Version history you can actually read, working copies that stay off the live site until you publish, and a reminder when an article goes stale. Your readers get a fast, searchable help center on your own domain.
Real teams, real knowledge bases. Click a logo to see theirs.
Every article's state at a glance: what's live, what has a working copy waiting, and what's gone stale.
Built around how docs teams work
✍️
Writers and editors
Add a comment to any sentence, @mention a teammate to pull them in, and mark the thread resolved once the fix lands. Markdown you paste shows up formatted right away.
📋
Documentation managers
All your working copies, stale articles and drafts show up in one list, and you get a weekly email pointing out anything that's now out of date.
🧑💻
Developers and DevRel
Bring your Markdown in from a GitHub repo, and every article goes back out to AI tools as Markdown, via llms.txt and MCP.
We love writing about docs, too.
Documentation is our favorite subject, so we write about it a lot: guides to building a knowledge base, notes on writing help content, and research from real help center traffic.
Your published article keeps serving readers even while you rework a working copy. When you're ready, compare it to any earlier version and publish the new one. If it turns out wrong, you can always restore the old version.
Here's v26 of "How to Create Your First Guidebook" placed right next to the newest version.
📝
Working copies
Any edits you make to an article that's already published won't go live until you select Publish. Meanwhile, your readers keep seeing the current version.
🔍
Side by side or inline
Pick any two versions and compare them. Anything deleted shows in red and anything added shows in green, so anyone reviewing can tell precisely what changed.
⏪
Restore in one click
Every time you save, a new version is kept along with who made the change and when. You can roll back to any one of them whenever you like.
🛟
Unsaved work, kept
Unsaved work sticks around in your browser and lands in Versions, so closing a tab won't eat your afternoon.
Content upkeep
Know which articles need you before readers do.
Documentation ages out without anyone noticing. You can mark an article stale and give a reason, or set a schedule so it goes stale in 30 days, 3 months or 6 months. The page stays live while that's pending, and the stale marker appears wherever your team looks.
Outdated articles, content that has aged, working copies left sitting around, and drafts nobody ever picked up, all tallied for you.
🍞
Stale, with a reason
Whoever takes over can see at a glance what got updated: the screenshots, the feature, or the UI.
📅
Review dates
If an article follows a release or a policy cycle, you can pick the exact date it goes stale.
📬
A weekly digest
Articles that have gone stale find their way to your Home screen, and a weekly email catches them too. Nobody has to hunt around for outdated content.
🔎
Missed searches and feedback
Check the searches your readers ran that came up empty, and the articles they flagged as unhelpful. That tells you where your next edit belongs.
ReviewBeta
Review together, right on the page.
Select any sentence to comment on it, @mention a teammate, and resolve the thread when it's fixed. Pin a comment as a Guardrail and anyone about to publish reads it first.
Hold this until the new PIN screen ships on the 24th. Steps 3 and 4 change.
Priya Nadeem · 2 hours ago
How to set up your first guidebook
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Preview Your GuidebookSet a PIN, then preview it to check everything looks right.
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Comments12
Comments Beta
1 active comment2 active comments
Priya Nadeem2 hours agoInternal note
Set a PIN, then preview it
Hold this until the new PIN screen ships on the 24th. Steps 3 and 4 change.
Resolve
Rebecca Thompson1 hour ago
@Priya Nadeem got it. I'll swap the screenshots once it's live.
Add a comment…
Comment
This article has an internal note
Someone pinned a note to this article. It is about to go live. Worth a read first.
Hold this until the new PIN screen ships on the 24th. Steps 3 and 4 change.
CancelPublish anyway
Priya pins a comment, so whoever presses Publish sees it first.
💬
Comment on any passage
Highlight the text and call out what's wrong with it. Your comment holds the quote, and clicking through drops you right back to the sentence.
🙋
Mentions and replies
Bring a teammate into the conversation by @mentioning them, reply in the thread, add a reaction, and mark it resolved when the job's done.
🚧
Guardrail
Once you pin a comment as a Guardrail, it hangs at the top of the article. Anyone about to hit publish runs into it first, then makes the call.
Write once
Write it once. Reuse it everywhere.
Keep repeated content in one place, so you write it once and reuse it anywhere. Markdown works if that's how you think. Translating won't mean copying articles around.
That PIN message box down at the bottom is a Clip. Change it once in that spot and every article that includes it picks up the new version.
🧩
Clips
Turn things you repeat, like a warning or a setup step, into a Clip. Update that Clip once and the change shows up in every article that uses it.
🏷️
Variables
Keep a product name or support email in one spot. Drop it into a Clip, then override it on any article where you need something different.
📄
Markdown in and out
Paste in Markdown and we'll do the converting, or drop in a Markdown block and type raw. Whatever you publish, you'll also get a .md version of every article.
📦
Import from GitHub
Point it at a repo (Docusaurus, MkDocs or a plain docs folder) and the Markdown files become articles. It's a one-time import, not a sync.
🌍
One article, many languages
Each language is a version of the same article, with machine translation to start from. 3 languages on Sprout, 20 on Bloom, unlimited on Harvest.
