Levi Olmstead
12 Best Online User Manual Creation Tools (2024)
- Published: July 13, 2023
- Updated: November 16, 2023
A new product is only valuable when it is usable. It doesn’t matter how many challenges your product can solve or how beneficial it can be to your customers if they can’t figure out how to make it work.
That can be done by creating effective technical documentation for your product’s end-users.
Crafting a helpful user manual helps close any knowledge gaps, improve customer onboarding, reduce churns, and drive customer adoption — and with the right tool, creating, distributing, and updating your user manual is easier than ever before.
Let’s talk about some of the best user manual tools.
What are the best online user manual tools in 2024?
- ClickHelp
- Notion
- Whatfix
- Scribe
- Document360
- GitBook
- Dozuki
- HelpDocs
- Paligo
- Speach.me
- Nuclino
- Bit.ai
What Is a User Manual Tool?
A user manual tool (or user manual software) is a platform used in the creation, distribution, and management of your product’s user guides and step-by-step instructions.
Using specialized software documentation tools makes it easier to customize and design your manual to fit your company and customer needs. With user manual software, you can include things like videos or GIFs in your support documentation, manage versions and updates, create in-app guidance, and even gather performance insights with analytics.
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Features of User Manual Software
User manual tools are usually very customizable and come with several features to ensure you can create documentation that matches your unique needs. Here are some of the most common — and most useful — features to look out for:
- Easy-to-use editor. An easy-to-use, WYSISWYG editor gives your team the freedom and flexibility to create high-quality content with embedded images, videos, and more – all without extensive coding or engineering dependencies.
- Options for links, lists, and attachments. Adding extra context through links and attachments can help you push users to additional assistance straight from your user guide, providing learning at the moment of need support.
- Customizable branding. Keeping your user guide consistent with your brand image can enhance the user experience.
- Backups and version control. As you make changes to your user guide, built-in backups and version management can ensure you’re always putting the right information forward — and keep past versions accessible if you ever need to revert back.
- Security and protected documentation. If you have sensitive information in your user guides, you’ll want the option to keep your manual protected from falling into the wrong hands.
- Analytics and tracking. Identify trends and gather insights with analytics to constantly improve your user manuals.
- Search, tags, and recommended content. Make it easier for users to find the information they need within your manual, including offering similar or supplemental articles to further their learning.
- Integrations. Integrating your user manual into the platforms or tools your customers are already using, like your website or your app, or your various customer training software tools. This empowers end-users to access the information they need right when and where they need it.
Generative AI & User Manual Software
Combining generative AI and your user manual software is a great way to make your guides even stronger. Many user manual tools have AI built-in, plan to introduce AI features or integrate with third-party generative AI tools to enhance your user experience.
Generative AI can help you create and build out content to get useful information to your users faster. With AI, you can get a first draft of content completed in just a few seconds — shortening your time to create a final product.
But while AI can be a great tool, it’s important to ensure the content you’re creating aligns with your brand and product. Make edits, additions, or deletions based on AI suggestions — don’t assume that your AI-generated content will always be accurate!
12 Best User Manual Software in 2024
We’ve researched the many user manual creation tools and shortlisted the best products, complete with user review ratings from G2, pricing, and an overview of each platform.
Here are our top 12 user manual tools.
1. ClickHelp
User review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Starter: $175/month
- Growth: $285/month
- Professional: $580/month
ClickHelp is an online technical documentation tool that gives you the flexibility and control to create guides and manuals with rich content like videos, quizzes, feedback forms, and more. User guides can be shared and accessed online, or they can be downloaded and distributed in PDF format.
ClickHelp has easy importing and exporting, so you can create content in the tools your team is most familiar with — like Microsoft Word or Markdown. Use readability scores and metrics to make your content easy to understand, and gather in-depth insights through analytics.
Other notable features of ClickHelp include:
- Translation mode to create content in multiple languages
- API features
- Integrations with Google Analytics, Zendesk, YouTube, and more
2. Notion
User review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Free individual plan
- Plus: $8/user/month
- Business: $15/user/month
- Enterprise: Custom
Notion is a connected workspace for all your wikis, docs, and projects — and it has a powerful built-in AI feature. Notion provides blank pages that you can build out and customize with “blocks.” Add text, tables, and checklists, or embed images, links, and more from your favorite apps like Asana and Github.
