--- 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: '2026-07-20' 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. Great software, very easy to use. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin D. | Support/QA Manager, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2017 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The ease of use and good help materials. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Nothing really. It has met all out needs. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We revised an old RoboHelp 8 Help system with it, worked very well. ### 2. Tried a few Flare won out 10x over! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Theresa (TJ) C. | Senior Lead Technologist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 05, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare is easy to learn, but flexible for the advanced user. Most if not all bugs found are addressed within a year. I've never experience this with any software in the past. Most software bugs are addressed within a 5 year time frame. With flare it feels as though they listen and are instantly improving. I started at this company using Word Processing, just superseding the literal copy and paste with glue and scissors! I worked to get a central database resource software of ANY type and tried Frame Maker with DITAToo plugin. After two years of dealing with problems and not getting solid, functional, productive solutions back from adobe or DITAToo faster than 14 days (Feedback yes, solutions no.) we still were not ramped up and running. I had to consider the software a sunk cost and move on. By then, MadCap had been born and I pulled us on board with Flare as fast as I could. We were up and running in 3 months!! We didn't have all content transferred over, but that wasn't in the plan anyway. It was the easiest transition, learning curve, and solution I have ever seen in a software, ever! It is intuitive, surprising, and even teaches you through example. I'm amazed and will be hard pressed to ever move away from Flare for any reason. Now I'm looking for more reasons and ways to use Flare in our daily operations. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's still a new software, and the being a software, there are going to be bugs. But, they fix them so fast, its negligible. And the support team is amazing. I've spoken with them most every week and get solutions within minutes, not weeks! **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Consider who is going to process your content and outputs now and in the future. If you want a cheap learning curve, invest now in Flare, and their support plan. It pays dividends down the road. And, Flare is transparent with zero hidden proprietary programming, so no matter who takes over after it is implemented, the learning curve will be shorter than most any other software. I only say most because I haven't tried others. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Content re-use. Faster content updates. ### 3. A lot of front-end work, but the end result is worth it. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric M. | Sr. Technical Writer, Content Architect, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** (1) Single-sourcing is a requirement when publishing similar content for multiple products or platforms. Flare has very robust features for sharing content like this, plus a comfy user interface that lets you make style changes while keeping the gritty reality of HTML code out of sight (or in a separate pane to keep an eye on it, if you desire). (2) Though getting multiple languages to generate right can be time-consuming, in the end it is in fact completely possible to change one image (as an example) and then with a single click, build every translation or document version, and post them to an unlimited number of locations (server, library, web). Watching that process flash across the screen is extremely satisfying! (3) Platinum phone support gets you real live professional LOCAL support within seconds, every time, no pressing 15 numbers and waiting around or waiting for a callback. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** (1) Even on my top-end PC and running off an SSD hard drive, Flare can get very resource-hungry sometimes, causing my mouse to lag and snap around the screen until Flare finishes whatever it's doing. Sometimes it's like working on a remote PC on the other side of the world. Fortunately these occurrences are brief and the software otherwise works as fast as you'd expect it to. (2) Flare usually forces me to shut down Acrobat before it will generate a PDF, so I can't do other review work in the minute or two while my project is generating. This could be Acrobat's problem with properly releasing control of files. (3) Flare's integration with Lingo is not as seamless as is suggested; it rapidly diverges from the single-sourcing concept both in source files and output, and working around that to force it to use common folders, images, and style sheets is time-consuming and impossible for anyone uncomfortable noodling around in HTML. (4) All translations require individual tweaks to the final output; there is no way to retain these tweaks (spacing, pagination, unique hyperlinks, etc.), so on next regeneration, boom--hope you wrote 'em down somewhere! **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** It can be a steep learning curve. Get the free demo and play around. Buy the platinum support for the first year and watch the many videos and webinars. Go to the MadWorld conference. Plan on at least three months to produce an end product you'd let the public see. Check the newsgroups or Google for help--most questions have already been answered! **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Flare and Lingo are helping us streamline our output and integration of material to translate. Once all the pieces are in place, publishing can happen with a single click on a batch process. ### 4. Best Solution Available for Lone Writers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michelle L. | Documentation Manager, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I used to manage a team of three writers, plus myself. Together we produced upwards of 3,000 pages of documentation for every software release. This was with updates to existing documentation plus writing about new functionality so it was not complete rewrites of the 3,000 pages, but a combination of maintaining the documentation and adding to it. Due to both attrition and downsizing, the "team" eventually became just me. (Proof that there is an "I" in team. HA!) Thankfully before all of the churn we had started using MadCap Flare to produce all of our online help and user guides. Before we used Flare it took 40+ hours to update all of our user guides even when all we changed was the software release number and release date on the covers. Now it takes me about an hour, all alone, because I've automated it all in Flare. Additionally, my company is a government contractor and we are required to provide Section 508-compliant documentation. I thought my release notes and new functionality guides (the only things I did NOT author in Flare until about three months ago) were all Section 508 compliant, but upon running tests on them with Adobe Acrobat, I discovered that they were not. I started authoring even the release notes and new functionality guides in Flare, with output that went straight to PDF, and voila! Problem solved. Passed all of the Adobe Acrobat compliance tests with flying colors. I now use Word only to write my weekly grocery list. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** You have to be kind of a gear head to use the software--or at least be willing to stop and tinker around a little bit when problems occur. Even then it's still worth the rare headaches that it causes. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take the Flare training classes and brush up on W3C. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Takes me less time to produce the same volume of documentation. AND my documentation is Section 508 compliant without me having to think too much about it. ### 5. The MadeCap suite enables me to achieve my goals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Linda W. | Product Documentation Manager, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** It is such a versatile tool - especially with the most recent releases, I am able to design a layout and format that works for my company. The fact that I can re-use content and publish it in virtually any format, electronic or print, allows me to work efficiently. The ability to customize output for various targets, using the content from the same project provides the ability to publish for multiple versions and product variations all in one place. Product support is amazing. Anytime I've had a question or problem, they've been there to help get it resolved in a timely and professional manner. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I love having integrated graphics and movie modules. It would be great to see more upgrades in those modules. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** In my opinion, there is not another vendor out there that provides this level of software for creating and publishing documentation. There is a learning curve, and it is helpful if you have some understanding of HTML and CSS. MadCap provides free recorded tutorials in addition to classroom and online courses. It is well worth the investment that might be required to learn this tool. Once you have learned the basics, you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish. This tool can help you look like a superstar with what you will be able to create. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We've gone from no online or printed help to a multi-version multi-product help system that is available in WebHelp or PDF format. This has increased customer satisfaction and assisted our internal employees in finding answers to product questions. ### 6. A stable, easy to use tool - easily the best authoring tool I have used in 26 years of writing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nigel B. | Senior Technical Writer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Once I had set Flare up to produce the look and feel I wanted, generating standardized and consistent outputs was simply a matter of clicking a button. Flare is stable and predictable, and in the rare event that I have a problem, the support team are always polite, helpful and provide a result. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The style sheets are huge, and one needs to have a fairly good grip on the principles of CSS to get quick results (I don't). It is not always easy to find the style I need to edit to achieve the results I want. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Get it, and do the course ASAP. My HOD waited 3 years before sending me on the course, and I could have saved a LOT of time and effort during the Flare set-up phase had I known what I was doing from the beginning. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** My company has over 30 documentation projects for software applications that are updated using agile development, and requests for major and minor changes arrive continually. We need to keep on top of the job, and Flare allows us to achieve this. ### 7. Flare-tastic! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rosa D. | Documentation Manager, Entertainment, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The versatility of the product. There is so much you can do with Flare when it comes to one source publishing. The more I learn, the more impressed I am with this. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The difficulty in learning the best practices for using the system. Because it is so versatile, unless you have training when you first start using the tool it is very hard to know where to begin. While the online PDF's and Getting Started videos are quite helpful I have learned a lot more though the monthly webinars as to how to work with my projects more efficiently. Due to work loads and back log, taking the time to get training and learn to use Flare meant jumping in with both feel and get going. Nearly one year later, I am still trying to clean up the project I started with due to my lack of direction at the start. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take advantage of the training opportunities MadCap offers. They are fantastic at putting great webinars and the annual conference has so much benefit it is worth every penny. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Need for training documents for our product. We now have high quality output in PDF's and help documentation integrated right into our app. We are working on integrating a second help file into another one of our product platforms. ### 8. A very powerful tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bob P. | Technical Writer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I transitioned from Adobe FrameMaker 12 to MadCap Flare 11. There was enough commonality of features between the two to make the transition relatively painless. I like that Flare 12 is usable by both WYSIWYG guys like me and code monkeys, too. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** We have very complex projects with a lot of single-sourcing. I find that we push the capabilities of Flare from time to time. Flare 12 has a nasty habit of crashing and locking files at inopportune times. I find I have to reboot my system a disturbing number of times. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take Flare training and attend the MadWorld conference before implementing. Both MadCap and their users are very good at answering questions and problem solving. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** As I noted earlier, we have a lot of single-sourcing (60+ docs out of 8 projects), and we also keep many versions of our doc sets current. Frame can handle this level of complexity. ### 9. We are a MadCap Flare shop! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Debra J. | Immediate Past President, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I like the robust nature of this product. My team loves the product. They are experts and can use it with ease. We like that MadCap is always adding new features and capabilities. We are looking forward to new features such as Madcap Central. It is easy to install on local machines. It is easy to connect to our TFS source control. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's very difficult to get someone new up-to-speed quickly. It can be complicated. I wish there was a cheaper overview training for managers who are not in the tool all day or every day but need to understand the workflow. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** The value for the cost is terrific. Just make sure to get as much training as possible... you will be happy that you did. It's a great tool. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Consistency in content production Standardization Quicker time to market Maintaining legacy content but having the ability to produce newer HTML5 Responsive design outputs ### 10. MadCap Flare - An Incredible Improvement **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Breezy W. | Content Developer/Technical Writer, Industrial Automation, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** It is hard to pick one thing that I like best. Flare has so many more capabilities than our previous software. I am always learning something new (and cool) about this software. The very best thing about Flare though is the MadCap Customer Support team. They are TOP NOTCH. Helpful, friendly, and if they don't know the answers to your questions, they work on it and get back to you. MadCap's support team has turned what could have been a painful and frustrating software transition into a satisfying success. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Flare is so vast! There is so much that it can do that it can be a little overwhelming initially. Once I got over the hump of terminology and learning the user interface (and with some excellent help from MadCap's Customer Support team) working with Flare has gotten fun, mostly because there is always something new and cool to learn. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** We do not regret for one minute switching to MadCap Flare. Lest I sugar-coat our experience too much, our transition was not without some transitional "growing pains", as Flare is much different than what we used for our document production before. However, with the education we received from MadCamp and MadWorld in addition to using MadCap's Customer Support, we have been successful and are very pleased with the improved user experience and output of our documentation. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits to us are single-sourcing, which saves us a lot of time that was previously duplication of content. We have also been using Contributor and Lingo, and are seeing a large financial and time savings using them in conjunction with Flare. ### 11. Top shelf performance for single source authoring **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dave M. | Senior Technical Writer, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I have been using Flare for about six years for help authoring and PDF production. Once I developed the styles sheets, writing became the focus not wrestling with the tool. Managing styles across multiple projects is a breeze, much easier than in tools with embedded style sheets. I'm the only UA content developer in a three person office and if it was up to me, all of our technical publications, not just UA, would be authored in Flare. Madcap support has been great. I have found many solutions on their forum and the webinars have been a great help and all of that is free. They are quick to respond with submitted issues. I recently attended Mad World which was a phenomenal 2-day experience of like minded professionals. Well worth the money and time out of the office. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Flare is still is a little problematic when working with formatting for the printed formats but it is getting much better. In particular, awkward page breaks are hard to detect for .pdf output until the actual output is generated but that is also a constraint by topic based authoring. Word output has been a very small problem because every once in a while you find some corner of Flare that isn't supported. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Got to training, read the forums, and get MAD certified. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Simultaneously delivering user assistance files in both .chm and .html formats along with .pdf files for print output. The ,pdf is required for the commissioning of our products. ### 12. Vital content management tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark G. | Documentation Manager, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare is a tool that makes the impossible possible. As a solo writer I would not be able to support my company's range of products without Flare. Flare is a robust tool with a lot of features that exceed my expectations. Madcap is also continually improving Flare. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The product is so feature-rich that it can be difficult to pin point the most effective way to accomplish a task. For example, I wanted to add page breaks to a topic and it took a while to realize that the easiest way was to manually add the page breaks in the paragraph tags. I assumed that I would have to change the properties of a style. So basically, there are lots of ways to accomplish a task, and sometimes it seems needless complicated and there are almost too many options. Feature bloat is becoming an issue. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Flare is the best tool on the market. There is a learning curve and the tool has a lot of features but you can initially use it in a simple way. And then incorporate the more advanced features. I've been using Flare for eight years and I'm still learning. It's not a perfect tool and some of it is too complicated for my taste, but it has made my work life a lot easier. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Basically I'm trying to create and maintain the documentation for a host of legacy software products, support new products, and make the Help systems and guides as attractive as possible. So I need the process to be as automated as possible. Flare helps me accomplish this goal. So with limited resources, I am able to support my organization's various products. This would be impossible without Flare. ### 13. Help made easy **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eden O. | Knowledge Center Analyst, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare is intuitive, easy to use, and fun to explore. I like that no matter how much I use it, there are always more useful features to be discovered. I use Flare to create Online Help and PDF outputs. The documentation for the program is very helpful and well written. I love that I can change the stylesheet when any change in our branding occurs (which is quite often) and change every topic. That makes turnaround time much shorter and the changes more convenient. The structure of the program is easy to learn and use. The MadCap team is always coming out with improvements to the software, which keeps things interesting. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There isn't much I don't like about Flare. The one thing that is more of an inconvenience is how numbered and bulleted lists work. If there is non-ordered content in between numbers in a list, it messes with the numbering scheme. It requires a manual fix in most cases, which can be tiresome. But, that gives me an opportunity to brush up on XML and CSS coding, which is good to keep up with. I have also had trouble with Flare--->Word outputs. Word does not operate on XML, which means that it doesn't interface well with Flare. Styles and page layouts look different in a Word output than they do in a PDF, even if they use the same topic as a reference. That is frustrating for reviewers, but it is easily managed with a final PDF output. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** I definitely recommend using MadCap Flare. The thing that makes MadCap great is that they are a smaller company with extraordinary customer service. They are always innovating and helping their users do cool stuff, and that means a lot to me. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I create the Online Help for one of the consumer-facing business units in my company. I help call center agents understand the application they use, and that brings me great satisfaction. ### 14. Helpful - but not for a Novice **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2017 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** This product is very helpful ONLY AFTER you've mastered all the in's-and-outs. Like a typical document management product, it is very detailed and takes some time. Although, once you understand the basics, it can create some pretty neat documents and the management is very helpful. MadCaps allows you to save all your document pieces (headers, images, layouts, etc.) in a single location. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** MapCap takes a bit to learn. Unless your company pays for online help/assistance, the only way to actually understand how to use the product is through blogs and time. Additionally, the product has a tendency to retain some old formatting, so it can be a pain - especially if you're under a deadline. Also, this product can only be accessed through licensing. So, if an employee does not have the licence too bad for them! They cannot make any edits or adjustments to a document. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** I would consider advising your company to purchase the support. This would REALLY help with learning the product. Also, give it time. This took me about a year to become pretty well versed in MadCap. Finally, use the copy template feature. It helps retain the layout and font, while allowing you to make the necessary edits. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I used MadCap to create and publish all of the company documents. The benefit was definitely the organization and document management that came with the software. It made things easy to find and organize large documents. ### 15. Great customer support experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 06, 2017 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** My 10 rating is actually for the Doc-to-Help product. I'm a Doc-To-Help user. Our configuration is particularly complicated. I called for support for two issues. The analyst I worked with was able to follow along with the question I was answering, in the context of my particular set up. She continued to follow up offline, reproduced my issue, and sent a bug off to the dev team. It is great when you get the chance to interact with support staff who have enough technical skill to do their job well, but also a congenial disposition and a who are dedicated to tracking down your issue. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The bug itself is annoying, something my team can live with but that makes our team-authored project clunky to work with, particularly when adding a user as a new author. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** The organization I'm working for is moving to lean processing, a new focus for many government agencies. Their mission is to develop standard operating procedures that combine business process flow diagrams, roles and responsibilities, instructions for doing work in the software system, and a resource of frequently asked questions to help their staff do their jobs more efficiently. Doc-to-Help is the perfect tool for this organization, particularly given the technical capabilities of the team and their need to review Word documents. From a benefits perspective, we've re-architected the operations for the entire organization and used Doc-to-Help NetHelp, embedded in their software system and available on their intranet, to standardize everything they do. It is a major accomplishment and we couldn't have done it without this tool. **Official Response from David Ferriot:** > Thanks for the feedback! We actually have a profile page on G2 Crowd for MadCap Doc-To-Help as well. https://www.g2crowd.com/products/madcap-doc-to-help/reviews ### 16. Great customer support **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michel T. | Technical Writer, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 20, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Regardless of who is on the other end of the line, the folks at MadCap are always friendly and helpful. I'm not one who enjoys calling customer support, but I know that doing so with MadCap will provide me with the answers I am seeking. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I love the remote support option that is provided. However, I find that the steps could be reduced somewhat. If I've already navigated to the site, downloaded a startup file, clicked ok, etc, it's obvious that I want a remote session to occur. Unfortunately, I have to confirm it a few more times. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** A bunch of things. ### 17. Good authoring tool **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vanessa V. | Documentation Lead, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Strong feature set. Ability to manage authoring and publishing all in one interface. Ability to output as online help or PDF from the same content base. Ability to work quickly on content by switching between the text and XML views. Features that improve engagement/interaction with the content, such as the glossary hover feature, thumbnails, and the built-in expand/collapse styles. Search filters. Link viewer. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Incompatibility with non-Microsoft products/environments, such as Mac OS, Google Docs/Sheets, Atlassian Jira/Confluence, Yoast, etc. Inability to share authoring/contributing capabilities through a browser-based interface. Online help authoring, output, tools, etc. are not designed with SEO in mind. Little support for creating developer-facing documentation, like API reference. Cannot apply colors to code with any automation and there is no developer-friendly output (like Slate or Swagger). Constant issues with changes that we make in Flare not "taking," e.g. we change a setting but the output doesn't change. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** It's more likely to serve you well if you are in a Windows environment using Microsoft tools or if you don't need to integrate your workflow with other teams. We are struggling with incompatibility issues. If we could work in a silo and create and manage all content ourselves, it would be a lot better. Consider your end-to-end workflow and the direction of your company and industry before committing. On the other hand, you would be hard-pressed to find a better alternative if you need a powerful tool for generating a lot of technical content. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed to create more engaging content without building a lot of features from scratch. We also needed to unify our content and publishing so that we could publish a single searchable documentation web site. ### 18. Structured FrameMaker junkie converts to Flare **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Public Safety | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Initially, the selling points for us were the HTML5 templates, including the ease to edit those templates, and also the online webinars and other information you provide. We had originally chosen RoboHelp over Flare, as we were already in the Adobe family anyway, having used FrameMaker for nearly 15 years and becoming quite expert-level users at it along the way. But we were not happy with the out-of-the-box HTML5 output from RoboHelp, and also the difficulty involved in modifying that output. So those issues in particular were what brought us to Flare. Now that we've been using it for a little while, some of the better features for myself and especially my staff is the source control integration, which we're putting to good use (and which also solved the problem of how to get multiple users in the same project), and the ease in which to generate output. Our old FrameMaker process, while an outstanding process, was complex and it could take up to 20 minutes to get from your source files to just one generated CHM or PDF. So to be able to generate a help file in a matter of minutes, while still having full access to your PC, is something my team in particular is very excited about. We've used technical support sparingly, but it's been outstanding, as has the training opportunities (members of my staff have attended both the online and on-site training classes) and the MadWorld conference (which I attended myself). **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I thought the import from FrameMaker was good but could have been better. Maybe we're just perfectionists in that regard, but I did not like how FrameMaker lists, for example, are converted into HTML tables. That takes forever to clean up in Flare and convert them all back to proper lists. And I would have liked a check box so that cross-references would target a page instead of the specific heading on a page. (That cuts off any header content at the top of the page when your page is longer than the HTML window, which is a real pet-peeve of ours.) More options to control table importing would have been nice too. It just takes a lot of work on the Flare side to clean all that up. We've gotten pretty good at doing this through searching the HTML code, but some things, like converting FM-imported lists from tables to true HTML lists, can only be done manually and it's just a painful process to go through. Other dislikes, I would write those off to transitioning to a new product after so many years as a passionate advocate of structured FrameMaker. FrameMaker has many strengths, particularly in regard to the structured authoring environement. But with those strengths comes an increasingly high level of complexity, and we are finding that Flare strikes the right balance between powerful features and ease of use. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take time to watch all the webinars that are available online. And don't be afraid to ask for an extension to the 30-day trial, if you have not had time to fully vet the product. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** As mentioned above, the biggest driver to Flare was the need for HTML 5 output. We previously used Adobe FrameMaker and had a very sophisticated process, using structured FM and a number of plugins for condition management, content reuse, and other similar objectives. While I would say our FM process had more power and flexibility, the simplicity in how similar things can be done in Flare will ultimately be a better course for us. Our FM process was just growing too complex, and we wanted to have tools and a process in place that other users across our company can emulate. Flare will meet that need. ### 19. Flare doesn't give me headaches. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I like having everything - topics, stylesheets, page layouts, condition tag sets, etc.. - stored as plain text files. It makes it a lot easier to troubleshoot problems. Being able to search and replace formatting as well as content is wonderful. Here's an example: After importing a huge project from FrameMaker, I was able to use a regular expression to automatically replace width and height settings on all icon-sized images with an icon image class. Now icons that appear inline with the text change size depending on the size of the text, and I didn't have to manually adjust a single image's settings to make that happen. (Major time saver. I don't even know how many thousands of icons there were.) **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I get frustrated when Flare decides to be helpful and add xml tags that I didn't want or strip out formatting, links, etc... that I added intentionally. Sometimes I wish I had a button I could push to make Flare stop trying to guess what I am trying to do and let me get on with it. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** It's overkill for small projects, especially if your document editing experience to this point consists of standard word processing software, like Word. However, for large projects, especially projects that you will be maintaining and updating for a long time, Flare is a big time saver. It's flexible enough that you can meet changing demands without having to go back to the drawing board every time. If you already know some HTML and CSS, or you have used other tech writing tools like FrameMaker or Robohelp, it'll really help with the learning curve. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have many large documents that need to be published as PDFs and HTML5 web pages. It's nice not to have to maintain 2 copies of the same thing. We use a set of standard template files that can be quickly updated to keep formatting consistent across many projects. ### 20. The absolute best single-sourcing development tool for Help, documentation, and training materials! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare has a wonderfully clean user interface and user experience making it easy to learn and use. The ability to set up reusable templates, master pages, snippets, etc. makes it so convenient to create and also to maintain projects. We have hooked up our MadCap Flare installations to Microsoft's Team Foundation Server (TFS) for source-control. With my team spread out over multiple locations, working together without stepping all over each other's work is very important. MadCap Flare has made this possible. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** As we explore new ways to become more productive and innovate, the ability to seamlessly connect MadCap Flare to other tools is becoming more necessary and apparent. Making these connection needs to be as easy as possible and without the need for professional services. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Visit the company web site, understand how the product meets your requirements, review the sample projects - most of which are real-world products. Download and use the trial version, talk to the MadCap team members, and if necessary, ask to speak with current customers. We are bluntly honest! **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Before using MadCap Flare, as we created different types of Help, training, and learning products, we realized that we were using multiple development tools to create the various products. As a result, we could not easily share information across product types. With MadCap Flare and the ability to single-source all our products, we have resolved this issue and hence become much more productive. ### 21. As a satisfied user of MadCap Flare for more than eight years, I highly recommend this product! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Grace R. | Senior Technical Writer/Editor, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I have been a satisfied user of MadCap Flare for more than eight years and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to purchase a Help authoring tool. After using several other online help tools throughout my career as a technical writer, I found MadCap Flare to be extremely user friendly and was able to learn it without any formal training. MadCap has excellent Getting Started guides and videos to facilitate the training process. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending MadWorld for the first time and I was totally blown away. Let’s just say this was the most organized user conference I have ever attended and the best two days of learning and networking! The sessions were extremely informative and I walked away with a wealth of knowledge. The support lab was on steroids! One of the team members was able to quickly assist me with an import issue that was taking me too long to solve on my own. As a satisfied customer, I encourage you to purchase MadCap Flare and other MadCap products. You will be glad you did! Grace Roldan Senior Technical Writer **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There is absolutely nothing to dislike. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are currently embarking in an HTML5 Top Navigation output. ### 22. An excellent, bleeding-edge help authoring tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Paul P. | Sr. Information Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 27, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I have been a MadCap Flare user for 10 years (at the time of this writing) and I love using Flare and teaching other people how to use it. Flare is a single-source authoring tool that allows you to write help content and reuse that content in multiple ways, either in multiple places in a single project, and even in different output types (print, web, mobile, ebook, etc.) Flare allows you to create a variety of output types including PDF, Word, Framemaker, several varieties of online help, and several older, deprecated types. You can get very professional output in all the output types. Flare is built using current web standards. The source files are XML files. The topic files are based on extended XHTML, so you can edit any of the files in your favorite text editor. This also makes Flare very user friendly for source control tools, since the source control tools work best with text-based (non-binary) files. Flare has decent source control integration, and in each version they improve it. For example, recently, in Flare 12, they introduced support for SSH connections to GIT. I really like using Flare, and I highly recommend it. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Like any tool, Flare has areas where it can use improvement. Currently there is a limitation with using a single topic in multiple places in a table of contents (for online outputs), which can be frustrating to deal with if you have huge projects and you are merging multiple smaller TOCs into a large TOC. I will say that MadCap Support is best-in-class, in my experience. They are exceptionally helpful and will work with you to solve your problems. Platinum support is worth its weight in, well, platinum. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take full advantage of the 30 day trial, which comes with FREE platinum support during the trial period. Use it for several hours each day, and call MadCap with questions. It is an excellent tool, and worth its cost. Don't become intimidated by it. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** With Flare, we are generating content for 12 PDF guides which are all combined into a single WebHelp output. We are able to generate all 13 targets from the command line in a daily process. ### 23. Best Application to create Reusable Content **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Paula C. | Senior Technical Writer, Financial Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 04, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Easy to create content that can be included or excluded from manuals. Conditional text allows you to create a topic and make it specific to the manual without having to rewrite the content. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Crashes (but does not close the application like version 11). Table text styles and bullets (for tables, steps, etc.) need to be easier to create and included within the main style catalog without having to create style workarounds. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Flare is able to produce content in multiple formats (PDF, Word, etc.). It is able to handle very large documents with multiple changes without the corruption problem often found with large Word docs. ### 24. Flare 12 Exceeds Expectations **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Patrick C. | Senior Technical Writer, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 26, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The multilingual help feature is a great tool for anyone providing online documentation in more than one language. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Not having enough time to play with all of the myriad features and functions. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** There is a bit of a learning curve but once you've climbed it, you'll find it the most invaluable tool in your arsenal. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are able to support a web portal in Canadian French and Swedish in a far more effective manner than previously using Flare 12. ### 25. MadCap Flare: The only way to write technical documentation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The best thing about Flare is the use of single sourcing and reuse content, along with multiple output options. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It can be a bit buggy at times, especially when coupling Analyzer with multiple projects. You also have to be aware of how large your project is growing with unnecessary content/images/resources/topics/etc. But that's more of an operator error. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Get a high level maintenance package! **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm currently transitioning all tri-pane online help to Top Nav, which is an awesome end result, but getting there can be an issue. As a newer feature and the depth that Flare can take you, it can be a bit frustrating at times, especially if you don't have the platinum maintenance package. ### 26. Madcap Flare - Essential Technical Writing Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Management Consulting | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** There are so many features that are incredibly beneficial it's hard to list just one! From the single sourcing capabilities to the variables and snippets, Flare allows me to be incredibly efficient in my day-to-day tasks. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** I can't think of a single thing I don't love about Flare. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** At my current company, we use Madcap Flare for printed documentation only. However, I have used Flare for the HTML capabilities as well. Single sourcing is huge at my company as we have small differences in our products and services to the main part, so having to update pieces in one spot and having the content cascade down to other version is a huge time saver. ### 27. Flare has improved our workflow 100% **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Garry S. | Technical Writer/Corporate Trainer, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The ability to create multiple formats using the same material. The single sourcing aspect of the software. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There isn't really anything I dislike about the software. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take the training or go through the manual before your first project. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our business had the need to generate PDF and Online help systems for our customers. Before we were using MS word, and it was very counter productive. The switch to Flare was seamless, and painless. ### 28. Great Product **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** How powerful it is and the open architecture. I also like the community around the product. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's got a lot of bugs, and the interface is beginning to look dated. I have a lot of trouble using source control with Flare. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Flare's a great, powerful product that can really improve your documentation efficiency. I definitely recommend it. My advice: tap into the community. There are lots of folks out there in user groups and the forums who can help you out a lot. There's a lot of peer-to-peer support with MadCap Flare that I really enjoy. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creating single source help to aid our users in many different media. ### 29. Easy to use, saves a lot of time **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shayne O. | Technical Writer, Security and Investigations, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** The easy ability to generate content in multiple formats. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The WYSIWYG interface is sometimes a little clumsy. Line breaks and some formatting can take a little too much time to format correctly. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Don't delay - give it a trial and use the online tutorials. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Single-sourcing of content for multiple outputs. The ability to generate output quickly and eaily has been hugely beneficial especially in saving a lot of time. ### 30. Happy to work with industry-standard software **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Craig L. | Documentation Manager, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Well-defined standards; uniform authoring experience; ease of implementing XML. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** What we jokingly refer to as Flerrors; that is, lack of stability. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** I am convinced MadCap Flare is now setting the industry standard in technical product authoring and publication. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Publication of product documentation; facilitates collaborative single-sourcing. ### 31. Review of MadCap Flare **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Variables for headings. Scheduled build generation. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Not having proxy for file tags. In Top Nav, -breadcrumb dependency on TOC -Limitations of TOC in navigation **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Learn all you can about Flare. Determine need to deliver web-based content. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Delivering content for server-delivered help. ### 32. A quality product with great support. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Writing and Editing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** It is based on open standards. WYSIWYG **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Not easy or intuitive to customize output **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Take your time in learning the product. Create some test projects using your own data. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maintaining integrity throughout documentation. ### 33. I love working with MadCap Flare **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Integrated source control, document build, analysis, and single sourcing options. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's not 'what you see is what you get' **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Plan your deliverables well, before you begin to write. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Re-using content cuts down on errors in our user documentation. ### 34. Using since version 1, love it! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 01, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Great authoring environment, up to date features, wonderful support. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** ongoing bugs that have not been fixed for a while. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Submit the features you want because MadCap often listens! **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** single source authoring, complicated rebranding requirements. ### 35. Great editing tool for multiple support outputs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** David G. | Senior Curriculum Developer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2016 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Very powerful editing environment leveraging stylesheets and cross references that work for both online and print outputs **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The sister products in the Madcap suite are a bit weak in comparison to Madcap. The core product is great. If I had one wishlist item, it would be a WordPress output option or integration **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** If you need true content management, not just a document repository tool, there are significant advantages to Flare **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We had to convert a 350+ article wiki from an older platform while making significant global changes. Madcap all ### 36. Creates PDFs, Context Sensitive Help, and Online Help (mobile friendly) from One Source **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Heather C. | Technical Writer, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2015 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I like that you can create multiple outputs from one program and using the same content. I like the new top navigation design and I like the slideshow option as well. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** The complexity can get a little overwhelming as a new user. There are many things you have to remember to do or your project will not work the way you want it to. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** I have hired a consultant to help me learn and transition to Flare. I find it has been invaluable to have someone with ample experience walk me through all the steps so that I can know how to use Flare in my day to day routine. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** I can get many outputs from one product and save my team time. I am part of a two person team and we are limited on the time we can spend on each project. MadCap saves time since we really only need one set of content that can be used across multiple platforms. The Global project is also a great tool that we use so that I can use the same Style sheet across all documentation. ### 37. My Flare Experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Bonnie W. | Documentation/Project Mgr, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 11, 2015 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I was the only technical writer at my company for a couple of years and at that time I was using Word, converting to HTML and 'massaging' it in Dreamweaver to post it on our website via Joomla/K2. Let's not forget, saving as a PDF, as well. Anyone that has worked in a software development industry is probably familiar with changes being made at the 11th hour. This was constant and it created a lot of frustration because of the work involved for one tiny UI change. So, I talked my company into purchasing Flare after researching several options. There are so many things I love about Flare. I can single source our generic screenshots so they get replaced quickly and easily, I can create snippets, I can publish multiple outputs without having to rebuild or open countless Word files, I can condition areas of the doc not to publish when we are ramping up for our next release, the list goes and on and on. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Now, as with anything, nothing is perfect. There are, what I consider 'flaws' in the product. We are integrated with our TFS server and experience crashing fairly frequently, cannot create snippets that contain drop-downs, cannot implement any security to put materials behind a password, does not integrate (well) with Google Search Appliance, unable to lock down table widths once set, drop-downs are finicky in long documents and the list goes on. However, with the quirks that Flare has, it has saved me countless hours over the past two years. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has saved countless hours over the last two years. In the past, when something changed, it could take hours or weeks to make the change - now, some times it's as simple as using Find/Replace or modifying a snippet. It is allowing me to spend more time 'moving to the next level' and I am not as frustrated with last minute changes. ### 38. State of the art authoring tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph K. | Senior Technical Writer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 09, 2015 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare offers a feature set and an ease of use that is far better than any competitors. In addition, the suite of other MadCap products integrate well and help make the entire process of help authoring more efficient. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** There is really nothing I dislike about the product. I am very satisfied with the product, the tech support, and the training available. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** The product is easy to use, offers an amazing set of features, and works very well. The tech support is excellent. The training webinars are frequent and excellent. This is the best help authoring tool I've used. I attended the first MadWorld conference and as one attendee said "MadCap doesn't just have users, they have fans." **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We switched to MadCap Flare from RoboHelp and Author-IT and have been able to create very high quality online help systems faster and with more features than with other tools. With Flare 11 and the new "top nav" output for WebHelp we are improving the user experience for our customers by providing a more web page like interface with much improved navigation. ### 39. Moving to Flare - a mostly pain-free solution for our documentation needs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in E-Learning | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 12, 2015 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** Flare offers a great suite of tools, but what I find to be the most valuable is the ability to produce multiple outputs using the same content. The department that I work in uses Flare primarily to handle our paper-based manuals, but the ability to leverage digital output is a genuine timesaver. Flare also allows for a great deal of interoperability. If I edit a document, my colleagues can see those changes when they pull the next update, without having to resort to a cloud-based solution. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** One of the few things that I dislike about Flare is how it leverages SVN in its integration. We've decided to divorce Flare from SVN, and instead pull our updates manually. This has saved us a great deal of time. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Spend a great deal of time configuring your master page layouts, and your style documents. Resist formatting anything ad hoc. If you spend the extra time to build the formats the proper way, you'll save yourself a great deal of time in the long run. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Flare for our documentation and printed training materials. The ease of use, and ability to reorganize content on the fly, have made using Flare much easier than a traditional word processing program. ### 40. Great Help Authoring Tool for content to various outputs **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 05, 2015 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** I used this as a technical writer for documentation user guides, both print and web-based help. The user interface is fairly easy to use and the product has a ton of functionality, although it takes a while to learn it all. Loved how easy it was to see all of the content organized into folders and access them easily. Being able to make changes in one place for multiple outputs saved a ton of time. **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** It's a very complex tool and quite the learning curve to know how to use it. I also wish that you could do more to customize the look of the output - both web-based and print. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** Great tool, but would have been better for my company to send me to a training on Flare to really learn the product and take full advantage of the features. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Content management and single sourcing to update content going to various outputs. Also has the ability to integrate with translation, but is set up to work with Madcap's translation tool the best. ### 41. Switching to MadCap software from FrameMaker was the best decision we ever made. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Machinery | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 11, 2015 **What do you like best about MadCap Flare?** MadCap Flare blows FrameMaker out of the water. It has so many benefits, too many to even mention. Our content looks way more professional and beautiful. Oh and the MadCap support....AMAZING. They make writing and learning way more fun! Double thumbs up from me! **What do you dislike about MadCap Flare?** Nothing, Flare offers everything I need to do my job beautifully. **Recommendations to others considering MadCap Flare:** You'll start loving your job all over again and you'll want to burn your copy of FrameMaker or feed it to the alligators. **What problems is MadCap Flare solving and how is that benefiting you?** Single sourcing, multiple outputs, I can now create a beautiful online help and burn Dreamweaver. I'm saving THOUSANDS of hours by using condition tags. ## 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?page=43§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-21+07%3A27%3A15+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=70cd0f09-6e95-4d1c-9909-2edfdbcca745&secure%5Btoken%5D=f408c171f30424f12c6d489abe5fa5b4862744b57e664bf9de4ef63e0506fe36&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 **Content** - Content Authoring - Rich Text Editor - Versioning - Plug-ins/Widgets/Apps - Approval Process - Content Scheduling - Asset Management - Internal Search - Content Repository **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 / Integrations **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 **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 (525 reviews) - [Microsoft Word](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-word/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (2,006 reviews)