MadCap Software, headquartered in La Jolla, offers MadCap Flare, a help authoring and technical writing tool featuring onboarding and support from MadCap, and a set of modules for designing advanced guides, aids, and web or application help aids.
$167
per month
Notion
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Notion aims to present users with an all-in-one workspace — for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases, from Notion Labs in San Francisco.
$5
per month per user
Pricing
MadCap Flare
Notion
Editions & Modules
MadCap Central
$1,500
per year
MadCap Flare
$1,999
per year
MadCap AMS
$2,999
per year
Personal Pro
$48
per year per user
Team
$96
per year per user
Enterprise
Custom
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
MadCap Flare
Notion
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Includes a 12-month Platinum-level Maintenance Plan.
MadCap Flare has its problems, but it serves our team well as an authoring software. This would not be the case if we needed to regularly collaborate on articles, as Flare is prone to conflict issues when another person dares to breathe near an open topic. When working individually, though, it's fine. I'd love to see improvements to design, performance, and stability, but Flare remains one of the best softwares on the market for our needs as an authoring team. MadCap Central is well-suited to internal reviewing when every member is comfortable with Flare (the errors it tends to introduce set aside). SMEs, though, tend to find it hard to use. It's cluttered, some styles don't render, and it just seems like a failed attempt to reproduce Google Docs. I'd love to see improvements there, to help get our SMEs to want to use Central.
I believe Notion is a highly versatile tool that can be used for almost any scenario! Personally, I rely on it for event planning, ensuring that all details are organized in one place. Additionally, I use it as a digital recipe book, storing all my favorite recipes for easy access. Having everything centralized helps me stay organized and efficient.
The customization options are excellent for sparking creativity and making organization enjoyable
Notion provides versatile scheduling features that empower you to organize personal tasks, work assignments, study schedules, and even appointments with ease.
Notion's free version is perfect for students, individuals who may not be able to afford the cost of the platform, or even those who simply want to try it out before committing.
Notion's free plan is great for personal use, but one big limitation is the file upload limit (5MB per file). If I want to attach larger images, PDFs, or videos, I have to find some other ways like linking to Google Drive instead. It would be nice if the limit was a bit higher.
There is no offline mode on Notion is probably my biggest frustration. If I'm in a place with no or bad internet, Notion just doesn’t work. I can’t access my notes, even if I opened them before going offline. A proper offline mode where I can view and edit notes without internet, and sync later would be great.
Notion's mobile app could have some improvement. I mostly use Notion on my desktop, but when I do use the mobile app, it feels a bit messy. Such as text editing is not as smooth as on the desktop and the user interface is not as intuitive as it is on the desktop.
MadCap Flare is in desperate need of an overall redesign. It relies heavily on dozens and dozens of tiny buttons that contain dozens of nested features. Clicking the wrong button can cause your software to freeze and crash. Building targets can be an absolute mystery, as far as all the files involved. It also has a tendency to freeze and crash. There's typically a huge learning curve for new hires who've never used it--nothing is intuitive.
Notion addresses most of our needs and help teams to organize their tasks, track their progresses and then archive for future reference. The company uses Notion to share announcement, holiday schedules, employee contact information and organizational structures. Everyone finds it useful and helpful. The notifications are instant. Reminders are on time.
MadCap software does offer quite a few more technical features than Google Drive, but the user experience is far inferior. Google Drive is much less buggy to work with, and it's much more accessible. MadCap only being available on Windows operating systems makes it difficult to work with teammates who may not have such a device available.
Jira is a great tool, that is probably more robust than Notion and more scalable. But for a small company (under 50 people) the investment is hard to swallow without a significant revenue stream justifying it. Notion is a perfect low cost option that meets 80% of the capability, and that extra 20% is not needed by most organizations.
Onboarding time has significantly reduced, possibly up to 70-80%, as new joinees can just be shared required notion documents.
It isn't great for project management because of its clunky and slow UI, so we used something else for task and project management on a granular level.
Great for document collaboration and writing collaborative product specs.
