Introduction
The training manual is an important instructional document for any organization — regardless of whether it has ten employees or thousands.
It’s the easiest way to keep your workforce on top of all training, learning and development activities. Use it to orient and train your employees, as well as build a comprehensive knowledge base to standardize office tasks and processes.
But gone are the days when the phrase “training manual“ meant bulky, corporate-looking booklets bound in a drab cover. Times have changed, and these handy training documents have become more visual and accessible. More effective.
The training manuals of today neither look nor function like they used to—and training manual software made this happen.
Top training manual software in 2022
- Scribe
- ProProfs Training Manual Software
- Trainual
- EdApp
- TechSmith Snagit
- Coassemble
- Clickhelp
What is training manual software and how does it help?
Training manual software is a tool that allows you to create, personalize, organize and manage training-related documents. It’s also known as a training manual creator.
The software aims to reinforce training knowledge by providing your staff with helpful job-related content, thereby helping them perform assigned tasks effectively and without errors.
Using a training manual software has far-reaching benefits.
You can create attractive training manuals for your employees and add videos and pictures where necessary to make the material more interesting. Having a software as top dog also means your training content stays fresh and responsive to changes made in real-time.
The fact that you can automate the otherwise time-consuming process of creating elaborate training manuals seamlessly and stress-free is another solid advantage.
Most training manual tools let you create training manuals for specific use cases, too. A few common applications include:
- Onboarding new hires or offboarding current employees
- Introducing new software and systems
- Providing customer training and education
- Sharing standard operating procedures (SOPs)
- Providing product instructions and information
- Implementing new protocols or process documentation
Getting the right training manual creator makes the training guide more effective and accessible. And the more effective your training manuals, the more streamlined your employing training processes and the more proficient your employees.
Top training manual software
1. Scribe
G2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Scribe Pricing:
Scribe currently offers three plans:
- Basic — Free.
- Pro — $29 per user, per month.
- Enterprise — Request a customized quote.
Scribe Overview:
Scribe is one of the few training manual software that lets you create functional and visually-appealing training manuals.
Simply turn on the Scribe extension or desktop app and continue working as you do. The tool will capture your process and auto-generate step-by-step guides that you can then combine in process docs (called Pages) to create visual training manuals. Scribes can be edited, combined and added to a Page in under 60 seconds.
The mind-blowing part here is that Scribe auto-generates text and screenshots. You can add custom branding, annotations, text and blur to your documentation if needed.
Since Scribe auto-documents your whole process, the tool can’t miss out on any crucial step or information. You don’t have to spend additional time documenting or outlining your processes to build your training material, ensuring employees have complete and accurate information to perform their jobs.
Scribe Features:
- Create and share visual step-by-step guides at a click.
- Easy to use drag-and-drop interface.
- 15x faster process documentation.
- Combine strive to create different types of documentation.
- Pre-build page templates for various use cases.
- Built-in editor to add text, annotate and customize training manuals.
- Share training manuals instantly as a PDF document or send them directly with a URL link.
- Compatible with Windows, Mac and any web browser.
2. ProProfs Training Manual Software
G2 Rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars
ProProfs Pricing:
ProProfs currently offers three plans as part of its Private Knowledge Base:
- Essentials — $2 per user per month.
- Premium — $3 per user per month.
- Enterprise — Request a customized quote.
Try any plan for free for 15 days.
ProProfs Overview:
ProProfs can seriously simplify the process of developing training manuals.
You can create attractive and interesting training manuals and enrich them with images and videos to make it even more engaging for your employees. Choose from over 600 fonts and themes for a professional touch if you don’t have any prior designing expertise.
ProProfs also lets you provide context-sensitive help for a holistic understanding. Add lightboxes, tooltips and popups to provide further explanations for complex concepts and terms. This will make your training manuals self-sufficient, so your employees won’t have to look elsewhere to get more information.
Sharing your training manuals with your team is easier, too.
Assign permissions and roles (admin, contributor, viewer and editor) to monitor who can view, edit and manage the training manuals. Tracking previous changes and reverting to an earlier version using revision history is also possible.
ProProfs Features:
- Build attractive training manuals in minutes.
- Include images and videos to enhance the interest quotient.
- Choose from over 600 fonts and themes for a professional look.
- Add lightboxes, pop-ups and toolboxes for context-sensitive help.
- Assign roles and permissions to manage training knowledge.
- 100+ settings and integration with popular tools.
3. Trainual
G2 Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Trainual Pricing:
Trainual currently offers three plans:
- Build — $49 per month
- Train — $99 per month
- Scale — $199 per month
Try any plan for free for seven days.
Trainual Overview:
Trainual is one of the biggest names in digital employee management solutions, and not without reason.
It serves several use cases, including creating onboarding materials and assets for new hires, streamlining process or SOP documentation for simple or advanced procedures, and imparting ongoing employee training through learning management systems (LMS).
Document all your training processes and procedures, as well as test every material to boost comprehension and accountability. Built-in search functionality allows employees to look up training content by any keyword and find any document they need within minutes.
Trainual offers free templates to guide you in creating effective training manuals for your employees. You can test your employees on their knowledge and get reports on their performance post-training while you're at it.
Enhance your training manuals with GIFs and enjoy access to Pixabay’s royalty-free image library. You can also add your company’s colors and logo for an on-brand look.
Trainual Features:
- Unlimited topics, steps and tests.
- Several free starter templates and process playbooks.
- Built-in filter and search functionality.
- 700+ quick embed integrations.
- 1-on-1 support from our team to help you set up your account.
- Tons of third-party integrations.
- Custom secure URL feature.
