If you are exploring the best tools for creating documents and you have heard of word processors, you might be wondering if it is the right solution. Or perhaps you are writing your own book or planning to write a book. Whether you are an educational or professional author, or maybe a student in need of a book writer, here I give my insight on best authoring tools These tools will help you in various aspects while writing and they will help me in turning my idea into a tangible work that I can send to publishing houses after I’m done with the whole process.
Document authoring tools are the software that is used for writing documents of different kinds. There are so many kinds of these document authoring tools and some of them were actually developed for specific purposes like to write academic documents.
There are many different tools available that can help you to author your next seminar paper, thesis or even a book. There are online tools and tools which are downloadable for your desktop. Each of these document authoring tools has the ability to create documents that meet the specifications of your institution, which is why it is important to find out what these specifications are. This blog post will summarize some of the best document authoring tools on both desktop software and also online software.
Education has always been the foundation for success. With access to information just a click away, the world has become a global village that accepts knowledge as the keystone for achieving prosperity. Likewise, to be successful in any field, regardless if it’s business or education, you need to possess the right tools. While looking for the best tool is always a straightforward task, searching for tools that meet your specific needs can be daunting. There are many authoring tools and Document Management Systems available nowadays that makes it difficult to decide which one is best for you and your organization.
What is a Help Authoring Tool?
A Help Authoring Tool is a content management system that enables you to create, manage, and distribute help documentation. The end user output of a Help Authoring Tool is usually the Help section on a company’s website, or an internal company knowledge base.
Help Authoring Tools can range from basic systems that have simple features to more complex Component Content Management Systems (CCMS). Usually, the features available include:
- WYSIWYG editor for editing text, code, images and video
- Multi-author functionality that enables collaborative content production
- Importing and exporting your documentation
- Customizable end-user interface to fit your brand
Now, let’s move on to looking at the top 10 Help Authoring Tools.
1. Document360
Document360 is more than a help authoring tool that allows you to quickly and easily create help documentation, product documentation, instruction manuals, user manuals, and FAQs. As soon as you sign up for an account the user-friendly interface lets you get started straight away.
What really sets Document360 apart are its multilingual opportunities for you to create a knowledge base content to support your customers with AI machine translation. Offer your help documentation in multiple languages for your global customer base.
Document360 is more than just a knowledge base tool. It integrates seamlessly with your other favourite apps, including help desks like Zendesk, Freshdesk, and chatbots like Intercom, LiveChat, and more.
Document360 features:
- Markdown text editor – style your content using typical formatting techniques such as headers, lists, and italics
- Category manager – organize your content into a hierarchy up to six levels deep
- Landing page customization – customize your knowledge base with your brand colors, logo, links and custom CSS
- Versioning – rollback and versioning allows you to see the history of changes for each knowledge base article and revert back if necessary
- Analytics – understand the performance of your knowledge base with advanced analytics
- Import and Export to Microsoft word document
- Output to multiple formats like Word, Markdown, HTML, PDF
Price:
Starts at $99 per project per month and 14 days free trial with full access to the platform. You can check them out here.
An intuitive knowledge base software to easily add your content and integrate it with any application. Give Document360 a try!Get Started
2. ClickHelp
ClickHelp is a fully functioning Help Authoring Tool that runs in the browser with no installation required. You can author help content from a single portal and collaborate easily with teammates.
This software is a central place to manage all your technical content and create internal and external guides, multi-version software user manuals, FAQs, Knowledge Bases, Tutorials, API Docs, and more.
ClickHelp offers dynamic content support for single-sourcing – snippets, variables, and conditional blocks allow you to reuse your content across the documentation, saving untold amounts of time and effort.
ClickHelp features:
- Translation module – create a multilingual help site with ease
- Easy importing and exporting – import from Microsoft Word, HTML, RTF, CHM,
- ODT and export to CHM, HTML5 Web Help, PDF, DOCX
- Powerful full-text search – users can find content easily and support wildcard search
- Reporting – lets you analyze user behavior and measure team performance
- Context help – add context-sensitive help to your applications
Price:
Starts at $55 per author per month.
