Where to find helpful knowledge base software reviews in 2018

You want to invest in some knowledge base software for the first time, or upgrade your existing system to better software. Or, you’re a company wanting to improve your online presence for your own software by generating some user reviews.

75% of all B2B software purchasers will look at reviews of products and services before they buy. That means vendors must think hard about the image they’re presenting to their customers before they even reach the company website.

If you’re a customer, you’ll be doing yourself a favour by researching the options on reputable review sites. This is where software reviews come in handy.

Although there is a wide range of review sites out there, software-specific sites will have better reviews and be more likely to come from professionals using the software.

1. Capterra

Capterra is a great resource for finding reviews about many different types of software. They host reviews of software in more than 300 categories. It focuses on businesses and non-profits, and it’s essentially a software-matching service.

They have a comprehensive list of knowledge management solutions and their website is very user-friendly. You can search by rating, number of users, or narrow your search with more specific parameters.

It’s extremely specialised and has been established since 1999, so you know you’re looking at quality reviews. The big drawback of Capterra is that the big players tend to get to the top when you browse the categories, and these solutions are not suitable for everyone. They’re mostly for the enterprise.

Capterra also does not have a separate category for knowledge bases – only knowledge management software. This is common for software review sites. Instead, you can type ‘knowledge base’ or ‘knowledge’ into their search bar to come up with a good selection of software solutions.

2. G2 Crowd

G2 Crowd features a clean interface which you can use to search its collections of Customer Self-Service and Knowledge Management Software.

They produce handy visuals for comparing different segments of software, like this one for customer self-service software:

It’s helpful for comparing software based on industry niche, so for example Salesforce is a Leader because it dominates the market. KnowledgeOwl is a High Performer because while the software is of outstanding quality, it is not quite operating on the scale of solutions like Salesforce.

One drawback of G2 Crowd is it doesn’t have a category dedicated to knowledge bases. You have to compare customer self-service with knowledge management solutions, of which there is quite a large variety and overlap.

On the rest of their website, you can directly compare different software options based on product features and customer satisfaction in order to see which option is the most suitable for your business.

It comprehensively compares solutions against one another, and combines a selection of useful metrics with customer reviews to produce an in-depth picture of the available software.

3. GetApp

GetApp has a great section dedicated knowledge bases.

You can filter your search by your own company size, as well as additional knowledge base features such as whether it includes a ‘customer history’ feature or API integrations. The interface is intuitive and not overwhelming like some other review sites.

It has a handy ‘Save for Later’ feature which you can use when researching solutions in-depth. You can save products that interest you to your profile with the click of a button.

GetApp also gives an in-depth description of product features for each listing, and a library of accessible customer reviews. It has a helpful feature comparison with similar products, although this usefulness depends on the site having accurately categorised the various different software.

4. Software Advice

Software Advice is a website offering a list of knowledge management software solutions and uses visual symbols to represent their different features.

It has thousands of reviews for its many products on offer, and also tells you at a glance what sized business the software is best for. The reviews are structured by including the most liked and least liked features, plus recommendations from the reviewers, such as tips for using the product.

Software Advice is a good overview of the knowledge landscape although again, they do not offer a dedicated category for knowledge bases.

5. Product Hunt

A very popular platform with startups, if you’re looking for new and quirky software products then Product Hunt is normally the place to go. Products can also include hardware, books and other non-software solution technologies, so it’s not the most focused marketplace.

Product Hunt is a ‘community’ of product enthusiasts, and it’s good for finding brand new software. Whether a product gets surfaced or not depends on a series of upvotes, like reddit, so theoretically you should only be seeing the most genuinely popular products. It’s common for companies to launch products and ask their networks for upvotes, though.

And popularity is not necessarily the most reliable guide when it comes to B2B software. Companies tend to opt for what they know is a safe bet, and they need reliability above all – just look at the popularity of established brands like Microsoft and Salesforce.

