These are the features buyers of public help centers expect or request, taken from incumbent feature lists (HelpKit, Scroll Sites, Refined Sites, Notion Sites) and from the gaps they point out in each other. Each is classified with the same honesty as the stated idea. Being requested doesn't mean you should build it.
Legend: TS = Table stakes, D = Differentiator, X = Distraction, L = Liability. Priority: P0 = v1 of the Confluence wedge, P1 = next, P2 = later, — = don't build.
4.1 Publishing (the core, all table stakes)
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Publish one Confluence space (or page tree) as a public site | TS | P0 | The product. Respect Confluence page restrictions: never publish a restricted page. |
| Custom domain with automatic HTTPS | TS | P0 | Everyone has it. |
| Help-center theme (categories, article pages, breadcrumbs) | TS | P0 | One good theme. Not a theme store. |
| Fast static pages, sitemaps, clean URLs | TS | P0 | Speed is how help centers rank. |
| llms.txt and AI-crawler-friendly output | TS | P0 | HelpKit and Scroll both market it. Cheap to add. |
| Near-instant updates after a page is edited | TS | P0 | Scroll Sites highlights "live updates". Notion builders are criticised for slow sync. |
| Several sites from one Confluence (product A docs, product B docs) | TS | P1 | Advanced edition. |
| Versioned docs (v1, v2 of a product) | TS / X | P2 | Scroll has a whole product line for this. Only if customers ask. |
| Multi-language | TS / X | P2 | A translation workflow is a support burden. |
4.2 Finding answers
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Full-text visitor search | TS | P0 | The biggest gap in Notion Sites (per HelpKit), and the reason anyone pays over free publishing. |
| Search that tolerates typos and synonyms | TS | P1 | Expected by visitors. |
| AI answers with citations to the page | TS / D | P1 | Advanced edition, capped. Never answer without a source. Scroll and Refined include AI search. |
| Embeddable help widget for the customer's app | TS | P1 | HelpKit has one. Keeps visitors in the product. |
| "Contact support" hand-off with the search context attached | D | P1 | Pass what the visitor searched for into Zendesk, Intercom or JSM. |
| Generic AI chatbot trained on everything | L | — | Intercom Fin, Chatbase, Rovo and Notion agents already do it. Uncited answers are a liability. |
4.3 The doc-owner loop (the only real differentiator found)
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Failed-search report (what visitors searched for and didn't find) | D | P0 | HelpKit tracks failed searches. Nobody found in this run turns them into assigned work inside the docs tool. |
| Weekly tasks to page owners (Jira issue or Confluence task: "12 people searched 'refund' and found nothing") | D | P0 | The weekly reason to keep paying. Uses data Atlassian already holds (page owners, Jira). |
| Article feedback ("Was this helpful?") routed to the page owner | D | P0 | Same loop. |
| Stale-page alerts (not edited in 12 months but still viewed) | D | P1 | Cheap and useful. |
| Monthly "docs health" email to the support lead | D | P1 | Top gaps, pages fixed, searches that now succeed. Evidence for the renewal. |
| Ticket-deflection percentage | L | — | You can't measure it without the help-desk data. Report searches and clicks instead. |
4.4 Access and control
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Password or email-gated sections | TS | P1 | For partner or customer-only docs. |
| SSO or token access (customers log in through the vendor's app) | TS | P2 | Scroll has it. Needed for larger customers. |
| Draft preview before publishing | TS | P1 | Avoids publishing half-written pages. |
| Approval before publishing (honour Confluence approval workflows) | TS | P1 | Confluence Cloud now enforces approval-required publishing for REST updates (search summary, medium confidence). |
| Audit log of what went public, when and by whom | TS | P2 | Refined has it. Enterprise buyers ask. |
4.5 Moving in (acquisition features)
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Import from Zendesk Guide, Intercom articles and Help Scout Docs into a Confluence space | D | P1 | The wedge buyer's switching cost is the move. Remove it. Do it by hand for the first 10. |
| Import from a Notion help center (HelpKit and others) | D | P2 | A small but real flow. Content marketing first. |
| URL redirects from the old help center | TS | P1 | Protects the customer's search traffic. Without it, nobody switches. |
| Free public help-center checker (search, broken links, speed, llms.txt) | D (marketing) | P1 | A free tool, like HelpKit's Notion Table Generator, which drove its early growth. |
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Form builder writing to Notion | X | — | Notion Forms is free. Tally is free and unlimited. |
| Conditional logic, file uploads, payments | X | — | Covered by Tally, NoteForms, Fillout and OpnForm. |
| "Contact us" form on the help center | TS | P2 | Use the customer's help-desk form or a mailto. Don't build a form product. |
4.7 Workflow and business
| Feature | Category | Priority | Notes |
|---|
| Google Analytics and privacy-friendly analytics hooks | TS | P1 | Expected. |
| Status page and uptime history for the published sites | TS | P1 | Your customers' help centers are public. Downtime is visible. |
| White-label for Atlassian partners and agencies | X / D later | P2 | A channel, not a v1 feature. |
| Internal wiki or intranet mode | X | — | Refined's home ground. Confluence is already the internal wiki. |
| Data Center or Server version | X | — | A second codebase for a shrinking base. |
4.8 Net effect
Of about 40 features, about 7 are real differentiators, all in the doc-owner loop and the move-in tools. About 10 belong in v1. The rest is table stakes you'll add slowly, or other products you should hand off to.