The Top 15 Knowledge base softwares in 2024

Knowledge bases store information to serve as a single source of truth for teams. The best knowledge base software underwent major improvements in 2023. This updated list rounds up the most popular options:

1. Slite
2. Helpjuice
3. Zendesk Guide
4. Confluence
5. HelpCrunch
6. Document360
7. Bloomfire
8. Guru
9. Notion
10. Archbee
11. Slab
12. Knowledge Owl
13. HelpScout
14. Tettra
15. Nuclino

The right knowledge management tool can significantly impact how organizations store, access and search information daily. The guide analyzes features, usability, pricing and more to help make an informed decision for an organization's needs. This Knowledge Base article will help you make just that decision.

2 Defining Aspects of the Best Knowledge Management Software

People want better AI features in their Knowledge Bases to save time. Companies are optimizing their tech stack, and leaders have high hopes from AI.

AI

I’m looking forward to seeing Generative AI power even better-automated content in 2024. With new iterations of ChatGPT and other AI technologies steaming ahead, we should expect an industry-wide increase in how knowledge bases are aggregating content automatically and sharing it with users.

AI can gain an even deeper understanding of user behavior and use that data to deliver the most relevant content to users at company, department, and individual levels. Leaders don’t have to spend as much time keeping employees informed and engaged with the help of automation, so they can focus their time and energy on enriching employee experiences and engaging in more meaningful ways. - James, DeLapa, Director of Digital Marketing @ Wrike

Most of the companies are looking to improve efficiency and get better answers to customer queries - faster - within their knowledge bases.

Integrations

In 2024, the big thing I'm looking forward to in knowledge management software is how everything will mesh together. The goal is to enhance their compatibility with various daily-use tools for smoother integration. This means tasks from various project management tool tools like Trello could seamlessly connect with platforms like Notion, and discussions in communication apps like Slack could directly reference specific documents or projects. - Campbell Tourgis, Executive VP & Chief Operating Officer at Wainbee

Teams want their tools to talk to each other and share knowledge everywhere. The right Knowledge Base software helps integrate with your project management tools, because your Knowledge lives everywhere - across your email, task boards, Slack/MS Teams groups, etc.

#1 Slite: The Best Knowledge Base for teams

Slite is made for teams to quickly find and access collective knowledge. Its clean interface combines useful features like sketches, databases, and app integrations.

Slite's AI writing tool helps create clear, readable documents. It scores and auto-improves your doc's spellings, structure, formatting in one-click. Teams can even import content from Google Drive, Notion, and other tools into Slite. It also connects to all popular project management apps like Asana, Trello, Linear, etc. for smooth workflows.

Beyond just storing knowledge, Slite enhances knowledge management with its Knowledge Management Panel powered by AI. This lets you see which docs are most viewed, quickly find and organize related docs, and get analytics on your knowledge base usage.

The AI automatically sorts docs that need to be archived, updated or verified based on team activity. You can ask questions like "show me docs about product updates" to multi-select and manage and find relevant articles and files.

Slite's AI-powered search stands out. Slite Ask understands the intent behind questions using natural language processing. It provides nuanced, accurate answers - not just keyword matches. The AI comprehends complex multi-part questions. It surfaces the best info from all your team's documents and pulls in new knowledge from external sources like Slack, Linear, Google Drive, etc.

Lastly, Slite has a browser extension that lets you ask questions from your information sources anywhere, across every tab. It also has a Slack integration that can automatically answer questions in your channels. It helps the entire organization by speeding up workflows of desk workers and helps ground workers stay up to date.

With its simplicity, and the most well-integrated AI features, Slite comes out as the best Knowledge Base software for fastest growing teams.

Pricing

Slite costs $12.50 per user/month billed yearly for the standard plan. This is a competitive price for teams. There is also an enterprise plan with extra security and support.​​​

#2 HelpJuice - An External-first Knowledge Base

HelpJuice is a knowledge base solution primarily focused on creating external help documentation for external customers and support teams. While feature-rich for this use case, it has some limitations as an internal, knowledge base system.