📏
Readability as you write
Every article displays a word count and a readability score underneath, so you can catch a draft turning dense before an editor has to point it out.
HelpDocs AI
AI that works for your writers, not instead of them.
HelpDocs AI clears the blank page and the busywork, meta descriptions and alt text included, then drops a draft in your lap to shape. You're still the author. Whatever ships is your call.
Use AI to generate a draft article from a title and outline. You can then edit and publish it.
CancelCreate draft
Feed it your outline and get a draft back. Then you tweak it and hit publish.
🌱
Draft from your outline
Drop in a title and your bullets, and you'll get a structured first draft you can rework in your own words. Every plan.
✨
Rewrite and improve
Pick a stretch of text and have it rewritten for you. Improve (Bloom and up) takes the whole article, offers up suggestions, and lets you take only the ones you like.
🎨
Your style guide, built in
Set your default style one time, and every AI draft and rewrite follows it (Bloom and up). The AI takes its lead from there. It won't police your writers.
🧹
The tedious bits
Meta descriptions, summaries, search tags and image alt text get written up for you, so you just review them instead of starting from scratch.
💡
Ask AI for readers
Readers ask questions in whatever words they use, and they get responses pulled from your published articles, along with the sources. Your writing steps in to answer.
🔌
MCP for your AI tools
Point Claude, ChatGPT or any MCP client at your docs so they can search and read through them, then let them draft into an unpublished article that a person still reviews.
Governance
Control who sees what, and know who changed it.
Choose who sees each piece, your whole audience or just one team, at the article or category level. Every edit, publish and sign-in leaves a trail, so you can show your work whenever questions come up.
The Audit Trail logs every edit and any action the AI takes.
🔐
Permission groups
Limit who sees a particular article or a whole category, so only the groups you choose get access and the rest of your content stays public. Bloom and up.
🧾
Audit trail
All edits, publishes, AI actions and sign-ins are logged, with who did what and when. Filter through them, or export the record for a compliance review. Bloom and up.
👥
Roles for the whole team
Administrators, Editors, Writers and Read Only users, so a contractor can write without being able to change your settings.
🔗
Private articles
Publish an article privately, and it goes live but stays unlisted, so only people you share the link with can find it. Every plan.
🛡️
Single sign-on
Keep your entire help center behind your own sign-in using JWT SSO on Bloom and above. Harvest comes with an anonymous mode.
🏢
IP restriction
Lock your internal help center to office or VPN addresses, keeping it confined to your own walls. Harvest.
From teams who write in HelpDocs
“Because HelpDocs is user friendly and because you get a pleasant result with what you create, it makes you want to use it”
Corine Barbazanges, GuidiGO
“Before HelpDocs we had an 80 page PDF that was our user guide”
Echo Alexander, NRC Health
Bring the docs you already have.
Built-in importers pull your articles across, and Word files, PDFs, a CSV or a whole website can come in too. Old article URLs can become redirects, so the links people already have keep working.
Drop diagrams and walkthroughs straight into your content, connect your localization platform to handle translations, and you'll get a Slack ping the moment anything publishes. Whatever else you need, a read and write REST API is included on every plan.
Grab a free template for the docs your team writes most often. Copy the structure into your own article, or let HelpDocs AI turn the outline into a first draft.
Not yet, but we're building one. Until it's ready, most teams run reviews with working copies, comments and @mentions, and a Guardrail (a comment pinned to the article) tells anyone about to publish exactly what to check first. If a strict approval gate is a must for you, and tell us how your process works. It helps shape what we build.
Is HelpDocs AI trying to replace our writers?
No. It drafts from your outline, handles the busywork like meta descriptions and alt text, and suggests edits you can take or leave. It doesn't publish on its own: a person reviews and publishes. AI credits are included in every plan, and you choose which AI tools are switched on in Settings.
Can I write in Markdown?
Yes. Paste Markdown and it converts to formatted content, or add a Markdown block to write raw. You can also upload a Markdown file as a new article. Every published article is available as Markdown too, by adding .md to its URL.
Can I bring my existing docs over?
Yes. There are built-in importers for Zendesk Guide, Intercom Articles, Help Scout Docs, Document360, GitBook, ReadMe, Notion, Google Drive and more, and the GitHub importer reads Docusaurus, MkDocs or a plain docs folder. Imports are one-off, so HelpDocs becomes the place you edit. See how migration works.
How is this different from a wiki or a file share?
A wiki or file share stores documents for the people inside your company. HelpDocs publishes them: a branded help center on your own domain, search that reports what readers couldn't find, an in-app help widget, and permission groups (on Bloom and up) for anything that should stay private.
Is there a free trial?
Yes, 14 days with no credit card and no call with sales. Plans and what each includes are on the pricing page.
Try it on your own docs.
Bring your existing content over, or begin with a template. Fourteen days to explore, with no credit card and no sales call.
Guides HelpDocs Learn A free path from knowledge base basics to choosing software, building it and keeping it current.
Blog Bookmarked Our blog on the art and craft of knowledge bases and customer support, and the people behind them.
Research The State of Knowledge Base Traffic 2025 A 24-month study of where knowledge base traffic comes from, how it shifts through the year, and how often searches succeed.
