and edit articles using WYSIWYG editor
• Build a support forum to build strong relationships with your audience

Pros: 

✅ You can add all types of attachments to articles

✅ Create unlimited knowledge bases from a single account

Cons: 

❌ It’s not a standalone knowledge base tool

❌ UI could be improved

Choose it for: Advanced reporting, multi-channel communication, community forum

Pricing: Starts from $15/agent/month

What Type of Content Is Included in a Knowledge Base

The question of what to include and what not to include in your knowledge base is often a matter of confusion for most businesses. 

If you, too, are wondering about what content to add, we are here to help. 

Below are some of the crucial content types that can be added to your external and internal knowledge bases. 

1. External Knowledge Base Content

An external or customer facing knowledge base should cover the following: 

• How-to videos
• FAQs
• Troubleshooting guides
• Glossary
• Product & service information
• Step-by-step process instructions, and a lot more.

2. Internal Knowledge Base Content

Since an internal knowledge base is focused around employees and your organization, it should include: 

• Company policies
• Vision & mission
• Holidays & attendance
• Leave application & approval process
• Employee roles & responsibilities 
• Workplace safety guidelines, etc. 

Knowledge Base Software Customers

Online Knowledge base software is quite versatile and can be used by organizations of all sizes to achieve both customer support and team collaboration goals. 

Based on their size and scale, we can segregate knowledge base customers as: 

1. Startups 

For startups, managing tickets and maintaining CSAT is a huge challenge. 

Being new players in the market, startups need a solid system to win and retain customers for the long term. 

Deploying a knowledge base tool helps them serve customers 24×7 and keep the ticket volume under control. This leaves their small support team with enough bandwidth to focus on business-critical matters. 

2. Small Businesses

Most small businesses operate on a tight budget. 

They need tools that require low yearly investment and are flexible enough to be used both for customer support and internal knowledge sharing purposes. 

By adopting knowledge base software, small businesses can hit both of these targets with a single arrow. It helps them keep their customer support up and running 24×7 without investing in team expansion. 

This opens the door to several benefits, the biggest one being a significant reduction in customer support cost. 

Additionally, small businesses can also set up an internal knowledge base to boost team productivity and collaboration across departments. 

3. Large Corporations 

Most enterprises have their footprints across the globe. They run on large teams and have a customer base that’s always exploding! 

This means an ever-increasing ticket volume and a support team that’s always burned out. 

On top of that, such businesses often face the problem of information silos and poor collaboration. 

Adopting customizable knowledge base software helps enterprises keep critical company data in a secure, centralized space, thus helping global teams collaborate, innovate, and work cohesively on projects. 

When set up as a public knowledge base, this tool proves incredibly helpful in reducing the influx of tickets. This wins back more time for your support team to take part in strategic business activities. 

Knowledge Base Best Practices to Level-up Self-Service Support

Creating a knowledge base is only half the job done. The other half is all about optimizing your content to leave a lasting impact on users. 

Here are some simple knowledge base best practices you can implement to take your self-service support to a whole new level. 

1. Enrich Your Content With Powerful Visuals 

All text and no visuals might make readers lose interest in your knowledge base.

Adding the right visuals at the right places is a solid strategy for building an interactive knowledge base that is a rich mix of written and visual content. 

If the intent is to solve a problem or enhance learning, product screenshots and how-to videos can work wonders. Such visuals complement the written text and clearly demonstrate how a task is performed or a problem is solved. 

Users learn by reading as well as watching which increases their clarity on the subject and helps them solve problems faster. 

Furthermore, visuals leave a stronger, lasting impact and also improve information recall, as can be seen below – an interesting image used by LinkedIn to promote its marketing guide. 

2. Step Up Your SEO Game 

While internal knowledge bases can do without SEO, public or customer-facing help sites need to be optimized for search engines to generate better traffic and ranking. 

As customers look up a problem on Google, your knowledge base should appear in the first few search results. When that happens, content discovery becomes a breeze for customers, and they are able to resolve issues effortlessly. 

There are several ways to strengthen your knowledge base SEO, such as: 

• Create high-quality content that’s centered around customers’ needs and interests
• Add popular keywords at the right places and the right number of times in your content
• Interlink related articles to make crawling easier for Google
• Add keywords in the meta titles and meta description

Following these simple hacks will surely up your SEO game and help your knowledge base grab millions of eyeballs. 

3. Create a Style Guide to Maintain Consistency Across Articles 

A knowledge base is like a comprehensive book loaded with helpful articles. 

Imagine if all the pages of this book look different. Some have larger fonts than others, and some have longer paragraphs. Some of the pages have headers and footers, while others come with completely different formatting. 

Such inconsistency is bound to impact the end-user experience! 

Setting rules right from the start is, therefore, paramount to giving your knowledge base a unified look and feel. You can create a style guide that provides clear-cut instructions on:

• Word count, paragraph length, and format of articles
• Font type and size
• Background themes and images 
• Acronyms and abbreviations
• Voice and tone to be used
• External source links, etc. 

