Bloomfire and Document360 are two of the more popular knowledge management platforms on the market. But they serve different use cases and take distinct approaches to knowledge creation, organization, and delivery.

Bloomfire is built primarily for internal knowledge sharing across departments. It's strong at indexing diverse file types and making content searchable with AI. Document360 is more focused on structured documentation and publishing, with tools for both internal and external knowledge bases.

Those differences matter for customer service, where knowledge has to guide agents through the right process, help customers self-serve, and connect to the tools your team already uses. Neither platform was built with that goal in mind, which is why we'll also cover how Stonly compares as a platform designed for support teams.

Before we get into a deeper comparison, here's a quick summary of who each platform may be best suited for:

  • Bloomfire: Best for organizations that need a centralized internal knowledge hub with strong search across diverse content formats (videos, slides, documents) and a focus on cross-departmental collaboration.
  • Document360: Best for small companies and startups that need a straightforward knowledge base with a simple interface for creating and publishing documentation.
  • Stonly: Best for customer service teams that need interactive, process-driven knowledge for both agents and customers, with deep help desk integrations and analytics tied to support outcomes.

With that, let's walk through each platform's key features, advantages, and shortcomings, then compare them head-to-head across the categories that matter most when evaluating knowledge base software.

Bloomfire Overview

Bloomfire is an AI-powered knowledge management platform that pulls scattered company information into one searchable place, with a heavy emphasis on AI for finding answers and keeping content current.

The platform is used most often by mid-market and enterprise organizations that want a single system shared across teams like sales, marketing, operations, and customer success. However, Bloomfire is less of a fit for teams whose main goal is customer self-service or driving specific actions inside a support workflow.

Key Features

  • Synapse conversational AI assistant that returns cited answers drawn from content inside the platform
  • Multi-format search that makes text inside videos, audio files, slide decks, and PDFs searchable alongside articles
  • Q&A knowledge engine that routes questions to subject matter experts and saves their answers, so the knowledge base grows from real employee questions
  • Learn and confirm knowledge checks that embed quick comprehension checks into articles to reinforce training
  • Communities and custom layouts that let admins build role-based homepages and feeds for different teams

Advantages

  • Because Bloomfire transcribes and indexes video and audio, recorded training sessions and webinars are searchable alongside written documentation. This pays off for organizations where a lot of institutional knowledge is locked inside recordings.
  • Communities and permission controls let one deployment serve several business units at once, each with its own content and audience, without standing up separate tools.
  • Full-service onboarding covers planning, configuration, migration, and training, which reduces the risk of a stalled rollout for larger implementations.

Shortcomings

  • All content is article-based, so users may struggle when troubleshooting an issue or managing a multistep process. The user interface doesn't have an option to build a guided flow that asks a few questions and walks through the right answer.
  • The platform's strengths are mainly internal, so teams that need a polished self-service experience for end users will quickly discover content delivery gaps.
  • The breadth of features and enterprise price tag are often more than smaller teams need. Those looking for a straightforward documentation tool may be better off with an alternative.

Document360 Overview

Document360 is a knowledge base platform built around writing, organizing, and publishing articles. It's a common choice for technical writers, product teams, and support groups that need a clean place to maintain product documentation, help centers, standard operating procedures, or internal wikis.

The tool is especially popular with small and mid-sized software companies, where the focus is on getting structured documentation live quickly and keeping it easy to maintain. But it's less suited to customer support teams that need interactive guidance, deep workflow integration, or analytics tied to resolution outcomes.

Key Features

  • Dual-mode editor with both what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) and markdown support, plus templates, snippets, and reusable variables for consistency
  • Category manager for organizing articles into nested structures with tags and status indicators
  • Workspaces that let teams maintain separate documentation sets for different products or audiences inside one branded site
  • Eddy AI suite covering search, chatbot, article summarization, generative AI glossaries, and duplicate detection
  • Localization into more than 50 languages, which is essential for help centers with global audiences

Advantages

  • Teams can stand up a branded help center quickly, which is attractive for startups and smaller support groups that need something live within days rather than months.
  • Writers get a choice between WYSIWYG and markdown editing, along with in-line comments and reusable snippets, making it a comfortable fit for technical documentation workflows.
  • Native support for more than 50 languages makes it easier to run a single knowledge base across regions without stitching together outside translation workflows.

Shortcomings

  • The core experience centers on writing pages and letting readers find them. The platform supports interactive decision trees, but they're not a core feature, which limits how much process-driven content a team is likely to incorporate.
  • Reporting covers views, reads, searches, and feedback, but tying knowledge usage to resolution rates or handle time takes extra work outside the platform.
  • Support teams often start looking for an alternative to Doc360 when they outgrow the basic help center, since the platform can't guide agents through a ticket step by step or adapt customer-facing help based on who's asking.

