I Tested the Top Knowledge Management Software Platforms — Here Are My Favorites [+ Free Options]

Knowledge management software is essential for support team efficiency and customer satisfaction. As a former HubSpot support rep, I relied on our knowledge base daily for access to product knowledge and troubleshooting steps that helped me resolve customer inquiries quickly. Knowledge management software does more than just store data — it unifies data, slashes resolution times, and empowers teams.

Knowledge management software benefits more than just reps. Customers are empowered to help themselves with access to an organized treasure trove of self-service articles, FAQs, and how-to guides. The result? Reduced wait times and increased customer satisfaction.

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Whether you’re looking to tighten up support, create a knowledge base, or unify internal company resources, knowledge management software is that.

In this post, I’ll touch on the following:

• Best Knowledge Management Software
• What is knowledge management software?
• Why are knowledge management tools important?
• Types of Knowledge Management Software

What is knowledge management software?

Knowledge management software is a tool that organizes, stores, and shares all of the information your team and customers need. Instead of having content scattered across multiple email threads, drives, and chats, it consolidates your information into a single resource, ensuring everyone knows where to go for answers.

A study by Forrester Consulting found that employees spend an average of 2.4 hours per week searching for information trapped in data silos. Knowledge management software eliminates this inefficiency by creating a singular source of truth for all your information.

Implementing knowledge management software streamlines internal processes and enhances the customer experience. With access to a well-structured knowledge base, customers can solve issues independently without contacting support. This leads to increased satisfaction and a reduced workload on service and support teams.

Why are knowledge management tools important?

Knowledge management tools serve as a centralized hub for all your essential information, both internal and external, and they provide tangible benefits for customers and employees. Here are a few reasons why knowledge management tools are vital to the success of your business.

Breaking Down Data Silos

Data silos are isolated pockets of information within an organization that are accessible to some departments but not others. Data silos occur because of disparate software solutions that don’t communicate with one another. The result is unequal access to information, eroded data quality, and decreased efficiency and collaboration as team members must scour multiple sources for access to information.

Knowledge management tools break down data silos by integrating disparate data sources and consolidating them into a single source of truth, thus creating a unified information environment that everyone (internal teams or customers) knows to access for accurate, up-to-date information.

What I like: As a HubSpot support rep, I relied on our knowledge management system daily. We had an internal wiki that I looked to for company information and a customer-facing knowledge base that had answers to virtually any product-related question I encountered. Access to all this information in one place made me a better, faster, and more efficient support rep.

Accelerating Employee Onboarding and Training

Starting a new job can be overwhelming, especially as a fresh college grad stepping into my first role at HubSpot Support. There’s a lot to take in: the office layout, company policies and procedures, product knowledge, and best practices. Trying to retain all that information while learning the ropes of my new role felt impossible.

Luckily for me, HubSpot’s knowledge management system made that transition smoother. Our internal wiki housed everything I needed, from company updates to troubleshooting guides, so I always knew where to look when I needed an answer. I’m sure my managers and team leads appreciated not having to answer as many basic questions (although I definitely still bugged them sometimes!).

An effective onboarding process can boost new hire retention by 82%, so it is essential to set them up for success with all the knowledge they need in one place.

What I like: Knowledge management software reduces friction for new (and existing) team members by providing them with a centralized hub for learning. Instead of wasting time digging through email threads and Slack channels, they can focus on honing their skills and gaining confidence in their roles.

Reduced Service Volume

You’d be surprised how often, as a support rep at HubSpot, I sent knowledge base articles to customers. At the end of almost every service interaction, I included a relevant knowledge base article so customers could resolve the issue independently if it happened again.

Self-service resources, such as a knowledge base, empower customers to troubleshoot independently, reducing overall service volumes as fewer customers need assistance. According to a recent survey, 91% of respondents said they would use an online knowledge base if it were available, effective, and easy to use — that’s a lot of support tickets potentially resolved on their own.

What I like: A well-structured knowledge base lightens the load on your support team and allows them to focus on more critical tasks while customers find solutions independently.

