Top 15 Knowledge Management Software & Tools for 2024

Knowledge is power, but it can become a burden if your company’s valuable information is scattered across emails, Word docs, and Google Drive. 

Over the past 6-7 years in the knowledge management and customer service industry, I have noticed how knowledge management software helps centralize company information, making it easily accessible for employees and customers.

In fact, Deloitte has found that companies with effective knowledge sharing programs had a 34% higher productivity rate than those without such programs.

In this blog, I’ll list the 15 best knowledge management tools that have the right mix of features to help you share knowledge better. Here’s a quick summary of my top three. 

Before exploring all the tools and their features, let’s discuss some basics first. 

What Is Knowledge Management Software?

Knowledge management software is a tool that helps you capture, store, and access business information from a centralized platform. 

This information can include business processes, company best practices, standard operating procedure software tools, and client details – basically, anything your employees need to give their best shot at work. 

These tools encompass powerful features that facilitate instant search and smooth navigation across devices, including mobile phones. Moreover, with advanced analytics and multiple language support, knowledge management software lets you gather useful business insights and serve a diverse audience. 

Why Does Your Organization Need Knowledge Management Software?

The benefits of knowledge management software involves enhanced decision-making, better collaboration, and ensuring consistency in knowledge sharing at workplace. Let’s discuss these in detail.

Enhanced Collaboration & Creativity

Knowledge management software facilitates seamless collaboration, allowing teams to share insights, best practices, and lessons learned. 

It enables real-time communication through comments, encourages cross-functional collaboration, and breaks down information silos, fostering a culture of collective intelligence.

With teams getting a shared space to learn and work together, your knowledge management platform becomes a breeding ground for creativity and innovation. 

Accelerated Learning & Training

Knowledge management software can prove extremely valuable for your learning and development initiatives. It equips employees with comprehensive training materials, e-learning modules, and interactive tutorials, ensuring they have on-the-go access to relevant knowledge. 

As barriers to learning reduce, employees take less time to learn new skills and expertise in their respective fields. Moreover, they get adept with your company’s best practices faster and start contributing meaningfully to projects. 

Aids Employee Onboarding 

New hires have a tough time finding their footing in a new environment. Their learning process slows down if they are not provided with constant support. 

A knowledge management system gives new hires quick access to all company information, so they can get up to speed faster. It accelerates their onboarding by giving a helping hand right when they need it and empowers them to overcome all initial challenges with ease. This ensures that new hires have a smooth transition into your company and in their new roles. 

Improved Productivity & Decision-Making 

With quick access to a centralized knowledge repository, employees can get work done faster without wasting time in emails, calls, and shoulder taps. They can make informed choices based on the data available, thus positively impacting the project outcomes. 

Moreover, knowledge management software provides rich reports and analytics that empower leaders to extract valuable insights and make data-driven decisions for your company’s long-term growth.

What Are the Types of Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management involves creating, sharing, using, and managing knowledge within an organization. Here are the main types:

1. Explicit Knowledge Management: It deals with knowledge that can be easily articulated, documented, and transferred, such as manuals, documents, and databases.

2. Tacit Knowledge Management: It focuses on knowledge gained through personal experience and context, such as skills, insights, and intuitions, which is more challenging to capture and share.

3. Embedded Knowledge Management: It involves knowledge ingrained in processes, products, culture, and practices within the organization.
4. Implicit Knowledge Management: It involves knowledge that is not directly expressed but can be inferred from behavior, actions, and context.

Knowledge Management for Knowledge Sharing & Organizational Learning

Knowledge management is crucial in enabling knowledge sharing and organizational learning. By systematically capturing and organizing information, businesses can ensure valuable insights and expertise are easily available to all employees. 

This accessibility nurtures a culture of continuous learning and collaboration, where team members can easily share knowledge, learn from one another’s experiences, and innovate more effectively.

Knowledge management practices significantly enhance organizational learning. When knowledge is systematically documented and shared, it reduces redundancy, minimizes mistakes, and accelerates the onboarding process for new employees. 

