Creating, maintaining, and publishing technical documentation is a tedious & time-consuming process. There’s no point in dressing it up; it is what it is.
Thankfully, there are dedicated technical documentation solutions that can help lighten the load. These specially designed tools can help you create better docs and help run the documentation process smoothly.
With so many available options, finding the best documentation software that matches your feature requirements & your budget can take time and effort.
If that sounds like a headache, here’s some good news. In this post, we have compiled a list of the five best technical documentation software, including features, pricing, pros, and cons so that you can pick the best one for your business.
So let’s get started!
What Is Technical Documentation: Quick Guide
Technical documentation, to the uninitiated, is easily described by splitting it into two categories of types of written content. Internal technical documentation and external.
Internal technical documentation mainly includes sensitive information such as the product’s source code, plans for future projects, and more.
External technical documentation, by contrast, usually contains information that helps end-users, stakeholders, technical writers, and project managers comprehend the whole product paradigm.
External technical documentation can include generic product-related information, such as:
- how the product was built
- how a product works
- how the product should be maintained
And other relevant queries!
Technical documentation also plays a significant role in troubleshooting, training, and product development. With all the vital information ready at a reader’s fingertips, helping business owners reduce errors, increase productivity, and improve safety.
Another benefit of a technical knowledge base is that it helps you enhance your customer’s experience with your support services. With detailed solutions to every general query, you can quickly solve your end-users problems.
Overall, documentation plays a crucial role in the development of any industry. However, managing the entire document system effectively is a challenging task.
This is where technical documentation software comes in handy.
What Is Technical Documentation Software?
Technical documentation software is specifically designed to automate and streamline the documentation process.
It helps you organize all your product-related technical documents in one place so your team members and customers can easily find them whenever needed.
There are several problems with traditional web-based documentation software, including its design, lack of collaboration features, bugs, and other shortcomings.
So it is crucial to choose a solution that offers flexible customization features, allows your team members to collaborate, provides optimized functionality, and has reasonable prices.
That said, let’s now check our top picks for the best software for technical documentation.
Popular Software for Technical Documentation [Free + Premium]
Here’s a quick pricing overview of our technical documentation software.
| Technical Documentation Software | Free Version | Starting Pricing (Billed Annually) |
| 1. KB Support | ✅ | Free Forever |
| 2. Document360 | ✅ | $149/month |
| 3. Nuclino | ✅ | $5/month |
| 4. Confluence | ✅ | $5.75/month |
| 5. KnowledgeOwl | ❌ | $79/month |
1. KB Support
KB Support is a popular help desk and knowledge base support plugin for WordPress.
You can manage everything in one place, from customizing submission forms to answering support tickets and solving customers’ queries.
Think of KB Support as a SaaS product built for WordPress.
Including all the prominent help desk features, KB Support has integrated Knowledge Base functionality that allows you to automate your technical documentation workflow without touching a single line of code.
This built-in KB functionality lets you create a robust, optimized knowledge base of help articles and reference documentation based on your customer’s most frequently asked support questions and tickets.
A useful feature of KB Support is Ajax Live Search functionality, which allows users to find the exact docs solution to their queries.
KB Support is your one-stop solution if you’re looking for a WordPress plugin that gives you complete control over your support tickets and Knowledge Base articles.
Pros
- It lets you easily create, customize and update technical docs using WordPress editor.
- It allows you to tag your documents with relevant search terms and organize them into categories and subcategories.
- AJAX-powered live search functionality. Enables users to find solutions to common problems using an integrated knowledge base.
- Allows you to create specific Knowledge Base articles that you can send customers to provide solutions to their problems.
- You can restrict access to particular Knowledge Base articles to logged-in users only.
- Includes front-end widgets and offers shortcodes to extend the core functionality of the plugin.
- Comes with pre-built layouts for docs archive and single pages.
- Multilingual, allowing you to provide support to customers around the world.
Cons
KB Support is an intuitive WordPress plugin that is easy to use. However, for those new to WordPress, it may take some time to learn all its features and functionalities. However, with some exploration and practice, users can quickly get up to speed and take advantage of KB Support’s features.
Pricing
KB Support is a FREE WordPress plugin. You can install and activate it from your admin WP dashboard or download a ZIP file from the WordPress repository profile.
If you want to extend KB Support’s functionality & features, you can also try its premium extensions.
2. Document360
Next on our list is one of the robust & popular technical documentation software: Document360.
Document360 is a cloud-based knowledge management platform that allows you to create, publish, and manage a knowledge base for your end customers and team members.
