Flare and AuthorIt

Recently, I’ve been evaluating Flare and AuthorIt for a client. They’re moving away from RoboHelp since this product is, in the words of another blogger “craptastic”. I can’t even get a printed documentation output to work, but I really don’t feel like bothering either. If it is inherently craptastic, then I won’t be able to fix the problem!

Onto Flare and AuthorIt… They’re both pretty much the same in terms of feature sets, but AuthorIt imports multiple projects into one help project much more seamlessly. AuthorIt is good, solid, all there, but with Flare I get a sense of excitement: it’s easier to use, the product is evolving, the company is excited, their response times are great. AuthorIt’s customer service is good, too, but not as good as Madcap’s.

When I was evaluating the two products, there didn’t seem to be much of a swing either way in the community as to which product is better. I think they’re both good, AuthorIt perhaps better as a CMS, Flare perhaps better in usability. But what put me over the edge towards Flare was the possibilities of what else can be done with a product that is great already and is only 2 years old, and the customer service.