Investing in your documentation is now essential. 39% of millennials will check a company’s documentation before contacting support for help, and self-service is now an expected part of your support strategy. 

Help Authoring Tools (HATs) are a useful addition to any business – whether you have teams of technical writers, just one, or other employees pitching in, producing documentation remains essential for teams who want to improve their products or comply with regulations. HATs are typically used to help you produce large amounts of documentation that is centrally managed by your technical writing team.

Some common Help Authoring Tools are industry standards like Madcap Flare or Adobe RoboHelp, and they enable you to single source documentation across a range of print and digital platforms. There are now some relative newcomers available, such as our own SaaS knowledge base software Document360, which you can use to quickly create modern documentation websites that are easy for customers to use. 

Unfortunately, since some HATs can be quite expensive, it’s tempting to look into free options for your business. These options can range from free but proprietary self-hosted solutions, free SaaS (Software as a Service), to free and open source software. You can also use some WordPress plugins to add a knowledge base to your main website, if it’s already hosted with WordPress. 

In this post, we’ll go into detail about why free Help Authoring Tools might not be the best solution for your business.