Choosing the right documentation tool is foundational to the success of your business. Invest in a long-term partner who does not only satisfies your needs now but years ahead as moving between partners is time consuming. See our comparison of two of the top-rated documentation platforms - DeveloperHub and ReadMe - to help you choose the platform that’s right for you.
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While there are many documentation tools on the market, only DeveloperHub and ReadMe are focused on customer-facing developer portals. Both platforms provide tools for large as well as small enterprises. However, the differences start to emerge when you look at which side of documentation each company invests more in, and roles in the team that the product is focused on. This page will help you understand the differences between DeveloperHub and ReadMe, so you can choose the right documentation tool for growing your business.
What does DeveloperHub do?
DeveloperHub is a documentation tool for product and API docs which helps businesses boost customer satisfaction, minimise onboarding time and decrease support tickets volume by providing a self-service experience for their clients. DeveloperHub boasts a modern editor and authoring tools which technical writers rely on heavily, but in an easy-to-use fashion for everyone on the team to use.
What does ReadMe do?
ReadMe is a tool to build developer portals. As a company established in 2014, ReadMe packs a lot of features such as an API Reference editor, API logging tools and user metrics. ReadMe’s docs are written in their own flavoured markdown with support for drag and drop widgets. Because of that, ReadMe may present a steeper learning curve for non-developers and a limited authoring experience for technical writers.
Capabilities
Your docs are the foundation of your clients' ability to use your products. As your product grows, your docs must be able to scale with it. See how DeveloperHub and ReadMe compare across some of the most critical documentation tool capabilities.
| DeveloperHub | ReadMe | |
|---|---|---|
| Page Editor | Modern WYSIWYG editor with markdown shortcuts enabled. This means that you already see the preview as you are typing, no need to switch to reader mode - just like it is on Google Docs. The editor can be used right away by anyone on the team: developers, marketing, product managers, technical writers, CEOs… Furthermore, we support tabs allowing pages to have more complex structures. | ReadMe flavour markdown based editor with drag and drop widget support. The editor shows text in markdown format, and the widgets with a UI. No support for tabs. Non-developers must learn how to write markdown. (source) |
| API Editor | OpenAPI editor that supports adding/modifying/removing paths, data types, operations, info, request parameters, response parameters... basically everything you need. | ReadMe API editor only allows for the description to be modified for OpenAPI definitions. (source) |
| Publishing Tools | Pages have draft contents and published contents. This means that you can keep on editing the page until you are ready to publish. Versions, documentation sections, API references, and pages each have their own publishing controls. Pages can be unlisted too (reachable through link, but not visible in index). | Saving a page publishes the contents immediately with no draft capability. ReadMe alternatively provides a staging environment for enterprise plans where all changes are recorded and staged until deployed. (source) |
| Dynamic Linking | Links between pages are dynamic. If a page’s URL/slug is changed, then backlinks to the page will not break. We provide a tool to analyse all links in the documentation to ensure all links are always reachable. Cloning a version migrates all links with it. | Links between pages are static. If a page’s URL/slug is changed, then backlinks to the page become broken. (source) |
| Docs Structure | Versions can contain many documentation sections. Each documentation section is an index of pages. This is essential when your documentation gets complex and you need to scale out. In a documentation section, you can also categorise pages and create page hierarchies. | Versions can only contain one documentation section. Larger docs expand on the same page, in the same index, in different categories. |
| Export | All content written and uploaded can be exported from DeveloperHub, including all pages and OpenAPI references. | All written content can be exported, but APIs created using the API editor are not exportable as they have a proprietary standard. |
| Reusable Content | Synced blocks can be inserted in pages. Synced blocks provide single-sourcing which is essential for any growing documentation. With synced blocks, you can modify contents on many pages by editing it centrally. This ensures consistency and removes the need for duplication. | Single-sourcing is not supported. If content is to be reused, one must find all occurrences and replace them one by one manually. |
| Search Analytics | Analytics are collected from every search term. A dashboard showing analytics around search users count, search count, no result percentage, top terms and terms that lead to no results is available. | ReadMe provides a fantastic dashboard for analysing user metrics, including search analytics. However, ReadMe does not provide analytics around terms that lead to no results. Terms that lead to no results, to our customers, are the most important metric to decrease support ticket volume. |
| Hosting | DeveloperHub docs can be hosted on a custom domain (e.g. docs.example.com) as well as on a path under your existing domain (e.g. example.com/docs). Hosting on an existing domain is important as it would inherit the SEO ranking of the existing domain. | ReadMe docs can be hosted on a custom domain, but not under an existing domain. (source) Hosting on a new custom domain gives pristine SEO ranking to the docs site. It could take years to build the SEO ranking for the docs site. |
| Comments | Editors can use the comment system to discuss content changes required. Comments can then be resolved and pages can be published without prompt or unresolved comments. Readers can provide feedback on the content to help enhance the docs. | There is no comment system for editors. Suggested Edits feature allows readers to suggest edits directly to the editors. Readers can also provide feedback on the pages. |
Both DeveloperHub and ReadMe provide the following features:
User guides, API References, "Try It" API Playground, Customisation, Versioning, PDF Export, SSO, RBAC, Private Docs, Search Analytics, Export, Personalised Docs, Variables, Feedback, Custom Domains, Multi-Project Hosting on Single Domain, Multi-Project Search, Audit Logging
Pricing
To help you understand the difference in total cost of ownership between DeveloperHub and ReadMe, we provide the following comparison:
| DeveloperHub | ReadMe | |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Plan | Choice between: Not whitelabelled: $59, Whitelabelled: $129 | Not whitelabelled: $99 |
| Full Plan | $199 | $399 |
| Enterprise Plan | Starting from $499 | Starting from $2000 |
While DeveloperHub prices are lower, ReadMe packs features which DeveloperHub does not provide such as: Recipes, Changelog, Discussion Forums and API Usage metrics.
However, DeveloperHub provides many features for non-enterprise plans which are only available on ReadMe’s enterprise plans, such as: OpenAPI editor, role-based access controls (user permissions), multi-project hosting, global landing page, drafts (staging environment), custom javascript (HEAD tags).
Switching from ReadMe to DeveloperHub cannot be any easier. Just get an export file from ReadMe and use our dedicated import tool. All pages and images would be migrated to DeveloperHub. All you need to do is to hit the publish button!
Read MoreLots of time was saved for our customers and us internally. The ability for us to just send them the link, so they can easily navigate all of our documentation makes it all more cohesive, professional and put together. They can now find the answers they are looking for on their own. By doing that, we are avoiding having multiple calls to go through things. So we get a happy customer and time savings on our end.
Ronny Flaatten
Founder & CEO, CTIntegrations
DeveloperHub saves us a lot of time during the content creation process and simplifies documentation version management. Support for rich media, including videos on our documentation portal, is an added advantage. This makes it easy for customers and developers to quickly understand our product's value proposition and get started.
Anita CJ
Technical Writer, Infoworks
DeveloperHub provide a cloud-based authoring tool that is second to none. Multiple documentation areas with superb presentation from the get-go enable you to create the documentation you envision.
Adam Garrod
Technical Communications Manager
Relax Gaming Group
3 projects later, we do confirm that Developerhub is THE choice for API documentation sites. It helps us to effortlessly create (and more importantly keep it up-to-date!) our evolving API reference, backed by world-class support
Victor Martin
Chief Technology Officer, iBroker
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