Other review sites like Capterra and GetApp are more established and reliable than Product Hunt in the software that they showcase. On the other hand, their business model means they are also paid to promote certain software solutions by the larger vendors, who are essentially buying ad space. This presents a biased picture of the landscape.

While the reviews for these products are still helpful, this isn’t necessarily the best way to find software either.

6. SaaSGenius

SaaSGenius is a B2B software platform, and is a place to find core business apps that everyone else is using. They state that they want to be the ‘Yelp’ of the SaaS world.

SaaSGenius is aimed directly at making the procurement process for businesses more efficient. It does this by introducing businesses to multi-purpose tools for different tasks, rather than forcing them to use two or more tools.

Of course you will only be able to find SaaS tools rather than on-premise solutions on SaaSGenius. It also doesn’t have that many reviews on the site so it’s hard to compare the different solutions. Extremely popular and established solutions like Confluence have zero reviews.

It not clear what this site offers over others like GetApp or Capterra, even though it purports to be ‘SaaS’ focused. FinancesOnline (discussed later in this article) is a superior option for B2B SaaS reviews.

7. PCMag online

PCMag is a long-established publication that invests a lot of effort into producing quality reviews of popular technology products.

It’s not 100% focused on software as it includes hardware like phones, cameras and laptops, broadband, and security products, but you can be sure that they are trustworthy. It’s also not necessarily aimed at businesses since it places a lot of emphasis on the everyday consumer.

It’s extremely difficult to navigate the PCMag site, but if you manage to find what you’re looking for on there then the information is in-depth and valuable.

It doesn’t yet recognise ‘knowledge base’ as a distinct category of software, but they do have a handy review of the available helpdesk solutions – many of which include add-on knowledge bases.

It’s a bit suspicious how all the solutions have at least four stars, but maybe they are all really very good.

8. FinancesOnline

FinancesOnline is a well-established review site for B2B software.

They have an interesting SmartScore system to standardise their reviews, spanning the different areas of emphasis that companies require from B2B software. Rather than focusing on features, they’ve gone for business utility.

All the information on the site is extremely detailed and in-depth, which is handy for software procurers in the enterprise. This means that you can not only find reviews for software, but also learn a lot about the software landscape at the same time.

FinancesOnline will save you a lot of time because you won’t need to do so much of your own research. Unfortunately, they don’t have many results for the term ‘knowledge base’, but you can search for ‘knowledge’ instead. You can also browse the Knowledge Management category to find knowledge base solutions.

Choosing the right review site

Review websites help businesses with their self-service strategy by making it easy to find effective software to suit your needs.

If you do research using popular and reputable review sites, you’ll vastly minimize the chance that you’ll waste your budget on inappropriate software that doesn’t suit your company’s needs.

Kraft Blick has published a huge post on the top 60 SaaS directories which list software products and reviews.

To tell whether a software review is genuine, look for the small personal details and balanced nature of the review.

Go for reviews that have maybe four stars to get a really thorough understanding about why the person liked the software, and the small things they didn’t like about it. There should be good and bad things, and not just ‘fake’ bad things like “It’s too bad I can’t use it for everything!”

How to understand the software you need

By far the best way to empower yourself is to understand the type of software you’re looking for first.

One of the biggest problems with software reviews sites is the categorisation labels used to promote different types of software often have little relationship to the software itself. It’s more about marketing than it is about clarity.

Make a list of the features you will need from your knowledge base solution before you start researching and estimate your ideal budget. Remember to check if your preferred solution integrates with your existing software and whether you’ll be provided with the support you need.

Final remarks

The hard distinctions between software categories are frequently academic, but the fact that they are so blurred together means it can be hard to find the right software. To make matters worse, ‘knowledge base’ is often not usually recognised as a distinct category.

Until the industry catches up, you'll want to do some research to figure out what you need.

KnowledgeOwl is the highest rated knowledge management solution on Capterra and a high performer in G2 Crowd's customer self-service and knowledge management categories. Learn more about our knowledge base software, start a free trial, or schedule a demo today!