Faster Support Solutions

As a support rep at HubSpot, I quickly learned that speed matters. Customers didn’t want to wait on hold, and I didn’t want to waste time searching for information. Knowledge management software helped me spend less time searching for answers and more time providing solutions. According to McKinsey, a robust knowledge management system can reduce the time spent searching for information by up to 35%.

What I like: With all the essential resources in one place, I could quickly locate documentation and troubleshooting guides to solve the customer’s problem. More efficient access to information leads to faster resolution times, more cases closed, and increased customer satisfaction.

Types of Knowledge Management Software

Knowledge management software comes in many different shapes and sizes. I’ll break them down below.

Open-Source Knowledge Bases

An open-source knowledge base is free and publicly accessible. Anyone can access and edit the codebase, resulting in high customizability and frequent updates.

What I like: Open-source software often relies on community support, which can be a rewarding experience. It gives you access to peers for discussion, troubleshooting, and sharing of custom plugins/modules.

Examples: MediaWiki, Bitrix24

Proprietary Knowledge Bases

Proprietary knowledge bases are paid, closed-source platforms that are owned by vendors. They typically offer turnkey solutions with dedicated support and high-level security and compliance.

What I like: Proprietary knowledge bases can typically be up and running in days since they do not require any customization or technical expertise for setup.

Examples: HubSpot Knowledge Base, Guru

Internal Wikis

An internal wiki is a collaborative platform companies use to centralize internal processes, information, FAQs, and other company or team-specific knowledge. It may also be called a corporate wiki or an internal knowledge base.

What I like: An internal wiki is a single source of truth for company information, which enhances collaboration and increases transparency.

Examples: Nuclino, Tettra

Customer Facing Knowledge Bases

A customer-facing knowledge base is a public-facing, self-service hub designed for customers to access support information, FAQs, how-to guides, and troubleshooting information. These knowledge bases help customers solve issues independently and get the most out of their product or service.

What I like: Customer-facing knowledge bases lighten the load on support teams, as customers are empowered with the resources to troubleshoot and research solutions independently.

Pro tip: Maintaining and updating customer-facing knowledge bases is essential to ensure that customers have access to accurate information.

Examples: HubSpot Knowledge Base, Helpjuice

Document Management Systems (DMS)

A document management system is a secure platform for storing, versioning, and collaborating on PDFs, spreadsheets, and all other file types. While DMSs aren’t explicitly designed for organizing knowledge data, they can act as a single source of truth for company documents and information.

What I like: DMS systems typically include granular permissions, so you can restrict access to sensitive documents to only the teams that need them, such as legal and compliance.

Pro tip: Use OCR search features to scan and search text in PDF documents and images.

Examples: Dropbox Business, Quip

Process Documentation Tools

Process documentation tools are platforms for creating visual workflows, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and interactive guides. In a business where certain tasks or processes must be performed consistently and efficiently, process documentation tools make sharing that knowledge easy and transparent.

What I like: As a visual learner, I appreciate how these tools can facilitate onboarding and learning. Support reps can also use them to create quick custom guides for customers.

Examples: Scribe, Trainual

Community Forums

A community forum is a platform where customers or employees can congregate to share best practices, discuss a product/service, crowdsource solutions, and troubleshoot issues collaboratively. Community forums are typically associated with free, open-source software.

What I like: Products and services with a strong and active community forum typically experience high levels of customer loyalty, as users feel invested in the product’s success and empowered by helping others.

Pro tip: Forums require dedicated staff to moderate discussions and remove spam/inaccurate answers.

Examples: Discourse, WordPress Forums

1. HubSpot Knowledge Base Software

HubSpot’s Knowledge Base Software is a powerful tool that saves your team valuable time building your knowledge base. I like that it integrates with other channels used for rep-to-customer interaction, such as email and chat, so reps can quickly find and share knowledge base content with customers. You’ll also get an in-depth view of powerful metrics, including engagement, sentiment, search, tickets and conversations, ticket deflection, and maintenance suggestions.