HelpJuice's document creation experience is geared towards writing support articles and documentation. The editor provides extensive formatting options suited for technical writing but lacks modern features like native video/sketch embedding, Markdown support or AI writing assistance found in newer doc editors.

For knowledge management, HelpJuice is squarely focused on exposing articles publicly. While fine for publishing customer-facing help docs, it lacks content verification capabilities to validate comprehensive internal knowledge base. There's no way to be alerted if documentation goes stale. The UI also looks dated compared to sleeker internal knowledge base tools.

HelpJuice does not integrate AI capabilities into its interface or editor experience anywhere. Its search relies solely on keywords rather than understanding query intent or context through natural language processing.

Pricing

HelpJuice's pricing starts at a steep $30/user/month for basic knowledge base functionality, lowering to $5/user/month for their highest premium tier aimed at larger teams.

#3 Zendesk Guide - External Knowledge Base for Zendesk Users

Zendesk Guide is Zendesk's external knowledge base offering, designed to enable self-service support for teams using Zendesk's service and support solutions. As an external-facing help center, it improves customer experience with a self-serve repository of articles and documentation.

For document creation, Guide provides a straightforward external knowledge base authoring experience tailored for publishing customer-facing content. It offers limited whitelabeling options and theme customizations compared to more design-flexible solutions, though this streamlined approach may appeal to teams prioritizing ease of use.

Where Guide really shines is its AI-powered content recommendations that surface relevant knowledge base articles directly within support agent support tickets, based on context. It provides intelligent cues on which content to keep updated versus archiving based on usage analytics. This helps support teams ensure their documentation stays current.

Guide allows creating reusable content blocks and snippets to boost efficiency when publishing common information repeatedly. Its search functionality can also optionally return results from external blogs or web sources in addition to the core knowledge base for a wider information scope.

As part of Zendesk's broader Service suite, Guide integrates additional service cloud capabilities like chatbots, email management, a shared inbox, and mobile service apps into one unified customer satisfaction offering for customer support teams.

Pricing

Zendesk Guide does not have standalone pricing, being part of Zendesk's wider Service cloud plans which start at $69/user/month and scale up to $149/user/month for enterprise capabilities and additional functionality

#4 Confluence - A Solution for Teams Using Atlassian Products

Confluence is Atlassian's knowledge base offering, purposefully designed for teams already operating within and familiar with Atlassian's product ecosystem.

For document creation, Confluence deeply integrates with other Atlassian tools like Jira and Trello that teams may already utilize. This native connectivity allows seamlessly creating, sharing, and collaborating on knowledge base content across the entire Atlassian suite for fluid workflows.

Confluence's knowledge management capabilities truly cater to large enterprises with complex needs. It provides robust version control, granular user permissions, and highly customizable approval workflows. Confluence easily handles scaling to massive volumes of content and users without performance degradation.

The platform does, however, seem to lag behind more dedicated, modern knowledge base solutions when it comes to AI search and overall user interface design. Some users report a steeper learning curve, a less intuitive interface experience, and an AI-powered search that lacks the contextual understanding of newer AI-first offerings.

Pricing

In line with Atlassian's approach, Confluence offers competitive pricing with a free tier for small teams under 10 users. Paid pricing scales up for larger enterprise deployments based on user counts and additional functionality required.

#5 HelpCrunch - Affordable All-in-One Customer Service Solution

HelpCrunch is an affordable all-around customer service platform that includes a capable knowledge base solution as part of its feature set, though not a dedicated standalone offering.

While not solely focused on knowledge bases, HelpCrunch provides a comprehensive external help center experience for businesses looking to provide self-service customer support. It combines knowledge bases with chatbots, email marketing tools, a shared inbox, website popups, mobile apps and SDKs into one integrated solution.

