Why did we build another documentation product in 2024?
Hashnode has come a long way since 2020, transforming the blogging landscape. With a best-in-class editor, simple custom domain setup, a powerful dashboard, and an optional headless mode with GraphQL APIs, we’re now a leading platform for developers. The community love reflects that.
From early-stage startups to large communities like freeCodeCamp, many rely on Hashnode to run their publications at scale. While helping individuals and teams build their publications, we observed a specific problem common across many software companies.
Every dev tool or enterprise software company needs a blog and documentation, yet there’s no standard way to create and manage them. Businesses often spend a lot of time and money on different products to power blog and docs, which creates a disjointed experience. If they use a hosted service, they eventually need more customizations and end up building their own.
This is why, at Hashnode, we created an all-in-one platform for individuals and businesses to easily create both blogs and documentation in a standard way, saving time and money. Our new documentation product helps teams build content for their public documentation websites and collaborate without needing developers. It combines Hashnode's powerful editor, dashboard, and custom domain mapping, with an optional headless mode, to create any public-facing API docs or guides.
We're the first to launch with best-in-class GraphQL APIs and an open-source frontend (early preview). This means you get unmatched flexibility and customizations if you outgrow our hosted frontend.
😻 We’re live on Product Hunt today! If you believe in what we’re building, we’d love your support. Feel free to leave your feedback.
We launched the docs product in private beta a few weeks ago, and some amazing companies are already using it. Today, we’re making it available to the public, so anyone can sign up, try it out, and upgrade if needed.
Here are a few unique reasons why we’re launching a new docs product in 2024:
Build your dev hub on Hashnode — manage both blogs and docs together.
If you enjoy creating content with the Hashnode editor, you can now use it for your docs too. This saves you time, money, and the hassle of switching between tools. Add your team members and enjoy a seamless experience across the platform.
For example, the amazing team at Outerbase uses Hashnode to manage both their blog and docs. They love having one tool for both.
Sync from GitHub or write using Hashnode.
Most platforms are either good at sourcing from GitHub or have a great online editor, but not both. On Hashnode, you can choose how to create your content. With our GitHub sync feature (early preview), you can source some guides from GitHub while keeping others on Hashnode. This allows everyone to contribute using their preferred tool.
Engineers can use GitHub, while marketers and technical writers can take advantage of Hashnode’s excellent WYSIWYG editor. Both methods are fully supported.
Go headless — truly unlimited flexibility.
Many companies start with a hosted platform but eventually need more customization and end up building their own in-house solutions, which can be difficult to manage.
Hashnode solves this with an API-first approach. It offers a hosted solution, first-class GraphQL APIs, and a starter kit on our enterprise plan. This allows larger companies or advanced users to fully customize the look, feel, and every aspect of their frontend.
We introduced this headless mode to our blogging platform earlier this year with great success. Now, we're bringing the same approach to docs, making us the first platform to offer such unmatched customization.
Ask AI and AI-assisted writing workflows
As large language models (LLMs) improve, the cost of AI decreases. Because of this, Hashnode offers unlimited AI search responses in the startup plan at no extra cost. Not only AI search, but AI-assisted writing is also deeply integrated into our writing process and is available without any additional fees.
Our AI search plugin is built in-house and that’s why it understands docs powered by Hashnode better than any other tool. As per our own internal benchmarks, it’s crazy fast and starts sending the first token in under 1.5s in most cases.
Unlimited guides, pages and API references.
At Hashnode, we believe in giving our users complete freedom and flexibility. That’s why we don’t impose limits on the number of guides, API references, or custom pages you can create under our paid plans.
Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, you can produce as much content as you need without worrying about any caps. This ensures you can scale your documentation and resources as your project grows, providing your users with comprehensive, up-to-date information at all times.
Our goal is to empower you to focus on creating valuable content without constraints, making your experience with Hashnode as seamless and productive as possible.
Unify API references and product guides.
Use our OpenAPI importer to easily bring in your API docs and keep them alongside your product guides. Create unlimited guides and API references within a single project and scale effortlessly.
Best-in-class support for Versioning
Versioning is an upcoming feature that’s fully integrated into Hashnode’s workflow. You can create unlimited versions with no limits under our paid plans and easily manage content across multiple versions using either GitHub or Hashnode’s online editor.
SEO, accessibility, speed—all covered.
It’s no secret that Hashnode's SEO is the best. With a strong emphasis on speed, accessibility, and SEO, Hashnode provides everything you need to grow your blog and documentation together.
Easily scale to millions of users.
Hashnode’s docs are powered by the same infrastructure as our blogs. Let us handle the management, performance, and infrastructure so you can scale to millions of readers without any hassle. If you choose to run in headless mode, we’ll make sure our GraphQL APIs are fast and reliable, allowing you to scale without limits.
Enterprise-ready
Finally, Hashnode is enterprise-ready with features like SSO, custom SLAs, a 99.99% uptime guarantee, and audit logs. We will soon be SOC2 compliant, showing our commitment to protecting your data and ensuring our platform meets high security and privacy standards
We’re creating Docs by Hashnode to set a new standard for product and API documentation. While current solutions cover the basics, they don't scale well. Our unique API-first approach aims to cover all use cases and offer unlimited customizations. We don't like limiting usage in different tiers, so most features like guides, API references, pages, versions, and AI search are uncapped in all our paid plans. This way, you can scale without worrying about costs.
Our whole team is excited and curious to know what you think!