3. MadCap Flare
MadCap Flare is a very popular Help Authoring Tool that provides topic-based XML authoring and publishing for technical communicators. Flare is aimed at content reuse and multi-channel publishing to make sure you get the most out of your documentation.
The power of MadCap Flare lies in its ability to publish content to a range of mediums including web, print, desktop and mobile. One of the disadvantages of Flare is that it’s a complex tool with a steep learning curve. It’s not a software that someone can just pick up overnight.
What sets MadCap Flare apart is how easy it is to import content from a range of inputs with an easy drag-and-drop workflow, including from Microsoft Word and Excel, Atlassian’s Confluence, Adobe RoboHelp and more.
MadCap Flare features:
- Advanced content authoring – a configurable interface to create technical documentation, eLearning courses and learning and development programs
- Topic-based authoring – organizes your content in reusable chunks that can be reused across different mediums such as Getting Started guides, advanced user manuals, and more
- Micro content – short, concise content that stands alone which can be used to feed machine learning and AI applications
- Pre-built project templates – dozens of pre-installed templates that allow you to create web and print-based outputs in minutes
- Collaboration capabilities – workflows designed to make collaborative authoring streamlined, providing contributions and reviews in the cloud
Price:
$149 per month per user.
4. Adobe RoboHelp
Adobe RoboHelp is powerful Help Authoring Software that enables you to create a range of documentation for HTML5 output, EPUB 3, KF8, and MOBI formats. What marks RoboHelp out as a serious HAT is the ability to export documentation easily and have different versions of your user manuals.
Again, RoboHelp is not an easy tool to learn. Its wide variety of features mean RoboHelp requires a good deal of time getting familiar with the software before you can produce your documentation.
RoboHelp offers intelligent content reuse so you can use global snippets to make changes once and have them reused in multiple places. Blend content from different sources and create snippets within existing snippets for even more versatility.
RoboHelp features:
- Conditional content usage – create and apply rules to particular content such as a topic, paragraph or word
- Single-sourcing – make changes once to a snippet and reuse across multiple outputs
- Micro-content authoring – micro-content snippets that can be used by search engines, social platforms, in-context help, featured snippets, FAQs, chatbots and more
- Importing files – smoothly import from Microsoft Word, HTML and Markdown
Price:
$29.99 per month.
5. Paligo
Paligo is a Component Content Management System (CCMS) that enables you to author technical documentation, policies and procedures, knowledge management, and more. What sets Paligo apart is having every tool you might need for the authoring process all in one tool.
This Help Authoring Tool uses an XML source format to ensure proper structure, consistency and flexibility when authoring your content. Structured authoring makes it easy to reuse your content and guarantees your content’s value in the long-term.
Paligo is another topic-based authoring tool with smart content reuse that allows you to release your documentation in a fraction of the usual time. It supports team collaboration with a cloud-based CCMS.
Paligo features:
- Single-sourcing – smart content reuse that allows you to reuse content at scale with component reuse, block content reuse, text fragment reuse and dynamic variables
- Structured authoring – user-friendly XML editor that enables you to quickly author structured content with Paligo
- Multi-channel publishing – publish your content to a variety of outputs including HTML5, SCORM, PDF, Zendesk and Salesforce
- Versioning – version history and rollback makes it easy to keep track of changes made to your content and gives you the ability to compare versions
- Import existing documentation – Paligo offers a simple migration process from Microsoft Word, MadCap Flare, DITA, DocBook, HTML, Zendesk, Atlassian Confluence and many more.
Price:
Starts at $179 per month per author.
6. HelpNDoc
HelpNDoc is an intuitive and user-friendly Help Authoring Tool with a focus on producing documentation for multiple outputs from a single source. HelpNDoc supports HTML and CHM help files, PDF and Word, ePub and Kindle eBooks, Markdown documents and much more.
HelpNDoc is incredibly easy to use – if you know how to use a web browser and a word processor then you should be able to easily get up to speed with this software. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can start generating a wide variety of documentations that are responsive across platforms.
Lacking the power of some of the other solutions in this list, HelpNDoc makes up for it with its ease of use.