One compelling feature is the SEO recommendation engine, which monitors the performance of your knowledge base articles and flags ones that need attention. This ensures that relevant articles always pop up when customers search online.

The most significant benefit of HubSpot is that it’s so much more than just a knowledge base software. HubSpot’s Service Hub includes everything you need to scale your service operations. Features like omnichannel messaging, help desk/ticketing, an AI-powered customer agent, SLA management, and more help create 13x faster resolution times, 42% more tickets closed per rep, and elevated customer satisfaction.

I think HubSpot’s knowledge management software is a no-brainer for companies that already use HubSpot’s marketing and sales tools. The native integration between the HubSpot knowledge base, CRM, CMS, and the rest of our tools creates a holistic, easy-to-use environment that can be the command center for all your business operations.

Pricing for Professional Service Hub:

• Free plan available.
• Starter: $20 per user/month.
• Professional: $100 per user/month.
• Enterprise: $150 per user/month.

Pro tip: Pair the Knowledge Base software with our free Guide Creator to create easy how-to guides in just a few clicks.

Key Features:

• Quick set-up time.
• SEO capability.
• Engaging user experience.
• Performance insights tools.

2. Guru

Guru is a knowledge platform that integrates your company’s unstructured information and leverages AI to create a single source of truth for anything your employees need to know.

Guru connects with apps like Slack, Teams, Notion, Google Drive, GitHub, Salesforce, Zoom, and much more to unify company information and make it quickly accessible via AI-powered search. Over time, Guru’s AI will better understand your company’s workflows, customers, and operations to instantly deliver context-aware solutions.

Guru’s editor is attractive and easy to use for creating knowledge documents (called Cards). It features Google Docs-like collaborative editing features, the ability to embed rich content like videos and PDFs, and a built-in AI assistant to quickly generate, summarize, improve, or even translate your knowledge content.

During my demo of Guru, I was impressed with their personalized homepage feature. It truly felt like a command center where every employee would want to look for daily updates. I also thought their Slack integration was slick, and I liked that you could quickly create a knowledge card without leaving your chat. Imagine receiving a process question from a co-worker in Slack and being able to instantly turn your answer into a knowledge resource that everyone can access. Guru lets you do that. Pretty cool!

Pricing:

• Free trial available.
• All-in-one: $15 per user/month.
• Enterprise: Custom pricing.

Best for:

• Distributed teams looking to integrate knowledge from many different apps.
• Companies looking to build a smart internal wiki.

Key Features:

• AI-powered enterprise search.
• ChatGPT Integration.
• Company wiki and employee intranet.

3. Document360

Document360 is a knowledge management tool that helps you quickly build customer-facing knowledge bases, user manuals, and software documentation. While Document360 excels at creating customer-facing knowledge bases, you can toggle your knowledge base to private with the click of a button, making it suitable for internal wikis.

Document360 offers a fully-featured rich text editor for creating documentation, real-time AI-powered search, and built-in SEO tools to help your content rank higher in search.

I liked their homepage builder, which lets you create a homepage for your knowledge base within minutes. It features multiple attractive, intuitive, and official-looking homepage themes that are fully customizable.

My favorite feature is their real-time AI-powered search engine, which lets users search the entire knowledge base, not just article titles. It provides intelligent, context-aware search results that can answer your questions without you needing to skim a whole article.

Pricing: Available upon request.

Best for:

• Tech or Saas businesses looking to create product documentation.
• Creating customer-facing portals with an emphasis on user experience.

Key Features:

• Product documentation support.
• File storage.
• WYSIWYG editor.
• Real-time AI search engine.

4. KnowledgeBase

KnowledgeBase is a user-friendly knowledge management solution designed to organize and share knowledge resources for customers and support teams. It offers an intuitive interface for designing and creating an engaging help center that empowers customers to help themselves and lightens the load on support teams.

