Free knowledge base software and free trials

Free knowledge base (KB) software is a tool that enables organizations to collect, organize, and share information from a centralized storage space. This free software makes information easily accessible to all users, improving customer self-service and employee self-service.

There are three types of knowledge base software designed to improve knowledge-centered service and allow users to seek out individual answers. Dive into each type of KB below.

Internal knowledge bases

An internal knowledge baseis an operational library filled with every database, document, procedure, file, and policy that dictates businessoperations.

Internal knowledge bases support:

• Standard operating procedures (SOPs): Detailed instructions that cover safe task completion

• Employee handbooks: Written documents outlining procedures, policies, and other information

• Process and project documentation: Materials capturing important project and process data, including timelines, goals, and risks

• Sales documentation: Written materials facilitating communication and action between buyers and sellers

These knowledge bases (KBs) are employee self-service portals, helping agents access information themselves rather than running to a colleague or superior.

External knowledge bases

An external knowledge base is a resource customers can use to find moreinformation on a company, product, or service. These KBs simplify customer relationship management (CRM) and provide access to:

• Software documentation: Detailed materials describing the goals and expectations of a software solution

• Product documentation: Written materials covering how a product works and its intended use

• FAQs: Consistent answers to common questions

• Guides and manuals: Documents offering step-by-step instructions on how to set up, use, or disable services and products

To enhance external KB capabilities, businesses may use additional solutions like FAQ software and customer self-service portals.

Open-source knowledge bases

Open-source knowledge bases use source code that is publicly available and customizable. These types of KBs provide:

• Centralized repositories for storing data
• Internal and external sharing options for customers and employees
• Personalization, including specifications for data storage and structure updates

Due to their code-heavy structure, these KBs can require additional technical know-how to customize and deploy.

Free knowledge base tools and client portal software help agents and customers solve their own problems on their own time. Dive into the additional benefits of free KB software options below.

Enhanced customer experiences and retention

By providing customers and agents with a verified source of truth where they can find answers to their problems, knowledge bases quickly answer FAQs, solve repetitive problems, and more. KBs with knowledge base chatbots also help teams free up human agents to handle complex problems, improving CX by reducing wait times. 

Plus, free KB software allows organizations of any size to adopt a general or AI knowledge base for streamlining processes and data organization. This makes it easier for agents and customers to find information, which increases loyalty and customer retention.

Increased team collaboration 

Every department plays its role in building and maintaining strong customer relationships. Ensuring that each department has access to the most accurate and up-to-date company information allows teams to prioritize internal collaboration and move joint projects forward with greater speed.

Improved productivity and training

Free internal knowledge base software provides a cost-effective way for new hires to seek out answers individually, regardless of their manager’s availability during employee onboarding. This results in faster-paced customer service training, where new hires are empowered to independently problem-solve. This skill can then be carried into an agent’s daily responsibilities, helping teams improve agent productivity and efficiency from the start.

Customized code modification

Free knowledge base software, sometimes referred to as an open-source knowledge base, should offer users the flexibility to build unique KBs based on organizational needs and preferences. Customizable hierarchies, drag-and-drop rearrangement capabilities, and the ability to create distinct sections or categories are essential. Plus, its adaptability to data categorization, tagging, and structure is an important metric when evaluating a service’s potential.

Whether your knowledge management tool is free or offers a free trial, these are the key features you should consider:

• User-friendly interface: Choose an adaptable but easy-to-navigate solution and consider a system with a conversational interface for intelligent KBs.

• Integrations: The Zendesk Marketplace offers more than 1,800 integration options, allowing businesses to connect free knowledge bases to existing tech stacks.

• Content and revision history: This feature allows users to access old versions of articles and reinstate the original content, ensuring transparency and accountability.

• Help center search engine: Typically the first point of contact, these search engines can decipher meaning despite spelling or incorrect language usage and help optimize KBs for SEO.

• Analytics and reporting: Reporting and analytics features help users gauge the effectiveness and relevance of their content. They use help desk metrics to provide insights into page views, most-read articles, and search terms used.

