When it comes to customer support and facilitation, an internal or customer knowledge base can be of great help. A knowledge base plays a vital role in customer satisfaction and employee productivity for any kind of business.
In this article, we will discuss the best options for creating an online knowledge base, so you can choose the one that best fits your requirements.
However, before we start, here is a brief introduction to the concept and insights on how can a knowledge base make your life easier. So let’s jump right in.
What is a knowledge base?
A knowledge base is the easiest and most accessible form of customer service tool. As reflected by its name, its definition is that it is a vast directory of articles/content on different topics to help people find answers to their queries.
It is a self-help knowledge repository maintained by businesses for either internal use by the employees or as a part of customer support to be used by the customers/clients. It can include a wide variety of data, text in different formats, videos, graphics, audio-visuals, animations, and so on. Those looking for answers can directly find them in the knowledge base.
How does it work?
A knowledge base of your WordPress website usually operates at the center of your customer services. As a centralized storehouse of information, it can be accessed both by your employees to do their job better and improve their productivity. And for the customers to find quick access to the data they need.
It is more like a central knowledge management system, to store, organize, manage, and distribute data/information, wherever required. It is important that the procedures, processes, workflow, operations, and solutions to the repetitive issues are documented and saved for future access.
How to create a knowledge base software?
There are abundant tools that you can use to create a knowledge base for your website. The best knowledge base software applications come with inbuilt features and options and you can just register and directly start creating the knowledge base content.
In this post, we will see a list of such tools that you can use to create a knowledge base. Most of these are SAAS platforms where you pay a certain fee and use the platform to host your articles.
These platforms provide you with all the options and features to easily create a knowledge base with the given options and tools and maintain them. While some of these online Knowledge Base Software & Apps also provide advanced customer satisfaction tools along with a knowledge base.
Here are the top Knowledge base software compared and reviewed, you can pick one that works the best for you.
Salesforce service cloud
Salesforce is a cloud-based SAAS to let you create an internal or external knowledge base. The knowledge management system allows companies to create a knowledge library for the employees as well as the customers.
It is one of the Best & Free Internal knowledge base software that helps you streamline and manage the knowledge related to your business and improve the productivity of employees and the satisfaction of the customers. It provides the customers with easy access to the article repository through search features.
With the analytic tool, you can recognize and identify which knowledge base articles are working and even find out insights on the news articles that need to be created.
The knowledge base software from Salesforce allows you to create different article types and create data categories, making it easier to allow or limit access to data based on the user roles.
Pricing:
The service cloud pricing starts at $25 per user per month, which allows you to create a knowledge base along with some other support features like service console integration, case management, and so on.
The professional plan is available at $75 and the Enterprise plan at $150 per user per month and so on. The unlimited plan is priced at $300 per user per month.
Visit Salesforce service cloud
Document 360 Knowledge base
Document 360 also allows you to create a SAAS knowledge base with an easy interface and options. You can use it to create an external as well as an internal knowledge base.
To create a self-service knowledge base you can use the easy interface and the intuitive options to write and save articles. The access can be either private, limited to the employees, or public, for customers or clients.
Document360 comes with inbuilt facilities to easily build and maintain different types of knowledge base models like SOP, FAQs, online user guides, product help documents, or technical guides.
Document360 can be used in combination with existing help desk software, using the analytics tools, commenting apps, and live chat features. Moreover, you can use your knowledge base articles with external systems like your support tools like help desk and live chat systems.
They also offer you a migration service to help you import your existing material from whatever knowledge management software you are using.m
Some awesome companies like Microsoft, Harvard University, and Porsche use Document360 for their documentation.
Pricing:
There are three different plans at $99, $299, and $499. The startup plan at $99 supports two team accounts, the business plan at $299 that supports 5 team accounts, and the Enterprise plan at $499 that supports 10 team accounts.
You get 50 GB of storage for each of these plans and can pay $50 per month for an extra 50 GB of storage.
You can also request a custom plan for your enterprises, to host your knowledge repository hosted & dedicated only to your organization.
Visit Document 360 Knowledge base
Hubspot service hub
The service hub from Hubspot is a package for customer service. If you own a business and need some basic customer service facilities, you can rely on the service hub package.
For absolutely free, you can use their ticketing software, Live chat, email scheduling, documentation platform (for up to 5 documents only), email reply tracking, and so on. The only condition is that it will retain the HubSpot branding.
Startups can use the service and gradually upgrade to plans with additional features as and when required.
Guru Knowledge Base
Guru is an advanced system, to unify the different knowledge resources of your organization, filter the useful information, and provide the employees with easy access to all the information they need to perform better at their job, at their fingertips.
