Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Answerbase
Score 10.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Answerbase is a knowledge management platform for customer support and e-commerce, allowing users to ask questions, receive quality answers, and browse content and articles to meet their demand for information about your products and services. Each system comes with administration and moderation tools that are designed to help companies customize, manage and grow an engaging platform. According to the vendor, advanced features like moderation, user group management, actionable content insights,…
$49
per month
Bloomfire
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
Bloomfire provides knowledge engagement, aiming to deliver an experience that connects teams and individuals with the information they need to excel at their jobs. Their cloud-based knowledge engagement platform aims to give people one centralized, searchable place to engage with shared knowledge and grow their organization's collective intelligence.
$25
per month
Knova
Score 7.0 out of 10
N/A
Knova KM is a full-featured knowledge management software solution for large customer service and support organizations, especially those that must handle complex queries across channels in industries such as high tech, telecommunications, financial services, and the IT help desk. It was supported by Avolin, the company created from the sale of Aptean Vertical Business Applications to ESW Capital in 2018, and is now part of IgniteTech.N/A
Pricing
AnswerbaseBloomfireKnova
Editions & Modules
Basic
$49
per month
Professional
$149
per month
Business
$399
per month
Enterprise
Quote
per year
Basic
$25.00
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AnswerbaseBloomfireKnova
Free Trial
YesNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$25 No setup fee
Additional DetailsAnswerbase Enterprise allows for 100% custom adaptations and developments to take whatever ideas, new functionalities or integration requirements you may have and make them a reality. Our knowledgeable team will manage setup, integration, and provide web-based education and training to make sure your team has all the tools and information they need to successfully manage and grow your site. Therefore, we organize a quote on a per customer basis only for customers interested in an Enterprise implementation.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AnswerbaseBloomfireKnova
Best Alternatives
AnswerbaseBloomfireKnova
Small Businesses
Front
Front
Score 9.1 out of 10
Front
Front
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Front
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
RWS Tridion Sites
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
RWS Tridion Sites
RWS Tridion Sites
Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
AnswerbaseBloomfireKnova
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.2
(174 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(14 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(15 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AnswerbaseBloomfireKnova
Likelihood to Recommend
Lumin Creative
We implemented a Q&A board since we felt this would be the best way to create high quality content for our team when discussing the next sales strategy process. Really aids customers who have purchased a product from our company to navigate any problems they experience as they can seamlessly check the community question board Increases networking opportunities
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Bloomfire
Ad testing:
  • PTS: needed to bring a new senior marketing team member up to speed on how we got to our current TV campaign
  • Solution: Series featuring consumer insights, why specific spokesperson, agency brief, the entire creative process - scrips, animatics, rough cuts, feedback, and testing at each step. Including the actual creative from each step.
  • Total time to build: 1 hour
Concept testing:
  • PTS: things get lost, findable but version control
  • Solution: everything in one placeConcepts, testing, IHUTs, verbatims, videos with transcripts. Reduces the possibility of missing something, helps with any builds (reuse), but gives us a the chance to dig deeper. Example: search on terms like "indulgent", or "crispy" or "share" much faster
  • Total time to build: 1 hour
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IgniteTech
We expereienced an upgrade by Aptean in March 2014 and it actually created issues with our interfaces to Word and well as performance issues. As of November, we have most of the performance issues resolved, however our interface with Word is still not working. It takes alot of upfront work to convert with Word and with the upgrade that was affected. Authors are still frustrated with many issues in the formatting and editing of existing data. A vital tool to update the product home pages has not been available except for sporadic late night periods since the upgrade in March. Overall, many authors are not happy with this knowledge management tool
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Pros
Lumin Creative
  • Increases your team to collaborate with each other as you are available to post questions that more people can answer to express and opinion or idea
  • Browse existing community pages to see if your question has been answered
  • Allows you to share relevant documents with specific staff
  • Excellent customer service support team that are always on hand to help
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Bloomfire
  • Quickly reach out to whatever employee segment you want to reach by posting a topic and it will send a notification to everyone in that group with a link to the posting.
  • Bloomfire saves all of the previous posts so in your free time you can go to the site, and explore the various range of topics others have posted. The information on there will only be as good as the person posting it, but it will be people within your company and industry posting it. So it will always be helpful.
  • Bloomfire is a place to be noticed by your peers. Have a great topic you want to express, my company allows all to post there as long as we keep it professional. So you can share your ideas or experiences in a safe and productive manner. But we do have some fun on there too!
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IgniteTech
  • Aptean offers simple access to Knowledge Management for our Clients, Customer Support teams as well as internal support teams. Allows our knowledge management team the ability to provide consistent and up-to-date processes and troubleshooting tips for our associates as well as ADP Clients.
  • Aptean provides an easy to use user interface with tools for authors that mimic Microsoft Word (Cut, Paste, Spell Check, Bullets, Indentation etc). It also provides an easy to user user interface for our associates in accessing the Knowledge Management solutions. The Search tool is very powerful and allows the users quick access to the information they need!
  • In the more than 3 years that we have been using Consona/Aptean, we have had very little down time. This is important to our authors as well as end users in being able to access the information. Allowing the authors the ability to update the information in near real time is another key feature of keeping our information current.
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Cons
Lumin Creative
  • Onboarding checklist would be a great addition as setting up can be complicated
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Bloomfire
  • I would recommend adding a feature to combine different posts/series by job title (so in addition to the Revenue Ops category, there could be a structured walkthrough for Revenue Manager).
  • Live Q+A sessions for group onboarding initiatives.
  • Ability to label bookmarks by priority/job type.
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IgniteTech
  • We have experienced some slowness with importing pictures into our Aptean application. While they do eventually complete, it is very timeconsuming when several images are needed. Definitely tries our patience, or consider not including them at all!
  • Some of the formatting issues transfering our information from Word to Aptean are still challenging and require too much manual intervention than necessary.
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Likelihood to Renew
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Bloomfire
Most likely we will renew, our team needs a refresher on possible opportunities to advance our usage and learning of opportunities to move this answer to a 10, can't live without it.
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IgniteTech
Many business units are using the Aptean product for knowledge management and a change now would be too crucial to the processes that the associates are becoming familiar with using. We have spent a lot of time promoting our Aptean Knowledge Management tool and interfaced it with our call tracking system.
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Usability
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Bloomfire
Bloomfire is an easy-to-use platform for posting information and asking questions of my peers. It also has a user-friendly search capability. Yet like any other CMS, the secret to success rests in such items as the ability to use metadata to tag content or posts, and Bloomfire provides a wide range of options to make posting content and subsequently searching for it.
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IgniteTech
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Lumin Creative
No answers on this topic
Bloomfire
I have not needed to pose questions to the support team yet, as it is a very simple piece of software to use, however, its help documents and the bot ready to answer questions let me know I am in good hands. The help center could load a little quicker, but that's my only complaint.
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IgniteTech
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Lumin Creative
Just from a personal viewpoint, I feel that the ease of use with Answerbase is amazing and with first class customer service support team, that could not be more friendlier and helpful. The decision was easy and they designed specific requirements that met our needs. It has really complemented our workforce and saved time.
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Bloomfire
I like Bloomfire because it is more concise with the work I do whereas Google search engine would provide broader information. It has just been so user-friendly, and easier to use [than] I could have imagined. I would use this program over any other that I have tried in the past.
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IgniteTech
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Lumin Creative
  • Increased collaboration in the workplace
  • Saved time on staff asking the same questions
  • Provides customers a 'live' community to liaise with
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Bloomfire
  • Feedback from users in being able to perform transactions for members has greatly improved.
  • There has been an increase in engagement of material presented in posts by learners in training classes.
  • Reps and agents say they feel confident they can easily locate information if ever there is a need on the front line.
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IgniteTech
  • Increased Employee Effciency adding ability to look up processes and troubleshooting tips is invaluable.
  • Ability to share information with our Client Facing interface, which results in better customer service. Encouraging ADP associates and clients to become more self sufficient is what we're all about!
  • Ability to keep the information current with the effciency of the product.
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ScreenShots

