IT documentation is one of the most valuable resources, but it's not taken seriously. Look at the top IT documentation software that will make documentation a breeze.
Imagine this: A software developer joins your organization and needs a demo on product functionalities and use cases. The immediate supervisor is on leave, and the company doesn't have the required documentation to help the developer get up to speed.
Most IT professionals and engineers think documentation is a waste of time. They might do it sloppily with half-baked steps and information stored in unorganized folders, or worse on emails.
IT documentation software can come in handy and make the process smooth and hassle-free. Programmers can hit the ground running and record the software development lifecycle with the documentation tool for easier knowledge management, better team coordination, and increased output and efficiency.
There are many IT documentation tools in the market. Which one should you choose?
We've rounded up the ten best IT documentation platforms with their benefits, ratings and pricing, so you can decide which one is best for your business and how to leverage them to improve team collaboration and organizational productivity.
Before we get started, let's dig into the fundamentals.
What is IT documentation software?
IT documentation tools help teams organize, manage and create internal and external documentation for the software development team, technical stakeholders and end users. Using a tool makes documentation less tedious and time-consuming, thus, lowering employees' resistance to creating documentation.
An IT documentation software builds a centralized repository that includes a wide range of files, documents, source code, and other technical materials, along with specific details on how to use the software. Individuals can refer to the source materials whenever they feel stuck or need guidance—cutting down on the back and forth with managers and the time spent looking for files in different folders.
"One of the biggest impacts of IT documentation has been in reducing downtime caused by issues that can be easily resolved with documentation. For example, our helpdesk team can quickly reference documentation while troubleshooting issues, resulting in quicker resolutions and less downtime for end-users." — Natalia Tomchyshyn, Marketing Director, Relokia
Common types of IT documentation for your business
IT documentation can be divided into several categories, depending on the purpose and the audience. The goal here is to create effective documentation for the end-users to guide them throughout the product journey, and for developers and stakeholders to align on the project's objectives.
1. Process Documentation
Process documentation is a step-by-step guide that developers record for software development and maintenance. This informs the processes and procedures used to test, iterate, and develop the software.
Developers scope out this kind of documentation at the start of the process and add relevant information as the process becomes more refined. Common examples of process development documentation are:
Project Plans.
Meeting Notes.
Test schedules.
Development plans.
👋Use Scribe to turn any process into a step-by-step guide that team members can easily share, access, and collaborate on to achieve desired results.
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2. Product documentation
Product documentation informs the use of the software—how to install it, change it, navigate the features, and more. It can be used by either the development team to record system documentation or end users who need to know how to use the software.
👉 Good to know: Statistics by D2WorldWide confirm that 73.7 percent of people find documentation more helpful than videos, packaging materials, or talking to salespeople.
"As a product development lead of a successful SaaS startup, I can attest that documentation is crucial to our success. We could keep track of changes, document development plans, and strategies, and streamline processes with the help of good documentation tools." —Travis Lindemoen, Founder, Enjoy Mondays
3. Technical documentation
Technical documentation provides detailed information on the technical capabilities and specs of the software/product. Software developers and engineers use it to understand technical details and create a great user experience for the customers. Common examples of this type of documentation include:
API documentation.
Software architecture documentation.
Data structure.
Release notes.
User guides.
4. System documentation
System documentation encapsulates information on the architecture, design, and components and how they work together to create the software.
This helps the development team to understand the system's features and capabilities, allowing them to modify elements, track progress, and improve the system. Examples of system documentation are:
The documentation, as the name suggests, is created for the end users of the software to familiarize them with how the product works. Typically, user documentation is written in a simple, concise, and easy-to-understand style so users can understand the information easily. Common types of end-user documentation are:
Need help with making the guides or tutorials? Check out Scribe.
Benefits of using IT documentation tools
Whether your audience is software developers, IT professionals, technicians, stakeholders, customers, or end users, documentation can guide them in the right direction and empower the users to navigate the product without supervision or management.