It also helps organizations adapt to changes and challenges more swiftly by leveraging collective intelligence, ensuring that the organization remains competitive and resilient in a dynamic business environment.

15 Best Knowledge Management Software & Tools in 2024

To find the right knowledge management software, assess your organization’s specific needs, including ease of use, integration capabilities, and scalability. Let’s explore 15 such tools. 

1. ProProfs Knowledge Base – Best for Easily Creating Help Sites, Manuals & Private Knowledge Bases

We have been using ProProfs Knowledge Base’s AI-enabled WYSIWYG editor to efficiently create user manuals and FAQs (public, private, embedded inside your app/software, or integrated with chat). It allows us to add images, videos, and links directly into their documents, enhancing the instructional value of the content. 

The platform supports real-time collaboration with features like internal comments for collaborative editing, role-based workflows for outlining member responsibilities, and conditional content for secure information sharing. It also allows Administrators to set up roles and permissions to control who can view, edit, or manage the documentation. 

What you will like:

• A variety of knowledge base templates to help you create knowledge base articles easily
• Revision history to track up to 30 recent changes made to your knowledge base
• Lets you control the layout, format, and presentation of your knowledge base with the help of CSS
• Analytics feature for valuable insights into how content is being used
• Effortlessly integrates with your favorite tools to enable chat support, web forms, search analytics & more for your site
• Seamlessly integrates with other in-house apps – ProProfs Chat, ProProfs Help Desk, and ProProfs Survey for a comprehensive customer support suite.

What you may not like:

• No downloadable or on-premise version
• Dark user interface option not available.

Pricing:

Forever Free plan with all the premium features for up to 25 articles. Paid plan starts at $49/author/month.

2. Guru – Best for Connecting Company’s Collective Knowledge

I like how Get Guru allows you to capture knowledge directly from the workflow, allowing users to create and update knowledge cards within the applications they are already using. This integration ensures the information remains current and accessible without disrupting daily operations.

The platform’s browser extension is another primary feature that enhances productivity by providing quick access to knowledge without leaving the workflow. Users can search for and retrieve information instantly, reducing the time spent switching between different tools and platforms. 

What you will like:

• Allows subject matter experts to review and verify the information periodically
• Offers robust analytics and reporting to identify the most frequently accessed information, knowledge gaps, and user engagement trends information is readily available
• Lets users to comment and ask questions on the Guru cards.

What you may not like: 

• Adding videos to Cards can be complicated 
• Limited UI customization options.

Pricing: 

A free plan is available for up to 3 users. Paid plan starts from $10/month.

3. Document360 – Best for Creating Online Documentation

In my last company, we were using Document 360 to create and structure online documentation. It helped enhance productivity and ensure that knowledge is readily available. Its robust content editor supports rich text formatting, multimedia embedding, and Markdown, allowing users to create detailed and visually appealing documents that include text, images, videos, and more.

The platform’s advanced search functionality ensures that users can quickly find the necessary information. It indexes all content, providing relevant results based on keywords and phrases. It also supports categorization and tagging, further enhancing the organization and retrieval of information.

What you will like: 

• Allows multiple users to contribute to and edit content, promoting teamwork and ensuring that knowledge is continuously updated and refined
• You can assign roles and permissions, ensuring that the right people have access to the necessary information and editing capabilities
• Provides comprehensive analytics and reporting tools for insights into how the knowledge base is being used, including metrics on user engagement, popular content, and search queries. 

What you may not like:

• Sometimes, it’s difficult to migrate articles from Word
• The subscription cost of Document360 is on the higher side as compared to competitors offering similar features.

Pricing:

A free plan is available. Paid plan starts at $149/project/month.

4. Notion – Best for Creating Internal Wikis for Team Sharing Informal Knowledge

Notion’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows users to easily structure information to suit their specific needs, enhancing the knowledge base’s accessibility and usability. I like how Notion’s powerful database functionality helps users create relational databases that link various pieces of information, enabling a more interconnected and comprehensive knowledge management system. 

