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Flare, a documentation authoring tool, has proven to be valuable for a wide range of use cases based on user experiences. Users have found …
Starting at $167 per month
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What is MadCap Flare?
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.
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Pricing
MadCap Central
$1,500
On Premise
per year
MadCap Flare
$1,999
On Premise
per year
MadCap AMS
$2,999
On Premise
per year
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.madcapsoftware.com/pricing
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Starting price (does not include set up fee)
- $167 per month
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is MadCap Flare?
The MadCap Authoring and Management System (AMS) combines the power and security of on-premises authoring and publishing with the convenience of the cloud to provide a complete solution for content developers.
Maximize content reuse and streamline the creation and multi-channel delivery of self-service support sites and online Help, user guides, instruction manuals, interactive eLearning courses, product training, knowledge bases and more with the most efficient technical writing tools.
Formed in 2005 by industry veterans with decades of experience in the technical communication and content development industries, the vendor states that MadCap Software is now a trusted resource for more than 20,000 companies around the globe.
MadCap Flare Features
- Supported: Patented XML Editor
- Supported: Advanced Single-source XML Authoring & Multi-channel Publishing
- Supported: Import Support for a Rich Variety of Content Types
- Supported: Responsive Layout Editor for True Responsive Content
- Supported: Powerful Analysis and Reporting
- Supported: Content Management and Source Control Support
- Supported: Multilingual Web and Print Publishing from a Single Project
MadCap Flare Screenshots
MadCap Flare Video
What do companies like Vernier, Illumina, Senior Sistemas and Perforce have in common? They switched from Word, In-Design®, FrameMaker®, RoboHelp® and other applications to leverage the power of MadCap Flare.
MadCap Flare Competitors
MadCap Flare Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Countries | All |
| Supported Languages | UI is localized into Japanese, Chinese, French, and German. Our editor supports authoring content in all languages. |
MadCap Flare Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
MadCap Flare starts at $167.
The most common users of MadCap Flare are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(15)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Business Problems Solved
- Recommendations
Flare, a documentation authoring tool, has proven to be valuable for a wide range of use cases based on user experiences. Users have found that Flare provides a modern online help appearance without the need for designing custom styles. It enables users to organize and manage their knowledge base effectively, offering robust options for customization and organization. Onboarding with Flare is relatively quick, with a small learning curve for writers to get up and running. Flare integrates well with other MadCap products, allowing for seamless workflow and reporting capabilities. It also simplifies user assistance and troubleshooting by providing different outputs from a single source. Flare's flexibility allows for adapting content to different customer needs through CSS functionality. Moreover, single sourcing with Flare reduces the chance of copy/paste errors and allows for outputting to multiple audiences, resulting in significant time-saving and efficiency in content creation. Whether it's generating online help documentation for major application products or creating product manuals and work instructions, Flare proves to be effective in streamlining documentation processes for technical writers across various industries.
Users recommend the following for this product:
Users find it important to have Platinum support for this product. They suggest taking the training offered and becoming MAD certified. Additionally, they recommend joining the community board on Slack and reading through the documentation before using the product. It is mentioned that the software may crash if not used properly.
For a better customer service experience, users recommend purchasing Platinum support. They suggest that the product is great for content creation, reuse, single sourcing, and publishing, making it a good all-round authoring tool with plenty of support.
Users recommend participating in online training sessions to discover more functions and think that the product is especially great for creating multiple publications based on topics. They also mention that users with experience in other technical writing tools will find it easy to transition to this product.
To ensure smooth integration with TFS, users suggest working with the global administrator. They believe that the product is a great tool for people in the technical writing field. Although customer support may not be helpful initially, after getting familiarized with the software, it provides all necessary tools for creating and publishing documentation.
To fully learn the product, users advise purchasing books and taking courses. The product receives recommendations for its HTML5 output, single sourcing, and managing multiple projects. It is mentioned that there may be a high learning curve initially but the help and resources available are excellent.
The product is considered lacking in integration with TFS and table formatting. Buying Platinum tech support is suggested. Users also recommend learning HTML and CSS for a better experience with the product.
Users suggest having someone dedicated to learning and using the tool on a team as it is a solid authoring tool. However, it is mentioned that Framemaker has tied into Adobe Experience Manager leaving this product behind.
For additional features, users recommend considering Javascript integration and using External GIT for source control. The product is seen as fully featured providing powerful tools for online documentation.
Users advise looking at other CMS and XML authoring tools and weighing the pros and cons. Careful planning of the upgrade process from current authoring software to this product is recommended.
Users suggest doing training early on to get the most out of the product. They also recommend learning the basics of CSS before using it. It is mentioned that the product can be slow, especially with a lot of topics.
Before deciding on another documentation utility, users recommend giving this product a test run to evaluate its performance.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-1 of 1)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
MadCap Flare is our primary authoring software as a technical writing team of 8. We use MadCap Central as our source control service, as well as for reviewing internally and for SME reviews. We use MadCap Flare to build and publish our in-product help, as well, which is accessible to all clients as well as the company internally.
- Using MadCap Flare to create and publish our in-product help is much easier than using the MadCap ZenDesk Connect plug-in to publish to ZenDesk (which we used previously). It allows for more customization (with a lot of know-how) and a much easier publishing process.
- MadCap Central works well as a source control option with MadCap Flare, aside from bugs that arise. It's fully integrated with MadCap Flare, making it easy to send files for review to other colleagues.
- MadCap Flare has many single-sourcing tools, I'm a particular fan of snippets and conditioning. Using snippets to create article templates (then converting to text) has been a valuable tool in improving consistency and efficiency.
- I love being able to set customizable keyboard shortcuts, including using macros to assign shortcuts to complex actions. For example, I've been able to reassign a standard Ctrl + B shortcut to apply our custom bolding style, as opposed to default local bolding. Saves lots of time and effort to use my own shortcuts.
- I've encountered a lot of buggy behavior with MadCap Central as a reviewing platform. On return to MadCap Flare, spaces will randomly vanish, locally-formatted red text will appear where annotations were, and variables will vanish. It can be hugely frustrating for errors to be introduced as part of the reviewing process.
- MadCap Flare can be unstable. I am using it on Parallels on a Mac (sadly it's not supported for MacOS). It tends to freeze when syncing, crash if I scroll too quickly, and cause all sorts of other "oh god I hope I saved before that crashed" moments.
- With an 8 member team, it's not uncommon to accidentally run into merge conflicts. The conflict manager tool is nigh-impossible to understand. I think we all just pick an option to accept or reject all changes, and pray.
- The support system is very rigid as far as enforcing price vs access tiers, which can be frustrating when you're looking for support. For example, one person has Platinum support for their license key, so only they're authorized for phone support. Tying support to individual license keys without taking into consideration how many licenses our company pays for, and just giving us all the same level of support, is a bit bizarre.
- MadCap Flare very much feels like a software begging for a total redesign. New features get jammed into an already-crowded toolbar. There's so many buttons that it's hard to find the ones you need. It needs a modern overhaul as well as overall performance upgrades.
- I'd love to see improvements in MadCap Central as a reviewing tool. More support for rendering custom styles, being able to hide or show conditioned text, fixing the issue of it introducing errors, and making it overall a more pleasant reviewing experience for our SMEs.
- Single-sourcing, particularly conditioning and snippets.
- Support for building and publishing our in-product help.
- Topic-based authoring.
- MadCap Flare makes it easy for our entire team to work on the same project.
- MadCap Central is a mainstay of our reviewing process.