--- title: MadCap Flare Reviews meta_title: 'MadCap Flare Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 491 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how MadCap Flare works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.4 review_count: 491 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: Development url: https://www.g2.com/categories/development --- # MadCap Flare Reviews **Vendor:** MadCap Software **Category:** [Help Authoring Tools (HAT)](https://www.g2.com/categories/help-authoring-tool-hat) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 491 ## About MadCap Flare Empowering teams to create, manage, and deliver exceptional content at scale MadCap Flare is the go-to solution for technical content teams that need to streamline workflows and deliver consistent, high-quality content across every channel. Trusted by documentation, training, and knowledge management professionals worldwide, Flare combines the precision of XML-based authoring with the flexibility of multi-channel publishing—all from a single, centralized platform. Why leading teams rely on Flare: Scalable, topic-based authoring: XML-based structure ensures precision and scalability for complex documentation projects. Single-source publishing: Manage all outputs from one project to eliminate redundancy and simplify updates. Multi-channel delivery: Publish effortlessly to self-service portals, online Help, documentation hubs, and training guides. Advanced content reuse: Reuse variables, snippets, and conditions to save time and maintain accuracy. Real-time collaboration with Flare Online: Co-author, review, and manage content simultaneously in the cloud—no check-in delays or version conflicts. Integrated translation management: Accelerate localization and expand your global reach. Flexible publishing formats: Deliver content in HTML5, PDF, Word, SCORM, and more to meet diverse audience needs. Proven ROI: Cut production costs, speed release cycles, and boost customer satisfaction. What sets Flare apart: Unlike traditional content management tools, Flare is purpose-built for technical content teams—offering unmatched flexibility, control, and scalability. With Flare Online, teams gain cloud-based collaboration and instant publishing capabilities for faster, more connected workflows. Together, they form a unified platform for creating, managing, and delivering knowledge at scale—ensuring efficiency, brand consistency, and an exceptional user experience. That’s why thousands of organizations trust Flare to power their global content strategy.gy." ## MadCap Flare Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users praise the **exceptionally user-friendly content management** of MadCap Flare, streamlining documentation tasks with ease. (2 reviews) - Users benefit from the **exceptional efficiency** of MadCap Flare, streamlining authoring and documentation tasks seamlessly. (2 reviews) - Users admire the **user-friendly platform** of MadCap Flare, which simplifies documentation tasks and enhances workflow efficiency. (2 reviews) - Users praise the **exceptional customer support** of MadCap Flare, highlighting responsive assistance during complex challenges. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **customization options** in MadCap Flare, which enhance flexibility and creativity in project development. (1 reviews) - Ease of Learning (1 reviews) - Users find MadCap Flare to be **exceptionally user-friendly** , streamlining authoring and documentation processes with ease. (1 reviews) - Easy Implementation (1 reviews) - Easy Setup (1 reviews) - Features (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users face a **steep learning curve** with MadCap Flare, making it challenging to recall processes without regular use. (2 reviews) - Users find **MadCap Flare's complexity** challenging, especially when they aren't using it regularly, but can overcome it quickly. (1 reviews) - Users find the **entry and travel costs** for MadCap Flare conferences prohibitively expensive, limiting accessibility for many. (1 reviews) - Users find the **learning difficulty** of MadCap Flare challenging, especially when not used regularly between projects. (1 reviews) - Users report that **performance issues** can arise in MadCap Flare, particularly with large projects experiencing lag during builds. (1 reviews) - Users report **slow performance** in MadCap Flare, particularly noticeable in large projects, affecting efficiency during builds. (1 reviews) ## MadCap Flare Reviews ### 1. Single-Sourcing with MadCap Flare for Content Creation & Maintenance = Flexibility & Time Savings **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mary M. | Information Architect, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 09, 2026 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The single-sourcing capabilities of MadCap Flare are invaluable. I love the idea that I can write repetitive content once and be able to use it in multiple places and multiple outputs. When I need to revise it, I have just one place to go and the change propagates automatically throughout all uses. It's a tremendous time-saver and makes content maintenance so much more efficient than traditional tools. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Bug fixes seem to take an awfully long time to get in. New features/functionality are nice. But it seems like bug fixes get pushed to the back burner. Also, for users who are not familiar with topic-based authoring, the learning curve seems to be steeper than it used to be. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** The biggest "problem" MadCap Flare is solving for me is the ability to create single-sourced context-sensitive Help for multiple products with multiple types of users, along with the ability to use that same content in different outputs as needed (e.g., PDF, Word, PPT, eLearning, etc.). ### 2. Powerful Tool Once Mastered, Excellent Collaboration Features **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Warren K. | Chairman, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 22, 2026 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I find MadCap Flare extremely easy to use now, even though it was slightly difficult to initially master. It does exactly what I want, and the web pages turn out exactly as I want. It's got all the facilities I need for interconnecting pages and making pages readable, which would otherwise be far too complicated. I need collaboration, and MadCap Flare is helpful in that regard because it allows multiple people to help me, especially when reviewing pages. I think this is far better than any other comparable software. When I started my project, it became clear that this was the only software that would do what I needed. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I struggle with the appearance of tables. Getting MadCap Flare going initially was quite difficult for me. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use MadCap Flare because it allows multiple people to review my pages. It has all the facilities I need for interconnecting pages, making them readable, and turning them out exactly as I want, which would otherwise be too complicated. ### 3. Powerful Tool for Seamless Documentation Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adam M. | Senior Technical Writer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 23, 2026 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I really like the snippets feature in MadCap Flare. It lets me reuse small pieces of content across different parts of the application. If I'm using a line across various products or parts of the UI, I only need to update it once. This single source of truth reduces errors and misinformation. It's also great for productivity because instead of updating the same thing multiple times across the software, I just do it once, and it's updated instantly. I also appreciate the huge amount of YouTube videos and training courses available through MadCap's YouTube and their website. It makes the tool easier to manage independently and is a major strength over the competition. The logical workflow makes it accessible, even if you're new to it. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I think the MadCap Flare online interface could be improved. It's still fairly early in its adoption, and because I'm working pretty much independently, it's not that favorable for me. The idea is it's a lightweight interface you can use across different team members to work on the same topic at the same time, but it's just not really useful for me. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use MadCap Flare to quickly update and manage documentation. It allows me to easily adjust to last-minute changes from the development team and generate multiple outputs efficiently. The tagging system helps me produce content in a smooth and controlled manner, reducing errors. ### 4. Simple, Writer-Friendly Interface That Keeps Communication Flowing **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 25, 2026 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Simple interface for writers that are more into communication than code **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Help Desk hours do not work with mine and it can be buggy **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helping us deliver modern easy to maintain user assistance in a customer appropriate way ### 5. Easy Startup with Templates and Simple Customization **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 08, 2026 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Templates make the startup easy. Customizing from there is easier than having to start from scratch. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Using the branching feature is confusing when you are unfamiliar with branching. Even though we have watched all the tutorials a couple of times, we still keep having conflicts and overwrites and don't know why. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Flare allows us to write content once and then reuse it in multiple places, which makes update fast. We are also now using it for eLearning content. ### 6. Flare Continues to Amaze After 16 Years of Versatile Use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 19, 2025 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Admittedly, long ago... in the very beginning, I had to move from RoboHelp to Flare... it was a steep learning curve for me... but once I got it, I never looked back... After 16 years, I still learn something new and magical about Flare with every project. Flare is often fun to work with because there are so many ways to use it. I have used it for online help, knowledge bases, and it's currently what I use for our company glossary. There are periods of time when I am asked to or want to incorporate a new element or functionality into a project. Tech Support - especially Keaton L. - has helped me through those challenges, as needed. Those folks in TS are amazing. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Because Flare is rather complex in its ways, it is definitely a challenge if I don't keep working in it... between jobs or because certain jobs haven't allowed me to use it on a regular basis, it can sometimes be a challenge to remember the processes. But those are quickly overcome. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I think the biggest change in the documentation due to Flare is our official company glossary. It used to be maintained in Confluence... that tool is like the Wild West... everyone is doing their own thing... and the search feature was not the greatest. It also didn't look great and it was hard to get to. Once we decided we were changing it over to Flare, the interface for the glossary is so much cleaner and easier to navigate. The use of snippets and micro content makes the search feature more efficient, and so much easier to navigate. We also impressed our Legal department by using it for a couple of their knowledge bases - they were happy to see what we were able to create for them. ### 7. Peerless Authoring Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adam M. | Senior Technical Writer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The features are industry leading. Topic-based authoring, snippets, conditional settings make for a fully customiseable output. Lovely UI to use. The team are really helpful and friendly. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Steep learining curve. But if you put in the effort and watch the training videos and read the great documentation, you will get to where you need to be. MadCap Software do MadWorld conferences for documentation professionals. The cost of entry and travel required is prohibitively expensive for me. If only an online stream attendance was available so thoese of us who cannot attend in person don't miss out. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Documenting multiple versions of software in the same shared source content. I can design lovely outputs and hosted sites using Central. ### 8. Comprehensive and User-Friendly Documentation Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** TEJAS S. | Technical Writer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The platform is exceptionally user-friendly, making it efficient and straightforward to handle both authoring and technical documentation tasks, as well as carrying out thorough reviews. The support team and documentation provided by MadCap have also been extremely helpful and accurate, ensuring we can quickly find solutions to any issues that arise. Additionally, if you’re looking to customize standards or layouts, MadCap Flare is an ideal tool, offering extensive flexibility and options to tailor documentation to specific requirements. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** On large projects with many topics and assets, Flare may occasionally experience slow performance or lag, especially during builds. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Flare allows for easy reuse of content across multiple projects through its topic-based authoring and single-source publishing capabilities, saving time and ensuring consistency. It simplifies the generation of various outputs (PDFs, HTML5, eBooks, etc.) from a single source, eliminating the need for duplicate work across formats. Features like responsive HTML5 output, searchable help, and intuitive navigation improve user experience in our documentation. ### 9. Organization Simplified **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aly O. | Senior Account Executive (US Summits), Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2025 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MapCad really helps organize documents and offers brilliant solutions to improve software. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Price is somewhat high, but if you use it regularly the ROI will eventually be high. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps bring all my developments in one place, offers solutions that expedite processes. ### 10. MadCap Miracle ! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lori K. | Product Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Branching is making our lives so much easier. Also the support from Keaton is amazing! **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There is a definite learning curve, but that time is well spent. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** When writing user manuals in software development, functionality in scope changes frequently. By utilizing MadCap's branching capabilities, we can separate each feature and then decide which branch(es) should be used for a release. Branching is automated, and only requires intervention if a potential conflict arises between branches. This functionality is a game changer. ### 11. Fantastic Software for Tech Writers **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vidya Raman S. | Technical Writing Specialist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2018 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Single sourcing Flexibility in managing templates and styles HTML5 templates Top Nav functionality **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Integration with TFS Issues with formatting tables **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** I definitely recommend Flare for anyone with the following requirements: - HTML5 output and responsive design - Single sourcing - Managing multiple projects - Large number of projects - Large projects (typically with thousands of topics) The learning curve may be high initially, but the help and resources available on MadCap's web site are excellent. The website provides many examples for HTML5 projects. The only areas where Flare seems to be lacking are: - Integration with TFS: We have had recurring issues with check ins particularly losing our changes after a successful check in . - Table formatting: We have had issues with tables re-sizing automatically. Flare tends to add a lot of additional code to the basic HTML for table. - Table Styles: The table stylesheet editor should be extended similar to the Stylesheet Editor. It should provide for additional formatting options. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy to manage large projects in Flare Ability to set up a Master Project and use it across multiple projects ### 12. Flare remains the best content authoring tool on the market and for now remains value for money **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gerard W. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I’ve used various commercial content authoring tools for the past twenty years to build Help and training systems for global software developers and tertiary institutions. About a decade ago, spurred on by the increasing licence costs for the tool we were using at the time, I assessed the content authoring offerings then available. Flare stood out for its features (especially the HTML5 output), usability, UI, ease of implementation and value for money, and despite the significant effort in migrating from one system to another we decided to move to Flare. I use Flare on a daily basis and it is not a decision I’ve regretted. Flare is a powerful authoring tool and it keeps pace with technological innovations. MadCap’s Support is generally very good, and the online documentation and training videos are excellent. I continue to assess the content authoring offerings every few years and am content that we are using the best content authoring tool on the market. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** My only concern these days is with licencing. MadCap’s decision a few years ago to eliminate tiered Support / Licencing (it now only offers the more expensive premium licence) was disappointing. In recent years MadCap has focussed development on its new cloud offering, MadCap Central – I’ve assessed this and am not yet convinced that the features available, and the higher cost, are better value than the desktop offering, at least for our number of users and setup. My concern is that MadCap’s licensing model might encourage a move to the Cloud offering (desktop licencing costs have increased in recent years). Time will tell. In conclusion, I believe that Flare remains the best content authoring tool on the market and for now at least remains value for money. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We build large and complex software offerings and our documentation is comprehensive. A big issue with any large Help system is discoverability - users need to be able to find answers to their questions. Flare has an impressive range of features (from indexing to microcontent) to facilitate discoverability. ### 13. Great tool!!!