Last Updated: April 2024
Planning to buy Shelf to provide fast answers and reduce call times of your customer service department? If yes, please read this complete Shelf pricing guide with a full listing of plan features and a quick comparison table.
Additionally, we also provide you a section of missing features in Shelf as compared with its competitors. This information will enlighten you on the flip side of the software too. Based on these inputs, you can decide whether to or not include Shelf into your customer support block.
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What is Shelf Software?
Shelf is a modern knowledge management software that can be incorporated into your customer service. It provides automation tools to create, publish, and manage help content for cross-channel usage.
There is an in-built machine learning called MerlinAI within Shelf. This tool helps you identify the knowledge gaps and improve the quality of the articles constantly. Also, it automatically shares answers to customers’ questions on the self-service portal and to your contact center agents while providing voice support.
Leading brands like Glovo, Herbalife nutrition, DSW, Hello Fresh, Hire Right, CBC, Opex, and more use Shelf to develop their organizational knowledge base.
“Shelf reduced average search time from 4 minutes to less than 30 seconds.” – says the VP of Operations of Viking Assistance Group.
Gartner awarded this software as the “Product of the year”. Other recognitions include Knowledge Management category Leader, Front Runner, etc., from G2, Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice.
Now you know what Shelf is and how it can help your business. Let us now proceed to the overview and detailed pricing breakdown of Shelf price plans.
Also read: Best Knowledge Base Management Software 2024
Overview of Shelf Pricing Plans
Shelf offers three pricing plans and charges on monthly basis depending on the number of users you want to subscribe to. The plan features differ for every plan catering to different sizes of businesses. But the biggest disadvantage of Shelf price is it doesn’t provide you with a free trial period.
That’s the overview of Shelf pricing plans. Next is the detailed breakdown of all three plans.
Complete Breakdown of Shelf Pricing Plans
Knowledge Management
Plan price: $20/user/month.
Offers tools that allow your teams and departments to draft, publish, and share your organizational knowledge base. Read below to learn about its key features.
Key Features of Knowledge Management Plan
Core Platform
- Bulk import and continuous sync: This lets you transfer bulk content from shared servers, GDrive, One Drive, etc. Automatically indexes the content text and creates metadata.
- Categorization and Tag system: Employ tags and folder categorization to enable easy cross-folder search.
- Connections and pinned content: Connect relevant knowledge articles with each other. Add important announcements, new policies, and other important content to the Pinned content on the main dashboard.
- Content authoring: Use the WYSIWYG editor within the Shelf interface to draft, edit, and update the content regularly.
- Content recommendations: Automatically recommends relevant articles depending on the user’s search behavior.
- Content versioning: Roll back the content to previous versions and track the full content history for auditing purposes.
- Guided workflows: Gives the ability to create intuitive and guided workflows for complex interactions.
- Search with MerlinAI: Browse using the MerlinAI tool to pinpoint search according to the browser behavior and to get faster and more accurate results.
- Folder taxonomy and group libraries: Create and manage folders and group the relative folders for content segmentation.
- Library management: Build private, shared, self-service, and organizational libraries. Implement rulesets and notifications for knowledge management within Shelf.
- Web Clipper browser extension: Extract blog posts, articles, videos, images, etc from the web and organize them with knowledge documentation.
- Platform customization and configuration: Shelf administrators can configure rating, commenting, tagging, and other components of the platform.
- Analytics and reporting: Comprehensive reports on content quality, activity, user activity, and search analytics. These reports can be exported into CSV files.
- Enterprise security: Soc2 Type2, PCI, AES encryption, and GDPR compliance.
Knowledge Governance
- Announcements manager: Admin users can create, publish, and share important updates through the core platform, email, or Agent Assist. Set and track reader acknowledgments, due date reminders, etc.
- Automated content maintenance: Shelf’s AI self-learning platform tracks usage to predict recommendations, search results, and content tagging.
- Content publication workflow: Include guest authoring and review tasks via a centralized dashboard.
- Feedback manager: Let your readers rate and post comments/questions on the knowledge base content.