4. EdApp
G2 Rating: 4.8 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: NA
EdApp Pricing:
EdApp currently offers three plans as part of its Self-service option:
- EdApp Free
- EdApp Growth — $1.95 per user per month
- EdApp Plus — $2.95 per user per month
Other plans are also available to cater to more specific needs.
EdApp Overview:
If you don’t have a tech-savvy workspace, you’ll find the simple and straightforward approach of EdApp very convenient.
This cloud-based and free training manual software offers several interactive templates, allowing you to build microlearning courses that engage your employees. If you don’t want to curate training manuals yourself, you can deploy premade courses straight from EdApp’s fully editable course library.
An AI translation feature lets you translate training manuals into over a hundred languages. This is a handy feature for organizations with a global workforce with employees that speak different languages.
Being an authoring tool, EdApp can provide you with various useful insights to better structure your training manuals. These insights include the most used templates, the most effective template sequence for maximum retention, and the best placements for elements within the training manual.
Native smartphone features like swipes, drag and drop, and other gamification aspects make training more engaging and effective, motivating employees to complete the training courses.
EdApp Features:
- All-in-one learning management system
- Data-driven authoring tool
- 80+ interactive and engaging microlearning templates
- Fully editable course library
- Deliver and optimize content in real-time
- AI translation tool that’s compatible with 100+ languages
- Gamification and reporting and analytics
5. TechSmith Snagit
G2 Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
TechSmith Snagit Pricing:
Snagit® 2022 costs $62.99 and renews at $12.60 per year. In addition to the 15-day free trial, there’s also a 30-day money-back guarantee.
TechsSmith Snagit Overview:
Next on our list of the best training manual software is TechSmith Snagit.
Snagit is an offering by TechSmith software that lets you create everything from straightforward guides to comprehensive training video courses.
Creating a training manual can quickly become tedious when you don’t have prior training or designing experience. That’s why Snagit offers dozens of professionally-designed templates that can be customized in minutes.
Simply select the images you want to include in your training manual, followed by adding text and arranging the order of the images. You can also change the screenshots, font, colors and layout in a few simple clicks.
And that’s it! You now have a handy training manual ready for your employees.
Share your brand-new training manual either in print or digitally. If you decide to save it as a PDF or image file, send the document to your employees through one of Snagit’s outputs like Microsoft Word, Screencast.com and email.
TechSmith Snagit Features
- Screen-capturing with markup for more clarity.
- Smart move feature that automatically makes objects in your screen capture movable.
- Add images, GIFs and videos.
- Free and premium training manual templates.
- Media sharing on popular apps, platforms and cloud drives.
- Personalize training manuals with stickers designed for screenshots.
6. Coassemble
G2 Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Coassemble Pricing:
Coassemble currently offers two plans: Pro and Premium.
The prices of these plans depend on the number of users you have. So, for instance, if you have 20 users, the prices will be:
- Pro 20 — $120 per month
- Premium 20 — $160 per month
Coassemble Overview:
Specially designed for growing themes, Coassemble helps you create and share interactive training manuals that fit your employees’ specific training needs. It’s an intuitive platform with a flat learning curve, so you can get started right away.
This training manual software strives to create impactful training experiences. As a part of this initiative, it offers visually stunning training materials that can hold your employees’ attention and facilitate long-term knowledge retention.
With its authoring tool, choose from several user-friendly interactive screen templates and customizable lessons and then publish your course in just a few clicks. The platform also offers many preloaded quiz templates that can be useful to incorporate learning assessments for employees at the end of every course.
Coassemble also supports the SCORM file option, which is a package interchange file (PIF) containing all the necessary data to transfer learning content to an LMS. So, you can easily transfer your old courses from other platforms to Coassemble.
Another feature we like is the option to celebrate employees' training achievements, which is an excellent tactic to motivate them.
Coassemble Features:
- User-friendly interactive screen templates.
- Supports interactive learning processes.
- Intuitive platform.
- Course building told with interactive quizzes.
- SCORM file option support.
- 24/7 customer support availability.
- Deep analytics to supercharge training experiences.
7. ClickHelp
G2 Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
ClickHelp Pricing:
ClickHelp currently offers the following four plans:
- Essentials — $55 per author, per month
- Startup — $69 per auto, per month
- Team — $99 per author, per month
- Enterprise – $139 per author, per month
Clickhelp Overview:
With ClickHelp, you can create the most efficient and engaging training manuals with little to no effort.
Make content-rich training manuals featuring images, screenshots, videos and tables to boost employee engagement. If you don’t want to do the hard work, use ClickHelp’s ready-made customizable templates to save time.
You can also consider contacting the branding team ,who will help you create a documentation portal built to your exact requirements.
ClickHelp is a reliable cloud documentation tool that provides employees 24/7 access to all training materials from anywhere and at any time. All they need is a laptop or smartphone and a reliable internet connection. It also offers centralized storage for all your training manuals, complete with a handy search functionality that lets employees find anything they need in a matter of seconds.
Multiple document version support is another desirable feature. This is useful for departments and teams that need different training manuals based on different use cases.
ClickHelp Features:
- Create content-rich training manuals.
- WYSIWYG editor to visualize what your training manuals look like in real-time.
- 24/7 training document availability from any device.
- Centralized storage for training manuals.
- Multiple versions of training guides.
- Easy-to-update training materials.
Choosing the right training manual software
The right training manual creator can make creating training manuals for your team effortless.
Choose a tool that aligns with your and your employees’ needs and preferences. Don't commit to any solution right away. Experiment with different options by signing up for free trials and basic plans and understand which one best helps your team to work more smartly and efficiently.