Guru will use the different channels like Slack, emails, CRMs, and even the data browsed through Chrome or other browsers to gather the knowledge and serve it when needed. It uses AI to identify and classify the information, and smartly present it to the employees when required so that they can respond and act without wasting their time.
With Guru, your team can generate, update, share, and access the required information in the form they need, and when they need it, which increases productivity and eventually customer satisfaction with the instant support they receive.
Guru integrates with other systems but doesn’t come with advanced support features like live chat or email ticketing. It has export/import features, document comparisons to testify the truthfulness of data, version control, and project management features.
Guru is great for internal documentation and knowledgebase management system. Guru is great for saving time for your organization and boosting productivity.
Pricing:
You can start using Guru for FREE, with up to 3 core users. Integrate your knowledge base with Slack & Microsoft Teams Apps for easy access, or you also have an affordable plan starting at $5/user per month.
There is another plan at $10 per month, per user, for an advanced plan, and $20 per user per month, for proactive knowledge management tools, features, smart suggestions and linking to your ticketing platform.
WordPress (With a WP Theme or Plugin)
WordPress is a wonderful tool that you can use to create almost any kind of website. And with WordPress, you can easily create a knowledge base with the help of a designated WordPress theme or a plugin.
One of the most popular and best WordPress themes for creating an online knowledge base is the WordPress KnowHow theme. It lets you create an article repository where you can post different online knowledge base articles under different categories.
You can multiple knowledge base WordPress themes with different features and different pricing to create your website.
WordPress powers almost 43% of the total internet since it has proved to be one of the best website building tools. It allows fast deployment, easy to use, and is free and open source. The WordPress themes from different WordPress theme companies also deserve a little attribution for the success of WordPress since they are beautiful, feature-packed, and very affordable.
These knowledge base templates, are in fact not just designs, but come with features and generally work out of the box. And the features can be added modularly in WordPress using the WordPress plugins.
So you can use either a WordPress theme designed for a Knowledge base, or use a WordPress plugin to create a knowledge base on your website.
BasePress WordPress Plugin & Docs tool
If you want to create a documentation section or an article directory on WordPress, BasePress will let you build one in just moments. You can use this plugin with any WordPress theme that you already have. It can be your alternative as one of the best free knowledge base software.
This makes it, even more, easier to integrate a wiki article repository on your existing website of any niche. Whether it is a simple blog site and you want to start a tutorial section, or if it is a complex directory website and you want to add a how-to section.
BasePress can also be used to create an Internal Knowledge base for your employees, to easily find the data, and answers that they need to support the clients. It allows you to choose from the three available themes and comes with intuitive admin options and an easy installation as well as a customization process.
Based on your requirements you can choose a free or premium version of this plugin to get started with. It allows you to create a professional-looking, feature-packed knowledge base within your WordPress website with some awesome design features, widgets, an inbuilt search system, shortcodes, and much more.
Pricing: WordPress is a free and open-source tool. And the price may vary for different WordPress themes, or plugins depending on their features.
Moreover, you will also need to subscribe for a reliable hosting service since WordPress is different from most SAAS platforms listed here, and not self-hosted.
Ultimately, WordPress themes or plugins can be bought at a one-time price. They are affordable compared to the other platforms listed here. Apart from the hosting service, you won’t have to spend on a monthly fee.
Download BasePress Knowledge Base Plugin
BloomFire: Knowledge Management Software
Bloomfire is a platform primarily intended to help you create a centralized knowledge base to help the employees learn new things and do their job efficiently.
Let your employees connect through research and market analysis by keeping it at the center of your organization and access to all the team members. It helps you connect different departments and teams by providing them with insights and aiding the research needed for efficient decision-making.
With Bloomfire you can create an atmosphere where you can systematically train your employees with an easy-to-use and searchable Knowledge repository and research information that they can use to drive company performance.
It lets you upload content in a wide range of formats: PDFs, word documents, videos, audios, and so on. Besides, you can even create content on the platform using the inbuilt editor and tools. Bloomfire also features an advanced search and indexing system that will provide the audience with the results they are seeking for.
This knowledge management system can be used by the support employees to quickly answer the support queries from the customers and improve customer satisfaction.
It is a flexible and expandable platform that can be used by almost any size of business. With BloomFire you can create an internal knowledge base to help the employees learn and share knowledge through an internal resource center.
Pricing:
There are no complex pricing plans for Bloomfire, their service can be acquired at $25 per user, per month, and has to be paid annually. You can contact them for your enterprise-level needs.
ProProfs: knowledge base software tools
ProProfs is the owner of a variety of software solutions like Quiz maker, survey maker, collaboration tool, project management software, and so on. It can aid your customer support through different products like Knowledge base, Live chat, and help desk software.