- Pre-configured dashboards: Shows real-time KPI reports and graphs along with custom filters to search and optimize.
Knowledge Management Plan is Good For:
If the creation and management of a Knowledge Base are sufficient for your startup or small business, then go for this plan.
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Contact Center
Plan price: $30/user/month.
Includes advanced knowledge management tools including CCaaS, CRM integrations, AI-driven Agent Assist, etc., for customer service. Giving below the details of some of the Contact Center plan exclusives in addition to the Knowledge Management plan features.
Key Features of Contact Center Plan
Answer Automation
- Agent Assist SDK: Delivers relevant articles to your customer service agents automatically based on real-time interaction. Helps reduce resolution times by improving your agents’ efficiency with context derived across channels and smart operational workflows.
- CCaaS/Ticketing system integration: Integrates CCaaS agents and admin environments to map knowledge base content to IVR, chat, and web form.
- IVR integration: Connect the Shelf to any IVR tree to auto-display relevant articles during call interactions and transfers.
- CRM integration: With due Salesforce integration, you can attach Shelf content to account, customer, lead, and opportunity records.
Contact Center Plan is Good For:
In case your organization requires advanced integrations and response automation along with basic knowledge management features, then choose this plan.
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Enterprise
Plan price: Custom pricing.
Consolidate knowledge silos and deliver answers to your customers and agents whenever and wherever required. Along with all the features included in the above-mentioned plans, get advanced security and customization options.
Key Features of Enterprise Plan
Core Platform
- Multiple languages: Manage every single article in different language versions. Supports 100+ languages. Enable language localization depending on the user’s browser preference.
- API access: Integrate Shelf with any software, services, and web properties using REST or GraphQL APIs.
- SSO integration: Allows Okta, AD FS, Azure active directory, OneLogin, GSuite, and custom SAML login solutions. But, there is an additional charge of $.30 per user per month.
- User groups and roles: Set different user roles and groups and define their actions and permissions.
Self-Service Help Center
- Self-service portal: Create and manage external-facing knowledge content easily. Publish articles on various customer-accessing locations like public websites, microsites, etc.
- Simple configuration GUI: Customize the self-service portal easily without using any code. You can change the content settings, homepage, footer, branding, languages, and more.
- Multiple languages: Deploy the self-service portal in multiple languages.
- AI-based portal: Turn on the auto recommendation of relevant articles for customers’ self-resolution.
- Webform integration: Shows matching articles depending on form inputs even while typing.
- Themes: Standard out-of-the-box themes are available to use.
Enterprise Plan is Good For:
If your organization’s requirement is huge and needs hosting a knowledge base integrated self-service portal in multiple languages, then subscribe to this plan.
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Also read: How To Create A Knowledge Base (Easy Yet Complete Guide)
Shelf Plans Feature Comparison Table
Core Platform | |||
| Features | Knowledge Management | Contact Center | Enterprise Wide |
| Bulk import & continuous sync | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Categorization & tag system | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Connections & pinned conent | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Content authoring | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Content recommendations | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Content versioning | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Decision tree/Guided workflows | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Search & browse | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Folder taxonomy & folder libraries | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Library management | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| MerlinAI pinpoint search | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Web clipper | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Platform customization & configuration | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Analytics & reporting | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Multiple languages | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| API access | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| Enterprise security | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| SSO integration | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| User groups & roles | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
Knowledge Governance | |||
| Features | Knowledge Management | Contact Center | Enterprise Wide |
| Announcements manager | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Automated content maintenance | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Content publication workflow | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Feedback manager | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Pre-configured dashboards | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Answer Automation | |||
| Features | Knowledge Management | Contact Center | Enterprise Wide |
| Agent Assist SDK | 🗙 | ✔ | ✔ |
| CCaaS/Ticketing system integration | 🗙 | ✔ | ✔ |
| IVR integration | 🗙 | ✔ | ✔ |
| CRM integration | 🗙 | ✔ | ✔ |
Self-service Help Center | |||
Features | Knowledge Management | Contact Center | Enterprise Wide |
| Self-service portal | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| Simple configuration GUI | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| Multiple languages | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| Widgets | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| AI-based article recommendations | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| Webform integration | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
| Standard themes | 🗙 | 🗙 | ✔ |
A glance through these above-given tables lets you easily compare all three plans side by side. We are now moving on to the next section where we will discuss the setbacks of Shelf software.