HelpCrunch's knowledge base articles component offers a standard WYSIWYG rich text editor along with built-in SEO optimization features to enhance content discoverability. Teams can also turn their knowledge base articles into an embeddable widget for integration into web apps and other external touchpoints.

For knowledge management, HelpCrunch provides access to insightful metrics like article view counts, ratings, and data on failed searches to identify areas for improvement. It also includes AI-assisted features for translation, tone adjustment, length changes, and proofreading.

The platform allows for extensive white labeling and customization of the overall help center experience, including the homepage design and branding. Native multi-lingual support is also included.

Pricing

HelpCrunch does not offer a free plan. Paid pricing starts at $15/month for basic customer service features and scales up to $25/month for the full knowledge base and help center experience. An unlimited top-tier plan for larger teams is available at $620/month for up to 50,000 emails.

#6 Document360 - The External Knowledge Base Geared for Writers

Document360 is an external Knowledge Base solution primarily designed for documentation teams, technical writers, and those focused on creating customer-facing help content.

Document360 stands out with its top-notch analytics capabilities for a free Knowledge Base solution. It provides a wide variety of intuitive dashboards and visualizations to answer common questions about article performance and usage.

For document creation, Document360 offers an extremely customizable experience tailored for writers. It allows choosing between Markdown, WYSIWYG, and advanced WYSIWYG editors during onboarding. The doc organization mimics a familiar folder-article structure akin to Google Drive. It refers to docs as "articles," language familiar to its core audience of documentation teams.

Document360's focused writing features include the ability to create articles and build custom workflows for editing and approval processes. Easily editable SEO titles and meta descriptions cater to teams optimizing for discoverability. A unique Feedback Manager consolidates all comments and suggestions on articles in one place.

The platform provides several content reuse capabilities like templates, variables to store reusable text snippets, and frequently used phrase libraries to boost writing efficiency.

And if you're already using it and looking for something else, here's our top 5 Document360 alternatives guide.

Pricing

Document360 has an untraditional pricing approach compared to other knowledge bases. It offers a free plan but locks away API documentation access. Paid pricing is quite steep even billed annually, especially for "internal use" instead of external docs. However, lucrative startup discounts are available. Private hosting options require contacting their sales support team first for custom quotes.

#7 Bloomfire - Robust Analytics and AI Editor for External Knowledge Bases

Bloomfire is an external knowledge base solution that shines with its best-in-class AI editor capabilities and robust analytics offering, though it lacks some other collaboration tools and workflow features.

Its powerful AI writing assistance headlines Bloomfire's document creation experience. The AI editor allows choosing different levels of detail for automated summaries and content generation. Bloomfire also provides an excellent free trial and walkthrough to showcase its editing tools.

For knowledge management, Bloomfire truly stands out with its industry-leading analytics suite that even outpaces offerings like Document360 or Guru. It provides granular insights into content performance and usage.

While primarily geared as an external knowledge base tool, Bloomfire does allow creating internal communities as well. It offers extensive HTML editing options and the ability to customize the community home screen experience.

Bloomfire's AI search capabilities are a bit lacking compared to more modern solutions. Rather than providing natural language answers like Slite or Guru, it displays a more old-school search bar or directory of matched keywords.

Pricing

Detailed pricing information for Bloomfire is not public. The company requires scheduling a call with their sales team to provide custom quotes, suggesting Bloomfire is targeted primarily at larger enterprise customers rather than smaller teams. However, they are known to offer four distinct pricing tiers.

#8 Guru - An Intranet Software with growing AI features

Guru brands itself as an AI-powered knowledge base software, but its AI features feel tacked-on and clunky compared to more integrated AI writing experiences.

Guru's document editor is unintuitive, especially when leveraging its AI writing assistance. You can ask the AI specific questions, but it provides output in a separate dialog box without an easy way to paste the content into your doc. There's no AI proofreading in the classic spellcheck style.