• Templates: Pre-built knowledge base article templates give users an easy, structured, and consistent starting point to create their content and get the knowledge base live more quickly.

These features help free knowledge base software provide an accessible point of entry for businesses to offer self-service options.

To build a KB from scratch, you need to choose the right AI-powered knowledge base with pre-designed, customizable templates that enhance content discovery and align with your brand. To start:

1. Determine the type of KB you need, as some free software providers only provide one type.
2. Identify your must-have features, as free KBs often have limitations, and there are no universal features across providers.
3. Set a budget and compare which plans best match your goals.
4. Integrate your chosen software with your current tech stack.
5. Create and upload content optimized for search engines.
6. Regularly update and maintain your knowledge base articles for accuracy and relevancy.

Additionally, consider these KB design best practices when creating your knowledge base:

• Aesthetics: Be intentional about using colors, fonts, spacing, shapes, and white space.

• Formatting: Prioritize the strategic application of call-outs, hyperlinks, warnings, headers, and tables.

• Navigation: Design a well-organized menu with hierarchical categories that support seamless browsing.

• Optimization: Leverage relevant keywords and smart tagging to enhance search functionality.

When investing in free software, ensure your selected solution has these capabilities, or consider upgrading to a free or extended trial of a paid KB.

Guide your customers and employees toward self-sufficiency by considering what the free knowledge base software and free trial providers offer below.

• Zendesk: Best for AI-powered knowledge management
• Bitrix24: Best for no-code authoring
• Zoho Desk: Best for community forums
• Confluence: Best for Atlassian users
• BookStack: Best for self-hosted knowledge bases
• Freshdesk: Best for website widgets
• ProProfs Knowledge Base: Best for micro businesses
• Flowlu: Best for medium-sized businesses
• Notion: Best for knowledge wikis
• Nuclino: Best for simple knowledge management
• XWiki: Best for open-source enterprise knowledge management
• MediaWiki: Best for text-based knowledge

1. Zendesk

Best for AI-powered knowledge management

Zendesk knowledge base software provides a simple yet powerful system with pre-built and customizable templates for creating and managing your company’s help center content. This powerful interface, with search capabilities, makes it easy for customers and employees to find the answers they need when they need them. Furthermore, our system’s reporting and analytics technology allows teams to monitor KB use and identify areas for improvement.

By supplying self-service options and knowledge at every touchpoint—including during initial outreach, first sale, and renewals and upgrades—Zendesk software helps businesses boost CX. Our AI-powered solution also uses tools like AI agents to resolve issues and support knowledge management, helping businesses scale their self-service offerings.

Additionally, our software is ready out of the box, allowing businesses to set up and deploy it easily. Zendesk is scalable, with a large app marketplace, ensuring you have a long-term partner for various service needs. Plus, qualifying startups can access an extended trial by joining the six-month Startups Program, giving users the autonomy they crave.

User reviews

• “Gold standard of help desk platforms.”
• “Great way to organize help desk tickets.”
• “Ideal for increasing customer satisfaction.”
• “Very good help desk software.”

2. Bitrix24

Best for no-code authoring

Bitrix24 is a customer relationship management (CRM) software with a free knowledge base solution and on-premise or cloud capabilities. It offers open-source knowledge base options and no-code authoring for teams looking to modify their KB to meet specific customer service needs. Plus, Bitrix24’s centralized knowledge repository is accessible and editable by all teammates.

The free Bitrix24 plan provides one company knowledge base with pre-built templates, allowing teams without coding know-how to create articles and share knowledge. This software also has the option to create a knowledge base for a specific project or work group. The solution’s access restrictions are configurable for individual knowledge bases and entire groups, and the platform uses smart search to help users find information.

User reviews

• “Ideal for automating processes, enhancing company-wide awareness, and boosting employee productivity.”
• “Useful but with many glitches and limitations.”
• “Very bulky and difficult to learn.”

