A short review of MindTouch for technical documentation
Updated June 16, 2016
A short review of MindTouch for technical documentation
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
MindTouch 4
Overall Satisfaction with MindTouch
We use MindTouch for customer-facing product documentation, as well as some documentation meant for an internal audience. I am responsible for structuring, writing, and distributing our documentation. I also manage MindTouch users and control access to various parts of the documentation site. We use MindTouch as a single-source of content for our online web-based documentation and for context-sensitive help in Cloud Cruiser, our SaaS solution for monitoring cloud billing and usage.
- The support team at MindTouch is simply outstanding. They have provided the best support I've ever had from a software company. They respond quickly, and have provided above-and-beyond levels of support. They talk about having a vested interest in making me successful, and I've certainly felt that in my interactions with their support team. This is always the first thing I mention to colleagues when discussing my experience with MindTouch.
- Because MindTouch is a SaaS product, I don't have to worry about managing product updates myself. I know this doesn't make MindTouch unique in the software industry, but it is a piece of how they contribute to the success of my efforts by making my life as a documentation manager simpler.
- The integrated F1 help system was very easy to implement in our product.
- The authoring interface feels a bit clunky at times, and I've had to make a few compromises and implement a few workarounds to accomplish what I want to accomplish. For example, while I can define variables in my doc site, those variables are not handled well in expanders. Multiple paragraphs in a table cell cause the first paragraph to add unnecessary padding above the first line of text. I've removed the paragraph tags in the source markup to remove the padding.
- While full inaccessibility has been rare, the hosted site can be slow to respond at times. For example, pages can be slow to open for editing. Dialog boxes for images might not open with all options available.
- MindTouch has a doc structure that is not strictly enforced, but one must work around the limitations if that structure is not wanted. For example, PDF exports cannot include pages in the first two levels of the doc structure.
- MindTouch is simple to use, so my learning curve after being hired was very short.
- I have full control of who can access different parts of our documentation, which has enabled us to provide documentation for multiple audiences and for different purposes.
The decision to use MindTouch was made by the prior documentation owner at my company. I know Atlassian Confluence and MindTouch were the last products considered.