Notion has thousands of templates on their gallery to help get you started, or you can build out templates of your own. Easily collaborate with your team to create new pages and keep your customers informed of the latest product updates or changes.
Other reasons to consider Notion:
- Eliminate platform switching by keeping all your content stored in one spot
- Collect feedback, comments, and notes from team members to ensure user manual content is updated and accurate
3. Whatfix
User review rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Custom
Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that lets you create in-app documentation that guides users through onboarding, product updates, and troubleshooting. Whatfix overlays step-by-step instructions right into the platform itself, so users don’t need to open a new window to get the information they need.
In addition to in-app walkthroughs, smart tips, and product tours, Whatfix provides self-help widgets and other contextual content into your app. Whatfix Self Help connects with your knowledge repositories (ie. FAQs, knowledge base, support center, documentation, videos, etc.) to provide end-users a searchable, moment of need support solution. Users learn faster with minimal resistance, improving user experience, satisfaction, and adoption.
Whatfix also gives you:
- Multiple content formats to create PDFs, videos, slideshows, and more
- End-user analytics to extract user behavior insights and product analytics
Create contextual user onboarding flows, drive adoption of new features, and make in-app announcements with Whatfix
Whatfix is a no-code digital adoption platform that enables product managers to create contextual in-app guidance, product-led user onboarding, and self-help user support – all without engineering dependencies. With Whatfix, create branded product tours, user onboarding checklists, interactive walkthroughs, pop-ups, smart tips, and more – all enabling customers and users with contextual guidance at the moment need. With Whatfix, analyze, build, and deliver better user experiences.
4. Scribe
User review rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Basic: Free
- Pro Personal: $23/seat/month
- Pro Team (5 seat min.): $12/seat/month
- Enterprise: Custom
Scribe automatically creates step-by-step guides in just a few seconds. With the Scribe extension, all you need to do is record your screen as you move through a task or activity — then the platform takes care of the rest. Scribe will create user guides complete with GIFS, images, and instructions you can share with your customers.
Scribe eliminates the burden of needing to manually document your task processes. Subject matter experts simply need to move through the task themselves and you’re given a complete manual at the end — no more worrying about blocking time for endless reviews or worrying you’ve missed a crucial step.
With Scribe, you can also:
- Embed Scribe guides into platforms your users are already familiar with
- Quickly create customized user guides to support customers through unique challenges
- Edit software-generated docs to add extra contexts like links, tips, and alerts
5. Document360
User review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Standard: $159/project/month
- Professional: $319/project/month
- Business: $423/project/month
- Enterprise: Custom
Document360 is a knowledge base platform that can be used both internally and externally — giving you the flexibility to create, store, and manage private, team-only content and outward-facing customer documentation in the same place. Document360 can be used to create user manuals, FAQ pages, self-help guides, and more.
Your Document360 knowledge base can also live in an in-app widget, giving your users the ability to find the support they need right when they need it. Document360 integrates with popular third-party tools, like chatbots, translation services, and analytics tools to make your user guides even stronger.
Other reasons to love Document360 include:
- Maintain and manage multiple page versions
- Easy editing with page previews to get a feel for how your content will look before you hit publish
- Built-in analytics to better understand your users and make data-driven decisions
6. GitBook
User review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Personal: Free
- Plus: $8/user/month
- Pro: $15/user/month
- Enterprise: Custom
GitBook is a documentation tool built specifically for technical users. GitBook has many of the popular features you’ll get in other documentation tools, including ready-to-use templates, page grouping and nesting, and the ability to add tables, images, and more. But where GitBook really shines is its connection with GitHub.
GitBook recognizes code blocks, tables, and familiar shortcuts to make building your user manuals even easier with technical teams. Easily request updates, manage reviews and revisions, and compare versions with a ticket-based system that your team already understands.
GitBook is also great for:
- Integrating with your favorite third-party tools and apps, including Jira, Slack, and Discord
- Using AI to create “supercharged” knowledge base content
7. Dozuki
User review rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Custom
Dozuki is a documentation and training platform designed for industrial and frontline workers. Dozuki helps standardize processes and systems when it matters most, bringing safety standards and guidelines to your user manuals. Dozuki replaces outdated paper-based instructions with visual, video-rich, and descriptive content that helps your frontline team do their job better.
