Content delivery platforms for online documentation
Market overview of content delivery platforms and solutions that are especially designed for providing access to technical documentation and user assistance. Plus a market overview of recommendable utilities for the embedding, context-sensitive calling, and testing of online documentation (online help systems).
For information on the indicated price levels ● ● ● ● ● ●, see Price levels.
By the way: As a service, I am happy to support you in selecting an authoring tool or content management system for technical documentation.
Content delivery solutions
Fluid Topics
Web solution for publishing online documentation produced with structured content authoring tools. Provides advanced search, navigation, and analysis.
Price level: ● not published
Zoomin docs
Provides content based on user profiles via one central hub. Allows users to search across all publications with full-text search and faceted search. Can also be used to provide intelligent context-sensitive help. Users can share, comment, and rate the content.
Price level: ● not published
https://www.zoominsoftware.com
Heretto Deploy Portal
Enterprise help and documentation portal to dynamically distribute content to any audience.
Price level: ● not published
Congility Content Server, Congility Mobile
Content delivery platform for online browser-based documentation portals and content delivery to Android, Windows, iOS and macOS apps.
Price level: ● not published
Titania Delivery
Solution for dynamically publishing personalized content.
Price level: ● not published
https://www.oberontech.com/solutions/content-delivery/
XDeliver
Price level: ● not published
proLibro
Price level: ● not published
EasyBrowse
Price level: ● not published
https://www.gds.eu/en/products/content-delivery-easybrowse
Quanos InfoTwin
Price level: ● not published
https://quanos.com/en/products/quanos-infotwin/
JAMES CDS
Price level: ● not published
fischer Content Delivery
Price level: ● not published
https://www.fischer-information.com
TopicPilot
Price level: ● not published
https://www.docufy.de/en/products/topicpilot/
Cobrili
Windows-based help viewer with several advanced features.
Price level: ● not published
Queri
Makes it possible to browse, search, and annotate collections of information stored in Word, HTML, XML, structured FrameMaker, DITA, and PDF files.
Price level: ● not published
https://lexum.com/en/products/qweri/
tekReader
Publishes XML content as an HTML5 website. Users can add notes to individual paragraphs within a document.
Price level: ● high
Help+Manual 2 Go
Mini web server that doesn’t need installation and can be used for running browser-based help locally. Avoids the problem that browsers are increasingly implementing security features that prevent browser-based online help from running properly when opened from local drives. May be even distributed with your own products.
Price level: ● free (freeware)
https://www.helpandmanual.com/hm2go.html
iiRDS and metadata
iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard) is a technical standard for the vendor-independent exchange and delivery of digital user information.
plusmeta
AI-based solution for automatically enriching existing data with meta information.
Price level: ● not published
iiRDS Open Toolkit
Simple iiRDS generator (web service) that can be used for enriching content such as PDF files with metadata. Generates a valid iiRDS package.
Price level: ● free (web application)
https://iirds-ot.plusmeta.de/iirds-open-toolkit/start
iiRDS validation tool
Online validator for iiRDS packages.
Price level: ● free (web application)
https://iirds-validation.plusmeta.de/iirds-validation-tool/validate-iirds
Solutions for embedding information into applications (onboarding, walkthroughs, overlays)
Zoomin In-Product Help
Embeds personalized user assistance into web applications.
Price level: ● not published
https://www.zoominsoftware.com/in-product-help
elevio
Easily provides context sensitive help in various forms for web applications.
Price level: ● diverse
WalkMe
Platform for adding intelligent user guidance to an application. There is also a free basic version available.
Price level: ● not published
InlineManual
Solution for creating walkthroughs, onboarding guides, and tooltips.
Price level: ● high
whatfix
Adds interactive guides and other forms of help on top of an application.
Price level: ● not published
edc
Solution for editing and embedding contextualized user help and onboarding information.
Price level: ● high
https://www.easydoccontents.com/en/
UserGuiding
Adds product walkthroughs to a web application for onboarding new users.
Price level: ● high
Userlane
Adds information for onboadring and staff training to an application. The company compares their product to a car's navigation system. Just as the navigation system of a car guides the driver safely to the destination, Userlane guides the user of a software step by step to the destination.
Price level: ● not published
Product Tour
Displays step by step instructions on top of a web application. The user experience adapts to the device size.
