Comparison: Notion vs. Notion Traditional knowledge bases

Notion's proposal

I have already dealt here with How to organize a personal knowledge base from text notes. And, as the name implies, it is not a basis for sharing this information. After all, if you want to share something, you need that information to be hosted on some internet service.

I also recently announced that the Notion now has a plan that allows you to share just that kind of information, therefore offering more than a personal knowledge base . This means that you can use Notion's free plan to host a knowledge base (with FAQs, tutorials, manuals, etc.), as long as we're talking about a small project.

After all, how does Notion compare to other knowledge base tools?

While Notion is a tool for organizing content (generically speaking), the alternatives created to support projects (regardless of their size) are marked by the workflow they intend to serve.

Support Software

A good comparison category for our purpose is made up of tools aimed at serving the public, a category also known as help desk. Or Zendesk it is an example, because, although it is focused on receiving tickets, it offers a knowledge base at a relatively affordable price (USD 5/month).

In fact, you have to pay for the support ticket management tool, and you end up getting access to the knowledge base, called Guide. If you are interested in this combination, it can be an alternative. But, for me, unfortunately the price is still an issue.

Zendesk leads us to two similar comparisons, one more expensive and one cheaper. The most expensive is the Intercom (USD 99/month, i.e. prohibitive) and the cheapest is the Freshdesk , which has a very good free plan. The only downside to Freshdesk is that you can only customize the look and feel of your support portal on the most expensive plans ($49/month).

In summary, good support software also offers, among countless options, a knowledge base. You can take advantage of this, insofar as These tools can have billing strategies that allow the use of a knowledge base for free or at an affordable price.

This opportunity is due to the fact that support portals are increasingly offering complex services, which include: service automation through bots, integration of the knowledge base with chat, support from various channels (including Whatsapp, phone and social networks), etc. Since companies tend to charge for these sophisticated services, the knowledge base itself may end up being offered for free .

Documentation Software

Another category of tools that offers knowledge bases is documentation software. The perspective is a little different from that offered by the support solutions, as they are unlikely to include the automation functionalities previously listed. This does not mean that they are cheap, as they are complex tools in their own way.

Or Gitbook It has a very interesting free plan. The product is spectacular, but it still doesn't have Portuguese translation . In the mid-range price range, there is the Confluence ($10/month). Among the most expensive and unfeasible options for my budget, the ReadMe has plans starting at USD 99/month.

In fact, as the documentation world intends to serve developers, it is possible to find a number of free or very cheap tools. But, as the audience is developers, you will possibly need to be a developer to install and manage programs like Sphinx , MkDocs , Docusaurus or Read the Docs .

Preparing the completion...

The knowledge base format has a very useful structure. Because it is independent of a timeline, It is an organization option that is very complementary to a blog for instance. But it can also work autonomously. I myself, if I had known this in the past, would have used the knowledge base approach to solve some demands that ended up not being well met by a blog.

It may be then that you, like me, need a knowledge base much more than a blog to solve your current demands. As an example, more recently, corporate blogs have become repositories of use cases, while knowledge bases are much more versatile, and can include: tutorials, FAQs, documentation, etc.

The question we keep coming back to is: what is the problem you are looking to solve? A blog is the ideal tool for posts that tell a short story or present an opinion. A knowledge base, in turn, is the ideal tool for posts that convey instructions of any kind. So basically, you need to know if you want to tell a story or if you want to spread instructions.

And if you want to disseminate instructions, what is the best way to do it?

... Closing the conclusion

In terms of options between tools, the knowledge bases offered by support solutions are more accessible. The knowledge bases offered by documentation solutions are more expensive.

The reason seems to be that the strategy of support solutions is to try to sell added services (not necessarily the knowledge base, but, for example, its integration with a chat); while documentation solutions serve only this purpose. The consequence is that they have to charge for the only solution they sell, even if they don't necessarily offer a much superior experience.

Or Notion It emerges as a new alternative, as it is not a support solution or a knowledge base per se. In fact, Notion is a productivity tool (free for personal use) that allows you to share knowledge bases, making it the ideal option for small projects that don't have a budget.

If you have a generous budget, there's a good chance you've made it to the end of this post. In addition, I have the impression that the more specific solutions I have listed here (such as the Gitbook ) did not have their applications translated into Portuguese. In other words, in this case, money does not solve it completely, as the field of "Documentation as a Service" seems to be offered only by foreign companies with little interest in Brazil.