Stonly Overview

Stonly is an AI-powered knowledge base built for customer service. It handles both agent-facing and customer-facing knowledge in one system, with standard articles, interactive guides, AI-powered search and chat, and an agent-assist copilot that runs inside the help desk. Stonly serves support and customer experience (CX) teams working to reduce ticket volume, shorten handle time, and keep agents consistent on complex processes.

1. Interactive guides that adapt to the situation

Stonly is the only full-featured knowledge base that pairs standard articles with interactive guides as a primary content type. For topics where the right answer depends on context, content can branch based on what the user selects or what data is pulled in from another system. Common examples include troubleshooting a product issue, walking a customer through an account change, or running an agent through a refund process.

A single guide can cover what would otherwise require a dozen separate articles, and the reader only sees the steps that apply to them. The editor uses the same WYSIWYG approach as article creation, so non-technical users and subject matter experts can build and maintain guides without engineering help.

2. Knowledge delivered at the point of need

Stonly surfaces the right content inside the tools and screens where people are already working. For customers, this looks like embedding guides in a web or mobile app through a widget and using no-code triggers to push content based on the page, user segment, or behavior. That means someone stuck on a checkout step can get a walkthrough right there, without opening a separate help center.

For agents, the same principle applies inside the ticketing system. Stonly integrates with Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshworks, and ServiceNow to deliver the relevant guide for each ticket directly in the agent's view. The integrations are two-way, meaning Stonly can read ticket data to skip ahead in a guide, then write data back, fill in fields, or fire macros as the agent moves through the steps.

3. Workflow automation built into the knowledge itself

Stonly's guides can take action on behalf of agents and customers mid-flow. A decision tree can check eligibility in one system, trigger an update in another, send a confirmation, and close out the ticket, all from inside a single flow the agent is following. The knowledge itself becomes part of how the work gets done, creating a better user experience that embeds the process directly in the content.

For example, Personio improved average handle time by 70% after rolling out Stonly's agent guidance, and RemoteLock brought new-agent ramp time down from six weeks to under three. Both resulted from putting the process inside the content agents were already following, instead of asking them to interpret it themselves.

4. AI trained on structured knowledge

Stonly offers three AI products. AI Answer powers conversational search and a standalone chatbot for customers. AI Agent Assist is an agentic copilot that summarizes tickets, surfaces relevant guides, and drafts replies for agents to review inside the help desk. Knowledge Agents monitor knowledge health around the clock, connecting to tickets, search results, AI conversations, and policy changes to find duplicates, outdated content, inaccuracies, and gaps. When something needs attention, they draft the updates following your company's guidelines, so your team can review, refine, and publish.

All three build on the structured knowledge in the platform, which gives the AI clearer signals about how to handle conditional scenarios. Since guides use discrete steps with clear branching logic, the AI can follow the same path a human would when walking through the flow.

Teams that prefer to bring their own AI model have flexibility. They can feed Stonly's structured content into it and get the same benefit.

5. Hands-on partnership model

Stonly includes full-service onboarding, knowledge migration, and ongoing success management as part of the relationship. Customers work with product managers and customer success managers who have helped hundreds of other support teams roll out interactive knowledge. The partnership covers content architecture, rollout, adoption, and measuring how the program performs after launch.

Interactive knowledge changes how a team thinks about content, and teams that try to go it alone often get stuck on where to start or how to structure guides for their most common tickets.

What Real Customers Are Saying About Stonly

"Stonly is a remarkably adaptable tool that has massively upgraded how we engage with our customers. Now, we can offer real-time solutions directly within our application, transforming the customer experience into one seamless interaction."

- Marco Ricciardi, Senior Program Manager at Personio

"Stonly simplifies our complex processes with step-by-step knowledge right where agents and users need support, resulting in a faster and more consistent experience."

- Andrea Eskanos, Customer Success Enablement at RemoteLock

"Thanks to Stonly, we’re leading the charge in our industry by giving customers quick and accurate resolutions and freeing up our technicians to tackle more complex tasks."

- Justin Wilder, Service Manager at Anderson America

Comparing Bloomfire, Doc360, and Stonly Head-to-Head

The three platforms overlap on paper, but handle the day-to-day work of a support team differently. The comparisons below walk through eight categories to help you find the best knowledge base software for your organization.

Content Formats

These three platforms range from static articles to interactive, branching guides, which affects how much users can do without escalating.

Bloomfire Static articles, Q&A posts, and uploaded files (documents, video, audio, slides)
Document360 Articles and videos (decision trees available with enterprise plans only)
Stonly Standard articles plus interactive, branching guides built for troubleshooting, SOPs, and personalized walkthroughs

AI Capabilities

All three platforms offer AI features, but they serve different purposes depending on whether your priority is search, content creation, or support resolution.

