Introduction
When you centralize organizational information, you significantly enhance your employees’ consistency and knowledge retention. But unfortunately, not every company is prepared to jump into using a paid knowledge base due to team size or budget constraints.
Free wiki software allows every business to organize and share information effectively. Explore our guide to the best free wiki tools to elevate company-wide documentation.
What’s Wiki Software?
Wiki software refers to knowledge databases that allow multiple users to contribute and edit content. These solutions help companies collect, organize and share vital information in an accessible, centralized location.
Free wiki apps are an excellent option for teams who want to test whether a given software is right for them before committing to a paid platform. Say a small startup uses a free tool to organize their onboarding documentation. They experience a noticeable performance boost in new hires, so they adopt a larger knowledge management system like SharePoint.
Why Should You Use Team Wiki Software?
If you’re looking for better organizational tools, wiki software is an accessible, collaborative option. Here are the main benefits of using a corporate wiki platform.
Centralizes Company Information
Wiki software collects and consolidates company information like policies, manuals and SOPs. This ensures all employees, including distributed workers, can access knowledge.
A knowledge platform also reduces duplication and encourages consistency. It’s easy for multiple employees in similar roles to execute tasks differently, but a central wiki provides your staff with a single source of truth.
Improves Navigation
An organized company wiki allows your workforce to access any document they need in seconds. Performing a quick search query brings up relevant policies and how-to guides so employees can find what they’re looking for and spend time on more meaningful work.
Acclimates New Employees Faster
Joining a company can be overwhelming, and new hires must review many documents to ramp up and acclimate fully.
Wiki software structures organizational information intuitively so new employees can find and study all necessary documentation, such as benefits packages, conduct policies and handbooks.
Updates Information Regularly
Organizations should frequently update processes and policies for documentation to remain accurate and relevant, and doing so requires an easy-to-edit database. Wiki pages make it simple to sign in and edit procedures, reducing inconsistency and ensuring all workers adhere to new standards and processes.
Retains Organizational Knowledge
It’s damaging when high-performing employees leave their roles and take expert practices with them. Wiki software is an excellent part of an employee transition plan, cataloging crucial techniques and knowledge. This means new and existing staff won’t have to create processes on the fly, maintaining performance and productivity.
Encourages Collaborative Contribution
While certain databases only allow admins to contribute, many wiki tools encourage your entire team to collaborate. Every employee is an expert in their field — the more they share knowledge and add to your company wiki, the more you spread high-quality information across a vast, accessible directory.
Promotes Knowledge Absorption
Easy navigation in a central database ensures your workforce can digest information in bite-sized pieces, enhancing absorption. It also makes it easy for people to revisit manuals and SOPs, enabling them to jump in for a quick look if they forget a detail.
Types of Wiki Software
Different wiki software types are available, each serving a unique need. Here are the main types, sorted into three categories. Choose an option from each category to find the best tool for your organization:
- Company versus personal: Personal wiki tools have more simplistic, limited features and are ideal for single entrepreneurs or employees completing an individual project. On the other hand, company wikis are better for multiple users and include sharing permissions, detailed search functionality and integration with other corporate tools.
- Public versus private: Private wikis are secured and accessible only to those with the proper permissions. Public wikis, the most famous example being Wikipedia, are accessible to anyone online.
- Hosted versus self-hosted: Hosted wikis are managed and maintained by a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider. Self-hosted tools are managed locally on your servers, which offers more freedom and customization but requires a lot of maintenance and a dedicated IT team.
The Top 5 Free Wiki Software
The right free wiki software lets you fluidly create, organize and distribute information. Here are our top five recommendations so you can get started today.
1. Scribe
Scribe is a process documentation tool that automatically builds how-to guides. Just turn on the browser extension or desktop app and perform your task, and the AI software captures your screen and builds accurate, step-by-step instructions.
Manually filling out wiki pages is time-consuming and effort-intensive — you have to write out steps, find and place links and take helpful screenshots. Scribe makes the process effortless, quickly ensuring your wiki is organized and accurate.
The best part is that you can use Scribe alongside any other tool in this list. Choose the best wiki software for your company, and then use Scribe’s free AI process documentation to fill it with informative, customized guides.
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2. Nuclino
Nuclino is user-friendly corporate wiki software that facilitates knowledge storage and sharing and encourages collaboration. Customize your wiki pages to suit your team, adding visuals, embeds and internal links to enhance engagement and make each entry more effective.
This platform also offers space for comments and feedback and an intuitive search to ease navigation.
The free version doesn’t include a version control history or detailed user permission settings, but it’s a great way to try wiki software and see if it works for your company.
3. Notion
Notion is wiki software with task management features, allowing you to maintain a knowledge base and projects in the same tool.
This versatile platform lets you create documents, publish content, build templates, collaborate with teammates and embed hundreds of different apps in your wiki pages.
Notion is a powerful tool but might be overwhelming for teams with less tech expertise. We recommend you start slow, learning a few new features as you go instead of trying to tackle it all at once.
4. DokuWiki
DokuWiki is an open-source wiki engine that’s well-known for its clean, simple user interface (UI). It doesn’t require you to set up a database, making it easy to get started.
This software has an indexed search that uses keywords and phrases, quick templates and reliable security features, such as built-in access control and authentication. It also offers over 1,000 plugins, letting you enhance your experience by adding new features. For example, the Blog plugin adds the ability to write blog posts or add comments.
However, DokuWiki lacks key corporate features, including integration with standard business tools. It also requires you to discover and download the right plugins for the best experience.
5. MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free platform that powers many popular wikis, including Wikipedia. This tool has advanced features, including an extensive database to store countless documents and detailed revision histories.
Setting up MediaWiki is tricky and best left to dedicated IT specialists. This ensures you avoid issues and get the most from each feature.
Because it offers complex functionality and has the bandwidth to handle thousands of access points, this is an excellent solution for larger companies and enterprises.
How To Choose Corporate Wiki Software for Your Company
Wiki software is a powerful addition to your daily workflow, but one tool doesn’t suit every business. It’s vital to consider your organization’s needs, including size, tech know-how and content type.
Say you’re a small company that simply needs to store and maintain SOPs — Scribe and Notion is a great pairing. However, if you need to support a team of developers and facilitate tech projects, it’s worth looking into creating a GitHub Wiki.
After you determine your organizational needs, consider these essential wiki software features:
- Ease of use: Wiki software should be accessible and easy to navigate with a clean UI.
- Collaboration and communication: Your tools should offer features for feedback and team responses.
- Access permissions: Permission control ensures the right people view documentation, ensuring privacy and compliance.
- Easy editing: Wikis must be regularly reviewed and updated, so it’s vital that team members can jump in and make edits.
- Tool integrations: Your chosen tools must integrate into your current workflow to make a smooth, unified system.
- Customer support: There’s always a chance you could run into issues while building and maintaining your wiki, so tools with dedicated customer support are ideal.
Adapting to new systems can be overwhelming, so we recommend starting with free wiki software and trials. Test solutions out for a few weeks, ask your team for honest feedback and choose the best tool for your company.
Enhance Your Wiki Software With Scribe
Scribe takes process documentation to the next level, making creating an actionable company wiki effortless. Building traditional wikis requires time-consuming manual input and formatting, but our AI tool writes step-by-step guides in seconds.
Try our Work Instructions Generator to craft concise, helpful manuals and populate your new database quickly. You can also generate guides through prompts or take advantage of over 100+ templates.
Sign up for Scribe for free and build a vast company library.
