MadCap Flare vs. QuarkXPress

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.

Incentivized

I used QuarkXPress to maintain a proper page layout for the UI which I receive from a UIUX developer. I develop Graphic Illustrations on the digital canvas to create creative content on the page design set and to develop designer headlines and sub-headlines where writers and editors can amend the text and place the copped images.

• Single-sourcing
• Branching (GIT)
• Publishing and hosting

• Excellent project conversion into PDFs and digital formats.
• Incredibly user friendly and intuitive to use.
• Works seamlessly with our Adobe Suite of programs.

Incentivized

• I use it on a mac with windows parallel and it can be so buggy and laggy.
• I would love it if the software was entirely cloud-based, like Google Docs.
• Reviewing in Central is not a good experience, need better review functionality.

Incentivized

• Currently does not have a way to open really old archived QuarkXPress files.
• Text manipulation could be expanded upon (ie be able to warp or distort text).
• Be able to output files in InDesign format.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

This is an industry standard. It is intuitive and pretty simple. I have been using it for 40 years and by no means do I use its potential, rather it does just what I want it to do.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

QuarkXPress simply blew the competition out of the water when it came to pricing and scalability in our business. Every employee that uses Quark always speaks very highly about using the software. We are not a large company but, the amount of money saved on the cost of each license was about 60% when compared to the competitors' products.

Incentivized

• We haven't measured this specifically

• On different computers, it does crash.
• Issues with accidental (program) photo overrides.
• Corrupted photo formats.