The cloud-based SaaS Knowledge base model lets you easily create, manage and maintain a knowledge base, documentation, and user manuals. There is a simple process to start with your online knowledge base and it doesn’t require any technical expertise to start with one.
All of the software products by ProProfs intend to help you acquire knowledge, assess, test, apply, and share it.
Knowledge base with ProProfs
ProProfs has solutions for almost all of your business needs for knowledge management tools when it comes to the knowledge base.
You can create an internal or external knowledge base, that can be used by your employees or your customers as a means of self-help. It comes with abundant tools to create thorough documentation for the product, process, software, training courses, or technical stuff. There are software solutions for creating simple user manuals, or a full-blown help center with advanced features, Wiki, or FAQ software.
Help Desk
The help desk system by ProProfs includes a number of modules like an email ticketing system, IT help desk software, customer support software & email management system, customer complaint management software, simple issue tracker, a specialized customer service software for eCommerce.
It will help you get your email support requests coming through different channels in one place and easily respond to them through there. The highly customizable help desk software also includes live Chat, Knowledge Base & Survey systems.
Live Chat
If you are looking for support automation and make sure that none of your site visitors goes back without leaving their message, or without being answered for their queries, ProProfs also helps you with its Live Chat system.
Get more conversions by easily transferring the chats, and auto-responding through canned replies by anticipating customer questions, and adding the self-help articles. Besides you can get in-depth reports and analytics to track the chat data with this live chat customer service software.
The software by Proprofs is used by some awesome brands like Dell, Nestle, Sony, Loreal, Ford, HP, etc.
Pricing:
The basic plan for knowledge base solutions by ProProfs supports 3 authors available at $30 per author/month which sums up to $90 per month and $1080 per year. A premium plan for $40 per author/month and you can choose from 3 to 10 authors. And an enterprise solution with custom pricing as per your requirements.
Help Juice: Knowledge base solutions
Help juice is a cloud base knowledge management system that you can use to create awesome portals to help your customers. With help juice, you can create both – an internal knowledge base for the assistance of your employees, or a custom self-service knowledge repository where they can search for and find the articles of their interest.
There are some awesome features to edit and format the content for creating the knowledge base, inbuilt features to help you generate content with minor variations effortlessly, structure the content, and browse and restore the previous versions of the published content.
The knowledge base also boasts an intelligent analytic system including user insights about what an individual user is searching and article insights on how it is performing.
Help juice has plans for both small as well as large businesses to set up and manage their knowledge base and provide customer support. Moreover, it’s easy to use for your knowledge base managers as well as the users. There’s an advanced search feature that will help them find the correct results effortlessly.
The best part of help juice is how they let you thoroughly customize your knowledge base to fit your branding. You can choose from the available themes to change the appearance of your knowledge base. Or you can choose to take help from the experts for the customizations.
This internal/external knowledge base software will also provide you with insights on the usefulness of the content in the knowledge base, the list of most searched for topics, and other important reports. There are also access control tools and collaboration tools to allow the readers to comment on the articles.
Help juice lets you localize your knowledge base in any language (300+ supported). It also supports a lot of third-party integrations like the Microsoft team, Zendesk, Slack, and much more.
Moreover, there are advanced user role management features where you can assign users up to 4 different levels of roles, bulk import as well as editing options.
Help juice is an excellent way to set up a knowledge base in mere minutes and to start providing your customers with answers to their questions.
Pricing:
A bit different from the regular knowledge base management plants, the starter plan for Help Juice starts at $120/month for 4 users and $200/month for 16 users. For bigger businesses, it offers all its services including the expert customization service at $289/month for up to 60 users, and $369 for unlimited users.
Before you subscribe to any of their plans, you can use their services for free with a 14-day free trial sign-up
Live Agent: Online knowledge base & More
Live Agent has the fastest live chat feature and comes with many other premium and useful help desk applications. Like every other service mentioned in this article, Live Agent allows you to integrate different channels to provide seamless customer support.
The ticketing service by LiveAgent will help you get messages from multiple channels like emails, social media, chats, calls, and others under one roof, and manage customer service easily.
The self-service part of Live Agent is awesome too. You can use the customizable platform to build an online knowledge base and FAQs that the customers can search from and find quick solutions to their queries. This includes useful forums that can answer a lot of user questions.
There is also an included call center service with a voice-over IP phone system. It includes all the advanced services like advanced features such as simple voice calls, high definition video calls, call back requests, IVR, ACD, call transfers, recording, and more.
Creating support systems and managing all your help desk resources is so simple with the customization tools.
