Best Software Documentation Tools for Visual Studio

Compare the Top Software Documentation Tools that integrate with Visual Studio as of October 2025

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This a list of Software Documentation tools that integrate with Visual Studio. Use the filters on the left to add additional filters for products that have integrations with Visual Studio. View the products that work with Visual Studio in the table below.

What are Software Documentation Tools for Visual Studio?

Software documentation tools are designed to help developers and technical writers create, manage, and share documentation related to software applications. These tools facilitate the writing of user guides, API references, installation instructions, and other types of technical content. They often include features like version control, templates, collaborative editing, and integration with code repositories to streamline the documentation process. Some popular tools offer support for various output formats, such as HTML, PDF, and Markdown, making it easier to distribute documentation to different audiences. By using these tools, teams can ensure that their documentation remains accurate, up-to-date, and accessible throughout the software development lifecycle. Compare and read user reviews of the best Software Documentation tools for Visual Studio currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

1

Help Generator

Help Generator

The Help Generator provides help authoring tools to create chm help files, browser based help and printed user documentation. The modern, Office style, help editing environment has many features to make you highly productive and guarantee quality output. Edit using WYSIWYG (HTML) Help Editor with the modern Windows fluent ribbon. Use the Help Generator help authoring software to create the standard windows help files, also called chm files or compiled html help file, and browser based help for any windows application. The Help Generator add-in makes for each form in your application a descriptive topic page which include a title, screenshot with image map and sections for all controls. The pages generated by the add-in are been automatically integrated with your application so that you have instant F1 support for context sensitive help. Add-in versions are available for Visual Studio .NET, Visual Basic 6 and Microsoft Access.

Starting Price: $37 one-time payment

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2

Doc-O-Matic

Doc-O-Matic

Use Doc-O-Matic to effortlessly and reliably create source code and API documentation and author general purpose documentation in a multitude of formats and styles in the shortest possible time. Doc-O-Matic takes source code and comments, adds conceptual topics and external input and produces documentation from it. With its single-source approach, Doc-O-Matic generates many different kinds of output from a single documentation base. Doc-O-Matic produces HTML-based Help files including HTML Help, Help 2, Help Viewer 2.x and browser based Web Help. Doc-O-Matic also creates printable documentation in PDF and RTF formats as well as XML output ideally suited for post-processing. Documentation created with Doc-O-Matic is feature rich out of the box. It provides collapsible and tabbed sections, automatically cross-links the entire documentation, including source code. Your Help bridges the gap, truly integrating into pre-existing library documentation.

Starting Price: $49 per user

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3

Document! X

Innovasys

Document! X is a combination of an automated documentation tool and a full authoring environment which can be used to create, publish and maintain accurate, professional quality documentation for .NET, Web Services, Databases, XSD Schemas, COM Components and Type Libraries, Java and Javascript. Document! X is not just an automated documentation build tool - it includes a fully featured documentation authoring environment allowing you to supplement the automatically generated content where required. Document! X supports a wide variety of solution elements. One consistent, customizable and comprehensive toolset for all of your technical documentation requirements. With Document! X, documentation can be automatically produced throughout design and development without requiring investment of developer resources, providing development teams with an accurate and up to date reference and allowing new developers to jump the learning curve of new components and schemas.

Starting Price: $413 per year

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4

HelpSmith

HelpSmith

Complete help authoring tool to create CHM HTML Help files, Web Help systems, printed manuals, Adobe PDF documets, Microsoft Word documents, and ePub eBooks from a single source. If you are looking for a help authoring tool to create a CHM help file, online Web Help system, or PDF manual, you can consider HelpSmith which provides a rich feature-set from the powerful word processor to write help topics, to the built-in screenshot tool with the possibility to create help for dialog windows automatically. Using HelpSmith, you can create a CHM help file, a fully responsive Web Help system compatible with desktop computers and mobile devices, Printed Manual, PDF document, ePub eBook, and Microsoft Word document from a single source help project. You can write topic content using a built-in word processor that includes a spell checker with dictionaries available for many languages.

Starting Price: $199 one-time payment

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5

Help+Manual

Help+Manual

Help+Manual is a full featured documentation tool that is as easy to use as a word processor, yet much more powerful, it gives you the power of a true WYSIWYG XML editor and puts all the tools that you need at your fingertips. This is combined with powerful features for generating and editing help and documentation files, including full support for multimedia and complex modular projects. Whether you publish documentation for desktop or mobile, iOS or Android, Windows help or PDF user manuals, it is always a breeze with Help+Manual! But single source is much more than just outputting the same information to different formats. Mark content with conditional tags to create different outputs for each publishing channel, no post-processing is required. Help+Manual handles the complexities of documentation generation for you. Power users, however, can get under the hood and manipulate topic and layout templates and more. Help+Manual gives you the best of both worlds.

Starting Price: €498 one-time payment

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6

HelpXplain

Help+Manual

In Technical Documentation, we often need to explain multi-steps procedures. We use bullet lists, we add screenshots and text. The more we add, the more likely it is that our readers will lose track. An Xplain, as we call it, is a series of slides freely arranged on a huge canvas to spark your creativity. HelpXplain is perfect for slideshows embedded into web pages and technical documentation. Create animated step-by-step tutorials and quick instructions in minutes instead of hours. The magic is in the method, HelpXplain animates a series of simple screenshots, each of which can be edited or replaced at any time. HelpXplain can also record multi-page screencasts of programs on your computer screen that run in autoplay mode like a video. Recording and editing them is massively easier and less stressful than trying to create a video! All Xplains are 100% standards-compliant HTML5 and Javascript.

Starting Price: €199 one-time payment

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