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Here’s the dirty secret about IT documentation: the more critical it is, the more likely it’s out of date.
Your network diagram was accurate six months ago. Your runbooks reference servers that were decommissioned in Q2. Your onboarding docs describe a ticketing system you replaced last year. And somewhere, a new hire is following a procedure that will take down production because nobody updated the disaster recovery playbook after the infrastructure migration.
IT environments change constantly -new services, updated configurations, rotated credentials, decommissioned hardware. Documentation decays the moment you write it.
A study by Freshservice found that IT teams spend an average of 30% of their time on repetitive tasks that could be automated or documented. Yet the documentation that exists is so unreliable that teams often skip it entirely, preferring to figure things out from scratch or ping a colleague on Slack.
The problem isn’t that IT teams don’t value documentation. It’s that most IT documentation software treats documentation as a static artifact -something you create once and occasionally update. In modern IT environments, that model is fundamentally broken.
This guide evaluates IT documentation software through a different lens: how well it keeps pace with change. Because documentation that’s 90% accurate is often more dangerous than no documentation at all.
What IT Documentation Software Needs to Do
Before comparing tools, let’s establish what IT documentation actually needs to accomplish.
1. Reduce Knowledge Silos
Every IT team has that one person who knows how everything works. When they’re on vacation, things break. When they leave, institutional knowledge walks out the door.
Good documentation distributes critical knowledge across the team. It turns tribal knowledge into organizational assets.
2. Enable Faster Incident Response
When systems are down, every minute costs money. Teams shouldn’t be hunting through wikis or pinging colleagues to find the right runbook. Documentation should surface the right information instantly.
3. Streamline Onboarding
New IT hires typically take 3-6 months to become fully productive. Good documentation compresses that timeline by giving new team members a reliable reference for systems, processes, and procedures.
4. Support Compliance and Audits
Regulated industries need documented procedures, access controls, and change histories. IT documentation software should make compliance evidence easy to produce -not a quarterly scramble.
5. Stay Current as Systems Evolve
This is where most tools fail. Your infrastructure doesn’t wait for documentation updates. Servers spin up and down. Configurations change. Services get replaced. Documentation either keeps pace or becomes a liability.
Two Approaches to IT Documentation
IT documentation tools fall into two camps:
Static documentation platforms give you a place to write and organize information. They’re essentially structured wikis with IT-specific features. Content sits there until someone manually updates it. Most established tools fall here.
Active documentation platforms help maintain documentation over time. They integrate with your systems, detect changes, identify gaps, and reduce the burden of keeping everything current. These are newer and less common.
The static approach works when documentation is simple and systems are stable. For modern IT environments -cloud infrastructure, DevOps practices, frequent deployments -static documentation creates technical debt that compounds over time.
Best IT Documentation Software in 2026
1. Ferndesk
Best for: IT teams that need documentation that stays current automatically
Starting price: $39/month
Ferndesk takes a fundamentally different approach to IT documentation. Instead of providing a better place to store information manually, it provides an AI agent that actively maintains your documentation.
The agent, called Fern, connects to your sources of truth:
- Your codebase and infrastructure repos to detect system changes
- Support and service tickets (Zendesk, Intercom, Help Scout, Freshdesk) to identify documentation gaps
- Internal docs (Notion, Confluence, Linear) to extract existing knowledge
- Communication channels to capture decisions and procedures discussed in chat
Every week, Fern analyzes what’s changed in your environment and what questions people are asking. When it finds outdated content or missing procedures, it drafts updates for your review. You approve, tweak, and publish.
Why it works for IT teams:
Most IT documentation software assumes you’ll manually track every infrastructure change and update docs accordingly. That’s a fantasy. Reality is that documentation updates get deprioritized for urgent issues, and the gap between reality and documentation grows every day.
Ferndesk inverts this. Instead of requiring you to remember to update documentation, it monitors for changes and reminds you what needs attention. It’s the difference between push and pull.
The support ticket analysis is particularly powerful for IT teams. Instead of guessing what procedures to document, you see exactly what questions users and team members ask repeatedly. Ferndesk analyzes up to 5,000 tickets monthly to surface patterns -so you document what people actually need, not what you assume they need.
