Find the best Knowledge Management Systems
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SysAid is an IT service management (ITSM) platform that helps organizations automate workflows and optimize IT service delivery. The platform caters to a variety of industries, including education, healthcare, manufacturing and managed service providers. I...Read more about SysAid
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Service Cloud from Salesforce is a cloud-based customer service management solution that is designed to initiate customer service activities from anywhere. Built on the Salesforce1 Platform, Service Cloud works to centralise and optimise the agent efforts,...Read more about Salesforce Service Cloud
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Zendesk is a cloud-based help desk management solution offering customizable tools to build customer service portal, knowledge base and online communities. The solution offers a customizable front-end portal, live chat features and integration with applica...Read more about Zendesk Suite
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TeamSupport is a ticket management solution designed to optimize workflow and improve team collaboration. It serves a wide range of industries, from software-as-a-service providers to manufacturing companies, helping them manage customer inquiries, inciden...Read more about TeamSupport
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Document360 is an AI-powered knowledge base software for creating and sharing self-service knowledge bases. It offers a range of tools, including documentation creation, categorization, editing, and branding features such as markdown support, version contr...Read more about Document360
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AI-powered enterprise search, intranet, and knowledge base in one. Search for content across all your knowledge sources (Gdrive, Onedrive, Box, Dropbox, Sharepoint) Create, improve, or synthesize verified content and translate it to over 100 languages. ...Read more about Guru
Notion is a digital workspace that lets small to large businesses streamline and manage notes, tasks, projects, records, calendar and more. Key features include portfolio tracker, designer templates, database management, documentation and data export. Dep...Read more about Notion
LiveAgent is an online Help Desk solution for eCommerce businesses at the small and midsize levels. The platform offers live chat application, ticket management, online self-service portals and change and license management, all as either in-suite or stand...Read more about LiveAgent
HelpCrunch is a customer communication platform combining live chat, email marketing automation and a help desk in one solution. The solution helps support, sales and marketing teams to acquire, convert leads and support their customers. HelpCrunch is suit...Read more about HelpCrunch
livepro is a purpose-built cloud knowledge management platform for staff, customers, and partners. livepro offers the ability to view business knowledge as decision trees and process guidance, as well as articles. Everyone in the organization can collabora...Read more about livepro
KnowledgeOwl is a cloud-based knowledge management solution that is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It is industry agnostic and is most useful to human resources (HR) and customer service departments. Core features include knowledge base creation and...Read more about KnowledgeOwl
A Modern B2B Helpdesk CRM Software. Supportbench is a state-of-the-art Customer Relationship Management Software. We specialize in helping you build loyalty and customer retention through our seamless communication channels. Gain full visibility into wh...Read more about Supportbench
Shelf is a cloud-based platform that helps modern businesses thrive with on-demand answers to the questions that block customer and employee success. Shelf’s proprietary MerlinAI listens for questions and instantly suggests the best answers in search, cha...Read more about Shelf
Reamaze is a cloud-based help desk and customer messaging solution that helps businesses support, engage and convert customers using a single app. It’s suitable for businesses across industries such as higher education, retail, food and beverage, health ca...Read more about Re:amaze
Malcom! is a customer self service platform that helps businesses of all sizes in any sector provide a self service solution to their customers. Use Malcolm! to surface your knowledge, digitise your service related tasks, route data through to the other ...Read more about Malcolm!
Gist is a cloud-based help desk platform that helps small to large enterprises manage customer queries and streamline communication with leads. It enables users to embed chat widgets into business websites and customize greeting messages. Gist allows...Read more about Gist
BOSSDesk ITSM Help Desk Ticketing System on the Cloud and On Premise Turning ticket management into an exceptional customer experience! With rapidly increasing service requests, is your company maximizing its investment in your service management solutio...Read more about BOSSDesk
JustClip is a collaboration tool that helps businesses of all sizes in education, sales, accounting, law and other industries collect, organize, annotate and share information from a centralized platform. Professionals can save, categorize and label ideas,...Read more about JustClip
Slab is a knowledgebase and collaborations management solution designed to help businesses create a database of documents, policies and procedures, articles, employee handbooks, guidelines and more. Organizations can modify, remove or store information in ...Read more about Slab
TextExpander boosts your business productivity by allowing your team to communicate smarter, faster, and more consistently across all your channels. Built with collaboration in mind, your team will: - Save time and be more productive - Stay consistent, ...Read more about TextExpander
ProcedureFlow is a cloud-based knowledge management solution. The solution converts organizations’ processes and information into an accessible management tool to be used by employees. Key features includes data flowcharts, title search, drafts, approval s...Read more about ProcedureFlow
MyHub will allow you to quickly create a beautiful intranet that will transform the way employees connect to information, processes, and each other. With MyHub, benefit from modern intranet features such as pre-built templates, chat, newsfeeds, forums, blo...Read more about MyHub
HelpSite is a cloud-based solution that helps businesses create and build customizable knowledge bases and FAQs to resolve clients' queries. Using the platform, customers can receive automated suggestions about suitable articles and utilize the search func...Read more about HelpSite
Bettermode is an all-in-one customer community platform to engage customers and build meaningful experiences. A community built on Bettermode is a customer hub with many use cases. Product teams collect ideas and feedback. Customer support and success tea...Read more about Bettermode
Groove is a cloud-based help desk software for small businesses. It helps companies to communicate with their customers via email, live chat, social media and phone calls. Key features include ticketing, live chat, knowledge management, reporting tools and...Read more about Groove
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Your Guide to Top Knowledge Management Software, May 2024
Software Advice uses reviews from real software users to highlight the top-rated Knowledge Management products in North America.
Learn how products are chosenExplore FrontRunners
“Usability” includes user ratings for Functionality and Ease of Use.