HelpNDoc features:
- User-friendly user interface – the functions of HelpNDoc are clearly displayed in a ribbon format with some elements only appearing when needed
- Tools are integrated – all the necessary tools for creating documentation are integrated, including the table of contents editor, WYSIWYG topic editor, keywords editor and library
- Modern word processor – the functionality you’ve come to expect from tools like Microsoft Word is available in HelpNDoc’s word processor
- Media library system – all media elements such as videos, images, documents, HTML code snippets and variables are managed by the library
Price:
Starts at free with ads and limited features.
7. ProProfs
ProProfs knowledge base is part of the ProProfs suite of software and allows users to create user-friendly help documentation. You can publish private or public knowledge base sites for your target audience and author documentation from ProProf’s attractive built-in templates.
ProProfs supports multiple authors working collaboratively and has an internal review process for content. You can set up roles and permissions for your authors ranging from administrator, viewer, editor and contributor.
ProProfs is more than just knowledge base software. It offers integrations with the ProProfs Help Desk, ProProfs Live Chat, Salesforce, Zendesk and Freshdesk, so you can take advantage of more streamlined workflows with your favorite software.
ProProfs features:
- Single-sourcing – write a piece of content once and reuse in multiple parts of the documentation
- Context-sensitive help – use tooltips, lightboxes and pop-ups to present your documentation contextually in your app
- Multi-branding – create multiple help sites with ProProfs and brand them individually
- Article workflows – set a workflow status for articles depending on what stage they are at in the review process
- Advanced reporting – provides actionable insights for your documentation’s performance
Price:
Starts at $30 per author per month.
8. Confluence
Confluence is popular wiki software designed as a shared workspace for teams to work more collaboratively. The advantage of Confluence is its integration with Atlassian’s suite of software including Jira and Trello.
With Confluence, the software is organized into spaces which are areas that contain pages for individuals, teams and strategic projects. Pages are documents where people create, edit and discuss their work. Confluence comes in-built with an extensive library of templates for you to create your documentation.
You can make documents and share them with your team – these documents can be set as “read only”, “edit only”, or “read and edit”, so you have full control over access.
Confluence features:
- Real-time editing – co-author documents in real time and publish updates that track version history and highlight changes
- Advanced search and page tree – you can organize and find your pages easily with advanced search, labels, and an intuitive page hierarchy
- Jira integration – Connect your plans to development work with issue-tracking and dynamically updating roadmaps
- Commenting – collaborate better with in-line and page comments, GIFs, emojis and images
- Permissions – control what information employees can access and protect sensitive content
Pricing:
Starts at free for up to ten users.
Why Use Help Authoring Software?
There are several advantages to using help authoring tools. You can:
- Save time with single-source and topic-based authoring. Write a text once, then compile it into different formats from the same source. Easy to write, easy to edit, easy to update.
- Collaborate on documents. Let the team write, comment, and edit together in one document to get the best customer support material possible. No more wasting time searching for the latest document version or trying to gather scattered comments into one document.
- Go multi-language. Serving customers in multiple languages can quickly turn into a headache. The right help authoring tool makes it easy to switch to the correct language — both for your team and for your customers.
- Skip excessive coding. No need to build and maintain a platform from scratch — instead, use a tool that already has all the features you need.
- Improve your SEO. Your customers might turn to Google before they go to your website. We all know how Google loves well-structured, interlinked, keyword-rich content, so your help documentation will rank highly. A help authoring software helps you establish a content hierarchy with indexes or tables of contents, link related content, and expand on popular topics.
Conclusion
When researching the best document authoring tools, it took me a while to find sites that gave unbiased reviews and were not solely promoting one tool over another. Since I was creating content for a specific niche, I needed a tool that would allow me to create content for that niche. After hours of research, here is the list of content authoring tools I found are indispensable for any writer or blogger.
Document authoring tools help you develop professional-looking documents. Tool’s features include customized templates and projectors, thesaurus support, templates for building tables and charts and special character recognition which helps prevent typographical errors when you are writing a document in your local language.