Key features:
- AI agent that monitors systems and drafts documentation updates
- Support ticket analysis to identify missing procedures
- One-click migration from existing knowledge bases
- Embeddable help widget for internal IT portals
- Human-in-the-loop review -nothing publishes without approval
- SEO built in for public-facing IT documentation
Pricing:
| Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Startup | $39/month | 10 AI articles/month, 1,000 ticket analysis, 2 team members |
| Scale | $99/month | Unlimited AI articles, 5,000 ticket analysis, 5 team members |
Ideal for:
- IT teams drowning in outdated documentation
- MSPs managing documentation for multiple clients
- Organizations without dedicated technical writers
- Teams that ship infrastructure changes frequently
2. IT Glue
Best for: Managed Service Providers (MSPs) needing structured IT documentation
Starting price: $29/user/month (minimum 5 users)
IT Glue is the incumbent leader for MSP documentation. It provides a highly structured approach to documenting IT assets, configurations, passwords, and procedures.
What it does well:
- Asset documentation with flexible templates for networks, servers, applications
- Password management integrated into documentation
- Relationship mapping showing how assets connect
- Runbooks for standardized procedures
- MyGlue portal for client-facing documentation
- RMM and PSA integrations with ConnectWise, Datto, and others
The catch:
IT Glue’s strength -structure -is also its limitation. The rigid template system works well for stable environments but becomes cumbersome when documentation needs to evolve quickly. Many users report spending significant time maintaining the structure rather than the content.
IT Glue also doesn’t solve the maintenance problem. It gives you a place to store documentation, but keeping that documentation current remains entirely manual. When servers change or procedures evolve, you’re responsible for remembering to update every affected document.
Pricing adds up quickly. At $29/user/month with a 5-user minimum, you’re looking at $145/month minimum. For larger teams or MSPs with many technicians, costs escalate fast.
Pricing:
- Basic: $29/user/month (minimum 5 users)
- Select: $38/user/month (2 integrations, 2-way PSA sync)
- Enterprise: $44/user/month (unlimited integrations)
Ideal for:
- MSPs with structured documentation requirements
- Teams needing password management integrated with documentation
- Organizations with stable environments that change infrequently
3. Hudu
Best for: MSPs wanting an IT Glue alternative at lower cost
Starting price: $27/user/month (annual) or $30/user/month (monthly)
Hudu emerged as a cost-effective alternative to IT Glue. It offers similar structured documentation -asset management, password storage, knowledge base -at a lower price point with no user minimums.
What it does well:
- No user minimums -pay only for what you need
- Self-hosted or cloud option -same pricing for both
- Asset management with customizable templates
- Password vault with encryption
- Process documentation for standardized procedures
- Public portals for client-facing documentation
- API access for custom integrations
The catch:
Hudu is essentially “IT Glue but cheaper.” That’s valuable if cost is your primary concern, but it inherits the same fundamental limitation: documentation maintenance is entirely manual.
The self-hosted option requires infrastructure and maintenance. If you’re choosing Hudu to self-host, factor in the operational cost of running your own instance.
Pricing:
| Billing | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $30/user/month | No contracts, no user minimum |
| Annual | $27/user/month | 10% discount |
Add-on: Hudu Radar (network discovery) is $9-10/company/month.
Ideal for:
- Cost-conscious MSPs with smaller teams
- Teams wanting self-hosted documentation
- Organizations migrating from IT Glue’s user minimums
4. Confluence
Best for: Organizations already using Atlassian products
Starting price: Free (up to 10 users), $6.05/user/month (Standard)
Confluence is the default choice for teams already in the Atlassian ecosystem. It’s a general-purpose wiki that can be adapted for IT documentation.
What it does well:
- Tight Jira integration for linking documentation to issues
- Spaces for organizing documentation by team or client
- Templates for common document types
- Permissions for controlling access
- Search across all content
- Large ecosystem of add-ons and integrations
The catch:
Confluence is a general-purpose wiki adapted for IT documentation, not purpose-built for it. You’ll need add-ons for password management, asset relationships, and IT-specific features.
The free tier is limited to 10 users with 2GB storage. For real teams, you’ll quickly need paid plans. And like every wiki, Confluence does nothing to help maintain documentation -it’s a storage system, not a maintenance system.
Many IT teams report that Confluence becomes a documentation graveyard. Content goes in but rarely gets updated, and search quality degrades as outdated content accumulates.
Pricing:
| Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Up to 10 users, 2GB storage |
| Standard | $6/user/month | Unlimited users, 250GB storage |
| Premium | $11.75/user/month | Advanced permissions, analytics |
| Enterprise | Custom | Unlimited sites, admin controls |
Note: Atlassian announced 5-10% price increases effective October 2025.
Ideal for:
- Teams already using Jira and Atlassian tools
- Organizations with light IT documentation needs
- Companies wanting a general wiki with IT adaptations
5. BookStack
Best for: Teams wanting free, self-hosted documentation
Starting price: Free (self-hosted)
BookStack is an open-source documentation platform with a clean, intuitive interface. It organizes content into Shelves, Books, Chapters, and Pages -a hierarchy that maps well to IT documentation.