“Customer Satisfaction” includes user ratings for Customer Support, Likelihood to Recommend and Value for Money.
Reviews analysis period: The reviews analysis period spans two years and ends the 15th of the month prior to publication.
Buyers Guide
This detailed guide will help you find and buy the right knowledge management software for you and your business.
Last Updated on January 27, 2025Knowledge management systems allow you to tame the waves of data flooding your business to streamline training, customer support and other vital operations. We've written this buyer's guide to help you narrow down the many options on the market and find one that fits your needs.
Here's what we'll cover:
What Is Knowledge Management Software?
The Benefits of Organizing Company Data
Common Features of Knowledge Management Software
Pricing and Purchasing Options
What Is Knowledge Management Software?
Basically, this kind of software transforms the raw data accumulated by a company into useful information. It accomplishes this goal by collecting data in a central knowledge base, contextualizing it and making it easily searchable, so that users can find the information they need on their own.
These applications help a company to build and maintain a knowledge base, which is essentially a specialized database that can be searched and browsed by customers. This allows customers to find answers to their own questions before they contact support agents.
Modern knowledge bases are generally components of company websites, with either intranet or extranet access. Many software packages allow you to customize the design of your customer self-service portal so that it fits with your brand. Employees can write content to publish in the knowledge base. The articles can then be indexed in popular search engines for easy access.
Knowledge bases can also be created for internal use, to assist employees with functions such as document sharing, training and resolving support calls. Employee self-service features can interface with other kinds of customer relationship management (CRM) software in order to optimize the performance of support agents.
Why Do I Need It?
The day-to-day activities of even a small business can produce a bewildering array of data. If this data remains unorganized, it isn't worth much to the company. By using software to organize this data, companies can vastly reduce the time that employees spend searching for answers to questions about their jobs and dealing with customer inquiries.
Enterprises and certain markets—particularly IT, telecommunications and finance—practically demand the use of knowledge bases to survive in the information economy. Small to medium-sized businesses can use them to eliminate cluttered filing cabinets and to help ease the transition to a paperless office.
Knowledge bases also have the potential to streamline training processes for companies facing growing pains. And companies that are contending with a high-turnover rate may want to utilize one in order to keep awareness of best practices alive and to ease the responsibilities of trainers.
Common Feautres of Knowledge Management Software
Knowledge management software offers a diverse array of features. The following table lists some of the most important ones to help you focus your search:
Publishing options | Look for formatting options for content such as rich text, hyperlinks and images. Workflow customization options can streamline content generation, as does the ability to publish emails directly to knowledge bases by CC’ing them to a special address. |
Decision trees | Many knowledge management systems can help you create "Q&"-style decision trees, which enable customers to troubleshoot their own issues. |
Advanced search and browse options | Look for search filters, auto-suggest capability, natural language search and search engine indexing options. Intent-based search, which matches keywords to common reasons why users search the knowledge base (e.g., how to clear a paper jam in a printer), is another powerful feature included in many knowledge bases. |
Feedback options | Your knowledge base should have built-in feedback options that allow users both to vote on the relevance and helpfulness of articles and to add comments when necessary. |
RSS feeds | Many knowledge bases feature RSS feeds to keep users on top of new and useful articles. |
Self-service portals | Self-service portals or help Web pages for customers and employees are a major part of the foundation for knowledge bases. Make sure that your portal can be customized to fit your brand and the design of the rest of your company's website. |
The Benefits of Organizing Company Data
Almost all customer service-oriented businesses can benefit from organizing their data for employee and customer access. Benefits include:
Helping customers help themselves. Collating information to create self-service portals for customers helps to ease the workload of support agents. This is the function of specialized complaint management software.
Centralizing data for support agents. Support agents can also find data about common issues in a single location, which enables them to reduce the amount of time spent on a given ticket.
Centralizing data for sales agents. Similarly, sales agents can find centralized information about tactics for converting leads, in order to reduce their time-per-sale.
Streamlining training. New employees can find answers to questions they encounter as they learn the ropes in one convenient place.
Archiving best practices. The know-how of experienced employees can be preserved so the company doesn't hemorrhage brain power when they leave.
Easy document sharing. Providing employees with centralized, remote access to all vital documents reduces the barrage of internal communications that can snarl the daily workings of a company.
Keeping management informed. Managers have access to key data at their fingertips, which empowers them to make more informed decisions.
Pricing and Purchasing Options
There are two basic market trends that you need to understand to make an informed purchase: inclusion of knowledge management applications in integrated CRM suites and the Web-based deployment model.
Integrated suites vs. “best-of-breed” systems. Knowledge management tools are frequently bundled, along with other applications, as part of an integrated CRM software suite. If you choose an integrated suite, consider whether the other applications in the package meet your needs. If you choose a standalone or “best-of-breed” application instead, you will need to ensure that it integrates with your existing software, such as your customer service, help desk automation and call center automation solutions. Here are some frequently requested applications among buyers we recently surveyed who chose an integrated CRM suite:
Integrated-Suite Buyers' Top-Requested Applications
Web-based vs. on-premise systems. CRM software can be licensed to users in two different ways: Web-based (meaning, the software is hosted in the cloud and accessed online using an Internet browser) or on-premise (installed on your company’s own servers). The Web-based deployment model, or “Software-as-a-Service (SaaS),” is generally more popular for CRM software, and is priced according to a monthly subscription model. With an on-premise model, on the other hand, you get a perpetual license—meaning you pay the licensing fee once for ongoing use of the software.
Pricing scales up based on functionality. No matter which package type and deployment model you choose, if you want a richer feature set, you can generally expect to pay more for the software. You may have to pay for an enterprise-level subscription to create and maintain a fully featured knowledge base on a large scale:
