# Why use a hosted help center instead of building your own?

_Category: Why HelpCenter.io_

A help center looks like a few pages of articles, but behind it sits software: an editor, search, hosting, security, SEO and more. A hosted help center gives you all of that ready to use, so your team spends its time on the answers instead of on the platform.

## What you'd have to build and keep running

Here's what a good help center needs, and what HelpCenter.io takes care of for you.

| What you need | What HelpCenter.io gives you |
| --- | --- |
| An editor your whole team can use | A rich editor with drafts, templates, version history, and roles for writers, translators and admins. |
| Search that finds answers | Results that appear as readers type. With AI Answers (Catalyst, or the AI add-on), readers can ask a question and get an answer written from your articles, with sources. |
| Search engine basics | A sitemap, canonical links, language tags and a search title and description for every article. |
| Readiness for AI tools | AI-readable versions of your pages, an llms.txt file, and a public MCP server readers can add to their AI assistant. |
| Accessibility | Themes with keyboard navigation, a skip link, screen reader landmarks, automatic color contrast and support for reduced motion. |
| Security and access | HTTPS on every page, free SSL certificates for your own domain, two-factor sign-in for your team, and private or password-protected help centers. Catalyst adds single sign-on for readers. |
| Hosting and backups | We run the servers, update the software and back up your data several times a day. Growth and Catalyst come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. |
| Languages | Several languages, each with its own addresses, on Growth and Catalyst, plus AI translation on Catalyst. |
| Knowing what's missing | Statistics on what readers search for and don't find, and which articles they rate as helpful. |
| Help inside your product | A widget for your website or app, and FAQ sections you can embed on any page. |

## The real cost of building it yourself

Each row above has to be designed, built and tested, then maintained. The work doesn't stop at launch: browsers, search engines and AI tools keep changing, certificates expire, and someone has to fix the site when it goes down. For most teams, that's a second product to look after.

HelpCenter.io starts at $29/month per help center (Bootstrap, billed yearly), with no per-agent fees. See [Plans and pricing](https://self.helpcenter.io/content/plans-and-pricing).

## When building your own can make sense

Some large companies with specific requirements build their own. That can be the right call if your documentation has to live inside a system you already run, or you need workflows HelpCenter.io doesn't offer, such as multi-step approvals.

If you'd rather host a knowledge base yourself, Compass, HelpCenter.io's default theme, is also free and open source (GPL-3.0) as plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript on [knowledgebase.dev](https://knowledgebase.dev/).

## You stay in control of your content

A hosted help center doesn't mean giving up your content. Serve it from your own domain, export articles as PDF whenever you like, or copy everything out through the API. See [Do you back up my content?](https://self.helpcenter.io/content/do-you-create-a-backup-of-my-content)

## Related articles

- [Is HelpCenter.io right for my company?](https://self.helpcenter.io/content/is-helpcenter-io-right-for-my-company)
- [Security and privacy at HelpCenter.io](https://self.helpcenter.io/content/security-and-privacy)
- [Plans and pricing](https://self.helpcenter.io/content/plans-and-pricing)