Shelf vs Paperpile

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Compare Shelf and Paperpile based on features, pricing, verified reviews, integrations & more on GetApp. Find out which software is best for your business in 2026.

Confluence

Confluence is a remote-friendly workspace offering a centralized platform for documentation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Its AI-based tools via Rovo assist teams in drafting, brainstorming, and turning ideas into plans. Confluence supports live docs, whiteboards, databases, and templates to meet diverse needs while integrating seamlessly with Atlassian products and third-party tools.

Microsoft SharePoint

SharePoint is a collaboration & content management platform which can be used to build portals, collaboration sites, & also content management sites

Notion

Notion is a project and workflow management solution that helps businesses streamline operations related to goal setting, status tracking, lead management, and more on a centralized platform. It enables users to utilize the drag-and-drop interface to organize, rearrange, and develop ideas or plans.

The Shelf modern knowledge management platform helps businesses thrive with on-demand answers to the questions that block customer and employee success. Awarded for overall usability by Gartner Digital Markets for three consecutive quarters.

Access Controls/Permissions

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

Alerts/Notifications

Approval Process Control

Archiving & Retention

Audio File Management

Audit Trail

Catalog Management

Chatbot

Collaboration Tools

Commenting/Notes

Communication Management

Content Library

Content Management

Content Publishing Options

Customizable Branding

Customizable Fields

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Dashboard

Data Import/Export

Decision Support

Discussions/Forums

Document Automation

Document Capture

Document Classification

Document Generation

Document Management

Document Review

Document Storage

Drag & Drop

Drag & Drop Editor

Email Alerts

Engagement Tracking

Feedback Management

File Conversion

File Recovery

File Sharing

Full Text Search

Generative AI

Knowledge Base Management

Knowledge Management

Live Chat

Machine Learning

Multi-Language

Natural Language Processing

Optical Character Recognition

Performance Metrics

Pre-built Templates

Real-Time Notifications

Real-Time Reporting

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Rich Text Editor

Search/Filter

Self Service Portal

SEO Management

Single Sign On

SSL Security

Surveys & Feedback

Tagging

Templates

Text Editing

Third-Party Integrations

User Management

Version Control

Video Support

Web Notifications

Website Integration

Widgets

Wiki

Workflow Management

WYSIWYG Editor

Shelf

Web-based

Basic

Associate Manager, Call Center Technology

Tool functionality abilities (Answer Assist, chatbot integration, language containment within one gem, search functionality within documents, etc.).

Training and Knowledge Manager

Shelf is a great tool when it comes to our overall knowledge management needs. Since our implementation of Shelf we have seen an increase in advisor engagement and sentiment towards our knowledge management efforts.

With announcements we can send communications, attach Gem, set due dates, and require confirmation.

Associate

The migration process from our previous knowledge management system demanded more human resources than initially anticipated.

Continuous Improvement

So far we've seen a 25 percent reduction in average handling time across the first three months of going live with Shelf.

This has been a game changer for our team and makes it so we can directly communicate with our advisors.

Beta for additional reporting is available but when available to GA it will be a paid product.

Competence & Quality Manager

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..

Training and Quality Analyst

It helps them daily to confidently give answers to our customers.

We now have a single source of truth that our advisors can look to when helping customers.

Consultation

So much easier to use than other programs

Content Specialist

I don't agree with this, but many of the agents who use Shelf struggle with the search algorithm; when they use a search term to find something specific, the result they want is sometimes the 3rd or 4th result, not the 1st.

Maintenence function with directly feedback from user is so good and help us to structure and document all kind of changes we do.

Customer experience  specialist

Occasionally went blank and needed tickets raising.

I think the sync between Feedback and CPW could be better, because you need to be an collaborater to solve the connection between feedback/publish function.

Overall it has been a very smooth process, the staff are friendly and approachable, the system works well and is consistently being improved.

Business Intelligence

For typical users, the software's design as well as search make finding documents quick and seamless.

Treasury

Contribute to the cognitive and educational development

Knowledge Management Specialist

We also love the addition of Wiki Templates this year that allow us to create new content quickly and efficiently

Our advisors do not like how Shelf was integrated with Zendesk.

Shelf resolves these issues in straightforward and convenient ways.

I also miss an function where you can assign GEMs directly to owner of the document.

Furthermore they have always been receptive to our needs and requests for improvements in the system.