What it does well:
- Completely free (MIT license)
- Clean interface that’s easy to navigate
- Hierarchical organization for structured documentation
- WYSIWYG and Markdown editing options
- Role-based permissions for access control
- API access for integrations
- Active community with regular updates
The catch:
BookStack requires self-hosting. You need infrastructure, maintenance, and backups. For small teams without DevOps capacity, this overhead may not be worth the cost savings.
Being open-source, BookStack lacks enterprise features like advanced analytics and premium support (though it does support SSO via SAML 2.0, OIDC, and LDAP). And like all static documentation tools, it doesn’t help with maintenance -documentation decays at the same rate as any other wiki.
Pricing: Free (self-hosted)
Ideal for:
- Teams with DevOps capacity for self-hosting
- Organizations with tight budgets
- Privacy-conscious teams wanting full data control
6. Notion
Best for: Small IT teams needing flexible internal documentation
Starting price: Free (personal), $10/user/month (Plus)
Notion has become the default workspace for many teams. Its flexibility makes it adaptable to IT documentation, though it wasn’t designed for that purpose.
What it does well:
- Flexible structure for organizing information however makes sense
- Databases for tracking assets, configurations, and procedures
- Templates for common IT documents
- Real-time collaboration for team editing
- Integrations via API and Zapier
- Low learning curve for non-technical users
The catch:
Notion was built for general knowledge management, not IT documentation specifically. You’ll miss:
- Password management (don’t store credentials in Notion)
- Asset relationships and dependency mapping
- IT-specific templates and structures
- Compliance features and audit logs
- Advanced access controls for sensitive documentation
For small teams doing light IT documentation, Notion works. For serious IT environments, its limitations become apparent quickly.
Pricing:
- Free: Personal use
- Plus: $12/user/month ($10 billed annually)
- Business: $20/user/month (billed annually)
- Enterprise: Custom
Ideal for:
- Small IT teams or startups
- Internal documentation only (not client-facing)
- Teams already using Notion for other purposes
7. ServiceNow Knowledge Management
Best for: Large enterprises already using ServiceNow ITSM
Starting price: Custom (enterprise only)
ServiceNow includes a knowledge management module within its IT Service Management platform. For organizations already using ServiceNow, it integrates documentation directly with incident and change management.
What it does well:
- Tight ITSM integration linking documentation to incidents, changes, and problems
- Knowledge-centered support (KCS) methodology built in
- Workflow automation for review and approval processes
- AI-powered search and recommendations
- Analytics on article usage and effectiveness
- Enterprise features like SSO, audit logs, and compliance
The catch:
ServiceNow is enterprise software with enterprise pricing. If you’re not already using ServiceNow for ITSM, adopting it just for knowledge management makes no sense. The complexity and cost are justified only when documentation is part of a broader service management strategy.
Implementation is measured in months, not days. You’ll likely need consultants or dedicated administrators.
Pricing: Custom (contact sales; typically $100+/user/month for full platform)
Ideal for:
- Large enterprises already using ServiceNow
- Organizations with mature ITSM practices
- Teams needing documentation integrated with incident management
8. MediaWiki
Best for: Large-scale internal wikis with technical users
Starting price: Free (self-hosted)
MediaWiki powers Wikipedia. For large-scale documentation needs with many contributors, it’s battle-tested at extreme scale.
What it does well:
- Proven at scale (Wikipedia has 60+ million articles)
- Extensive extensions for almost any functionality
- Strong versioning with complete edit history
- Wikitext markup familiar to technical users
- Fine-grained permissions for access control
- API access for integrations
The catch:
MediaWiki is powerful but complex. The editing experience (wikitext) has a learning curve. Visual editors exist but aren’t as polished as modern alternatives.
Self-hosting requires significant technical capacity. You’ll need to manage updates, security patches, and backups. For smaller teams, the operational overhead outweighs the benefits.
And like all wikis, MediaWiki is purely a storage system. Documentation maintenance is entirely manual.
Pricing: Free (self-hosted)
Ideal for:
- Organizations with many documentation contributors
- Teams with technical capacity for MediaWiki administration
- Large-scale internal wikis with complex organizational needs
9. Guru
Best for: IT teams wanting documentation surfaced in workflow tools
Starting price: $25/user/month (minimum 10 seats)
Guru focuses on getting documentation to people where they work -in Slack, browser, or other tools. Its verification system prompts content owners to periodically confirm accuracy.
