The flexibility and feature-set of the software. If something is not supported natively in Flare, it's always possible to script it and create features using Javascript or other common web-based tools. Combining Javascript with the native Flare features opens up nearly any possibility. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The software itself feels old-fashioned and building outputs may take a long time depending on the size of the project and the speed of the computer. In addition, it is only available in Windows with no cloud-based solution. Creating a web-based Flare platform would make the software much more valuable to my organization as most of the company is not using Windows and does not need the entire feature set. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- 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 Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- 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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love the ability to build PDF, HTML, and Microsoft word outputs with the same HTML content. It's a great platform for collaborating with my coworkers and team. It makes it very easy to work remotely. The ease of use and the ability to learn new things while working in code view has helped me be a better tech writer. With the snippet and variable functionality, it makes it much easier for us makes rolling changes across our content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some of the user interfaces take a little bit of research to use but work great once you get the hang of it. The constant platform updates sometimes contain bugs when they are first released. I would really appreciate more options when it came to outputs as well and the ability to integrate with Kustomer would be appreciated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Versatility - The sheer number of publishing mediums available, with ease of build and publishing. It is surely my preferred way of managing end to end documentation needs for organizational projects.

True single sourcing - You can see your content changes reflected in real time the moment you save press Save. Instead of other competitive authoring tools that require you to perform certain iterations before you could hope to see the changes. Made life much easier.

Easier publishing methods - define variables, set TOCs and output path. Sit back and see it working in glory. Surely much better curve than doing book based printing and god forbid if you forgot to uncheck Print to File there.

Keyboard oriented commands - so glad they let the escape key sit in peace and gave us usual key combinations to carry out frequently done tasks. Super user-friendly and fast to achieve your deadlines.

Support team - raising bugs with crash reports, makes the support team actually respond and tell us the steps needed. Much appreciated. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Unstable - I might be overstating this but the number of times it crashed on me while I was obliviously lost in the middle of something - is uncountable. The support team, no doubt, responds to each bug I raise. But if I have to clear the analyzer, user and output folder before doing a project. I think that calls for a little tightening of the ends. Sometimes the crashes are so persistent, that I can't do anything other than to kill Madcap from the Taskbar and hope against hope, my last inadvertent save was effective.

Pure Development-oriented messaging - Not exactly a con, but this is as close to an authoring IDE as you can come to. Pretty evident from the error messages it throws up. From "...must be 248 characters or less" to intimidating "Object reference not found" -- me being from the technical side of the deal, can still manage to read through. Some of my team members with core writing experience were not so amused by witnessing such errors and apparently, they still get nightmares of build paths being more than 248 characters.

Publishing on the web server is a hit or miss. Sometimes it works, and other times sit simply and keep waiting for a response. That makes it much more time efficient to manually go and do the task instead of waiting for it to complete.

No perpetual license anymore - the major cons, the introduction of a subscription model is a straightaway hit at the lesser mortals individual authors like us who lived on the hope of eternal existence for a software. Just like how some photography lovers still use Photoshop 7.0 without breaking a sweat.

Learning curve - new users migrating from much easier-on-eye UI tools (Word, WordPad, etc) might need a stent for their arteries after seeing the spectacle it first throws at your face upon first loading up - TOCs, Targets, Projects... But on the flip side, that's where the joy lies in exploring it.

Project migration from Framemaker/word - still not perfect. Indentation and alignments are big misses that make it a completely foregone conclusion to think about it. Maybe I did it wrong but each time I attempted this, I thought about those stents too! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Flare is a great single-sourcing tool; we often have to create different flavors of the same documentation for multiple audiences, and Flare makes it easy to share core content but condition differences for different audiences. I also appreciate Flare's ability to track changes - while this is such a basic feature, it's one that I've weirdly found missing from some other programs we've considered for documentation. It's great to be able to hop into the code for individual topics and make changes there when you can't quite get formatting to work in the text editor. We've also had great success with some unique, user-friendly Flare features for our help sites, like microcontent and glossaries. Overall, Flare has been a very functional tool for creating our help documentation; while we've occasionally considered alternatives, we haven't found anything that quite stacks up. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are a few frustrating roadblocks we've encountered with Flare, and have not been able to resolve even with the platinum-level help of MadCap Support. One of those problems is seemingly basic flaws in the MadCap search functionality on our help websites; for example, a space in a search phrase is treated as a Boolean "AND," so that users entering more than one word in the search box will ONLY get results if those results contain ALL of those words (and there is no easy way to change this). MadCap also has supposedly built-in support for a few tools that we really wanted to use, including ElasticSearch and a connector to Salesforce, but we've ultimately found those tools to be flawed or unreliable (e.g., MadCap only supports a very outdated version of ElasticSearch, which we won't implement for security reasons). We've also had constant trouble with source control (Git), particularly with creating or loading others' new branches for Flare projects, and have to use manual command-line intervention (external to Flare) to get this essential feature to work reliably. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MadCap Flare can be used in a DevOps manner with nightly builds of the documentation. Automated processes can be designed around it. The HTML-based sources allow editing via search & replace, which is useful when we need to "correct" structural aspects. The support of source control and CSS is a powerful technology behind Flare, which offers quite some possibilities. Basic HTML5 output with responsive design can easily be created with a decent out-of-the-box online search. Sharing the same content in different outputs (PDF and HTML5) is a great pro. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

CSS is complex, and it seems like the Flare UI offers thousands of options that originate from CSS, which are supported by Flare, plus a few add-ons that are specific functionality of Flare. Often, when it comes to layout issues, in particular in print, these cannot be solved by Flare but then require some workarounds to harness CSS (again in our experience with a focus on print). Indeed, workarounds can often be found, but are cumbersome to implement in existing large documentation projects. If your project grows over time, you need to manage past versions for longer periods and want to maintain a very nice output (be it accurate print or just the one HTML5 feature that you still be missing), be prepared for refactoring tasks. Unexpected issues must often be faced on the side. In contrast, if you only have to deal with short-lived smaller projects, you will probably feel happy to improve with each iteration of a new project. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.