One of the most important aspects of a successful business, but a tough one to accomplish is an effective method of documentation.
With the substantial increase in the culture of remote working in many industry types, proper documentation is of utmost importance in the onboarding process, customer support, effective team collaboration, etc.
When you see companies the size of Zapier and Close CRM building and scaling up with a 100% remote workforce, it shows the huge shift in how productivity in work is accomplished.
Yes, Google docs can be used and many companies use it. However, it is not the core functionality of Google docs and it has its own limitations.
For many organizations, a specialized tool built for documentation across the whole team will be of great use, and the likes of Notion, Coda, etc. are fantastic for this purpose.
Start now with your first Archbee document
Archbee is a new tool that promises a similar or even better functionality. Does it manage to achieve that? Let us see in this review.
UI & Dashboard
The sign-up process is simple and easy with the team's name and a few other information asked for.
It is possible to invite team members right when you are signing up for the Archbee account.
Once signed in, the dashboard is clean and minimalistic. There is a lot of resemblance to Slack on the left sidebar and it is a really good thing.
There are some templates to start with like marketing projects, checklists, competitor watch, meeting notes, tech specifications, project proposals, etc. to get off the ground easily.
The folder management of the documents is also very neat with the ability to organize all the new documents under different document spaces.
Each document in the document space can have sub or child documents for even more content organization. Both the primary and the subdocuments can be cloned to make duplicates of the existing documents.
Workspaces can be made public and shared with a unique URL. This can be password protected and the access levels can be restricted as well.
This is an incredibly useful feature to share knowledge bases across teams easily.
The public space can even be on your sub-domain with just the addition of a Cname. The sub-domain will also have an SSL installed automatically.
Apart from the documents in the workspaces, you can have a separate space of notes and drafts which can be later moved to your preferred workspace once completed.
Document Editor
I liked the neat and clean interface of the editor with minimal distraction.
As you write and enter to move on to each line of the document, a menu bar displays on the right end to select whichever item you want to add.
Some of the menu items include bulleted or numbered list, checklist, tables, minitasker which works like a mini kanban with columns, image, video, code snippet, diagram, API endpoint, swagger UI, changelog, map, divider, etc.
The minitasker is really neat with the columns easy to add and edit.
The diagrams are super easy to use as well with all basic elements to build flowcharts and process charts.
There is a lot of keyboard shortcuts available to increase the pace of workflow.
It is possible to chat with other team members within the app to collaborate in the editing process.
Another fantastic feature of the editor is the code embed tool that contains almost all of the mainstream programming languages. If you are a development team and looking for proper documentation, this is of great help.
There is a specific focus mode, which as the name suggests removes all the distractions in the editor and cleans up the canvas to have a detailed and unintrusive look on the document.
Overall the editor is clean, intuitive and extremely easy to adapt coming from any text editor.
Integrations
For a reasonably new tool, I was really impressed with the number of integrations Archbee has with third-party tools for developers, team management and marketing.
Some of the important integrations include Slack, Airtable, Trello, Lucidchard, Typeform, Mindmeister, GraphQL, Swagger, Github Gist, Codepen, Invision, Figma, Marvel, etc.
Also, the public spaces can be integrated with Google Analytics to view the performance metrics and with Intercom to have a live chat embedded right in the public space.
Slack and Trello are fantastic integrations to have the whole team in sync with the documentation.
Very impressive.
Pricing
There are 2 plans apart from the free plan, the mid-level growing plan costing $3 per user per month and the highest level scaling plan costing $5 per user per month.
Considering the features that Archbee offers, these are incredibly competitive prices when compared to similar tools in the market.
Support
Live chat is available both on the main website and within the app.
The help and support documentation is pretty good covering all the features. It would be even better to have some in-depth video tutorials as well.
If you switching over from a different tool, the team will even provide migration of all the documents and data to make the process seamless. Archbee also offers custom development for your organization's needs based on your specific use case.
There is a public roadmap as well to check on the proceedings on new features planned and released. The addition of databases and zapier integration on the roadmap are features that are very exciting to look forward to.
Also, an active changelog is maintained to show the updates on all the changes that have been implemented month by month.
Negatives?
Well, there are a few.
Currently, it is not possible to export the documents as a docx although I was informed by the founder that it is in the plans.
It would be nice to have an option to export to WordPress directly which could be of great use for content marketing teams.
Also, for such a collaboration tool, the lack of native mobile apps might be a turn off for many users. Again, it was informed by the founder that it is in the roadmap to be worked on, but it is not available currently.
Conclusion
Overall, I was genuinely impressed with how robust and fluid Archbee was right from the user interface to the editor to integrating with other apps.
If you haven't already implemented an extensive documentation system for your business or planning to implement one soon, Archbee is a great tool to have in your productivity stack.
General FAQ
What is Archbee and what is does?
Archbee is a documentation and collaboration tool that will help your organization and team in any type of documentation process.
How much Archbee costs?
Plans start from $15 per month for 5 users and $3 per additional user.
Will it replace my project management tool?
It is possible for a small organization or team, but to get the best out of Archbee, it has to be used along with a project management tool like Trello.
How to collaborate with other team members?
There is a chat option built-in within the app and also a native slack integration to communicate with team members.
What are some of the use cases?
Archbee can be used for a wide spectrum of use cases like project documentation, a knowledge base for the team, customer support documentation, product roadmaps & changelog, employee onboarding, remote team documentation, etc.