Price level: ● low
https://codyhouse.co/gem/product-tour/
GuideChimp
Adds interactive guided tours on top of web applications. There are also commercial versions available.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://github.com/Labs64/GuideChimp
https://www.labs64.com/guidechimp/
Shepherd
JavaScript library for guiding users through a web application.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://github.com/shepherd-pro/shepherd
Embedded help system
jQuery plug-in that adds animated “Show me” help to web pages.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/embeddedhelp/
Guiders-JS
JavaScript library for taking a user step by step through a web application (guided tour), and for adding embedded help to a web application.
Price level: ● diverse
https://github.com/pickhardt/Guiders-JS
pageguide.js
Enables you to set up interactive, visual guides to elements on web pages.
Price level: ● free (open source)
http://tracelytics.github.io/pageguide/
Joyride
Enables you to set up a tour wizard for a website.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://github.com/zurb/joyride
Driver
JavaScript engine to drive the user's focus across a page with the help of overlays.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://github.com/kamranahmedse/driver.js
Other onboarding solutions
Intelligent search functions for online documentation
IntraFind
Various products for elastic and faceted search.
Price level: ● diverse
algolia
Advanced hosted search engine.
Price level: ● diverse
AddSearch
Search engine with auto complete and search suggestions, instant search, filters, facets, sorting, search in PDF, DOC and PPT files, and more.
Price level: ● high
Cludo
Intelligent search that uses machine learning.
Price level: ● high
Zoom Search Engine
Can be used to add full text search to browser-based online help files and websites. Also works for locally installed help.
Price level: ● low
https://www.zoomsearchengine.com
Swiftype Site Search
Can add powerful search and search analytics to Webhelp.
Price level: ● high
MeiliSearch
Relevant, typo-tolerant search that works out-of-the-box but is also customizable.
Price level: ● free (open source)
Apache Solr
Scalable enterprise search platform with advanced full-text search capabilities.
Price level: ● free (open source)
SeekQuarry (NEW ENTRY)
Search engine software.
Price level: ● free (open source)
Danswer (NEW ENTRY)
Lets you ask questions in natural language and gets back answers based on your specific documents, like ChatGPT if it had access to your unique knowledge. Connects to many common workplace tools such as Slack, Google Drive, Confluence, etc.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://github.com/danswer-ai/danswer
Commenting systems for online documentation
Commenting systems can be used to add social features to online help systems, such as user comments and ratings. You can use the commenting systems with all help authoring tools that let you modify the topics' HTML templates or embed HTML code snippets. So you don’t necessarily have to use a help authoring tool with an already built-in commenting feature.
Commentics
Advanced PHP-based commenting system with many features and a comprehensive administration backend.
Price level: ● free (open source)
HashOver
PHP comment system that allows also anonymous comments. Comments can be stored in either flat-file formats like XML or JSON, or in an SQL database.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://www.barkdull.org/software/hashover
Annotator
JavaScript library to add annotation functionality to text on a web page. Other than with typical commenting systems, the comments relate to specific text sections, not to an entire topic (an entire page). Annotations can be tagged and filtered.
Price level: ● free (open source)
Talkyard
Can be used as a simple commenting system, but also in many additional ways (knowledge base, forum, chat). Can be self-hosted (free) or hosted by the provider.
Price level: ● diverse
Some commercially hosted services
https://www.graphcomment.com/en
Web analytics for online documentation
If you create webhelp, you can monitor its use like you can monitor access to any website. So you don’t necessarily have to use a help authoring tool with built-in monitoring and statistics features.
Google Analytics
Price level: ● free (web application)
https://www.google.com/analytics/
Matomo
Price level: ● free (open source)
Open Web Analytics (OWA)
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://www.openwebanalytics.com
ScrollDepth
Plugin for Google Analytics and also for Piwik that analyzes how far down users scroll on a page.
Price level: ● free (open source)
https://scrolldepth.parsnip.io
Inspectlet
Provides in-depth analysis that standard web analytic tools don’t provide, such as individual session recordings.
Price level: ● diverse
Pirsch
Cookie-free, privacy-friendly web analytics. Based in Germany.
Price level: ● diverse
Optimal Workshop
Suite of tools to help analyze and improve information architecture and navigation.
Price level: ● high