I enjoyed KnowledgeBase’s AI-assisted content generation features, which leverage the power of generative AI within their rich text editor so you can develop comprehensive support materials in a fraction of the time.

I signed up for a free trial of KnowledgeBase using the business email of my instrument rental company, Tri-State Backline. I was pleasantly surprised that KnowledgeBase automatically analyzed my website and created a draft of my new knowledge base using my existing logo and color schemes. From there, it’s easy to customize the look and feel of your knowledge base, but there wasn’t much work that needed to be done. I was impressed with the clean, minimal design it gave me right out of the box, and it was already so similar to my existing website that I barely had to make any changes.

KnowledgeBase is developed by Text, the team behind products like LiveChat and HelpDesk. Accordingly, the native integration among these products is tight, benefiting customers who can access knowledge documents directly within your website’s AI-powered live chat window.

Pricing:

• $59/month or $49/month if you pay annually.
• The plan includes one knowledge base. Additional knowledge bases are available for an extra $24.99/month.

Best for:

• Small to medium-sized businesses on a budget.
• Businesses looking to streamline self-service resources for customers.

Key Features:

• LiveChat widget and integration with help resources.
• Rich text editor with engaging and helpful articles.
• Customizable help center.
• AI-assisted search.

5. Helpjuice

Helpjuice is a knowledge base platform with robust customization tools that allow you to design every aspect of your knowledge base and create user-friendly layouts. It offers collaborative features for authors, including shared page previews and version control for easy tracking and reverting of changes. With AI-powered translation tools, Helpjuice supports over 300 languages to ensure your content is accessible to a global audience.

I found Helpjuice easy to use, like working in Google Docs. Setting it up was quick, and I could manage content without hassle. I liked how I could build a big library of resources for self-service support.

One cool feature is Wizardshot, an AI-powered tool for effortlessly creating step-by-step guides. I wish I had access to something like this when I was a support rep. It automatically captures on-screen activity and generates comprehensive how-to guides with visuals and annotations. This is useful for enhancing self-service content and support reps looking to create tutorials for customers on the fly.

Pro tip: Leverage Helpjuice’s built-in feedback widgets to gather insights from customers on the usefulness of your knowledge content.

Pricing:

• 4 Users: $120/month.
• 16 Users: $200/month.
• 60 Users: $289/month.
• Unlimited Users: $659/month.

Key Features

• User-friendly style options.
• Unlimited articles.
• Easy team collaboration on content.
• Advanced versioning.

6. ClickUp

ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity platform similar to Monday and Asana. While it isn’t purely a knowledge management solution, it offers robust knowledge management features like collaborative docs, wikis, and AI-powered search. Best of all, these knowledge features are available in the Free Forever plan, so you can create beautifully formatted knowledge documents and curate an internal wiki for nothing.

Source

I tried ClickUp and found it packed with task management and document creation features. I liked how I could customize my workspace to fit my team’s needs. Working together on docs is smooth, and teams can edit docs simultaneously.

That being said, you should look elsewhere if you are looking for a dedicated knowledge base software. In my opinion, ClickUp is primarily a project management and productivity tool. While the knowledge features are nice, you’d be leaving a lot on the table if you weren’t taking advantage of other productivity features.

Pricing:

• Free Forever plan for personal use.
• Unlimited: $7 per user/month.
• Business: $12 per user/month.
• Enterprise: pricing upon request.

Best for: Teams looking for an all-in-one productivity and project management app with knowledge management features.

Key Features

• All-in-one productivity platform.
• Task management features.
• Document creation.
• Dynamic editor.

7. Stonly

Stonly is an innovative knowledge management solution that empowers customers and support agents by combining interactive content with powerful automation. Its step-by-step guides adapt to customers’ needs so they can troubleshoot issues and complete tasks independently. For agents, Stonly integrates with platforms like Zendesk, Salesforce, and Freshdesk to deliver knowledge directly within ticket views, speeding up responses and improving accuracy.

