The idea to put the Help site behind a sign-in has never made sense to me. But like many other bad ideas, this one too refuses to die. Like the moles in the popular game Whack-a-Mole, it keeps popping up from time to time. The most common reason provided for this demand is that competitors are copying features based on the documentation.
This argument is flawed on so many levels that we could build a skyscraper with it. Let's take them one-by-one.
Time to copy a feature: Most features take months to build. It involves market research, solutioning, UX design, actual coding, testing, marketing plans, and more before it actually comes out onto the market. If a competitor is going to replicate the feature, you already have a head start on them. All they can do is play catch up.
Help is the only source of information: To think that your competitor has no other way to learn about this feature apart from Help is to underestimate them. Just look within your company. If the only way you get information about your competitors' features is from their documentation, you should consider firing your Marketing and Sales teams.
Customers buy based on one feature: A customer is almost never going to churn because of one feature. The only way that could happen is if the feature in question is a key element in the customer's business. But if you knew that, then it begs the question why have you not plugged the other gaps? The churn isn't because your competitor has added this one feature, but because the rest of the experience within the product is broken.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that prospective customers always go to the Help site before they decide to buy a product. Putting it behind a sign-in just limits new customers from discovering things about your product that the Marketing team didn't mention.
The only situation in which I see this making sense is if you are customizing help content for customers.
What do you think? Is there any case to put documentation behind a sign-on?
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