Training Specialist

Adding content is very simple from a user standpoint, and the search and organization tools, such as connected gems, make it very quick and simple for users to find what they need.

The user interface is sophisticated and user-friendly.

Their system is easy to use for both advisors and administrators.

Shelf is easy to use both for agents and admins.

It also integrates well with the other applications that my organization uses.

Group Coordinator

Shelf allowed us to have 1 space for our employees to access with the most up to date, recent and most used documents.

I have been using Shelf for a long time and I am extremely impressed with its knowledge management and content organization capabilities.

people onboarding and training manager

Shelf is a very user friendly product , easy to set up, easy to maintain and delivers real impact

Project Coordinator

Since many features are interconnected, sometimes electing to only enable certain features can be difficult. Because all Shelf features are not applicable to us, we try to only use what makes sense to use, but when certain features have to be enabled in order to get others to work, this forces us to go through additional steps we may have wanted to avoid.

Managing Partner

I'd like to have control within the app over increasing the # user licenses.

Even as an Administrator user, I enjoy the capabilities of being able to track the number of interactions other users have with certain content.

Development Manager

I really like how easy it is to create and manage content in Shelf.

Development & Training Specialist

I'd say that the feature I'd like to see developed the most is the search.

Business Intelligence Analyst III

It has allowed us to easily share content between teams that had no capability of doing so previously.

Knowledge Content Specialist

The visuals of the frontend seemed a bit rudimentary, and we weren't able to modify or customize them.

Quality Assurance Specialist

Assists our learning and development to create training documents, save "good/bad" calls based on call types/scenarios to reference for future training classes or agents that have opportunities to grow.

It is easy to manage permissions and sharing.

Marketing Manager

I've worked with Shelf for 3 years now, and they are constantly upgrading the software capabilities to increase ease of use, and enhance our ability to use the platform in many innovative ways to both share and find information quickly internally, as well as house best practice materials that we can share directly with customers.

I've used Shelf for over 3 years now, and was blown away at the level of personalized assistance for helping me to set up a virtual company "library," as well as provide me with tips, tricks, and ideas for leveraging the software to achieve multiple knowledge sharing goals.  

President, School Social Work Association of America

Our challenges have been more keeping up with the number of resources we have loaded into the site and Shelf provided us with a great tool at the start of the project to help organize our site and the process so that it could be more successful.

The ease of use for searching information.

Director of Business Intelligence

I wish there were more controls on the tags that you could create to apply to content.

Content manager

I would have liked more options to be able to structure the UI and the customer experience.

Senior Analyst, Service Desk

Unavailability of a html editor to edit content.

Customer Support

Search

Ease of Use

Training and Learning Curve

Feedback

Bugs and Issues

Improvement

Mid-size Business

Large Enterprises

Small Business

Paperpile is a knowledge management software designed to help businesses synchronize the research library with multiple devices. Administrators can utilize the search functionality to find papers in real-time on a unified interface.

By industry, Paperpile reviewers are most commonly professionals in research (41%). The most frequent use case for Paperpile cited by reviewers is knowledge management (100% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Paperpile is a knowledge management solution with key features that include content management, text editing, and more.

Proprietary

Paperpile

Android

iPhone

iPad

Free

Academic

Business

Staff Scientist

I love that it can automatically change the reference style with zero effort and it can find the paper I want to cite by title DOI, link, whatever I throw at it.

It's a very user friendly tool, can be integrated into both GoogleDocs and Word and prevents me from messing up my references.

Graduate Student 

It is intuitive and since is connected to google docs as an extension I can have my info wherever I need it.

Professor

I love that there is an iPad app that I can annotate my papers, I love the tags (so things don't have to fit in just one category), and I love the easy chrome interface since I can access it on any machine.

Doctoral Candidate

I have the papers organized into categories; each one has personal annotations and notes that are searchable, so I can quickly find the publications I need.

Graduate Associate/PhD Candidate

I love that I have one place to save all my articles needed for my dissertation and other projects and that I can easily separate and/or tag readings for the different projects I'm working on.

Physician

The word plug-in, which is the most important thing to me since I write all of my papers in MS Word, can be buggy at times and sometimes does not update with new references/has to be recompiled frequent.

Shelf vs Paperpile Comparison (2026)

Shelf

Paperpile

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

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