Dozuki also provides continuous training to users, helping them reach and maintain changing standards. Built-in analytics makes it easy to identify how well your users are absorbing training information so you can ensure safety and efficiency.
Use Dozuki to:
- Create an on-demand library of user content for continuous learning and support
- Control document management, reviews, versions, and distribution
- Gather in-line feedback to ensure all your content is accurate, informative, and up to date
8. HelpDocs
User review rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Start: $69/month
- Build: $139/month
- Grow: $279/month
HelpDocs is a platform for building, hosting, and monitoring self-service knowledge content. With HelpDocs, simply use the custom text editor to create a document-style “article” and the platform will handle the rest. Organize your articles by subject or use SEO-focused templates to make searches quick and easy.
HelpDocs has a built-in Stale tool to make it easy to identify articles that might be out of date or need a refresh. You can even schedule articles to be published at a later date, so you can create content ahead of time to align with product updates or incoming changes.
Other notable HelpDoc features include:
- Analytics to identify trends, traffic, and performance
- Lighthouse, an in-app widget for finding answers without leaving your platform
9. Paligo
User review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Custom
Paligo is an enterprise-grade content management system that covers the creation, distribution, and management process end-to-end. It’s collaborative by design, allowing teams to work together to create the best content possible.
Smart single-sourcing features make it easy to reuse and repurpose content and keep pages consistent with minimal manual updating. Paligo also uses multi-channel publishing to push content to other platforms such as Zendesk, Salesforce, and GitHub.
Paligo also makes it easy to:
- Manage version history and roll-back, or create version branching for specific audiences
- Keep content organized and comprehensive as you scale
- Create content in different languages without needing to manage separate files for each language
10. Speach.me
User review rating: n/a
Pricing:
- Custom
Speach.me is a how-to video content library for enterprises. In just a few minutes, you can record, edit, and enhance videos with voiceovers, quizzes, CTAs, annotations, and more. Embed final video versions into learning management systems, websites, or other existing tools for easy distribution.
Speach.me is great for enterprise teams with multiple end users. With the Enterprise Suite, you can easily manage content for multiple teams in different locations, providing location or user-specific guidance as well as company-wide information.
Other notable features include:
- Automatic translation and subtitle creation in over 30 languages
- Media synchronization to incorporate video, voiceovers, slideshow, and more into each training
11. Nuclino
User review rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Free: $0/user/month
- Standard: $5/user/month
- Premium: $10/user/month
Nuclino is a “collective brain” for your team, bringing all your knowledge, documentation, projects, and tasks into one shared space. Nuclino is fast, simple, and easily customizable, allowing your team to create user manual pages without the need for complex coding or long development processes.
As a user manual tool, Nuclino keeps all your company content in one place to make it easier to manage content. It even has an AI-powered assistant named Sidekick that can support your team in creating or summarizing your user guide content.
Nuclino also gives you the ability to:
- Use analytics to gather insights and identify content trends and opportunities
- Export pages into various formats for versatile sharing
- Grant read or edit abilities to ensure only the people you want to update content can make changes
12. Bit.ai
User review rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Pricing:
- Free: $0/member/month
- Pro: $8/member/month
- Business: $15/member/month
Bit.ai is an end-to-end knowledge management and documentation platform with rich collaboration features designed to improve the way teams work. The digital content management platform includes a content library, customizable controls, smart search, and flexible editor permissions.
As a documentation tool, it’s easy to create templates, branding, themes, and more to create a unique user experience. Visual embeds and links helps create comprehensive user guides and with features like password protection and link tracking, you can share sensitive content without worrying it will fall in the wrong hands.
As a user guide tool, Bit.ai also offers:
- Built-in document feedback to quickly address questions or issues
- Document expirations to eliminate the risk of content becoming outdated
- Document exports for easy sharing
Evolve your end-user documentation with Whatfix’s in-app guidance and self-help support
It’s important to make it as easy as possible to get end users the support or guidance they need — and it doesn’t get any easier than putting that information right within the app. With Whatfix’s in-app guidance and self-help support, you can eliminate resistance and barriers to accessing help documentation, improving adoption rates and empowering end-users to learn in the flow of work
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Whatfix's digital adoption platform empowers your employees, customers, and end-users with in-app guidance, reinforcement learning, and contextual self-help support to find maximum value from software.
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