The platform also offers extensive customization options, allowing users to tailor their workspaces to specific workflows. Users can add different types of content, such as text, images, videos, and embeds, to create rich, interactive documents. 

What you will like: 

• Enables real-time collaboration, allowing multiple users to edit and comment on documents simultaneously
• The ability to assign tasks, set reminders, and track progress within the same platform, further enhances collaboration and project management
• It seamlessly integrates with various other tools and platforms, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Trello, to allow users to connect their workflows and streamline information flow across different systems.

What you may not like:

• I found it a little difficult to format text/pages for a first-time user
• Lacks an option for visualizing data – no real offline mode.

Pricing: 

A free plan is available. Paid plan starts from $8/user/month.

5. ClickUp – Best for Internal Wikis for Team Sharing Informal Knowledge

ClickUp is a robust project management tool that significantly aids knowledge management through its Docs feature. It allows teams to create, edit, and share documents within the same platform where they manage their tasks and projects. 

The platform’s task management capabilities let users create tasks, assign them to team members, set deadlines, and track progress. This ensures that projects are well-organized and everyone knows their responsibilities. The ability to attach documents and comments to tasks further enhances knowledge sharing, as all relevant information is centralized and easily accessible.

What you will like: 

• Lets teams collaborate in real-time on documents, making edits and leaving comments that are visible to all team members
• Offers customizable views, such as list, board, and calendar views, allowing users to visualize their work in a way that best suits their workflow
• Supports integrations with various third-party tools, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Trello.

What you may not like: 

• There are high volume of notifications overwhelming and sometimes difficult to manage effectively
• I have noticed it is slow when refreshing tasks or switching between lists.

Pricing: 

Paid plan starts at $7/user/month.

6. Bloomfire – Best for Collaborative Authoring

Bloomfire helps organizations efficiently capture, share, and leverage collective knowledge. I like how its intuitive content creation and management tools allow users to easily create, upload, and organize content in various formats, including documents, videos, and images.

The platform’s search functionality is powered by artificial intelligence, enabling users to quickly find relevant information by indexing the entire content library. This AI-driven search not only considers keywords but also understands the context, providing more accurate and useful search results. This ensures that users can swiftly locate the knowledge they need, improving productivity and decision-making.

What you will like:

• Intuitive user interface
• Robust analytics and reporting tools provide insights into how the knowledge base is being used
• Supports integrations with various other tools and platforms, such as Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams.

What you may not like:

• Offers limited options in price plans
• Sometimes, the search system shows unrelated posts

Pricing: 

Paid plan starts from $25/user/month.

7. Atlassian Confluence – Best for Team Collaboration on Documents

Confluence enables users to create spaces for different projects or teams, allowing for organized and structured content management. This segmentation helps maintain clarity and focus, making it easier for users to find relevant information.

My favorite is its  rich content editor, which allows users to create documents with various types of content, including text, images, tables, and multimedia, enhancing the richness and usability of the knowledge base. It integrates seamlessly with other Atlassian products like Jira, enabling a more cohesive workflow. 

What you will like: 

• Allows administrators to define who can view, edit, or comment on specific content
• It enables the setting of permissions at both the space and page levels, providing granular control over content visibility and collaboration.
• Enables rich insights on the knowledge base usage – identify popular content, and understand user engagement. 

What you may not like: 

• Some users do complain about its steep learning curve
• Sometimes, the search system is not that accurate at showing relevant results.

Pricing: 

A free plan is available for up to 10 users and 2 GB storage. Paid plan starts from $5.75/user/month.

8. Slite – Best for Collaborative Knowledge Base Powered by AI

Slite’s intuitive editor supports rich text, images, code snippets, and other multimedia elements. This flexibility allows users to create detailed and engaging documents that can convey complex information effectively. It also supports collaborative editing, enabling multiple team members to work on the same document simultaneously and enabling a more dynamic and inclusive knowledge-sharing environment.

The platform’s powerful search functionality ensures that users can quickly find the necessary information. It indexes all content, providing relevant results based on keywords and phrases. It also supports tagging and categorization, further improving the organization and retrieval of information.