Such rules will help technical writers create content that aligns well with your style guide and maintain a consistent format across all articles. 

4. Make Your Knowledge Base Mobile-Friendly 

5 hours 24 minutes – that’s the amount of time an average American spends on their mobile devices every day!

Clearly, a mobile-friendly knowledge base is the need of the hour! 

Accessibility is an essential factor that should be considered when building your knowledge base. A mobile-friendly knowledge base software takes help closer to users, right at their fingertips. This helps them learn on the go and address challenges right when they arise. 

Here are a few tips and tricks to make your knowledge base mobile-responsive: 

• Build a responsive and neat design that adapts to any screen size
• Avoid huge blocks of text in your knowledge base articles
• Use simple and clear fonts to improve readability
• Compress your images to reduce their size

Most important of all, keep your knowledge base design clutter-free. The lighter your knowledge base is with minimal design, the better it will work on mobile devices. 

5. Build a Solid Search System 

The purpose of a knowledge base is to help users find information with as little effort as possible. For that to happen, you need a solid search system that serves up the most relevant suggestions at blazing-fast speed. 

Your knowledge base should house a visible search bar right at the top where users can find all the answers they need.

For your search system to deliver information fast, here’s what you need to do: 

• Use analytics to conduct keyword research
• Identify the most searched keywords and add them to articles
• Build a logical structure for your knowledge base

A keyword-rich, information-loaded, and diligently-designed knowledge base is sure to show up exact search results that perfectly match user queries. 

6. Add Feedback Forms to Articles

Capturing user feedback is key to maintaining the health of your knowledge base. 

Regular feedback can introduce you to problematic areas of your knowledge base, so you can take action on time before things spiral out of control. It will enable you to identify unhelpful articles, incorrect information, as well as knowledge gaps that are hampering the end-user experience. 

One way of collecting feedback from users is by adding feedback forms at the bottom of every article. 

These forms are focused on a single question – “Was this information helpful?”. Users have two options – Yes and No – as the answer. On selecting “No”, they are shown a bunch of reasons and a comment box that gives them the opportunity to elaborate on the issue. 

You can also add ticket forms to allow users to raise a ticket for issues that your knowledge base fails to solve. 

Here’s a quick video that will help you understand the process of adding feedback forms and surveys to your knowledge base. 

Ready to Adopt Knowledge Base Software

So that was all about knowledge base software!

It’s literally a magical tool that can work both internally for your employees and externally for your customers. All you need to do is, analyze your requirements and identify practical ways to make the most of this software. 

Hopefully, this guide answers all your questions about knowledge base software, right from what it is to how to choose one for your business. 

In case you are still over the fence regarding which software will be the right fit for you, an honest recommendation would be to go for ProProfs Knowledge Base. 

It’s simple to use and loaded with advanced features that can get your knowledge base up and running in no time. 

Sign up now for a free trial to watch your knowledge base in action!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What type of data is included in a knowledge base?

A knowledge base is a rich information resource comprising FAQs, how-to videos, detailed articles, and troubleshooting guides to help end-users solve problems promptly. Additionally, it also includes a glossary of complex terms to provide readers with maximum clarity and leave no room for confusion. 

2. How do knowledge bases build trust and long-lasting relationships? 

A knowledge base gives your customers and employees instant, 24×7 access to all the assistance they need to solve problems in real time. This heightened convenience of on-the-go learning and problem-solving helps build trust and strong, long-lasting relationships. 

3. Can I set up a knowledge base using ProProfs KB? 

Yes, you can. Setting up a knowledge base using ProProfs is super easy and quick. All you have to do is sign up, pick a template, and start writing. You can even import existing Word docs, PDF files, Excel sheets, and PPTs to your knowledge base and publish the content across web and mobile devices. 

4. How can I create knowledge base articles within ProProfs KB?

ProProfs KB is well-equipped with all the necessary features you need to craft meaningful content for your knowledge base. It houses a powerful editor that helps you write and edit articles and add visuals to enhance engagement. 

You also get loads of customization options to tailor the knowledge base to your company’s branding and ensure that it strikes the right chord with readers. 

5. Can a chatbot be integrated with a knowledge base? 

Yes, you can integrate your knowledge base with a chatbot. When a chatbot works closely with your knowledge base, it serves up accurate articles from your KB to quickly solve customers’ problems. 

6. How do you keep your knowledge base up to date? 

To achieve a well-maintained knowledge base, you need to continuously replenish it with the latest information. Tracking KPIs such as failed searches, popular and poorly-rated articles, article upvotes, and downvotes will help you identify opportunities for adding new content and improving existing articles.  

7. How can you upgrade your knowledge base? 

Upgrading your knowledge base requires consistent efforts. You need to continuously work towards making your knowledge base searchable, SEO-ready, and mobile-friendly. It should also be highly engaging, with all the visuals used at the right spots across articles.