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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes building the site from Central seems to take much longer than when I build on my local machine. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Analytics and reporting give me the tools I need to prioritise the documentation requirements. You can use Google analytics to provide some of this information but it does not give you the same in-depth analysis that Central does. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't use all the features. I am a team of one and I don't use the reviewer features, there are a lot of features in the product and not all are obvious to me as a user as to what they do. When you open the product it's a blank canvas to add widgets and dahsboards but it should give you a starting point and maybe requires some UX improvements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The feature of XML is the most useful feature, it simplifies formatting and makes document update simpler. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

A few things that I disliked about Flare was, when I generate online output. I get all the files despites turning off the variables. Even in my firm, we rely on flare solely for offline documentation, but for online, we still don't rely on it.

Flare can use major ugrade for online documentation, as per latest trends.

Also, the transformation of word to flare doesn't work as expected.

There should be tutorial videos in the help section to describe this feature and describe this conversion process in detail. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Flare interface includes many context menus that can be used to understand how the file you are working on (whether that be a topic, table of contents file, target, snippet, page layout etc. ) is related to other files in the project. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Occasionally the screen sort of 'seizes up' and momentarily turns black, and during these episodes one cannot be sure what exactly is happening, or even whether the program is about to crash (which it sometimes does). Generally though, these incidents are uncommon. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ability to have the whole team pull projects from the latest version. This is our preferred venue for a large, thorny project that regularly has six contributors. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I'd like a per-company option to set up something like folders-- all the projects affiliated with Project A in one area, Project B in the next folder, etc. That would make it easier to assign permissions and even to locate projects rather than searching by product. The flat view of everything in one pool isn't great. We also checked out the associated review tool and found it lacking in features. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

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. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The single sourcing is a huge bonus. Variables, snippets, and conditions are all game changers for big documentation packages. The interface is mostly easy to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's definitly HTML focused and print output options are poor compared to Microsoft Word or Adobe products. Inserting images results in very poor image quality. MadCap Capture is a joke--don't use it. Their Flare Helpline is hit or miss on whether they will be able to actually help or not. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MadCap support is without fail quick and capable.

Helpful and enthusiastic user community.

Good tutorials and training videos.

Fairly capable and complete support for topic based authoring and publishing. If you need a lot of re-use and don't want to use Adobe FrameMaker, Author-it, or a DITA-based CCMS, this is the obvious alternative.

Lots of nifty built-in writing and analysis tools.

Almost all Flare project and content files are XML-based and 'hackable'.

Integration with several source control systems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The webhelp/portal output is heavily based on a somewhat outdated tech stack (jQuery). For integration into other portals or content delivery platforms like Fluid Topics, you can output clean XHTML, but might have to re-implement some features.

The built-in PDF rendering engine is a bit cumbersome wrt font configuration. We need CJK, Arabic, and Cyrillic as well as Latin scripts and had to implement some less-than-obvious workarounds.

To me, the basic editing features are a bit clumsy and inconsistent compared to, say Adobe FrameMaker or Arbortext Editor.

Some re-use features, for example redefintion of variables, can become unwieldy in large projects.

In large projects (many thousands topics), several features -- including editing -- get bogged down.

The user community is small compared to DITA and/or Adobe Framemaker.

Few suppliers of plug-ins and add-on tools compared to DITA and/or Adobe Framemaker.

Flare file formats are essentially undocumented. The support for XML Schema is not even halfbaked.

Flare API documentation is rudimentary. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.