What you will like: 

• Seamlessly integrates with other tools and platforms, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Trello
• Enables analytics tools to helps organizations understand user engagement, identify popular content, and track search queries
• Robust document verification and expiry system enables checking that all your documentation is up-to-date as part of your weekly routine.

What you may not like: 

• I felt the need for a better way to view spreadsheets or .csv’s in Slite
• Limited file upload types.

Pricing:

A free trial is available. Paid plan starts at $8/month/member.

9. HelpCrunch – Best for Creating a Structured Help Center

I love how HelpCrunch features a WYSIWYG editor for writing SEO-optimized knowledge base articles. This editor allows the integration of images, videos, and tables, helping streamline content creation and making it accessible for users to find necessary information.

The platform enables the integration of the knowledge base into a live chat widget, allowing customers to search for answers before reaching out to support. This can significantly reduce support tickets with knowledge base, enhancing customer self-service.

What you will like: 

• Provides actionable metrics to track article views and ratings, helping businesses identify content gaps through failed search reports
• Its AI-powered editor further simplifies content management by offering tools to shorten, expand, or rephrase text, adjust the tone, and translate articles automatically
• Enables businesses to match the help center with their brand by using custom domains, logos, color schemes, and CSS. and provide consistent support across different channels.

What you may not like:

• Does not support multilingual features
• You cannot edit the message after it has been sent on the app.

Pricing: 

Paid plan starts from $12/month.

10. Zoho Desk – Best for Sales-Focused Helpdesk with Advanced Features (In Higher Pricing Tiers)

Zoho Desk was recommend to me by a former colleague. It helps centralize the creation, organization, and maintenance of help articles. It allows businesses to create a separate category for each brand, making the knowledge base user-friendly and organized. It also supports automatic translation into over 50 languages, ensuring accessibility for a global audience. 

The platform also enables seamless integration between support agents and the knowledge base. Sales teams can receive automated article suggestions based on customer queries, ensuring quick and accurate responses. 

What you will like: 

• Converts article feedback into support tickets, streamlining the process of updating and improving content
• Enables SEO optimization tools, helping maintain high-quality, relevant content that appears prominently in search results, reducing the workload on support agents
• Multi-channel support allows agents to handle inquiries from various platforms like email, social media, and live chat in a unified interface.

What you may not like: 

• Integrating external apps could require technical know-how
• Sometimes, the automatic email sending invitation to new user of HelpCenter does not work.

Pricing: 

Paid plan starts from $9.6/user/month.

11. Zendesk Guide – Best for Zendesk Suite Users

Zendesk helps customers find answers quickly, reducing the volume of support tickets. It integrates seamlessly with other Zendesk tools, allowing agents to access knowledge base articles directly within their workspace and enhancing efficiency and consistency in customer support.

The platform’s AI-powered Answer Bot further improves knowledge management by automatically suggesting relevant articles to customers during chat and email interactions. It helps resolve common issues instantly, improving customer satisfaction and reducing the workload on support teams. 

What you will like:

• Its analytics provide insights into article performance, helping businesses identify and address content gaps
• The customizable ticketing system allows businesses to prioritize, track, and resolve customer queries efficiently with automated workflows that streamline operations
• Provides detailed reports on ticket volume, resolution times, and customer satisfaction, providing actionable insights, and enabling continuous improvement of service quality.

What you may not like:

• Gets expensive as you add on features
• Lacks automatic resizing option for the reply text area, particularly noticeable on Chrome.

Pricing:

Zendesk offers a free trial. Paid plans start at $55/month/user.

12. OpenKM – Best for Automatic Cataloging System

I like how OpenKM offers a taxonomy system to structure content, making it easy to find and access information. It automatically identifies and categorizes information using machine learning, ensuring valuable knowledge is systematically archived and easily retrievable.

The platform’s automatic cataloging system automates repetitive tasks and processes based on document events, minimizing human error and ensuring consistency in document management. This reduces administrative overhead and ensures that business logic is applied uniformly across the organization.