The overall document creation workflow is slow and rigid. You have to pre-assign authors, verification statuses etc. before accessing the editor. However, this slower and more intentional way of creating docs does ensure that your docs are verified and trustworthy as frequently as possible. This helps in better doc analytics and improves the overall health of Guru as a Knowledge Base.

Knowledge management in Guru feels disjointed. You can't organize docs into intuitive channels or folders. Finding important announcements is tough as they're nested under a Tasks section. Document navigation is sluggish, showing only high-level channels rather than your actual docs.

Guru's AI search is separated from regular search, lacking integration. The AI results are also limited to single sentences without full context. There's no sentence-by-sentence citation like in more advanced AI assistants.

And if you're already using it and looking for something else, here's our top 5 Guru alternatives guide.

Pricing

Guru offers a 30-day free trial with paid plans starting from $15/user/mo. They also offer enterprise quotations upon request.

#9 Notion - An all-in-one tool for small teams

Notion has grown into a remarkably capable all-in-one workspace solution for teams looking to consolidate their productivity and collaboration tools into one platform. But for small teams with <200 docs, it can be a great SaaS Knowledge Base software.

Notion streamlines document creation and collaboration with its modern, minimal interface. Teams can embed a wide range of multimedia and integrate with other popular apps and tools for seamless workflows. Notion's AI-powered search allows quickly retrieving information across all your docs.

Notion offers a full suite of knowledge management capabilities beyond just docs. It provides kanban boards, wikis, databases and more to organize your team's work. Notion's Calendar seamlessly integrates project timelines with relevant docs and tasks. You can also leverage Notion's large ecosystem of third-party templates and integrations.

Where Notion differentiates itself is the sheer breadth of its all-in-one workspace features spanning docs, tasks, projects, notes and more. Its AI search understands natural language queries to surface relevant information across all workspace content.

Pricing

Notion's Business plan is $15/user/month billed annually. However, its AI capabilities require an extra $10/user/month add-on on top of the base plan pricing. Enterprise pricing is available by requesting a demo.

#10 Zoho Desk - A great customer service Knowledge Base

Zoho Desk's Knowledge Base is a robust customer service platform that includes a comprehensive self service knowledge base and management system as part of its broader suite of customer service tools, while being a great help desk software.

For document creation, Zoho Desk provides an intuitive Knowledge Base for support agents to publish customer-facing help content. Its WYSIWYG editor supports rich text formatting, embedding media, and importing existing documents. Customizable branding and domain mapping allow integrating the zoho desk's knowledge base more seamlessly into your website.

Zoho Desk enhances knowledge base management through smart features like auto-suggesting relevant articles to agents based on ticket context. Published articles are automatically optimized for search engine discoverability. The platform provides in-depth analytics on knowledge base usage, engagement, and effectiveness.

Additionally, Zoho Desk's unified service desk experience tightly integrates the knowledge base with other support channels like the ticketing system, live chat, call center telephony, and community forums. This enables a seamless self-service experience for customers to find answers themselves or escalate to an agent seamlessly.

Pricing

Zoho Desk does not offer a free plan. Paid pricing starts at $10/user. This scales up to the Enterprise plan with advanced capabilities.

#11 Slab - Knowledge Base and Wiki for Internal Teams

Slab is a knowledge base platform and internal wiki solution designed for seamless sharing of tribal knowledge across teams and organizations.

For documentation, Slab takes a familiar "post" approach where content is organized under different topics, similar to channels in Notion or Slite. Its clean, modern UI will feel intuitive for teams already using tools like Asana.

Slab streamlines organizational knowledge management through deep integration with popular apps and services teams already use. Its multi-app search scans across integrated tools to surface relevant information from your internal knowledge base.

The platform provides insightful doc analytics highlighting top posts, leaderboards for top contributors, and more. You can favorite frequently referenced docs for easy access from the sidebar.

While Slab's core search relies on keywords currently, the platform is working on introducing AI-powered capabilities in the future. Its document editor also provides all the essentials without advanced features like native app embeds.

