Relative costs of printed and online documentation

This article compares the development cost, the production cost, and the maintenance cost between printed documentation and online documentation.

To pretend that only usability issues determine which media are used is unreal. Cost is a factor. The move to online help is not only because it is sometimes better than printed documentation, but also because it is always cheaper.

Development cost

The development costs of the source documents are approximately equal for printed documentation and online documentation. The general technical writing tasks are similar (for example, getting information, document design, reworking because of changed software). Inputting the information into a source document is a small part of the documentation process, and it makes little difference whether the final document is printed or online. The page layout for printed documentation adds some time to the project, but it is not large.

What's This? (field-level context sensitive) style help is time-consuming to implement, because each control in the software (such as an entry box, button, check box) must have an ID which must match an ID in the help. If a control is changed, the help must be changed, recompiled, and tested against the updated software. Nowadays, this type of help is not usually developed.

It is possible to use window-level context-sensitive help with hyperlinks on a graphic to explain fields—a simulated What's This? help. This is time-consuming to produce, and unless the individual popup topics are also listed, the user will not be able to print them.

Production cost

For the supplier, delivery cost for online documentation is always cheaper than printed documentation. Typically, it is effectively free, because the documentation can be included on the CD on which the software is supplied.

However, if the documentation needs to be printed, supplying it on a CD dumps the production cost (time and materials) on users. From a value-added perspective, possibly, it is more cost-effective to produce 1000 units that are supplied with a product, instead of expecting 1000 users to print individual copies.

To produce printed documentation in batches of less than approximately 1000, digital publishing is the most cost-effective solution.

For large print runs, litho printing is the best solution. It is top quality, and moderately cheap. The problem is the high setup cost.

Maintenance cost

There is little difference in maintenance costs between printed documentation and online documentation such as CHM or WebHelp. The details differ, but in either case, when the software changes, the documentation must be updated.

However, with What's This? field-level help, updates are more expensive, because there are many more steps in the update process.