Bloomfire Conversational AI with cited answers, AI-powered enterprise search across integrated platforms, AI authoring tools for auto-tagging and summarization, automated content quality monitoring
Document360 AI-powered search, AI chatbot, AI writing agent, article summarizer, FAQ and glossary generators, duplicate content detection
Stonly AI integrated into search, standalone AI chatbot, AI knowledge agents that help make and maintain knowledge, including duplicate content and gap detection

Help Desk Integrations

Integration depth ranges from basic article surfacing to two-way data exchange with the ticketing system.

Bloomfire Integrates with Slack, Teams, Salesforce, Zendesk, and MS Dynamics for surfacing knowledge in existing workflows
Document360 Connects to Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, Drift, Slack, and Teams for article search and sharing
Stonly Two-way integrations with Zendesk, Salesforce, Freshworks, and ServiceNow that read and write ticket data

Workflow Automation

Automation support varies widely here, from none at all to guided flows that execute actions inside the help desk.

Bloomfire No support workflow automation, as it focuses on content authoring workflows with approval flows and review flagging
Document360 No workflow automation inside support tools
Stonly Guided decision trees that auto-populate fields, execute macros, and skip steps based on ticket context

Unified Internal + External Knowledge

Each platform handles internal and external audiences differently, which matters if you need one system for both agents and customers.

Bloomfire Primarily for internal use; can support external knowledge sharing but not optimized for customer-facing help centers
Document360 Supports internal and external use, though not built for managing multiple audiences in one place
Stonly Single system for both agent-facing and customer-facing knowledge, built to serve both

Analytics and Reporting

Most knowledge base analytics stop at views and searches. Tying usage to resolution rates, handle time, or deflection requires a reporting model built around support outcomes.

Bloomfire Engagement, content performance, search success, content quality, and trending topic analytics with customizable visualizations
Document360 Article, reader, and search analytics, plus team activity tracking, feedback monitoring, and ticket deflector reporting
Stonly Content performance, search and AI effectiveness, per-agent usage, and configurable outcome-based reports tied to resolution rates and ticket deflection

Contextual Help

Where and how knowledge reaches people (embedded in-app, triggered by behavior, or limited to a standalone portal) varies across all three.

Bloomfire Surfaces knowledge within Slack, Teams, and other integrated platforms; no embedded widgets, tooltips, or behavioral triggers for customer-facing delivery
Document360 Knowledge base widget, Chrome extension, ticket deflector, and conditional content blocks based on reader group, country, device, or date
Stonly Embedded widgets, tooltips, banners, and popups configurable by user behavior and data, plus a web extension for agents

Service and Support Model

Onboarding and ongoing support range from self-serve documentation to dedicated success teams.

Bloomfire Dedicated onboarding team for implementation, content migration, and change management; ongoing support included
Document360 Standard support, with a dedicated manager available on higher-tier plans
Stonly Dedicated onboarding, customer success, and account management team with a consultative partnership approach

Price

All three platforms offer custom pricing, so direct comparisons require a sales conversation. The relative positioning below reflects where each one tends to land for a mid-sized support team.

Bloomfire $$$ (Custom pricing upon request)
Document360 $$ (Custom pricing based on number of projects)
Stonly $$$ (Custom pricing upon request)

Which Platform Should You Choose?

The right choice depends on what your team needs knowledge to do.

Choose Bloomfire if your primary need is internal knowledge management across departments. It works best for centralizing scattered information, making diverse content types searchable, and improving how teams share expertise.

Bloomfire's deep content indexing (searching inside videos, slides, and documents) and automated content quality monitoring stand out for organizations dealing with large volumes of internal knowledge. But keep in mind that it's not built for customer-facing self-service or support-specific workflows, so you'll likely need a separate tool if those are priorities.

Choose Document360 if you're a smaller team or startup that needs a straightforward documentation tool with a clean interface. The platform makes it easy to get articles published quickly and offers solid content management basics like version control, approval workflows, and AI-assisted writing.

Document360 is a reasonable starting point for teams that don't yet need interactive content, deep help desk integrations, or outcome-based analytics. Just keep in mind that as your support operation scales, you may outgrow its capabilities, particularly around workflow automation, contextual delivery, and connecting knowledge to measurable support outcomes.

Choose Stonly if your team needs knowledge that actively drives support performance. The platform is designed for customer service, with interactive guides that adapt to each situation, two-way help desk integrations that make knowledge part of the agent workflow (not just a reference tab), and analytics that tie knowledge usage to outcomes like ticket deflection and handle time.

Stonly serves both agents and customers from a single platform. The hands-on partnership model means you get strategic support with content architecture, rollout, and adoption, not just access to software.

To see how interactive guidance, workflow automation, and outcome-based analytics work in practice, request a demo of Stonly. The deciding factors are whether you need knowledge that just stores information or knowledge that actively resolves issues.