Let's look at some of the reasons why your organization should deploy IT documentation solutions immediately:
1. Everyone works on the same goal:
The first step in IT documentation is to collect information that guides the entire process. Without documentation, individuals can derail from the project goals, making it challenging to achieve specific project objectives.
Outlining processes can help developers to focus on what matters and how to perform an activity, so they can spend more time testing, versioning, and developing the software.
"Having the right documentation tools in place has allowed us to quickly troubleshoot issues, scale our operations without adding too much overhead, and increase our overall efficiency." — Daniel Chabert, CEO & Founder, PurpleFire
2. Improved work quality & process control:
Documentation outlines consistent, repeatable steps that everyone should follow to achieve desired objectives. When everyone works from the same script, the output is consistent and improves everyone's efficiency on the team.
"Our team relies heavily on IT documentation to streamline our internal processes and improve efficiency. It significantly impacted our company by allowing everyone to easily share knowledge, collaborate effectively, and maintain a centralized repository of information." — Abhishek Shah, Founder, Testlify
3. Smoother feedback implementation
Developers have to go through several iterations to build the software. Documenting feedback at every step is crucial to improve submissions and building a better user experience. When a new developer takes over, they can quickly reference the documents and understand the bugs or issues with the software, the feedback implemented, and what needs to be improved.
4. Progress tracking
Typically in software development projects, tasks are divided into smaller chunks with a single accountable owner. Each person is responsible for finding solutions related to the task, making it easy to track progress, allocate resources, and plan future work.
Keeping a record of the implementation can help software developers understand how to perform a task and the challenges associated with it.
5. Easier to onboard & train resources
When you're bringing a software developer or an IT professional to the team, documentation can make onboarding and training much more accessible and easier.
"Proper IT documentation enables a detailed project history for any new team members so that they can immediately get acquainted with the particular choices and preferences of a client." -James Nesbitt, Founder of Myth Digital
When a star employee quits the organization or retires, documentation prevents the loss of organizational knowledge and ensures someone is ready to take up the position. Organizations need to document senior managers' experience and technical know-how so the new resources can train themselves to take up the position, and add their experiences to the knowledge already present.
6. Improved user experience
Two main objectives of creating IT documentation are to improve employee and user experience. Software documentation can help the team to understand the inner workings—what, how, where, and why, and external documentation can provide instructions on how to use the software and navigate the features.
"One of the most significant impacts of IT documentation has been on our customer service. By readily making all our information available, we can quickly and efficiently resolve any customer issues, improving customer satisfaction and loyalty." — Rajesh Namase, Co-Founder, TechRT
Scribe gets your IT documentation in order by generating step-by-step guides in seconds. All you have to do is:
Click 'record' on the Chrome extension or desktop app.
Go through your usual process.
Viola! Your step-by-step guide is ready—with annotated screenshots and text.
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Whether you need to create software documentation, user guides, training manuals or client support materials, Scribe can save time while creating beautiful and user-friendly guides that you can store, link, export or embed.
Multiple people can collaborate simultaneously on the platform and handle different aspects of software documentation, making it easier to develop and share knowledge within teams.
"I love the ability to create content quickly on Scribe. I can start recording in Chrome or on my desktop, perform the actions, and press stop. I can go back and edit the steps, remove steps, and add additional info. This makes it super easy to hand off a step-by-step action plan or how-to guide for users or internal support." — Will D., Small Business Owner
Bit.ai is an IT documentation platform that helps software teams to collaborate, share and track information on one platform. Bit documents allow developers to add code or embed snippets directly in the interface, making the tool intuitive and user-friendly.
It supports multiple collaborators — editing, updating and reviewing the documents in real time. Users can also interlink documents to share information. The best part about Bit.ai is that it supports Markdown, which allows developers to create and format text without distractions.
GitHub is a popular choice with software developers that allows them to review and publish code, manage projects, and build software with other developers.
On GitHub, you can either create and store documents with GitHub Wiki Section or convert your GitHub docs into a custom website and host your portfolio and documentation. For first-time users, Github offers one free webpage, hosting and a custom domain.