What you will like: 

• The tracking and audit trails in OpenKM provide a comprehensive record of all activities related to document management
• Enables a detailed history of document changes, enhancing the overall integrity of the information management process
• Its connectivity options, including REST and CMIS web services and support for protocols like CIFS, FTP, and WebDAV, ensure seamless integration with third-party applications. 

What you may not like:

• Not too friendly graphic design
• Slow uploading documents at a large range of documents.

Pricing:

OpneKM offers custom pricing.

13. Freshdesk – Best for Support Teams with Complex Needs

Freshdesk allows businesses to create a centralized repository of articles, FAQs and guides that customers can access to find answers to their queries. The intuitive editor and customizable templates make building and maintaining content easy, ensuring that information is always up-to-date and relevant.

I added Freshdesk in this list for its AI-powered Freshdesk Messaging, which suggests relevant knowledge base articles to customers during live chat interactions. This reduces the number of support tickets, enabling customers to find answers quickly. 

What you will like:

• Supports multilingual knowledge bases, ensuring that global customers can access information in their preferred language
• Its ticketing system streamlines the management of customer queries by categorizing, prioritizing, and assigning tickets to the appropriate agents 
• Enables automated workflows and canned responses, allowing support teams to resolve issues faster and more consistently.

What you may not like:

• The features ‘Set Ticket Field Options’ and ‘Hide Fields’ are not built-in into the system, you will have to rely on third-party apps
• I have noticed that its spam sensors get tripped up when our users post any kind of URL, and the ticket is basically ignored, and messages are thrown in the bit bucket.

Pricing:

Paid plan starts at $27.5/agent/month.

14. Tettra – Best for Saving Reusable Answers & Keeping Them Up-To-Date With Automation

Tettra’s integration with various communication platforms, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, enables users to pull relevant information directly from their conversations, ensuring that knowledge sharing is integrated into the team’s workflow.

The platform’s robust content creation and management system allows users to create pages, organize them into categories, and link related content to form a comprehensive knowledge base. This highly customizable structure will enable teams to tailor the knowledge base to their needs. 

What you will like:

• Supports version control to help users track changes and revert to previous versions if necessary
• Includes a powerful search functionality that helps users find the information they need quickly
• Seamlessly integrates with other popular tools such as Google Drive, GitHub, and Trello.

What you may not like:

• The page editing mode lacks robust customization options for different fonts, font sizes, and colors, and more flexibility in creating tables
• Can be less intuitive for users not familiar with Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Pricing:

Paid plan starts at $4/user/month.

15. KnowledgeOwl – Best for Call Center Knowledge Management

KnowledgeOwl allows call centers to create detailed knowledge bases that include FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and product information. Its intuitive content creation and organization tools enable users to create articles, categorize them, and link related content, forming a structured and comprehensive knowledge base. 

The platform also offers powerful search functionality that swiftly helps users find relevant information. I particularly like how the search feature is designed to handle natural language queries, making it user-friendly and efficient. 

What you will like:

• Let you customize the appearance of their knowledge bases to match their brand identity, creating a cohesive and professional look
• Supports robust user management and permissions, allowing administrators to control who can view, edit, and manage content
• Offers detailed analytics and reporting features – which articles are most popular, and where improvements can be made. 

What you may not like: 

• I felt the need of a video library to add to an article
• Sometimes, the search free queries are long, with too much emphasis on non-essential key words.

Pricing: 

Paid plan starts at $90/month for all the premium features.