3. Zoho Desk

Best for community forums

Zoho Desk is a help desk solution that provides a free knowledge base forup to three agents. Users can customize knowledge bases to match the look and style of the company website, creating a unified branded appearance across all customer-facing interfaces.

Teams can use custom templates, forms, and tabs to provide personalized information to users. Plus, Zoho Desk provides community forums for customers to ask questions and collaborate to find answers. When users can’t locate the information they need in the knowledge or forum, they can submit requests from the help center and monitor the status of their tickets.

User reviews

• “Easy to integrate and configure.”
• “Excellent, but some plans are very limited.”
• “Functional but poor user interface.”

Learn more: Discover how Zendesk vs. Zoho compare.

4. Confluence

Best for Atlassian users

Confluence by Atlassian is collaboration and knowledge base software that helps customers access organizational data and allows employees to share information throughout a company. Its free knowledge base offers up to 2GB of file storage, and teams can create unlimited content pages and spaces to keep information organized.

With Confluence, employees can track page and revision history, allowing them to update or revert content to a previous version if needed. Users can organize data to simplify search engine results with a structured search hierarchy. This solution also provides templates for businesses to promote best practices across documents.

User reviews

• “A must-have for product management & team collaboration.”
• “Confluence is convoluted but can be complexly powerful.”
• “Clunky, non-visually appealing, and difficult to share permissions.”

Learn more: Discover how Atlassian integrates with Zendesk.

5. BookStack

Best for self-hosted knowledge bases

BookStack provides free open-source knowledge base software that businesses can self-host to store their information. Users can control whether the knowledge base is public or private and also choose from dozens of languages, such as German, Japanese, and Italian.

Configuration settings allow businesses to customize the platform with their name and logo. Users can separate content into books, chapters, or pages and connect different documents by linking to specific paragraphs within a page. Additionally, teams using BookStack can personalize settings for light or dark mode, image management, and page revisions.

User reviews

• “Great product for creating wikis to document common processes.”
• “An open source solution for internal documentation, that you can open to more contributors.”

6. Freshdesk

Best for website widgets

Freshdesk is a customer support platform that provides its users with a free knowledge base with limited features. The software’s internal knowledge base allows customer support agents to locate policies and troubleshoot workflows.

Businesses using Freshdesk can build branded self-service portals or website widgets and manage content, including document tutorials, DIY product guides, and FAQs. These centralized, multilingual content repositories also support help articles and categorized workspaces. Features like analytics, templates, and revision history are only available with paid plans.

User reviews

• “Excellent & efficient collaboration tool with great analytics to accompany!”
• “There's a bit of a learning curve, and some things are not intuitive in terms of managing KPIs.”
• “Awful product, lackluster support.”

Learn more: Discover how Zendesk vs. Freshdesk compare.

7. ProProfs Knowledge Base

Best for micro businesses

ProProfs Knowledge Base is a KB software company with free and paid subscription options for creating and managing business content. With options for both internal and external knowledge bases,this solution’s free plan supports micro-businesses or small teams with one author and letsbusinesses manage up to 25 articles.

Using pre-built and custom templates, ProProfs Knowledge Base users can create their self-service center. The software has SEO tools that allow writers to optimize articles for internal and external search engines. Users can also track up to 30 changes to the knowledge base and restore old versions if needed.

User reviews

• “Perfect for knowledge sharing & collaboration.”
• “User-friendly interface & seamless search experience.”
• “Great tool for creating interactive user manuals.”

Learn more: Discover how ProProfs integrates with Zendesk.

8. Flowlu

Best for medium-sized businesses

The Flowlu knowledge base platform allows small- and medium-sized businesses to manage content. It provides collaboration tools for capturing and dispersing up-to-date information to the people who need it the most. The solution’s single database allows technical and non-technical users to share expertise and benefit from others’ experiences.

Businesses can customize how knowledge gets organized with Flowlu, and teams can add brand colors and logos to create a familiar user experience. Teams can also incorporate tags and interlink articles to streamline internal and external searches or team collaboration.