ClickHelp is an IT documentation tool that requires no installation or configuration. It's an authoring tool that allows companies to manage, create and publish internal and external documentation on a single platform.
Technical writers can collaborate with subject matter experts, developers, specialists, and engineers in real time on a single documentation workflow. The best part about ClickHelp is that you can publish multiple projects and versions in different formats that can be password-protected or open to the public. You also get complete control of the UI customization with a number of reporting capabilities.
Doxygen is an excellent IT documentation tool to create documentation for developers. You can generate documentation from source code directly (C++ sources), and it also supports other programming languages such as Java, Python, C, Objective-C and more.
Both online and offline documentation can be extracted directly from source files, keeping documentation consistent with the source code. You can also use it to create regular IT documentation without source files.
If you're looking for a document editor for a software team, try MarkdownPad. It's a common choice for the users of Windows Operating Systems to write articles, READMEs, and other software documentation.
The best part of this tool is you can see how the documents look in HTML as you're creating them. It offers many customization options, such as different fonts, sizes, color schemes, layouts, and a built-in CSS editor.
"MarkDown has the right features needed to quickly develop robust documentation that ensures all of our products have detailed instructions, tutorials, and user guides that users could easily access when they needhelp." — Daniel Chabert, CEO & Founder, PurpleFire
G2 rating: 4.1/5 stars Capterra rating: 4.4/5 stars Confluence Pricing: Free up to 10 users Confluence Overview:
If you have a remote-first team of developers, Confluence may be the apt tool for your business. With a wiki-like system, it's easier to build, collaborate and organize information that can be easily shared with team members.
Developers can work with others in real-time to build software documentation. Confluence comes equipped with the best practices templates that developers can choose to create intuitive and user-friendly documentation.
"This tool has been invaluable in helping us structure things properly while keeping up-to-date with changes over time – especially when multiple teams work together on a single project within our company ecosystem." — Travis Lindemoen, Founder, Enjoy Mondays
8. Apiary — API documentation
G2 rating: 4.3/5 stars Capterra rating: N/A Apiary Pricing: Free basic plan available Apiary Overview:
If you want to create Application Programming Interface (API) documentation, Apiary by Oracle has the right capabilities. It's a simple and intuitive IT documentation software that lets users document their APIs and supports collaboration between teams.
Developers can work together to design, prototype, document, and test APIs on a single platform. It also comes with built-in API templates so you don't have to always reinvent the wheel and can get started on new projects quickly.
9. Read The Docs — Create, publish & host documentation
G2 rating: N/A Capterra rating: N/A Read The Docs Pricing: Free plans available Read The Docs Overview:
Read The Docs is an open-source IT software that automates and optimizes the entire process of documentation — creating, versioning, publishing and hosting the docs. Users can create multiple versions with different tags to track edit history and keep the documents up to date.
With Read The Docs, you can convert your software documentation into different formats, such as PDF, HTML, and eReaders. No additional configuration required.
10. Typora — Markdown editor
G2 rating: 4.1/5 stars Capterra rating: N/A Typora Pricing: Free basic plan available Typora Overview:
Typora is excellent for technical writers who want a minimalistic and straightforward markdown editor. It removes the preview window, mode switcher, syntax symbol of markdown source code to create a clean, distraction-free writing environment. Instead, there's a live preview feature that allows you to focus on the content you're creating.
Choose from the several built-in themes, download new themes from Typora Themes Page, or create your own. You can also easily convert and export the documentation to PDF, Word documents, HTML, RTF, and so on.
Pick the right IT documentation software for your company
Choosing the right IT documentation solution for your business depends on several factors, such as integrations, customization options, and ease of collaboration with the team.
You need to primarily create documentation for developers and end-users, and Scribe is a wonderful tool for that. It can help you create FAQs, user guides, training manuals, and how-to tutorials for internal and external audiences.
If you're particularly looking for open-source documentation, Read The Docs is a great tool. For API documentation, we prefer Apiary by Oracle.
Depending on your needs, choose the IT documentation software that makes the most sense for your business and your team.
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