9 of the Best Knowledge Management Tools by Category in 2022

Searching for the be knowledge management tool is like searching for the top vehicle manufacturer—a simple search turns up countless recommendations. You can find a lot of best-this and best-that lists online, but many lists fail to mention the ‘best’ solution listed isn’t the best choice for everyone. The ‘best solution’ sounds good….but best for what use case, for what budget, what variable was used to put the list together?

Many software products contain a knowledge component, so to knowledge management tool you select should fit inside the knowledge management system you have designed; some solutions are long-term investments, others not so much.

How to choose the best knowledge management tools

To select the best knowledge management tools, first understand the categories of knowledge management solutions on the market; some tools like knowledge management platforms enterprise-class and integrate easily with other products; other solutions like knowledge bases are inexpensive and designed for small businesses.

Understand your position on the knowledge maturity curve

Your knowledge management system may outline the people in your organization, the processes for maintaining knowledge—and a tool like a knowledge base.

As you grow, you may need to migrate to another knowledge management tool; these different ‘levels’ of knowledge management—are what we at Shelf have coined the knowledge maturity curve.

From left to right, most companies start with a simple knowledge base that stores information; as companies mature their knowledge requirements chance. Since B2C enterprises must thousands of customers, they eventually will need an enterprise knowledge management platform that can surface knowledge—not just internally—but wherever customers need answers.

Note: Knowledge automation is a subset of the KM platform that represents the future of knowledge management—where companies can use their knowledge management tool to automate knowledge work.

Check our our blog post, 7 types of knowledge management tools for a more in-depth overview of all the best knowledge management tools out there—like the difference between a knowledge base vs knowledge repository, and everything in-between.

Once you’ve sure of the knowledge solution you need, check out our list of the top knowledge management solutions broken down by category.

Summary

Shelf’s enterprise-class knowledge management platform that helps brands surface great answers anywhere and automate knowledge work. As the first knowledge automation platform, the Shelf platform serves as the knowledge hub for brands with contact centers and large customer bases like HelloFresh, Glovo, and Gerber Life. The product’s API-first architecture enables companies to centralize their knowledge silos to one location, integrate directly with support channels agents use, and serve better answers over time using Shelf’s award-winning AI engine.

As the best knowledge management tool designed to support enterprises, Shelf offers the knowledge authoring, maintenance, and machine learning capabilities a knowledge manager needs.

Summary

Zendesk provides customer service software designed to give customer support teams a simple front end portal to manage tickets and share information. The software includes a knowledge base for organizing information specifically within the support environment.

Zendesk serves knowledge to customers primarily using articles and predefined ticket responses; These articles can either be added natively or integrated from your company’s source of truth—where it adds or updates articles and other content types.

Summary

CloudTutorial offers a simple, easy-to-use product to help companies create a knowledge base for the first time. This solution can serve as an internal or external knowledge base, corporate Wiki website, FAQ or Help site, or used personally for storing notes, documents, and other files.

Out of all the knowledge options available, CloudTutorial offers an affordable solution for small companies starting to receive customer inquiries. The product doesn’t include integrations you’d expect with an enterprise-class knowledge solution, but has a few cool features out of the box, like basic workflows, customized forms, and customizable branding.

Summary

Docs, project management, wikis—Notion delivers on all three of these in a simple platform that makes working with your team easier.

Notion combines knowledge with every day work to give context to anything happening in your organization–from projects to vacation policies. Many people use Notion for personal knowledge management—things like organizing your reading list or organizing notes and ideas.

Summary

InSided is a Gainsight product to help you organize community and product-specific knowledge. The platform is great if you need a place where your customers can start message board topics if they have a problem that requires specialized knowledge.

Outside of building a user community, if you simply need a searchable catalogue of articles to help customers self-serve, inSided provides some basic authoring tools you’d expect in a good knowledge product.

With InSided, you can gather product feedback, build a user community for the first time, and give customers an outlet to ask questions to your team and their peers.

Summary

Monday.com is perfect if you are looking for a way to manage a heavy content workload for your internal team. The platform allows you to upload files to create a basic knowledge base; if your team needs a place to store a handful of image files or docs associated with a project, Monday should have all the basic knowledge base functionality you need.

Search functionality allows you to quickly find a task or piece of knowledge linked to one of your project boards. Monday is a good out-of-the-box solution to manage any kind of project with a deadline, a project owner, and common file types like images. This grid-based solution also includes a lot of customization options for adding project statuses, and displaying all the columns you need for your project board.

Summary

Absorb lets you create a custom look and feel for your company’s training programs, ideal for knowledge that is course or quiz-related related. With Absorb, can award learners for completing courses or learning paths with certificates and badges.

Choose from a library of pre-built courses, or create your own. If you need a simple knowledge solution to upskill or reskill your workforce, Absorb is an excellent option.

Summary

HubSpot provides sales and marketing team with a suite of products designed to store and manage customer-facing content. For website and content managers, CMS Hub is their content management product ideal for small teams who need to design and store images, files, and layouts needed to create great website experiences.

Summary

Helpjuice offers a simple, customizable knowledge base ideal for small companies looking to create a library of self service articles.

This solution includes the internal integrations you’d expect from a knowledge base like Teams and Slack. For growing companies without an existing knowledge solution that need an out-of-the-box way to create a simple help center or knowledge base, Helpjuice fits the bill.

Before you purchase another piece software, be sure your company has established a single source of truth for knowledge—a central place your KM team can work from and maintain. Knowledge management tools do different things, and most have some sort of knowledge management function (or module).

Instead of creating knowledge silos, integrate knowledge where you need it. For example, B2C enterprises prefer KM platforms (like Shelf) because these companies must surface knowledge in a ton of locations, in different languages, and need access to more than cards or simple content types.