Help center · Getting started

How to start a help center for a small SaaS

If five people have asked where to change a setting, you already have your first help article. Don't wait until you've written a manual.

Start with questions, not a table of contents

Open your inbox or chat history. Write down the questions you answered more than once in the last month. If you don't have customers yet, try the steps a new user takes: sign up, set up a project, invite someone, change a setting, and cancel. Where did a friend or tester get stuck?

Pick three to five questions. A tiny help center that answers real questions beats a beautiful one full of empty categories.

Write the answer you'd send a person

Use the question as the title: “How do I invite a teammate?” is easier to find than “Team collaboration.” Start with the answer. Then give the exact steps, including the names of buttons as they appear in the app. End with what the person should see when it works.

A screenshot helps if the screen is hard to describe, but don't use a screenshot instead of words. Screens change; text is easier to search and edit.

Keep the structure boring

For a new product, categories like Getting started, Account & billing, and Troubleshooting are plenty. If a category has only one article, you may not need it yet. Put the most common setup answer near the top and link to it from your welcome email or onboarding screen.

Make updating part of support

When a customer says “I tried that, but I don't see the button,” check the article before replying. Maybe the UI moved. Fix the text, then send the link and a personal answer. This makes the next support reply shorter without making this one feel like a brush-off.

MVPKit gives each project a public help page with categories and articles. You can use that as the home for these first answers; you don't need a separate documentation site to begin.