Pricing

Slab offers a free plan for basic internal knowledge sharing. Paid pricing starts at $6.67/user/month for additional functionality. The $12.50/user/month tier introduces long-term usage analytics and AI enhancements when available. Enterprise pricing is available for larger deployments.

#12 Knowledge Owl - Flexible Knowledge Base Builder

Knowledge Owl is a knowledge base platform focused on providing teams with flexibility to build user-friendly, accessible knowledge bases tailored to their unique needs.

For document creation, Knowledge Owl allows organizing content into intuitive categories and hierarchies using tags and search phrases. Its WYSIWYG editor provides all standard formatting features.

Knowledge Owl offers extensive knowledge management capabilities to support agents enhance user engagement. Published articles support reader comments, ratings, and contact forms to gather feedback and find relevant articles. Customizable branding, domain mapping, access controls, and multi-language support enable creating branded self-service experiences.

The platform provides built-in revision history tracking, making it easy to manage versions as content evolves over time. In-depth analytics provide insights into usage trends, popular content, and areas for improvement.

Knowledge Owl prioritizes flexibility, allowing teams to tailor the knowledge base structure, look, feel, and functionality to their unique needs. Its mobile-responsive design ensures a seamless experience across devices.

Pricing

Knowledge Owl has a simple all-inclusive pricing of $100/month with no annual contracts required. Additional authors ($25/each) and extra knowledge bases ($50/each) incur supplementary fees. A 10% discount is provided if billed annually ($90/month). Nonprofits and B-Corps are eligible for a 25% discount.

#13 Help Scout - Streamlined Customer Support Solution

Help Scout provides a streamlined solution that combines shared inbox capabilities, a full help desk software call center, ticketing system, a comprehensive knowledge base software, and messaging tools for every customer support team.

For document creation within the help center, Help Scout offers a simple rich text editor with standard formatting features teams need to publish customer-facing content. It provides whitelabeling and customization options to brand the whole customer experience itself.

Help Scout enhances its online knowledge base management by allowing customizable access levels - keeping documentation internal for agents or publishing externally. Robust analytics provide insights into customer visits, content gaps, article ratings, and trending topics to continually improve the knowledge base.

While core plans focus on basic knowledge base functionality, higher tiers introduce AI capabilities like automated article summarization to streamline content creation and maintenance.

Pricing

Help Scout does not offer a free knowledge base option. Paid plans start at $25/user per month for basic help desk and full free knowledge base software access. AI-powered, knowledge base software and management features are introduced at the Plus plan for $50/user per month. Enterprise pricing is available through their Pro plan.

#14 Tettra - A simple Knowledge Base

Tettra is a knowledge management platform centered around its "Kai" AI assistant to streamline content creation, curation, and discovery across your internal knowledge base.

Like most other Knowledge Base software solutions, Tettra provides a simple editor to capture tribal knowledge or import existing content. However, it lacks advanced integrations to embed live apps/data within documentation.

Where Tettra shines is its AI-powered, knowledge management system and workflow. Kai can automatically generate FAQ content, tag pages for organization, and instantly answer questions either within Tettra or channels like Slack. Its centralized knowledge management panel highlights verified content, public-facing docs, requests, and stale pages requiring attention.

Tettra automates many routine tasks like identifying outdated information and managing expert review/approval workflows to maintain an accurate, trusted knowledge repository.

Pricing

Tettra does not offer a free trial plan. Paid pricing starts at $4/user/month for basic knowledge base capabilities and scales up to $8/user/month for their Professional plan with full AI features. An unlimited top-tier plan is available at a flat $7,200 fee for up to 50 users.

#15 Nuclino - A Lightweight Free Knowledge Base Software

Nuclino presents itself as an excellent lightweight alternative to Guru for teams seeking a capable knowledge base complemented by great AI capabilities.

Like Slite and Guru, Nuclino is a dedicated knowledge base solution focused on writing and documentation workflows. What sets it apart is its unique ability to visualize all your company knowledge as an interconnected hive of ideas, akin to apps like Obsidian. While not crucial for strategy or operations docs, this visualization could appeal to writing teams wanting to explore connections between their content.