While most knowledge bases contain static, long-form articles, Stonly focuses on creating interactive guides that are engaging, helpful, and concise. I love that Stonly guides can be embedded and surfaced directly within your application, transforming the customer experience into a seamless interaction where users don’t have to leave their current page for support.

I find Stonly’s interactive guides more digestible and engaging than traditional help content. With the downward trend of our collective attention spans, I think these guides will become more prevalent.

Pricing: Small Business and Enterprise plans are available. Pricing upon request.

Best for:

• Customer support teams looking to reduce ticket volumes and enhance customer self-service capabilities.
• HR and training departments looking to develop interactive guides for employee onboarding and training.

Key Features

• Interactive, step-by-step guides for customers and agents.
• AI-powered search and customizable AI Agent or Agent Assist.
• Seamless integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce, and Freshdesk.
• Workflow automation to reduce handle times and escalations.
• Advanced analytics for optimizing knowledge performance.

8. Scribe

Scribe is a knowledge management platform designed to streamline process documentation creation by automatically generating step-by-step guides.

Using a Chrome extension, Scribe captures all your steps when executing a task and then automatically transforms your actions into a comprehensive guide with screenshots and detailed instructions. It can be used standalone or integrated with other tools for internal and external knowledge management, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and technical documentation.

I was very impressed by the automated capturing feature — no more manual screenshots and typing out every step. It was like magic how Scribe analyzed everything I did on screen and produced an accurate step-by-step guide. However, the auto-captured screenshots weren’t always perfect, but luckily, you can tweak and edit them.

I found Scribe a very compelling tool for creating guides and process documentation. I can see how it would help streamline the onboarding experience for employees and eliminate a lot of mundane work for training teams. However, if you want to create a traditional knowledge base, I recommend looking at other tools, like HubSpot or Document360.

Pricing:

• Free plan available.
• Pro Team: $12 per user/month.
• Pro Personal: $23 per user/month.
• Enterprise: custom pricing.

Best for:

• Organizations looking to streamline training and onboarding procedures with clear, step-by-step guides.
• Customer support teams looking to develop documentation and guides for common customer inquiries.

Key Features

• Free Chrome extension with unlimited document creation and users.
• Automatic screenshots, screen capturing, and written instructions.
• Suggested Scribes that recommend the most popular guides for different software and tools.

9. ProProfs Knowledge Base

ProProfs Knowledge Base is a tool that helps businesses provide instant self-help support to customers and employees through easily created and published knowledge base articles. It offers professionally designed templates for knowledge base examples, import options for existing documents, and built-in reporting for insights on user queries and content gaps.

During my product demo, I found ProProfs intuitive and easy to use. Creating a new knowledge base article was as easy as clicking a button. I appreciated that it featured templates for common page types like FAQs, wikis, manuals, presentations, and video-based documentation.

What stood out to me was the advanced AI search functionality, which could quickly parse through entire help articles rather than just article titles.

With collaboration tools, ProProfs facilitates multiple users collaborating on articles at once in a familiar, Google Docs-like interface. The reporting system is also robust and shows you what people were searching for and where you need to add more info. This helps you keep your content relevant and up-to-date.

ProProfs has fewer integration options than competitors, which could restrict its functionality within existing workflows.

Pricing:

• Free plan available.
• Business: $49 per user/month.

Best for:

• Organizations looking to create both internal and external knowledge bases.
• Companies seeking to reduce support ticket volume with enhanced customer self-service resources.

Key Features

• Import existing Word documents and PDFs.
• Built-in templates and analytics reporting.
• Public facing and internal knowledge bases.
• Customization and branding capabilities.

10. Tettra

Tettra is an AI-powered knowledge management platform designed to help teams manage, share, and organize internal documentation. It features an intuitive interface and a notable Slack integration that allows users to search and share answers from the knowledge base directly within Slack. Tettra can summarize Slack threads using AI and then save that information automatically as an internal knowledge document.

I was impressed with Kai, their AI-powered assistant and Slack bot. Kai monitors your Slack channels and will intelligently respond to teammates’ questions with context-aware answers from your internal documentation. For example, if a teammate asks in Slack, “When can I work from home?” Kai will reference your work-from-home policy and answer in the blink of an eye, saving everyone time.