Answerbase Screenshots

Screenshot of Each customer has access to an Admin Site where they can access the tools they need to effectively manage all of your content, users and access.Screenshot of The public interface comes with a standard template. Customers are encouraged to customize the look and feel, so that it is accomplishes their goals and accurately reflects their brand.Screenshot of Each admin and moderator has access to a “My Work” area where they can see their content assignments.Screenshot of Admins and moderators have advanced tools for moderation to control each piece of content from one area.Screenshot of Admins can have full control over customization to accomplish any look and feel they want.Screenshot of Widget builders and API’s empower you to accomplish even the most sophisticated integrations or even build your own Answerbase-powered Q&A applications.

Bloomfire Screenshots

Screenshot of You are provided with a variety of options to brand your Bloomfire community, such as customizing its colors, displaying your organization’s logo, and building a custom Promo Bar. This creates an aesthetic that truly reflects your company’s culture.Screenshot of Bloomfire features an AI-powered search that makes sharing and searching for information a lot easier. It deep indexes every word in each piece of content, regardless of whether it’s a PDF, slide deck, video, or any other file type. The platform also creates tags for your content automatically. And if a video is uploaded, Bloomfire automatically transcribes it, making the spoken words searchable and allowing users to jump to the exact part of a video where certain keywords appear.

All of those features result in an easy and smart searching experience. There’s no need to navigate through folders or guess file names. All you need to do is perform a search like you would with Google. When searching, you can further narrow down your results based on categories such as author and content type.Screenshot of Bloomfire's AI enables you to search and find the video you are looking for based on its audio contents.Screenshot of Use Bloomfire while you work seamlessly across your favorite apps.