Evaluation & Selection Criteria

The evaluation of products or tools chosen for this article follows an unbiased, systematic approach that ensures a fair, insightful, and well-rounded review. This method employs six key factors:

1. User Reviews/Ratings: Direct user experiences, including ratings and feedback from reputable sites, provide a ground-level perspective. This feedback is critical in understanding overall satisfaction and potential problems.
2. Essential Features & Functionality: The value of a product is ascertained by its core features and overall functionality. Through an in-depth exploration of these aspects, the practical usefulness and effectiveness of the tools are carefully evaluated.
3. Ease of Use: The user-friendliness of a product or service is assessed, focusing on the design, interface, and navigation. This ensures a positive experience for users of all levels of expertise.
4. Customer Support: The quality of customer support is examined, considering its efficiency and how well it supports users in different phases – setting up, addressing concerns, and resolving operational issues.
5. Value for Money: Value for money is evaluated by comparing the quality, performance, and features. The goal is to help the reader understand whether they would be getting their money’s worth. 
6. Personal Experience/Expert’s Opinion or Favorites: This part of the evaluation criteria draws insightful observations from the writer’s personal experience and the opinions of industry experts.

After exploring all the tools and evaluating them for features vs. pricing, ProProfs Knowldge Base stands out for its AI-powered, Word-like editor to create and sharing comprehensive, error-free, visually appealing guides and documentation without extensive technical skills. 

What Are the Key Features to Search for in Knowledge Management Software?

How a tool performs depends largely on the kind of features it possesses. There are some prominent knowledge management system features that a knowledge management tool must have for it to be useful for your business goals.

Let’s take a quick look at these features: 

• Easy-to-use editor – An MS Word-like editor is essential for creating and editing the content. You can even use it to upload images and videos and style the content just the way you want. 
• Access controls – This is a key feature that lets you manage user roles and permissions, paving the way for collaborative content creation. 
• Internal comments – Using internal comments, users can initiate discussions on articles, give feedback, and stay on the same page with respect to an article’s development. 
• Review workflows – You can set up a review workflow that comprises pre-defined article statuses. The workflow lets you stay in full control of an article’s progress from the time it’s written until it finally gets approved and published. 
• Version control – You can manage multiple versions of your knowledge management system and ensure your employees have access to the latest edition. 
• In-depth reports – With reports, you can get access to detailed insights into how your knowledge management system is performing and where it is lagging behind. 
• Third-party integrations – External integrations with tools like Jira and Slack make the process of managing and accessing business knowledge even more effortless. 

How to Choose the Best Knowledge Management Software

Now that we are clear about the purpose and benefits of knowledge management software, let’s go one step further and understand how to choose it right. 

There are hundreds tools for knowledge management on the market, which makes it all the more difficult to choose one that is perfect sync with your requirements. 

We have an easy way out for you. Here are some of the key factors you should look out for during the selection process:

Ease of Use

While most of the top knowledge management software boast that they are easy to use, only a few fulfill this basic yet important requirement. The software you choose should have an intuitive interface and require no coding skills or specialized training to set up. 

Centralized Platform

Any software you choose should provide teams with a unified space to work together and build high-quality content. This centralized platform is where teams can create structured content, track history, set workflows, and publish it across the web and mobile. 

Data Security

While working with sensitive business data, you need a tool with a strong security system. The leading software for knowledge management offers smart security features that allow folder or page-level restrictions to hide or display content. Such tools also support single sign-on and are GDPR compliant. 

Affordable Pricing

Knowledge management tools come with different price plans depending on the number of users and features offered. Go for a tool with a transparent pricing structure so that you don’t have to bear any surprises at the month’s end. 

Free Trial 

The tool should offer a free trial period of at least 15 days. This is vital for companies that want to take the product for a test drive before investing their hard-earned money in it. 

Moreover, a free trial period gives you a hands-on experience of a tool’s features and functionality, helping you make a mindful decision. 

Enhance Collaboration With the Best Knowledge Management Software

With tons of data being generated every single day, you need a dedicated system to manage this information and make it easily accessible. When managed well, knowledge can prove to be a valuable asset that drives innovation, improves efficiency, and helps you build a positive growth graph. 

The above-mentioned list of the best knowledge management software is carefully picked and will definitely help you make the most of your business knowledge. Compare their features and pricing, and opt for a trial version to check how well they perform.

If you are confused and need some recommendations, we’d say you can opt for ProProfs Knowledge Base if you need a tool that’s simple, feature-rich, and affordable at the same time. Give it a shot and watch how it can skyrocket your business growth.