Also read: 10 Best Customer Service Automation Software For Your Business
Features Missing in Shelf Software
Though Shelf owns some effective knowledge management solutions, there are a few missing tools for it to be a complete solution for your customer service.
#1 Email Management
Email integration is a big miss in the Shelf software. This feature enables you to easily attach relevant knowledge articles in your email responses. Deflecting the calls will further reduce the burden on your call center agents.
Also, Shelf only allows your customers to rate and comment on the help articles. With the email feature, you can reply back to them with any knowledge developments and rating acknowledgments.
Another advantage of email integration is lead generation. Your sales department can record and use these leads for generating more revenue. So, this opportunity too is unavailable to Shelf users.
“We also hear email integration is on the way. Right now and until it comes, it would be useful for user email lists to be generated internally.” – Paul B.
“The email addresses of other members are not stored, so when you want to share information, you need to know the address of that person (or copy and paste it from your email).” – Adrienne H.
#2 Bulk Tagging
The bulk articles tagging feature will save more time while letting you manage multiple articles at the same time. Also, you can execute searching, sorting, and grouping articles easily using this feature.
“Would be great if there was a bulk tagging feature, that is probably only one of my main complaints.” – Ameer R.
“The one function I could use most would be a “batch tagging” capability, which they have been working on.” – Loren C.
“Inability to download and tag multiple files/gems at once.” – Kris M.
#3 File Formats
A Knowledge Base should necessarily support multiple file-formats including pdf, excel, etc. Looks like Shelf is lacking this functionality too.
“The knowledgebase management tool is great for any textbase documents, but it lacks features that can be improved if it offered better functionality and scaling of specific file types.” – Vincent L.
“The issue i have is Shelf may have issues recognizing certain formats such as some PDFs, Excel. Basically, it may not recognize a document that can be updated (i.e. an excel sheet).” – William B.
#4 CRM
Though Shelf offers knowledge management and contact center solutions, there are no native out-of-the-box CRM tools available with Shelf. This requires you to integrate with other CRM tech stacks like Kustomer and Salesforce.
And it implies you need to subscribe to two software simultaneously to utilize knowledge in your CRM system.
“There is no built in CRM tool, and this would be really useful t have accessible.” – Dani B.
#5 Task Management
Shelf deprives this basic functionality of assigning tasks to a particular user and tracking the task workflows. Hear it from a user whose organization feels it difficult in tracking and managing the documentation.
“I also miss an function where you can assign GEMs directly to owner of the document. For example there should be an function when you create a GEM to select an user who is responisble for keeping that document up to date or that other people in the organization could know easier who is responsible for this manual/routine.. Now they only can see who’s created or last changed the document.” – Karianne T.
Also read: 10 Best Shelf Knowledge Base Alternatives & Competitors in 2024
To Conclude
We are now sure that you would have got a good idea about Shelf pricing plans with detailed feature comparison. The additional section on missing features along with reviews would have helped you understand the cons of this software.
Moreover, Shelf is an exclusive knowledge management software and not a complete helpdesk solution. With it comes an extra expense to make it compatible with any CRM, chat, and email solutions to provide total customer support.
Alternatively, we would recommend Saufter, a complete and exclusive E-commerce support helpdesk software. Firstly, let us highlight the fact, that with Saufter, you can enjoy a fully customizable and scalable Knowledge Base.
Along with that, you will also get branded customer self-service portal, email, live chat, ticketing, order management tools, etc. The advantage of this software is that you get all these solutions and much more for competitive pricing. Hence, we suggest Saufter as the best and most affordable Shelf alternative.
Furthermore, you can test the full potential of Saufter by signing up for a 15-day free trial without giving your credit card information. Then why wait?