Overall, I enjoyed Tettra’s UI. It felt familiar, intuitive, and not at all overwhelming. The text editor for creating knowledge docs is minimal and sleek, and it was easy to add rich content like embedded videos, code snippets, and callouts with the click of a button. I also found the Question & Answer feature to be helpful:

Employees can post questions directly to Tettra, and they are either automatically answered by Kai using AI that references existing knowledge documents, or they can be answered and pinned by admins for everyone to see.

Pricing:

• Basic: $4 per user/month (10 user minimum).
• Scaling: $8 per user/month (10 user minimum).
• Professional: $7,200/year (first 50 users included).

Best for:

• Small to medium-sized teams looking to create robust, AI-powered internal documentation.
• Customer service teams looking to streamline onboarding and enhance agent productivity.

Key Features

• 30-day version history.
• Summarize Slack threads and save them as knowledge docs.
• Kai AI assistant.

11. Nuclino

Nuclino is a modern, sleek collaboration and knowledge management platform that helps teams create and share information seamlessly.

At first, I found Nuclino to be a little confusing. It’s pretty different from traditional knowledge management solutions. Its WYSIWYG document editor was intuitive, but that’s about where the familiarity ends. After playing around with the tool for a while, it seemed clear to me that it was less of a knowledge base solution and more of a holistic information hub and modern workspace.

You can certainly create a company wiki using Nuclino, and a nice one at that. Still, the real value comes from using Nuclino as a unified workspace for managing projects, taking notes on meetings, collaborating on documents, and onboarding new employees. All information generated in these processes can be neatly organized, stored, and accessed via speedy AI-powered search.

The most unique aspect of Nuclino is its ability to organize visual content. Nuclino offers multiple ways to visualize information, such as lists, Kanban boards, and a unique graph view that displays the relationships between interconnected documents and items. Check it out:

It’s not immediately clear how I’d use a document graph like this, but I like it.

Overall, Nuclino is an interesting knowledge management solution for small teams looking for a central hub for all their knowledge and projects. Combined with a chat tool like Slack (which it integrates with), Nuclino can be a unified workspace for modern, agile teams that prioritize versatility, collaboration, and clean design.

Pricing:

• Free plan available.
• Starter: $6 per user/month.
• Business: $10 per user/month.

Best for:

• Small to medium-sized teams looking to create robust, AI-powered internal documentation.
• Customer service teams looking to streamline onboarding and enhance agent productivity.

Key Features

• Sidekick AI assistant.
• Real-time collaborative editing.
• Visual content organization.
• Unified workspace and company wiki.

Transform Your Business With Knowledge Management

Taking a deep dive into knowledge management software was eye-opening. Previously, I took for granted the sheer amount of information that businesses generated. Now, I’ve come to realize that knowledge management platforms are indispensable in managing and sharing that information, reducing redundancy, and enabling streamlined decision-making and onboarding.

From the customer standpoint, knowledge management is a must. As a modern customer and former support rep, I’ll always seek self-help resources before calling in or sending an email. With all the knowledge management options available today, there’s no excuse for not providing those resources. This approach empowers your customers and lightens the load on your support team, which results in higher-quality service and increased satisfaction.

In reviewing 11 different knowledge management solutions for this post, I’ve realized one thing is certain: AI isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Virtually every knowledge management tool offers AI tools ranging from AI assistants to AI powered search and generative AI embedded within document editors.

I think the most noteworthy platforms are the ones like Nuclino, HubSpot, and Guru, which have the power to create a unified workspace that consolidates your company information while enhancing productivity and eliminating the need for various other business apps.

Investing in a knowledge management tool in 2025 can yield substantial benefits for your employees and customers. As these technologies continue to evolve and customer expectations rise, now is the time to ensure a competitive edge with unified knowledge and robust self-service capabilities.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has since been updated for comprehensiveness.