Speed is one of Nuclino's key strengths. It's incredibly lightweight, allowing teams to seamlessly navigate even hundreds of documents without lag. If blazing fast performance is paramount, Nuclino excels.

The interface stays clean and uncluttered, minimizing distractions so teams can focus on their work. Yet it remains highly customizable to suit personal preferences.

Nuclino boasts a reliable search engine that rapidly surfaces any note or document regardless of library size with impressive accuracy.

When it comes to document collaboration, the editing experience feels instantly familiar, mirroring the intuitive approach of Google Docs for seamless real-time and asynchronous teamwork.

However, one area where Nuclino may fall short for some teams is analytics and usage insights. It lacks the in-depth metrics found in more comprehensive knowledge base platforms like Guru. But for teams who don't require advanced analytics, this may not be a major consideration.

Pricing

No need for a free trial since Nuclino offers a free plan. From a pricing perspective, Nuclino stands out as one of the most inexpensive options compared to alternatives like Guru. Its standard package is very accessible at $5/user/month, with an additional $5 for an AI add-on.

Final Advice on picking the right knowledge base software

At the end of the day, finding the right knowledge base tool is all about matching it to your team's specific needs and workflow. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

The options covered in this guide run the gamut - from lean, mean knowledge bases hyper-focused on documentation to full-fledged workspace suites aiming to be the central hub for all your productivity apps.

If you just need a simple, snappy place for your multiple team members to create and access internal info? Dedicated picks like Slite or Nuclino could be the way to go. Need more robust service desk capabilities for an external-facing help center too? Options like Zoho Desk or HelpCrunch might be a better fit.

Bigger teams already locked into an ecosystem like Atlassian's? Confluence offers tight integration there. Want one tool to rule them all, combining knowledge base with tasks/projects/etc? That's where the all-in-one workspaces like Notion or Tettra come in.

Need Help Getting to Know Slite Better?

If Slite's straightforward knowledge base experience is catching your eye, we'd love to show you more! Drop us a line and we'll be happy to walk you through the details, answer any burning questions, and even hit you with a quick demo of Slite in action.

FAQs

What exactly is a Knowledge Base?

At its core, a knowledge base is a central place for teams to create, organize, and access all their valuable information and institutional to create a knowledge base. It's like a shared brain for your company!

The goal? Quickly getting the right info in front of the right people, instead of letting all those genius ideas, processes, and insights get scattered across emails, docs, and human memory banks.

Some knowledge bases are focused inwards for sharing team and customer facing knowledge bases. Others are external-facing for self-serving customers. But at the end of the day, they're all about making all types of knowledge base sharing and discovery as seamless as possible.

What makes a great Knowledge Management System?

When it comes to choosing a Knowledge Base, there's no shortage of flashy features out there. Here are some key things that really move the needle:

• Intuitive authoring and editing experience
• Powerful search that understands human language
• Useful analytics on content performance
• Integrations with your other essential tools
• AI assistance for streamlining content creation
• Customization to match your brand and workflow
• Visibility into knowledge base health/staleness
• Collaboration capabilities like commenting/reviewing

The best Knowledge Bases smoothly combine robust knowledge management capabilities with an experience that doesn't leave your head spinning.

What's the difference between internal and external Knowledge Bases?

Internal knowledge bases are for keeping your team's tribal information, processes, FAQs, and general institutional wisdom organized and accessible. They're the home of right knowledge base software used for onboarding, training, documenting policies knowledge management processes, and more. Think of them as your company's private encyclopedia.

External knowledge bases, on the other hand, are customer-facing portals focused on self-service support. They empower customers to find their own software solutions first, learn about your product, and troubleshoot issues before having to get human support involved.

Some knowledge base tools are dedicated to just one or the other use case. But many give you the flexibility to have both an internal and external setup running side-by-side.

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