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 05, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap provides a comprehensive set of solutions, making it a unique and easy-to-understand platform. It includes all the essential tools needed for efficient content development and management, which streamlines the workflow for users. It is easy to use, easy to implement, and has great customer support available. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Nothing as such, Flare is a great tool and easy. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has given us a great platform to develop user-friendly and attractive outputs that grab users' attention, and its support team helps us a lot at each and every point. My Special thanks to my SME "Keaton Lullo" who has been a great support to us and been there to solve each and every problem we face. ### 14. A complete help authoring solution to meet all your documentation needs! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Very powerful single-sourcing tool and offers a great deal of flexibility with design. The interface is really good - it is easy to find and add a lot of online interactive features - such as drop-downs and responsive layout tiles. If you are good with HTML, CSS and JS, there's a lot that you can customize. Scripts are easy to add. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** No option to set conditions for showing two different outputs from the same document in different pages of the same online help. I need to do a lot of manual readjustment to fix tabbed spaces such that the text sample I create looks the same in both online and print. Coming from FrameMaker, these are the options I miss a lot: 1) No drag-and-drop options to add graphic objects like text boxes, arrows, circles, etc. (and hyperlinked text within it!) . 2) No easy way to see how your final PDF output would look like. The preview window just allows me to see a bit of the current topic. 3) PDF image maps for any shape other than rectangles don't work too well unless I change the dpi. 4) No option for adding only change bars without displaying changes while preserving tracked changes in the output. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Moving our PDF documentation into HTML. Standardizing our look and feel of documents. ### 15. Intuitive and versatile tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 19, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** After using FrameMaker and AuthorIt for several years, I find Flare most intuitive and easy to handle. I find the user interface appealing and most of the many features are easy to find and understand. I work with Flare every day. I enjoy working in the WISIWIG environment while being able to quickly swith to the xml code when things get tricky. Online documentation and customer support have proven to be very helpful on many occasions. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** None of the bugs we reported has been solved. I was given advice to store projects direcly on C because slightly longer file paths lead to errors during publication of projects. Compatibility with RWS Trados not good. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our customers demand customer specific documentation. Large numbers of files and conditions in combination with several TOCs allow us to meet that demand. This also helps us to save translation costs. ### 16. Brilliant support for a complex powerful tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Benjamin M. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 17, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare enables us to produce documentation variants that match every customer's unique system configuration with ease and precision. The range of functions like synchronisation with spreadsheets and simultaneous web and print publishing make it streets ahead of competitor offerings. The technical support team are patient, knowledgable and thorough. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's not simple to learn and can frustrate the beginner but the support guys make it all work **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Turning an inefficient way of working wasting many people's effort into a slick production line with vastly superior outputs in a fraction of the time ### 17. It's complex, but there's no better tool for producing multiple outputs from a single source **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Steve D. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2024 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Three things: 1. Single sourcing, enabling reuse of content, especially nested snippets (i.e. snippets within snippets) 2. Side-by-side XML and text editors, enabling direct editing of tags 3. Microcontent - this is really great **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It crashes on rare occasions for no apparent reason The find/replace functionality is not very useful **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Rather than rasing support tickets, users are referring more and more to the documents and websites produced by Flare. This reduces the load on our support team. It's also organizing and documenting our products' knowledge bases for in-house use. ### 18. Great app for tech writers like me! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ian Limwell A. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 14, 2023 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare is a popular authoring and publishing tool for technical writers that offers a wide range of features such as content management, multi-channel publishing, and localization support. Its ability to generate output in multiple formats, including HTML5, PDF, and mobile apps, is highly appreciated by users. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Madcap Flare's learning curve and high cost. It has been known to have a relatively steep learning curve, which can be a challenge for some users, especially those who are new to technical writing or the software. As for the cost, MadCap Flare is a professional tool designed for complex documentation projects, and as such, it may have a higher price tag than other authoring tools. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Flare solves many of the common challenges faced by technical writers, including Content Management, Multi-channel publishing, Localization support, and Version control. These features are designed to improve the productivity and efficiency of technical writers, which in turn benefits their organizations by reducing time and costs associated with content creation and management. ### 19. MadCap Flare is a comprehensive tool for creating technical documentation and training. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ken S. | Content Strategist and Architect, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare's ever-growing feature set allows technical communicators to create a range of outputs, from online help to support sites to manuals to training courses. The application includes a library of templates for new users and features like pre- and post-build event commands, third-party plugin support, and macro recording capabilities for more experienced users who need to customize outputs for their organizations and automate frequent tasks. MadCap provides excellent customer support and implementation services. The company has created a broad user community around its software, including an annual conference, a Slack channel, a LinkedIn group, and local user groups. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare is on-premise software, which might concern customers looking for a cloud-based solution. However, MadCap does offer a cloud-based solution called Central that can be used with Flare. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Flare allows technical communicators to create various output types (HTML, PDF, SCORM- and xAPI-compliant training courses, and more) regardless of their level of technical knowledge. Flare's single sourcing features allow technical communicators to reuse content they create across outputs, which saves them time and their organizations money (particularly if content is translated). ### 20. Using MadCap Flare since 2017 - happy customer **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John C. | T, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 17, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Every employer I've had that uses Flare also purchased Platinum Service. Their support is top-notch and helps with all user levels of capability. The software itself is great, but I would always recommend also having a support package. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Learning at least a little bit of code is inevitable, and I've worked with many users that are not up to the challenge of deciphering code. Along those same lines, how all the pieces fit together to get the finished product can be complex. If troubleshooting and trying to figure out what's causing an unexpected result isn't your cup of tea, much like any IT field, using Flare may not be one's best choice. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Most Flare users seem to be interested in Flare for the SOP, procedures, or Help Site html output capabilities. I've written for internal, as well as external, users / customers. This software provides a useful way to provide information. ### 21. A full-featured docs tool ideal for online and printed outputs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kate S. | Lead Technical Writer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I love using Flare for all of my documention needs. I've been using it since Version 6 (so, a very long time), and I don't see any reason to switch to anything else! It is a great tool for online and printed outputs. I've used it at several companies -- both large and small. At my current company, we use it primarily for online documentation, and we manage several different single-sourced outputs. Some of them are translated into a dozen languages, and Flare makes this easy, too. I've never had a documentation problem that Flare couldn't help me solve. I love its snippet and variables functionalities, its built-in analysis capabilities, and its flexible skin editor. All of the new microcontent features are amazing, too. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** If I had to pick one thing, it's only that Flare does have a steep learning curve. It's not a pick-up-and-go software tool. Luckily, Madcap provides great training opportunities within the software (tutorials), in the online help (more tutorials and walkthroughs), and through their training department. It might not be quick to learn, but it's worth taking the time to get to know this software so you can fully take advantage of everything it has to offer. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** While MadCap Flare has helped me to solve many documentation problems, it has been most beneficial in helping me single-source my documentation. At my current company, we were keeping all of our docs in several different places. Using Flare let us take all of those separate docs and combine them into a single project, which drastically cuts down on the time to write and maintain the documentation. ### 22. A Great Tool for Single Sourcing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Oleksandr B. | Technical Writer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 10, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Things I like about Flare: * Powerful single sourcing: In general, Flare breaks documentation down to essential components (such as topics, TOCs, layouts) which you can manage separately and then assemble as you wish. Using multiple TOCs, I can easily create several different doc targets using different output formats and adjust my content to match target-specific requirements (from scope to specific wording or variable values). * Variables are handy for things like company and product names. You can even use variables inside references. * Text snippets allow for flexible content reuse. * Conditional tags are great for "conditionalizing" anything from entire topics to specific paragraphs or even words. You can then control which conditions are included into your output (or even what's shown at a topic level). * Flare has a great editor, which neatly visualizes the underlying HTML structure of a document and enables me to work with tags (move them around, apply classes, and so on). Once you get used to it, it's really hard to go back to things like Robohelp. * Flare + Central (online hub) provide a collaboration infrastructure that we use both amongst our doc team (git environment for source control) and for reviews (our product owners have a separate account which they use to review updated topics online). * Flare provides several out-of-the-box HTML5 layouts that serve as a good starting point for new projects: https://www.madcapsoftware.com/downloads/madcap-flare-project-templates/ * Flare has powerful PDF layout tools - I set it up once to match our branding, and then it's push one button - get a ready-made PDF. * Madcap's support is reasonably quick and never failed to help me out so far. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Things I don't like about Flare: * This is not so much a critique of Flare, but rather our current CSS template setup. While Flare provides an internal CSS editor, it requires Flare-specific expertise to set it up properly. If your CSS comes from a design team not familiar with Flare, you might run into issues. * Sort of related to the previous item - Flare doesn't provide flexible enough tools that would enable me to modify the HTML5 layout. It's not impossible - but it requires under-the-hood tinkering and expertise that's not covered by out-of-the-box tools. * When sending topics for review in Central, I cannot apply any conditional tags - content goes out full, as is, which is not always helpful. Plus, it doesn't allow reviewers to edit text snippets inside topics (only separately). Sometimes I prefer to put my edits into a Word file and send it out to reviewers instead of Central. * This may be a minor gripe, but Flare doesn't automatically unbind links to topics that are out of scope in your current output (and even Adobe Robohelp could do that, I miss this simple feature). * Flare doesn't handle large image maps well (it resizes them without resizing the link areas). * Finally, a strategic consideration: authoring content in Flare requires a desktop application, as opposed to having a web-based option for contributors who are not trained technical writers. This applies to all help authoring tools, but I think it's something to keep in mind, especially if you wish your documentation to be a collaboration between multiple people. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** * Our team uses Central as our source control solution and main repository. We publish our documentation from Central to our help servers. * We have several technical writers who collaborate via Central. * Product Owners use Central to review doc updates. * We use Central's analytics to see the most common user searches and come up with helpful search suggestions via microcontent. ### 23. Flexible and feature-rich writing tool that can fit many requirements **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeff D. | Technical Documentation Team Lead, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Because Flare works with HTML, the possibilities are almost endless with what you can achieve with your HTML outputs. Advanced HTML content, such as mega-menus, can be added to your outputs as long as you have the HTML knowledge to create them. From context sensitive in-app help, to regularly updated online help, to static PDFs, Flare can create all the outputs that are typically needed from the same source content with just a quick setup. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** With so many features and options in Flare, it is often hard to find out how to do something without checking the online help or user forums. Luckily there's a great user base that is very helpful when new questions come up. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Madcap Flare is helping us to author and publish user documentation for customers to easily access and search. Flare also makes it easy to keep this content up-to-date with minimal effort. Flare also provides many features and options for improving your content by offering new features such as micro-content for improved search results that allow users to find the info they need with fewer clicks. ### 24. Flare: An easy to use all-in-one tool that every Tech writer needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rubin K. | Manager - Technical Documentation, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 05, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** - Easy to create a modern-looking responsive HTML5 Online Help. - Great single sourcing tool. Allows you to create multiple outputs with conditions - Proved great search results with Micro-content - Snippets are an awesome way to re-use contents - Easy to use CSS editor - even novice who does not have much experience in coding can create great CSS - Easy to use Skin editor **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** - Word outputs had some drawbacks, some of them are being solved in the latest releases (for example, bullets and numbering). But there are still a few issues with Word outputs. For example, the cover page (title page) style which I apply using Page Layout shows up fine in the PDF output but not in the Word output. Can this be resolved? - Can you provide more freedom to the users to edit the skin from the back end? For example, if a UX designer provides a UX prototype for me, I should be able to materialize that from the back end (sig HTML/CSS code) - Unable to provide separate styles for Online Help and PDF outputs when using Expand & Collapse. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** - It is great that MadCap Flare comes with r1, r2, and sometimes r3 releases every year which includes several new features and improvements such as the recent addition of elearning in Flare. - It solves the problem of single sourcing and multi-authoring which is either not available or not robust enough (or not easy to use for novices) as compared with the other authoring tools in the industry. - MadCap Flare provides you with the complete suite of products for tech writers including Flare, Capture, Mimic, etc. ### 25. Mad for Flare **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kristin L. | Technical Writer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 04, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I have worked with Flare for about seven years and the best part of it is how it aids in efficiency in documentation. I maintain a help file with thousands of topics and being able to make use of snippets, variables, master pages, page layouts, conditional text... (the feature list goes on and on) makes a huge difference in the amount of time I spend updating and building content. I love how flexible Flare is and how I can leverage my content in so many ways. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I have bronze level maintenance which includes unlimited email support and I have not had much luck with it. I have had intermittent success with getting answers from support on my issues and typically turn to the user forum instead so I can get timely help. Also Capture, which works inside of/integrates with Flare is incredibly clunky. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am so excited that Flare has introduced elearning features! I will absolutely be making use of those in the near future. I am so glad to know that my task of building a comprehensive training suite to accompany the OLH will be so much easier because I can use content I already have inside Flare to build SCORM-compliant training. ### 26. A powerful, flexible and features-packed authoring tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michele P. | Contet Strategist and CMS/CCMS Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** A very easy-to-use/understand authoring tool. It's not a database-based CMS, it's a file-based authoring tool/CMS, so it is very flexible and lots of customization can be made by yourselves if you have some CSS and HTML knowledge. If you have a developer in your team you can do A LOT more than what you have out of the box. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Not as "solid" as a database-based CMS/CCMS. Being file-based you could reach a performance limit if projects become huge. I don't like that translation processes are managed with MadCap Lingo which is another software, separated from the source Flare project in the Flare UI. This can increase complexity and brings some process limitations. For very complex environments, a "proper" CMS/CCMS could be a better choice. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's a relatively low-cost solution to manage documentation in a professional, modular, flexible way. Compared with other software of this kind, the learning curve is very short and allows teams to adopt the tool and processes usually faster than other softwares. In our technical documentation consulting company we use Flare a lot to produce PDFs in whatever format and responsive HTMLs. ### 27. Still top of the list - after 30+ years **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thomas B. | Owner and founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** What makes Flare stand out is its open file structure. It allows me to do whatever Flare allows me to, and on top of that also integrate into almost anything and develop around it. I do not have to wait for help, development, or design. It's all in the box. This, for me, is one of the important areas where it differs from "closed" CMS systems. In those I need to reach out for help if I have to dive deep and do the unexpected. That help often costs - if can even be done. In Flare I can do it myself. I have tried them all (or at least a whole bunch). Ranging from Ventura, FrameMaker, ST4, Paligo, AuthorIt and more. Flare sort of sums it up. I have yet to find a job which Flare cannot solve. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Only a few important nitty gritty things are missing: full support for CSS3 and the ability to link to files outside of a project and having them be part of the project. Apart from that, I'm pretty happy. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** A whole range of problems or challenges. Particularly in the world of regulated documentation for medical and machine production, and the vast amount of variations this often requires, Flare stands out. It might seem complicated. But the other option is not to be able to at all. The structure and functionality of Flare, combined with its single-sourcing capabilities, have also meant a huge reduction in translation costs. Huge like in HUGE! ### 28. A comprehensive single-source multi-output authoring tool with great support. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tamar M. | Technical Writer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Single-source: Write once, reuse content. Snippets for repetition, conditions for controlling output. Good support: If something is not working in my project and I send in a question, someone emails me back, looks at my project, and helps me figure it out. XML-based: If something does not look right in my topic, i can switch to the XML view, get at the nuts and bolts, and tweak what I need. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There are so many options and so much to know. I am probably not taking full advantage of the product. It took me a long time to get used to the fact that a document is made up of many files, each covering one topic/section. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Create a comprehensive help center, with search built in, that I can upload as-is to the cloud. Use the same files to also create a PDF guide. This very simply enables me to do my job. ### 29. Do yourself a favor and use Flare **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John A. | Technical Writer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare works the way I think, by clearly dividing the way content and display are defined yet having the logical connectors to show how the two elements are connected. Flare provides a variety of information containers; I can control how information is presented in dynamic ways through related search terms and when needed as static content. The MadCap development team is constantly improving the software giving me new ways to present my content, the support team is quick to provide usable solutions when I am stuck, and the training and customer success team is spectacular. I can’t say enough good things about the Flare product and the MadCap team. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The complexity of Flare can be a bit daunting at first. There are a lot of settings and functions to play with and get used to. They make it easier with some useful context help, the support team is great, and for sure take the intro class and watch the videos. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Presenting a cohesive operations manual instead of a disjointed pile of Word documents makes it easier for our teams to find out how to do those tasks that are rare yet complex. The ability to interconnect and relate content like glossary terms and see also topics is a huge help to our users. ### 30. All your data/tasks/builds in one place **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tricia S. | Technical Writer/ Illustrator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I like having a secure location to store my data and be able to access it from anywhere. One of my favorite features is the Task list. I create lists of items I'm working on, need to work on, and have all this information at a glance to show management. It's also great to build PDFs or HTML sites & host them directly from Central, where our associates and clients can access them. I also appreciate the checklists to keep track of all the topics in a manual that need to be added or updated for each new manual. So many great tools all in one place! It's a dream, not needing to worry about configuring databases and storage - MadCap handles that part for us. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I wish the checklists could be automatically created based on TOCs rather than folders. My manuals re-use content from multiple folders. It's just the table of contents that I want to work with, and I don't care from which folder the topics come. I'd also like to implement single sign-on from our company's website for the client to log directly into Central. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a department of one, with occasional contributors. Our project database is stored in Central, and is accessible by other authors even if they don't work with Flare all the time. I also appreciate the Review feature where our SMEs can review and comment on topics one at a time. I can accept or reject these changes, and bring them back into Flare, without having to re-type or re-format content from a PDF or Word or other format. ### 31. Flare is exactly what my team needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christina M. | Technical Writer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I love how easy it is to update my files and send them to my team for review. There are a ton of extra features that help me complete my work efficiently. I also really like their support team. We can call in and get someone knowledgeable on the line or at least a feature request submitted pretty easily. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There's just so much that Flare is capable of that I lose track of some of the features. There's also been some issues when trying to keep our files on OneDrive that have caused odd, random problems that are hard to track down and fix. They also really push MadCap Central, which is understandable, but my company doesn't use that. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Flare has made it super easy for our team to single-source our content and re-use as much as possible. Flare has also made our review process so much easier. We were sending each other PDFs and then entering our edits into Flare, now we use their review packets and are able to easily accept and reject changes right from Flare. We are saving a ton of time now. ### 32. Technical documentation all in one place **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gabrielle C. | Product Design Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare provides us with the tools to source all our technical documentation across multiple programs from one place. The alternative of keeping separate Word documents or sharing Google Docs would be incredibly difficult to keep track of and MadCap Flare offers easy collaboration within the company. This is beneficial for remote employees as well since everyone can access the same files. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The one downside that I am personally experiencing with MadCap Flare is the inability to authenticate with my GitHub personal access token. Since GitHub does not allow for logging in with a password for third party applications, we have needed the interface to update within MadCap Flare to allow for inputting PATs. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Flare is solving the problem of coordinating all technical documentation for the several software programs our company produces. Most of the software share similar technical resources, so it's helpful to have one place to store the information and update. ### 33. Flare review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Liven T. | Senior Technical Writer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I've been using Flare since 2012 and I like it because I find that single sourcing content is so useful and efficient. Other things I like: Exporting projects to use as a template, creating multi-version and multilingual product documentation, translation is simple as there are many translation suppliers who work with Flare, ready made templates available on the website, tutorial videos are excellent (yay Paul!). There's lots to learn and I like that. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's a steep learning curve for Flare. However, the range of tutorial videos these days is impressive. It's been really expanded since 2012. I pick and chose what I want to learn when I need it. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** The consistency and quality of the documentation I produce is high; it goes back to single sourcing :-) This makes it easy to update information in one place without a need to remember and track down information scattered in various places. ### 34. Flare enables you to generate high quality HTML5 help output **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Patricia H. | Manager, UX & Docs, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Their Technical Support is great! They are available to answer your questions very quickly (with Platinum support) and are very helpful. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** We import content from Adobe FrameMaker, so we do not use the Flare content editor. At first glance, the Flare content editor seems a bit confusing, but if I used it more frequently, I'm sure I would learn it and become efficient. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to import content from both Adobe FrameMaker and DITA projects from oXygen XML Author and generate identical output (using Flare). That is a great feature because we have technical writing teams at different locations. Also, when your company acquires new companies, Flare's ability to import multiple different types of content enables you to generate consistently branded output without going through a long conversion process. Flare supports importing content from Author-it, CHM, Confluence, DITA, Doc-to-Help, Excel, FrameMaker, HTML, HTML Help, Markdown, RoboHelp, and Word. ### 35. Easy to Learn, Easier to Use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christina M. | Technical Writer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Each update the Madcap Flare team provides seeks to make use of Madcap easier and fit the needs of their users. For example, formerly building targets for TOCs took forever (literally 20+minutes for some of my coworkers)-- new advanced options allow users to only build what is directly linked to a TOC rather than the entire project. Also, Madcap Flare is easy to learn how to use and has a robust community of users who are often easy to ask questions of. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The set up in terms of creating the git branches was not something I'd ever had to do before, but following the SOP on how to do it made enough sense, but still wasn't ideal. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Note the Target building improvement above. Aside from that Madcap Flare gives me a single location to build and publish content for a website within the company that is globally utilized. ### 36. Easy to Use Source Control For Flare Projects **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rosa D. | Senior Technical Writer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 09, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** With a push of a button, I can set up a remote repository for my flare projects. I can easily host and manage my content without dependencies on my DevOps or IT teams. I can create customer-facing for public content and staging sites to preview updates and new content in a matter of minutes. Central is an invaluable tool we use daily to manage our documentation and strategic planning. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Sometimes building the site from Central seems to take much longer than when I build on my local machine. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** By using Central, we no longer have to rely on our DevOps to create a deploy an environment for us to publish documentation. This helps us by reducing dependencies on other departments and reducing costs. Additionally, we can quickly deploy new documentation and have a foundation from which to scale as our products change and develop. ### 37. Awesome product - efficient and effective output to multiple channels **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Keith W. | Technical Author, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Madcap Flare is a fantastic product that I've been using for almost three years. Its single-sourcing abilities mean I write my content once and use it many times. My outputs can be for multiple audiences and across multiple channels. My audience love the search facility. It's a truly easy product to use, especially if you have used other technical authoring software. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Some people say that there is a steep learning curve, but to be honest, I didn't find that. It's a little expensive, but you do get what you pay for - a quality product with excellent support. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Madcap enables me to rapidly deliver content to my customers. It enables me to reuse the same content for several products. Layouts make the whole web experience for customers great without little effort once set up. ### 38. MadCap user since 2010, and still loving the product! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tracey Y. | Documentation Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I love that MadCap Flare lets me do both WYSIWIG and code-level editing for my online help content, and that it now also supports eLearning. It will much more efficient to source all of our content in one app, instead of trying to maintain it in two separate tools. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I am so busy with content creation that I haven't had time to explore the full suite of MadCap's capabilities. Much like my smart phone, I know that it has depths I haven't had a chance to plumb yet. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** The biggest problem was that for a long time, MadCap Flare didn't support eLearning content. Now that it does, I am campaigning to have our eLearning team bring their content into Flare, so that we can all use the same tools, reposititories, snippets, and more. ### 39. Great solution for our authoring processes **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 11, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I'm using Central for several years now. It is a great solution that improves supports co-operation between our Technical Writers and improves our authoring processes. In addition, Central allowed us to reduce costs, since we no longer need hardware to keep our online help up and running. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Reviewing using Central could be more improved. For example, it would be a big improvement if 'printed' documents 'as is' could be reviewed within Central. Currently, it is only possible to offer the reviewers one or more html's with a very limited layout. This way you can quickly lose the overview of the content to be reviewed. In addition, if you already invited reviewers for reviewing the html-file, and you want to invite an extra reviewer afterwards, this extra reviewer is reviewing another copy of the html-file. Reviewers that are separately invited to review should be allowed to see the same html as the reviewers formerly invited (also, see their annotations). With one html-file to be reviewed, this is not a huge problem, however, with multiple files you quickly lose overview. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We no longer need hardware to maintain and host our online help. Co-operation between our Technical Writers has improved consideratly thanks to Central. Thanks to the sync-option, our Flare-projects are always backed-upped and can be shared between our Technical Writers. ### 40. A writer's best tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The project management and source control tools have been the most helpful! Creating a site is easy and quick, and we're finding we use this feature frequently for customers to release "à la carte" content. The Teams and User Management system has also been helpful, as we have many different stakeholders. Finally, source control through Flare has been a breath of fresh air vs. the alternative. We used to get a lot of GIT-related errors, and that mostly feels like a thing of the past. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** No SSO support yet, but I've heard this feature is coming! Also, expenses to fully utilize features. Our license didn't come with SME seats, so these must be purchased as an add-on. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Central has made source control, content management, and hosting easier for us. In addition, I believe it will eventually streamline the review process with SMEs. Our team feels more productive. Thanks, MadCap! ### 41. A comprehensive writing solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Suzanne P. | Technical Writer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare makes it easy to keep our content well-organized. From advanced CSS features to highly modulable project structure, it gives us the flexibility to do things our way and offers many features that help us create content faster and more consistently. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Being a powerful software, MadCap Flare can be difficult to learn. Starting a new project can feel overwhelming when we are not sure how to do it. The support resources are great, but you might need to search a bit through user forums and blogs. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Flare allows us to have all of our support content in one place, and then produce the required documents in various formats (e.g. online, PDF, etc.) based on our needs. As such, we only need to update our content in one place when new features are released. Brand image management is also a lot easier: we can create templates as projects so that all our documents have the same look and feel. If changes are made to the brand, we can simply edit the template and recreate all our documents in a matter of minutes. ### 42. Makes topic reviews so much easier! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Insurance | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Central makes it so much quicker and easier for me to send out topics to Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for review and then incorporate amendments into my project. The interface is simple and intuitive - and my SMEs seem to find it easy to use too. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The default column order for the 'Reviews' pane in Flare isn't useful for me, so I rearrange it... but Flare won't save my preferences. The next time I go to Flare, the columns are back to the default order. Since using Central, I've found that Flare is slower to open and use because it seems to want to keep syncing with the cloud. Sometimes I can't move or rename files, which I also think is to do with the syncing. But maybe this is something I'm doing wrong?! I'd love for Central to help me monitor reviews. Currently, I send the topic from Flare to the SME and then send a separate email to them with instructions and deadline date. I then manually check for responses and chase the SME. It would be great if I could customise the email sent from Flare to include all the information I need to send. It would also be great if Central could note the deadline date and let me know when it's passed so I can chase the SME (or even better, it could send an auto reminder!). **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I need to send a large number of Flare topics to many different SMEs on a regular basis. Before Central, I needed to export the content to Word, email it to the SME, they'd mark up changes and send it back, and then I'd make the changes in Flare. That was very time-consuming! However, with Central, I can simply send the topic to the SME and then choose whether or not to incorporate their amendments into my project. I also love that I get 'Phrases with No Results' analytics - this has helped me make improvements so my readers can find what they're looking for. ### 43. Works as expected and meets my current requirements **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Philanthropy | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** - Customer service is awesome - Tool works as expected, meets my current requirements - Really liked the Madcap Capture app that came with it, very useful - Liking the multi-language capability - not needed yet but will likely need in the future - loved the videos that were available online **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** - I think the interface looks a little dated. I don't have an issue with it, but when it comes to socializing the app with colleagues, that's the first impression that comes up. - For some reason, sometimes I'll use it and every typed letter takes a while to enter. may be my computer? other times, it's not an issue. all times, the xml editor (showing the tags) has no such delay/latency issues -while I loved the videos, I realize many were out of date, referred to previous versions - an updated collection would be great **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I had a number of manuals (12+) that needed updating and were in Word. It was a nightmare trying to keep updating common sections and screenshots. I know folks use Flare for web but I use it for PDFs and love it. Flare plus Capture really saved me a lot of time and made me more productive! I can also build new manuals based on existing sections! It's made manual upkeep much more enjoyable! ### 44. Best for content management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I've used/implemented MadCap Flare at 5 different companies since 2015. Flare is the best tool I've encountered for complex software that requires strong documentation content organization and reuse capabilities. One set of source files can be used to generate documentation in multiple output formats. Flare offers native support for many different types of source control. I can publish HTML5 help to my deployment pipeline directly from within Flare. Flare offers wysiwyg editors for html topic content, responsive content formatting, and CSS, which is helpful because it means you don't have to be a web developer to use it. Offers many bells and whistles for modern documentation authoring, like links/cross-references, related topics, microcontent search capabilities, native support for SOME types of video embeds, dropdowns, conditional text. Great community help in terms of blogs, forums, user conferences, and template site offerings. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Sometimes the relationship with source control acts up and requires tapping in your IT team to troubleshoot. It's an extensive, robust solution, and it's getting more expensive, so it's a tough sell to keep your license current at software companies that have a budget. Flare has no user analytics, so you can't see how people are using the documentation without adding third-party analytics. Great for creating an extensive online help site, but not great for offering field-level help or walk-throughs right in the product, which is what many users want today. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** content organization, content reuse, easy online help site deployment ### 45. Happy MadCap user for 15 years **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lisa H. | Experience Content Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** My top 3 favorite capabilities of MadCap Central are analytics, cloud reviews, and sites. The analytics are simple, meaningful, and actionable, answering important questions like exactly what words and phrases do our users search for? Which searches yield no results or too many results? Do we have micro content set up for those words and phrases? Cloud reviews allow us to get feedback from virtually anyone in our organization and lets them use a lightweight interface to provide edits and comments. When you make tech reviews easy like thath it's much easier to get tech reviews! And sites make it easy to share internal previews when we aren't quite ready to stage or publish the content. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Due to our security model we aren't able to use Central for publishing directly to our user community so we only publish for internal site reviews. But we configured an easy "set it and forget it" publishing mechanism with Git and a build machine license. Pro tip - always keep your build machine license and MadCap subscription versions in sync! **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** MadCap Central analytics help us deliver the content our users are actually looking for, not just what we think they're looking for. So we don't waste time creating or maintaining content that isn't helpful. And our users trust that they will find the information they need. Bonus points for "search phrases with no results" that identifies potential content gaps and drives smarter phrase/answer pairing for micro content. ### 46. So much potential. Looking forward to the future. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Project management and source control tools are very good with great integration into Madcap Flare. Building sites is very quick and super flexible to meet the needs of our complex release cycle. User management is also very easy to maintain. Setting up source control through Flare is much easier than using a third-party source control provider. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Reviews in Central need to be modernized to support stylesheets, variables, and snippets. The Review process in Flare needs to be updated from the legacy email-centric tools to more closely follow the Central process. We need dashboards to monitor the progress of all reviews. Central also needs Single Sign-On to make user management even easier. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Madcap Central makes it very easy to produce and publish content in a very fast-paced agile development process. We have improved our collaboration with software development to externalize our help and move it to the cloud. This helps us make updates and customer-specific improvements on the fly, without having to wait for the next software release. ### 47. A great tool for authors to create useful and effective materials **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** There are many features I like about Flare but it shines with its single sourcing features. Features like snippets, variables, and conditions significantly reduce my workload and allow me to create print, web, and now eLearning materials from the same content. A single tech writer on our team is able to support about 18-20 developers thanks to features like this. I also really enjoy features like the link viewer which let me see where content is linked to/from which is very helpful when documenting products that frequently change and require updating. The built-in analysis tool is also something I use frequently to help maintain my project and ensure there are no broken links or any other issues. The analysis tool is also useful for suggesting single-sourcing opportunities. Beyond those features, managing the content is a dream in the XML editor. You can easily apply common styles, move content around, and add cross-references/hyperlinks without corrupting the document or styles. Maintaining our company's branding and adhering to our style guide is a no-brainer with Flare as you can set all that up with templates, stylesheets, and page layouts. You really can do a lot with Flare and there's definitely a reason why so many writers prefer it. MadCap also does a phenomenal job at providing free training for getting started using Flare. The online guides are excellent tools and their bank of recorded webinars is also super useful. Thanks to these resources, I was able to train a new junior writer on our team in a few days with minimal effort on my part. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Flare can be intimidating to new users simply because there's so much you can do with it, but there's lots of resources to help out with that. One thing I wish MadCap would do is update their screen capture software that comes with Flare. It works really well when used with Flare but I wish it had better editing capabilities and a few other features like for SUI and translating strings in captures. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a plethora of products that share a lot of common information yet are of course nuanced enough to need their own specific documentation. Flare allows us to single-source and save time when it comes to that common information and flag the content that is nuanced so it appears only where it should. Without it, we'd be writing the same thing in multiple documents making maintenance a time consuming nightmare. It also allows us to meet the need to have both web and print versions of the same content, again without any duplication. ### 48. MadCap meets my needs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare is easy to use, and I can generate output in a reasonable amount of time. Previously we used FrameMaker, and it took a lot longer to generate the PDF and help output. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I experience a number of errors every day where there's a notice that Flare had a problem and it offers me the chance to submit a ticket. I know that when I submit a ticket, I'm going to get the standard response of: delete the Output and Analyzer folders, clean my registry, and so on. Rarely has my problem actually been addressed and resolved, so I don't bother submitting tickets for those incidents anymore. I just live with that dialog and click the Don't Send report button whenever it comes up. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's easy to use. We were using Structured FrameMaker before, which I know fairly well but presents a steep learning curve for people who haven't used it before. It's easier to get people up and running with Flare. Additionally, we have a number of methods for content reuse (shared content, conditions, variables). Processing that from FrameMaker, with the third-party tools and plug-ins that we were using, was a tedious process that required a writer to be hands-on for the whole time. MadCap Flare includes tools that allow us to reuse content, and we can generate the output with a single click of a button. It then runs in the background, unlike FrameMaker, so we can work on other things while generating output. ### 49. Document management system that gets the job done. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Package/Freight Delivery | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap is pretty much the only system out there that allows the most versatile and robust authoring and document management. It has an unlimited number of features you can choose from to create your super-customized workflow, document design and control. It's very well thought through and way ahead of any other document management system on the market. PDF creation of a large and elaborate manual is just a click of the button. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It is far from perfect. The system runs only on Windows. If you want it to work on a Mac, you will need to use Parallels Desktop or something similar. The UI is a bit dated. The screen is very complex, which makes work on small monitors almost impossible. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were able to create a solid workflow, which makes it easy for us to author multiple documents with reusable content while keeping uniform design and version control. MadCap automated functions, which simply don't exist in other authoring systems, save us plenty of time and effort. ### 50. The best keeps getting better **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Garry S. | Technical Writer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 02, 2022 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Madcap Flare has been my goto authoring tool for 5 years or more. I appreciate the ease of use, and the support from both Madcap and the Flare community at large. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I find that the tool has a couple of quirks that interrupt my workflow sometimes. The main one is the inability to import a word document into a project bound to a Team Foundation Server. I mentioned it to Madcap support and they made note of it. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I create numerous help documentation in a variety of formats (Online, Word, PDFs). The main benefit of Flare is the ability to generate output in all those formats using a single set of documentation. ## MadCap Flare Discussions - [How to enable/ perform case-sensitive search in Flare?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-to-enable-perform-case-sensitive-search-in-flare) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Can I try it out in my environment?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/can-i-try-it-out-in-my-environment) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What training resources are available?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-training-resources-are-available) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What licensing options are available?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-licensing-options-are-available) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [If our team uses Flare, what can we expect in terms of the return on investment?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/if-our-team-uses-flare-what-can-we-expect-in-terms-of-the-return-on-investment) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [View MadCap Flare pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/madcap-flare/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=5§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-14+07%3A32%3A13+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b3bab63b-7fa2-40ea-b9a4-11d93088f776&secure%5Btoken%5D=a5e7503794d506b7223aa705489e7c5a21b83cd138d521118713bde4dc9ed71d&format=llm_user) ## MadCap Flare Integrations - [GitHub](https://www.g2.com/products/github/reviews) - [MadCap Flare Online](https://www.g2.com/products/madcap-flare-online/reviews) ## MadCap Flare Features **Additional Functionality** - Third-Party Integrations - To-Do List - @mentions - Single Sign On - File Management - Activity Dashboard - Drag & Drop - Alerts/Notifications - Prioritization - Access Controls/Permissions - Screen Sharing - Content Management - Brainstorming - AI Copilot - File Transfer - Calendar Management - Status Tracking - Real-Time Notifications - Version Control - Task Management - Activity Tracking - Real Time Editing - Communication Management - Chat/Messaging - Tagging - Generative AI - Assignment Management - Task Scheduling - Project Management - Collaboration Tools - Workflow Management - Secure Data Storage - File Sharing - Document Storage - Task Progress Tracking - Discussions/Forums - Commenting/Notes - Reporting & Statistics - Contact Management - Video Conferencing - Progress Tracking - Mobile Access - API - Document Management - Customizable Branding **Content** - Content Authoring - Rich Text Editor - Versioning - Plug-ins/Widgets/Apps - Approval Process - Content Scheduling - Asset Management - Internal Search - Content Repository - SEO Management - eCommerce Management - Forms Management - Campaign Management - Media Management - Drag & Drop Editor - Audio Editor **Design** - Graphics - Templates - Themes **Design** - Breadth of Pre-Built Templates - Mobile - Branding/Themes - Customization **Collaboration** - Multi-User Collaboration - Real-Time Communication **Platform** - User Community - SEO - Flexible Navigation Structures - User, Role, and Access Management - Enterprise Scalability - Internationalization - Dashboards and Reports - API **File Types** - Export - Import - Web Publishing **Edit & Revise** - Revision History - Suggestion Mode - Document Editor **Agentic AI - Web Content Management** - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction - Social Media Integration **Additional Functionality** - AI/Machine Learning - Reporting/Analytics - Collaboration Tools - Image Editing - Website Publishing Options - Chatbot - Content Publishing Options - Text Editing - Access Control - Website Accessibility Tools - Content Delivery - Content Personalization - Configurable Workflow - Generative AI - Alerts/Notifications - Video Editing - AI Copilot - Performance Testing - Activity Monitoring - Multi-Channel Distribution **Integrate & Embed** - Calendar - Website - Applications **Operating System** - PC Operating System - Mac Operating System - Linux Operating System **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation - AI Text Summarization - AI Text-to-Image - AI Text-to-Speech - AI Image-to-Text **Agentic AI - Document Creation** - Proactive Assistance ## Top MadCap Flare Alternatives - [ClickHelp](https://www.g2.com/products/clickhelp/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (65 reviews) - [Document360](https://www.g2.com/products/document360/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (529 reviews) - [Microsoft Word](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-word/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (2,018 reviews)