Live Agent brilliantly picks up customer conversations from different channels, such as email, social media, calls, forums, and converts them into tickets that the agents can respond to through their dashboard.
You can watch a live demo or sign up for a free 14 days trial.
Forever Free version
The Live Agent software can be used with some limitations with the forever free version. You get a 7-day ticket history, customer portal and forum service, and other features that you can get for free.
Pricing:
When it comes to pricing, the Live Agent has comparatively affordable rates for its customer support services. The basic plan starts at $15 per agent/month, with the ticketing system and customer forum. It doesn’t include the live chat system.
The next one, including the live chat feature, is priced at $29 per agent/month. And the best one includes call-center services in addition to the live chat and ticketing system along with the knowledge base system. This is priced at $39 per agent/month.
Zendesk: Customer service software
If you have been researching help desk software, you probably have heard of Zendesk again and again. It sure is one of the most popular support software. It is a software as a service for support.
Zendesk allows messaging through the web, email, phone, SMS, or social media, to be able to reach the customers easily, anytime, and anywhere. It is programmed smartly to forward the right ticket to the right customer support agent.
Moreover, Zendesk is completely customizable, making your customer support platform agile and flexible. You can easily adapt to new changes or extend the features since it is open software.
Zendesk has different applications and services working at different levels. It also has a knowledge management service where you can build your own knowledge base. Zendesk has solutions for all your requirements for a live chat service, ticketing system, forum, or help desk software services.
Some of the big brands like OLA, Forest essentials as well as ITC use Zendesk as their customer support platform.
Pricing:
Zendesk has different plans for users with different requirements. The basic plan starts at $49 per agent/month. It includes the ticketing system, messaging, help center services, Email, voice, SMS, and live chat support.
There’s also the suite growth plan, at $79, and the suite professional plan at $99 per agent/month. These are all billed annually.
They are custom plans for enterprises too, starting at $215. You get a free trial too.
Wix Answers: Knowledge management system
Wix is a very popular name when it comes to website building. The drag and drop-based website building platform also provide cloud-based help desk software as a service.
The highlight of this knowledge base software is that it comes with abundant features and flexibility. Use this platform to create a knowledge base for your customers where they can use the advanced search features and find the answers without wasting time.
The platform is divided into different services: Knowledge base, Ticketing system, call center, Live chat, insights, and widgets.
Knowledge base: A knowledge management system to guide the users to find the right answers, and for content creation and data management.
Ticketing system: A smart system for the customers to raise a query and for the agents to not just respond, but an integrated tool to view the customer history and previous interactions.
Call center: You can also provide support through phone calls, incoming, outgoing, and call back support.
Live Chat: This lets you communicate easily with a live chat feature.
Insights: The system to gather data, review and analyze it to provide insights on tickets, knowledge base, and top customer issues.
Widgets: Knowledge base modules are also available as widgets so that you can integrate it anywhere you want and provide support from anywhere.
It is a feature-packed system for all your help desk-related requirements. The ticketing system also includes call center features as well as live chat. Wix Answers come with super-smart features that allow the support agents to view the customer interactions and history, which makes it easier for them to assist the users.
View the reports based on the data and get actionable ideas to strategize and improvise your customer support.
There are customization settings and widgets that can be used by your customer support engineers for better management. For seamless content creation and publishing, you can use rich content editing tools.
Wix Answers insights will analyze the data that comes in and help with pinpointing the top issues that are reported and much more. It can also be translated so that you can localize your site.
Some of the very progressive brands like Getty Images as well as Rakuten Viber use Wix Answers to provide awesome customer assistance to their user base.
Pricing:
Wix comes with different plans for different users ranging from $24 per agent, per month to $80 per agent, per month.
The basic self-service plan, which basically lets you build a forum/answers portal. It will allow building a knowledge base with just the knowledge management service.
The call center plan is for those who want to provide telephonic support. It is priced at $56 per agent/month and it includes the Call center, Ticketing system, Live chat services.
Next is the multi-channel package with a Ticketing system, Knowledge management, and Live chat priced at $60 per agent/month Billed annually. And the unlimited $80 per agent/month with Call center, Ticketing system, Knowledge management, and the Live chat feature too.
14 days FREE trial available.
Wrapping Up: What works best?
With all these best knowledge base software applications, you will be able to set up a help center, with advanced features that can actually help your customers find the answers they are looking for, without wasting time. All these knowledge base software tools do not require any technical expertise for the setup process.
You can choose one of these options to build an awesome content repository, that can serve at the center of your customer support, to help both, your employees to find quick answers for the customers, and for the customers to find quick solutions without having to write an email.
