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Top 11 Amazing Software and API Documentation Management Platforms

Everybody dreams of having an amazing software doc like the stripe. But not everybody is a filthy rich Silicon Valley startup capable of making custom software documentation pages. Fortunately, here's a list of amazing software documentation items which you might find interesting. Some amongst them are big while others are new, however, promising. Let's check them out.

Confluence

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Confluence is a project management solution that helps organizations to create, organize, collaborate and review project docs. The system gives you both, cloud-based as well as on-premise deployment.

Its editor feature lets employees create content like meeting notes, research reports, and product requirements. This solution allows managers to review and offer feedback in docs themselves.

Confluence's knowledge management module offers users with a concentrated depository to access and discover relevant content according to project demands. This system allows managers to limit access to secret data and team up within closed groups. Users can publish, access and organize company information in a primal location.

Confluence's task management option lets managers assign, observe and track changes to tasks delegated to employees. This task management option keeps the managers updated with status on finished, pending and overdue tasks. This software integrates with JIRA for enabling project transparency.

Docsie.io

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This here is a pretty new solution. I saw their ads on Reddit and figured why not take a closer look. An excellent upside of Docsie is that they're free and helps me embed into my project using a single line of JavaScript. While almost all the technical users won't have any problem with that, I can imagine some less technical people getting demotivated with this approach.

This online tool here is dynamic and you can embed them on your domain with very little effort. Docsie docs seem fairly decent and since it's a one-page app, the app doesn't slow down your computer or browser at all, giving you a smooth user experience.

Docsie is good enough for handling all your basic editing needs like creating simple markdown and/or readme files.

Plus, with Docsie by your side, you never have to live in the obligation of finishing your entire work at a stretch owing to their pause and resume feature. Although this might seem like common sense, not every WYSIWYG editors comprise the feature of pausing and resuming whenever you want to. This also helps you slash down the fear of accidentally closing the browser or shutting down the computer. All in all, this Docsie feature pretty much sets you free.

Another great thing about Docsie is its usability. When you use this software, you'd really understand what it means to have a software carved out solely for your work. Docsie is incredibly developer friendly and can be used alone as the editor, especially with the powerful API and documentation.

And to top things off, Docsie has a collaboration option. Working as a team is crucial and Docsie is well aware of that. So they included the feature of collaborating while working. Saving you from a lot of hassle of searching for alternative ways to collaborate.

Readme.io

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This here is a multi-purpose software docs generator powering lots of API developer hubs. Readme comes with a Markdown-based editor, API exporer and versioning support to show sample calls and crowdsource options where the users can propose API changes.

The thing I found unique about Readme is they offer a template for a complete developer portal. Decidated developer center homepages aren't only best for organizing reference volumes, instead, API home page help SEO as well and allow room for sharing upper-level descriptions. Yammer, Mozilla, Box use Readme.io to craft simple, yet effective developer docs.

And it's no surprise that majority of the top-notch startups over the world swear by Readme, such as IOTa and VRChat. No, it's not because they're all funded by silicon valley startup and have the same VC.

To say the least, Readme is great at what it does. It is a great example of API Documentation and a community for software developers. While confluence is an excellent all-round offering alongside shitty API docs, Readme basically is your API docs as a service.

Readme's aim was to make stripe-like API docs first, and they accomplished it with perfection.

So, when should you be using readme.io?

  • To create your API documents from swagger within seconds.
  • To make interactive docs that your readers can dabble around with.
  • To make an amazing knowledge store for your cool new product.

Readme is fairly cheap, starting from 59$ a month for a project on the readme.io domain and 199 for every project. They're seemingly heading in the direction of a headless CMS as of now, however, I kind of like the concept. So, if you're looking for a headless docs editor, give them a chance.

Swagger.io

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Swagger is the most prominent editor using a markup language like RAML as the foundation for the specification of the API logic. In fact, the language named YAML was the foundation of the RAML specification. That said, you have to host it yourself on your personal server.

If you don't like YAML, as an alternative, Swagger is fully supported in specs written in JSON.

The fact that it supports both the language makes it much cooler. But the question remains: which one is easier to write and grasp?

While the RAML spec is pretty simple to work out, it takes some time to grasp all the rules. Fortunately, RAML and YAML have a really simple syntax that requires a simple logical approach and some time to cope with.

Unfortunately, unlike the modeler/API editor offered by MuleSoft, you don't really get an in-line error that highlights on the editor (line no.), is a real shame.

That said, Swagger has more than just an editor since there's an entire consume mechanism inside the documentation that'll let you consume the API from the external docs viewer, created by the same team behind Swagger.

Aside from the old-school appearance, Swagger is a quite powerful tool. It supports many kinds of authentication, endpoint resource grouping, a fast method for editing the schema of the payload and a simple method for displaying and altering the query parameter (when needed).

Postman API Docs

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While not everybody knows, everybody's favorite API management tool has its personal API documentation platform as well. Starting as a tiny chrome extension, postman now has served as the developer friend for many years. They built their API documentation platform many years ago to compete with readme.io.