User reviews

• “Flowlu is a universal system with great prospects.”
• “A good all-in-one for diverse client bases.”
• "Functional software, but beware.”

9. Notion

Best for knowledge wikis

Notion is free knowledge management software with AI capabilities. This tool offers various knowledge-sharing features, including built-in and templated knowledge wikis, that allow teams to centralize data, internal resources, and external guides. Additionally, the platform’s building blocks provide a variety of content templates to choose from.

Customizable views allow Notion users to visualize work in any format, including calendars and boards. The platform’s teamspaces offer areas for project collaboration, and the system’s AI-powered editing, drafting, and translation features enable teams to keep content up-to-date and accessible. Furthermore, Notion’s search functionality allows users to access documents across apps.

User reviews

• “A helpful tool that has saved me hundreds of hours.”
• “Good tool but sometimes hard to use.”
• “AI is not helpful, and it doesn't support direct conversion to .docx or Excel, either.”

Learn more: Discover how Notion integrates with Zendesk.

10. Nuclino

Best for simple knowledge management

Nuclino is a simple knowledge management tool with collaborative documentation that allows teams to make notes, assign tasks, embed files, and more. The software offers multiple content views, including list, board, table, and graph views, and a quick search feature with flexible filters so users can find the information they need.

Sidekick, Nuclino’s AI tool, can generate drafts and images and summarize notes, and the solution’s security controls and audit logs allow businesses to protect employee and customer data privacy. Further, team insights identify active contributors, popular articles and keywords, and other knowledge base metrics.

User reviews

• “Very fluent handling of markdown for a scaling personal knowledge system.”
• “An app to share & develop company knowledge.”
• “Great tool for company docs and wiki material.”

11. XWiki

Best for open-source enterprise knowledge management

XWiki is an open-source knowledge base platform capable of supporting enterprise businesses. It has been in development for more than 10 years, and it offers collaborative intranet and public website tools. Teams can create applications or self-contained sets of wiki pages that group similar articles together and are reusable.

Page indexes, breadcrumbs, jump pages, and search functions help users navigate organizational knowledge bases. XWiki also supports historical version control, allowing teams to view changes or revert to previous versions after publication. Furthermore, this free knowledge management software supports rights management and user accessibility.

User reviews

• “A collaboration tool that you can tune to your needs to organise your information.”
• “XWiki can be a powerful tool when used correctly.”
• “Easy to use collaboration platform.”

12. MediaWiki

Best for text-based knowledge

MediaWiki, the solution that powers Wikipedia, is an open-source knowledge base platform. The multilingual solution offers free knowledge organization and information distribution options to users. MediaWiki’s extensions for analytics, categorization, user access, and more also allow teams to customize knowledge bases for specific needs.

MediaWiki can support text, visuals, links, and more. The system tracks text changes, allowing teams to access recent updates, related changes, and user contributions. Users who need additional support can find professional developers and freelancers to aid in the creation and growth of their knowledge base. Plus, developers can extend the open-source code to personalize platforms for individual users or organizations.

User reviews

• “Great open source option for documentation and process management.”
• “A great solution for knowledge management.”
• “Many features, flexible, but a steep learning curve.”

Before deciding on the right free knowledge base software for your business, you need to understand your organization's needs and the role your KB will play. Here are a few useful criteria to help you decide:

• Search capabilities: Identify the search capabilities of your selected solution and verify its ability to search for keywords and industry- or company-specific terms.

• Use cases: Some free knowledge bases are only available as internal resources, or they only allow you to create one knowledge base, so consider whether you need multiple KBs or external support.

• Scalability: As your company grows, it is essential to have software with advanced features and capabilities that can grow and scale with your support operations.

• Security: Some free trials or knowledge base options may not have important security features that keep company information safe and prioritize customer data protection.

• Multilingual support: For businesses with a global reach (or those looking to expand), multilingual support is crucial and may not be supported by many free knowledge base software options.

While a free KB may be enough to support your business now, many high-quality features or AI-powered systems are only available for paid knowledge bases.