UO

Verified User in Online Media

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

9/16/2021

"Excellent storytelling software"

5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

It's very easy to use and intuitive – and it looks great. The team are also extremely helpful when it comes to any issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

Sometimes there are issues when embedding its stories on our own site, but these are usually resolved quickly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MT

Mark T.

Acting Manager – Education, Technology and Academic Development (ETAD)

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

5/19/2021

"Digital Storytelling in Tertiary Education"

5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

Visually striking and easy to use platform Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

Slowdown when using large images and vid Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Shorthand:

Save yourself some time looking at others and take the leap with shorthand. Works great across teams and allows you to quickly create visually striking content with ease of navigation and collaboration. Just make sure you practice the humble face you'll make when receiving complements, while being painfully aware that it only took you about 30 minutes to create something professional and unique. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Shorthand solving and how is that benefiting you?

Engaging students across longer periods, evaluating effectiveness with analytics to drive continuous improvement. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AH

Verified User in Higher Education

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

11/26/2021

"Excellent product, outstanding customer service. I never write reviews, so it must be good."

4.5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

Support for new and potential future users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

Capers, word counts, enforced feedback structures. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AR

Verified User in Renewables & Environment

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

2/19/2021

"An engaging and user-friendly way to add value and compile a story without prior coding knowledge."

4.5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

The fact you could create an interesting scroll-read without having prior coding knowledge.

Functional section layouts and easy ways of adding images and text. Alternative smaller screen versions and alt text for accessibility were useful additions.

Good tips and supporting documents for safe areas, image resolution and effective file format. And live/recorded tutorials to understand the workings were a useful reference at any time.

Customising options by allowing the user/client to add in the specific brand details – logo, font and colours.

Prompt support from the shorthand team, especially technical and theme support Alex Marshall and Dawn Murden. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

I found the theme form quite complex without a visual reference and what each section/heading or body style would look like. It would be good if the form had visual elements built in to cross-reference the context of the style and colour, especially where they would be applied and how they would appear.

And one other thing was not being able to have different height sections for text over media and scrollmation sections. Sometimes these sections aren't very long when they are broken up for layout reasons, so you end up with a lot of blank space. It would be good to have full and half screen layout like the title section for these as well.

In some sections I found the alignment of the image containers (top and left) to the text column a bit off and this bothered me, all it needed was a light nudge to align. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Shorthand:

An engaging medium if the story is visually compelling and has supporting visuals and media to offer. Storyboard and plan the story on paper before moving on to building the visual. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Shorthand solving and how is that benefiting you?

In the current circumstances (unpredicted 'pandemic') when we've lost human contact and sharing important reports and research via conferences, meetings with people using printed reports and other tactile means, shorthand helps bridge this gap by allowing a more user-friendly way of sharing a story and adding value to a report. As the report we worked with had many reviews and videos, Shorthands dynamic workspace with images, text and video aided a more interactive approach of telling the story. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AO

Verified User in Oil & Energy

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

9/29/2021

"Good understanding of our needs and excellent delivery."

5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

Shorthand were very responsive to any questions we raised and always happy to confirm what was happening at each stop of the process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

I don't have any negatives, our experience was 100% positive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

MH

Michelle H.

Writer and coach

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5/10/2021

Business partner of the seller or seller's competitor, not included in G2 scores.

"Deadline response"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

We needed help getting a story published on deadline and the customer "success manager" came through. Thanks Shorthand ! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

I wish more people used Shorthand. It's a great tool. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UN

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

5/28/2021

"Great product, great service!"

5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

Shorthand is a really intuitive platform that makes it easy to produce engaging, beautiful digital content. The service is brilliant, with as much 1:1 support as you need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

I can't think of any specific downsides other than relatively high costs which can be a bit tricky for my org. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

UH

Verified User in Higher Education

Enterprise (> 1000 emp.)

6/25/2021

"Shorthand - Flexible, Intuitive and appealing visual design"

4.5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

I really like the visually attractive templates available and the fact that it's easy to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

Not a lot to talk about here once you get used to the concept of stories live in collections which in turn live in stories. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

HC

Helena C.

Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.)

9/23/2020

"It radically changed how we think of content and what we can accomplish."

5/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

The universe of possibilities it opens up for us, in terms of what we can do with our content. It's very flexible, and yet, it always looks cohesive and elegant. The user experience is wonderful every time. The Reveal Section has endless uses: we've published animated cartoons, interactive waterworks infographics, pie/bar charts and photographs. This range provides an opportunity to rethink content - what we can do and how we can do it - and to incorporate new methodologies into our conceptualization process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

Depending on what you want to achieve, it can be the right tool for you or not. If you want total freedom to design user experience and interactivity, this wouldn't be the right platform. But for newsrooms without coding capabilities, this is as good as it gets. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Shorthand:

If you think this can be the right fit for your needs, do it. Get Shorthand. If you use its sections creatively, the possibilities are endless for what you can accomplish with your content. You get a flexible and elegant user interface, and strong backend processing capabilities. It is also easy to use, scale and incorporate into your production pipeline.

With Shorthand you can stop worring about the software and focus on creating the best content.

It's an overall superior product. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Shorthand solving and how is that benefiting you?

We are able to publish interactive, engaging and informative stories eficiently and without having to code. As a small newsroom in a country like Venezuela, our resources are limited. We face many constraints, from internet speed to hiperinflation, that make having a full-time programming team impossible. Shorthand allows us an array of content possibilities that work well with our needs and capabilities. The content is easy to upload, and therefore, the process is easy to incorporate into our pipeline, and several sections provide the opportunity to build interactivity through good design.

Shorthand allows small newsrooms to build big stories. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

AH

Andy H.

Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.)

9/22/2020

"Shorthand has enabled us to deliver content in a wider range of styles and in a more engaging manner"

4/5

What do you like best about Shorthand?

The relative simplicity of the system - it's very easy to find your way round. And it's pretty intuitive too. Where it's not, there's normally some kind of help page or article that points you in the right direction. Also like the preview option to check your work as you go along and that you don't have to constantly save while putting an article together. When Ive' encountered technical publishing-related issues, I'm pleased to say the help desk has been pretty quick to respond on the whole. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What do you dislike about Shorthand?

The lack of ability to make adjustments such as font size and column width within templates. Some built in image editing software would be useful too. For some articles you have to crop an image in so many different dimensions so that works well in all the different places - desktop version, mobile version, social channels. We've had some issues with a recent update at Shorthand's end which means articles look good in preview but when published the images are all pixelated. Apparently it's an issue at our end with our webservers but, to my knowledge, we weren't warned in advance that there could be disruption. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Recommendations to others considering Shorthand:

Get your theme right from the start. And explore how others have put Shorthand to use - it will stimulate ideas. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What problems is Shorthand solving and how is that benefiting you?

The ability to display not only data in a much more engaging way, but general content too. Articles are clutter-free, easy to digest and a pleasure to lazily scroll through. We've not really had the ability to do that before and consequently traction of our long-form reads has increased. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.