Their API documentation are pretty affordable and can be easily created using your postman spec which makes them spectacular. And the best part, these API documents are actually put on your monthly postman subscription.

Postman makes lots of nitty-gritty work out of API testing/creation a lot easier. Being able to save parameters and requests really helps in iterating over different calls or creating different versions of an API. Sharing calls between teammates is also incredibly helpful. Postman offers an extremely rich yet light developer experience. We can build sophisticated test frameworks alongside smooth teamwork. It's stable and does exactly what's expected.

The interface needs a bit of work and doesn't get updated often. It is a little difficult to understand where everything is when starting out. There are a number of nesting projects and requests, and tabs on multiple sides which makes it easy to lose what you were doing. While it's pretty user-friendly, it still demands a ton of technical knowledge. Someone with no API knowledge can't just go and check if the API is functioning or not. They must be in a situation to under how POST, GET and many other methods work.

While it probably isn't the slickest or easiest tool to use, it's a massive step about issuing curl commands for testing that comes cheap.

Postman eases up the process of testing out API calls and keeping track of the work you do. This lets you focus on the logic of the calls and the structure of it, instead of having to remember labyrinthine curl commands.

And the best part, Postman docs are included with your postman subscription and you build pretty nice docs pretty easily.

Gelato

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Made by Mashape as a doc generator, you can use Gelato.io to build complete developer portals too. This tool takes an alike hands-on approach. It accepts Swagger or API Blueprint uploads, and you can annotate in Markdown on a real-time preview editor. The end result? A cool design alongside an interactive API explorer and code samples. They offer the ability to serve documents on a custom domain using SSL and provide extra management options with paid options. The Gelato.io automatic API explorer is quite sweet and generated from your API spec automatically, the console allows developers to choose a resource and action from a drop-down menu, view responses in JSON and send mock requests.

ReDoc

This is a new API doc solution built by Rebilly. Redoc has a comprehensive Open API features support and creates a nice 3-panel mobile-responsive menu. Plus, it's carved out to work perfectly on all the browsers.

The API introduction side menu uses markdown headings of the OpenAPI description. And you can incorporate the samples using a 3rd-party extension. Under the MIT license, ReDoc can lay the same impact that a hosted documents provider can, but leaving the cost aside. They also got a “Deploy to Github” feature for creating a full-featured Github depositary for your API.

The live demo of the notorious Petstore API shows you the nicely built method calls, responsive values, and interactive parameters. Response codes are neatly noted, and request instances in C#, JSON and PHP are showcased on the far tight. As another implementation instance, witness how APIs.guru, he sprouting Wikipedia of APIs, uses this tool to document their public API.

SmartDocs — Apigee

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You can use this API management service for creating completely interactive docs. Here, interactive means reading a description, sending a live request, and witnessing a live response. Apigee console lets you do this, letting developers filter by methods, question certain values or parameters, and make calls to the API. With an Edge management platform, the Apigee developer services host docs. Although SmartDocs templets are certified by Apigee customers, you can witness them in this Github repository.

Speca.io

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While still in Beta, Speca.io seems to be a competition in the online API doc market. Motivated by docs like Stripe or Twitter, Speca provides a navigable, user-friendly API doc and an embedded API console. The editor lets you define API parameters, headers, maintain many versions of the API and export to Swagger or Postman. Although Speca.io is still in beta, you can surf the API documents that have been incorporated here.

RepreZen

RepreZen API Studio offers a thorough IDE for cooperative API lifecycle management. Created around the OpenAPI spec, Reprezen provides live documentation generation while you edit. It can be excellent for bigger projects as it lets you split a Swagger Specification across multiple files. Since RepreZen's output is Bootstrap-reliant, customization is limitless with custom CSS and Bootstrap skins. Further, RepreZen diagram is a great approach for graphically describing API structure and pecking order that suits the RAPID-ML API modeling language.

Mashape API Editor

While using your Mashape API editor, you see that you're about to be able to generate code snippets right away in your favorite language to consume APIs on the go. Unlike other editors, there's no language specification to follow. Rather, a method of checking boxes to incorporate endpoints, models to create your API occurs.

And to top things off, this editor is very powerful considering its simplicity, heck, you're far from needing a manual for learning to use it.

On the flip-side, there's no real user onboarding and for instance, putting up the base URL of the API done under the ”Analytics & Settings” page instead of the same page where you document your API.

Fortunately, there's a clear documentation about how you can incorporate an API to Mashape simply by following some screenshots and steps anyone can turn anybody into an API master on the platform.

The editor is equipped with out-of-the-box support for tonnes of options, including customer support and the capability of adding billing and so monetizing it in moments.

Last Words

Here you are, my list of software and API documentation items you can find online. Let me know if this helped you in the comments below and I'd get back to you right away. Also feel free to try Docsie.io. Which you can use to create your normal software docs or as a markdown editor in conjunction with the API doc platform of your choice.