What it does well:
- Browser extension and Slack integration for accessing docs in workflow
- Verification workflows that prompt periodic content review
- AI-powered search with custom AI Knowledge Agents
- Cards for bite-sized documentation
- Collections for organizing related content
- Analytics on what content gets used
The catch:
Guru’s verification system is a step toward solving the maintenance problem, but it relies on humans remembering to verify content. It’s better than nothing but not automated.
The card format works well for quick reference but less so for complex procedures or detailed system documentation. For comprehensive IT documentation, you may find the format limiting.
Pricing:
| Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Serve | $25/user/month (min 10 seats) | AI Knowledge Agents, verified KB |
| Enterprise | Custom | SSO, SLA, dedicated success manager |
Ideal for:
- Teams wanting documentation accessible in Slack and browser
- Organizations with 10+ users focusing on bite-sized reference content
- Companies willing to commit to periodic verification workflows
10. Slite
Best for: Remote IT teams needing async-friendly documentation
Starting price: $8/user/month (Standard, billed annually)
Slite is designed for remote teams with an emphasis on async collaboration. It offers a clean writing experience with AI features for search and summarization.
What it does well:
- Clean, focused editor for writing documentation
- AI search that answers questions directly
- Collections for organizing documentation by topic
- Real-time collaboration with inline comments
- Templates for common document types
- Integrations with Slack, Google Drive, Figma, and more
The catch:
Slite is a general-purpose documentation tool, not IT-specific. You won’t find asset management, password storage, or IT-specific templates. It’s essentially a more polished wiki.
For teams needing structured IT documentation -network diagrams, runbooks, configuration details -Slite’s free-form approach may feel too loose.
Pricing:
| Plan | Price | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $8/user/month | Knowledge base, AI search |
| Knowledge Suite | $20/user/month | Enterprise search across tools |
| Enterprise | Custom | SSO, audit logs, dedicated AM |
Ideal for:
- Remote teams prioritizing async collaboration
- Light IT documentation needs
- Teams wanting simple, clean documentation without complexity
Comparison Table: IT Documentation Software at a Glance
| Tool | Best For | Starting Price | Auto-Maintenance | Learning Curve |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ferndesk | Auto-maintained IT docs | $39/month | Yes (AI agent) | Low |
| IT Glue | MSP structured docs | $29/user/month | No | Medium |
| Hudu | Budget MSP docs | $27/user/month | No | Medium |
| Confluence | Atlassian teams | Free / $6/user | No | Medium |
| BookStack | Self-hosted docs | Free | No | Low |
| Notion | Small team flexibility | $12/user/month | No | Low |
| ServiceNow | Enterprise ITSM | Custom | Partial | High |
| MediaWiki | Large-scale wikis | Free | No | High |
| Guru | In-workflow docs | $25/user/month | Partial (verification) | Medium |
| Slite | Remote teams | $8/user/month | No | Low |
How to Choose IT Documentation Software
If your main problem is keeping documentation current…
Choose Ferndesk. It’s the only tool that actively helps maintain documentation. The AI agent monitors your systems and support channels, then drafts updates for review. For IT teams drowning in outdated wikis, this is transformative.
If you’re an MSP needing structured client documentation…
Choose IT Glue if budget isn’t a concern and you need the most comprehensive feature set. Choose Hudu if you want similar capabilities at lower cost. Both require manual maintenance, so factor that ongoing cost into your decision.
If you’re already in the Atlassian ecosystem…
Choose Confluence. The Jira integration alone makes it worthwhile if your team lives in Atlassian tools. Just don’t expect it to solve the documentation maintenance problem.
If you want free and self-hosted…
Choose BookStack for a polished experience, or MediaWiki for maximum scale and flexibility. Both require DevOps capacity for hosting and maintenance.
If you’re a large enterprise with ServiceNow…
Use ServiceNow Knowledge Management. It’s already there, it integrates with your ITSM workflows, and adding another tool creates unnecessary complexity.
If you have light documentation needs…
Choose Notion or Slite for simplicity and flexibility. They’re not IT-specific, but for small teams without complex requirements, they’re often enough.
Why IT Documentation Fails (And How to Fix It)
The tools matter less than you think. I’ve seen teams fail with expensive software and succeed with simple wikis. The difference isn’t the platform -it’s the system around it.
The Documentation Death Spiral
Here’s how IT documentation typically fails:
- Initial enthusiasm: Team builds comprehensive documentation. Everything is current.
- Reality sets in: Urgent tickets take priority. Documentation updates slip.