This technical documentation software offers many features, including document management, version control, collaboration tools, and advanced search capabilities.
One of the cool features of Document360 is that it gives you the flexibility to create an advanced Knowledge Base Portal for editors, writers, and reviewers. And on the other hand, you can set up a Knowledge Base Site with search functionality for your customers and employees.
Pros
- Clean and easy-to-use interface.
- Easy customization options allow you to alter your knowledge base’s branding as you like.
- Detailed analytics and insights of the knowledge base.
- Granular user access control lets you control who can view, edit, and publish content.
- Supports multiple languages.
Cons
- Document360 includes different pricing plans to fit different budgets. However, the pricing packages are expensive for small businesses and startups.
- The Standard premium plan doesn’t offer advanced integration such as Chat, Marketing automation, analytics, and more.
Pricing
- Document360 pricing plans are divided into five categories. The lowest Standard pricing plan costs $149 if paid annually and $199 if paid monthly.
3. Nuclino
If you’re searching for a documentation tool to organize & share information within your teams, Nuclino is a good solution.
It is a simple yet powerful collaborative tool that allows you to update, edit, and create documents in real-time.
You can add images, videos, code blocks, and other media content to create a lively knowledge base for your business.
Pros
- It has an interactive interface and includes beginner-friendly features.
- Flexible workspace that allows you to organize content as you like.
- Integration with popular third-party apps. Such as Slack, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
- Provides a powerful search and filter function.
- Supports Markdown formatting.
Cons
- Though Nuclino offers a free plan, it has limitations, such as limited users and storage space. The paid plans can be expensive, especially for larger teams.
- Lack of content customization options.
Pricing
Nuclino is a freemium documentation tool. The paid plan comes in two variations, and the Standard pricing plan costs $5 if paid annually and $6 if paid monthly.
4. Confluence
Yet another popular technical documentation software in our list is Confluence.
This documentation platform allows you to create, collaborate, and organize all your documentation-related work in one place.
With Confluence, you can easily create a knowledge base using a simple WYSIWYG editor and customizable templates.
The key feature of Confluence is that it flawlessly integrates with Atlassian products such as Jira, Bitbucket, and Trello.
Confluence’s real-time collaboration allows teams to create and edit content in real-time.
Pros
- Allows to add keyword labels to make the documentation process more organized.
- Includes advanced search & page tree features.
- Offers built-in Table of Contents macro.
- Integrates with other Atlassian products.
Cons
- Offers limited customization options, making it difficult to customize the software according to your preferences.
Pricing
- Confluence offers free and premium versions of its services, and its Standard paid plan costs $5.75.
5. KnowledgeOwl
KnowledgeOwl is a popular choice for technical documentation software.
This tool comes with a WYSIWYG editor, which allows writers to preview the doc before publishing to see how it will look.
Further, using its intuitive drag-and-drop feature, you can organize your knowledge base articles based on different categories.
With its Contextual Help widget, you can display a miniature version of your docs to provide an overview to your users.
KnowledgeOwl also helps you optimize your knowledge base content for search engines. With its article title tags and meta descriptions, you can track the performance of your articles.
Pros
- It comes with a WYSIWYG editor that allows users to preview their content as they write it.
- Allows reorganizing articles and categories using the drag-and-drop functionality.
- Includes easy customization options to change your site’s colors, logo, and fonts.
- Provides advanced search functionality that auto-suggests articles as users type in the search bar.
- Allows to optimize knowledge base content for SEO.
Cons
- KnowledgeOwl doesn’t offer a lite version of its services, and the paid pricing plans may not be suitable for small businesses or teams with limited budgets.
Pricing
- KnowledgeOwl is a premium technical documentation software. It has three paid plans, and the lowest premium plan, Flex costs $79/month.
So there you have it! These are our top picks of the best technical documentation software that you can choose from.
Conclusion: What Is the Best Technical Documentation Software for You?
If you still need clarification about what technical documentation suits your needs, let us elaborate!
If you’re using WordPress, then KB Support is a perfect choice; it’s free and offers all the Knowledge base features you would expect in any Saas tool.
You can go for Confluence if you have a tight budget and want a collaborative tool with a decent number of features.
If you have a large website and deep pockets (lucky you!), you can invest in Document360 or KnowledgeOwl.
Each of the tools we’ve listed has its pros and cons. Before investing, we recommend reading online reviews and trying the technical documentation software’s free version (or trials).
We hope you’ve enjoyed our mini roundup of the best software for technical documentation, and we hope you find a solution that meets your needs.