- Trust erodes: Team members find outdated information. They stop trusting the wiki.
- Abandonment: People go straight to Slack instead of documentation. Knowledge stays siloed.
- Crisis: Key person leaves. Critical knowledge is lost. Fire drill to reconstruct documentation.
This happens because most IT documentation software is passive. It stores information but doesn’t help maintain it. The maintenance burden falls entirely on humans who have higher-priority work.
Breaking the Cycle
Teams that succeed at IT documentation do three things:
1. Integrate documentation into existing workflows.
Documentation shouldn’t be a separate task -it should be embedded in how work already happens. Examples:
- Change tickets require documentation updates before closing
- Incident post-mortems include documentation improvements
- Onboarding includes contributing to documentation
2. Automate maintenance where possible.
This is where modern tools like Ferndesk shine. Instead of relying on humans to remember documentation updates, automated systems monitor for changes and surface what needs attention.
Even without AI tools, you can automate some maintenance:
- Scheduled reminders to review critical documentation
- Alerts when linked systems change
- Periodic audits of most-used documentation
3. Measure and improve.
What gets measured gets managed. Track:
- Search queries with no results (gaps)
- Support tickets that reference documentation (outdated content)
- Time-to-resolution for documented vs. undocumented issues
- New hire time-to-productivity
IT Documentation Best Practices
Regardless of which tool you choose, these practices improve outcomes:
Structure for Findability
IT documentation fails when people can’t find what they need. Structure content for discoverability:
- Consistent naming conventions for documents
- Clear hierarchies (by system, by team, by procedure type)
- Tags and categories for cross-cutting concerns
- Search optimization with relevant keywords
Write for Crisis Mode
IT documentation often gets used during outages when stress is high and time is short. Write accordingly:
- Lead with the action, not the context
- Use numbered steps for procedures
- Highlight warnings prominently
- Include rollback procedures
- Test your runbooks before you need them
Keep Credentials Separate
Don’t embed passwords in documentation. Use a dedicated password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, or IT Glue/Hudu’s built-in vaults) and link to it from documentation.
This is both a security practice and a maintenance practice -you don’t want to update multiple documents when a password changes.
Document the Why, Not Just the What
Procedures become outdated when people don’t understand why they exist. Include context:
- Why does this configuration matter?
- What breaks if this procedure is skipped?
- What was this designed to protect against?
When people understand the reasoning, they can adapt when circumstances change.
Plan for Turnover
Document with the assumption that the person who wrote it won’t be available to explain it. Ask:
- Would a new hire understand this?
- Are there assumptions that need to be explicit?
- Is tribal knowledge hidden in people’s heads?
The ROI of IT Documentation
IT documentation often gets deprioritized because the benefits seem abstract. Let’s make them concrete.
Reduced Incident Response Time
With documented runbooks, mean time to resolution (MTTR) decreases. If your team handles 50 incidents per month and documentation saves 15 minutes per incident, that’s 12.5 hours saved monthly -before accounting for reduced escalations and off-hours pages.
Faster Onboarding
New IT hires typically take 3-6 months to become productive. Good documentation can compress this by 30-50%. For a $100K hire, saving two months of ramp time is worth $16K in faster productivity.
Reduced Knowledge Silos
When critical knowledge exists only in one person’s head, that person becomes a bottleneck and a risk. Documentation distributes knowledge, reducing:
- Delays when experts are unavailable
- Risk when employees leave
- Stress on overloaded team members
Compliance Efficiency
For regulated industries, documentation audits are a recurring cost. Well-maintained documentation makes audits faster and reduces findings. Organizations with good documentation practices report spending 40% less time on compliance activities.
Conclusion: Choose Tools That Solve the Real Problem
Here’s what most IT documentation software vendors won’t tell you:
The hard part isn’t creating documentation. Any tool with a text editor lets you write content. The hard part is keeping that content accurate as your environment changes.
Most tools on this list are passive storage systems. They hold your documentation and hope you remember to update it. Some have nice features for organizing, searching, or collaborating -but none of that matters if the content is outdated.
That’s why Ferndesk exists. Instead of building another wiki, we built an AI agent that monitors your systems and support channels for changes. When documentation needs updating, it drafts changes for your review.
You still control what gets published. You still apply human judgment to every change. But you’re not responsible for monitoring everything yourself.
Ready to stop fighting documentation entropy? Try Ferndesk free for 7 days. Connect your support tickets and see what the AI agent finds. That analysis alone will reveal more about your documentation gaps than any feature comparison.
IT documentation should get better over time, not worse. It’s time for tools that make that possible.
