Why Companies Like Yours Are Already Leaving MadCap Flare: Real Customer Reviews

Every team that starts looking beyond MadCap Flare can remember the moment they realized their docs had outgrown it.

For some, it was the rebuild-and-republish cycle. Even a one-word fix meant rebuilding the entire project and pushing it live again, so even small updates took far more time than they should. For others, it was localization. The moment someone asked for the docs in more languages, they knew it would swallow the next few sprints.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

Here are three teams that used MadCap Flare for their documentation and what led each of them to start looking at something new.

These aren’t star ratings or a feature comparison. They’re MadCap Flare reviews from the teams themselves, in their own words at the time, so you can see how closely it matches where your team is today. If you’d like a feature-by-feature view, we’ve covered that in the MadCap Flare vs. Archbee blog.

Three MadCap Flare reviews from teams like yours#

1. An Enterprise IT Software Company#

People go to the docs first. So when a product ships faster than its docs can be updated, readers are the first to find the gap: an outdated step, a renamed button, a fix that hasn’t gone live.

The technical writing team from this company lived in that gap. Their SaaS products move fast. Their docs didn’t. Every update went through MadCap Flare’s desktop app, and because Flare works at the project level, even a tiny fix meant opening the software and going through a project-level publish. A typo shouldn’t take that long. But it did.

Slow publishing was only the first challenge. The next one came from outside the documentation team.

Documentation rarely stays with the writers, and this team’s translation process showed it. Their writers push content to Git. A separate localization team pulls that content from Git, translates it using Catalyst and TransPerfect (external translation tools), and pushes it back to Git. It’s a lot of steps, but the process worked well, and a different team managed it. So fixing the publishing problem couldn’t come at the cost of disrupting it. Whatever new tool came in had to leave that process intact.

Even after publishing, things were spread out. Customer feedback came in as CSV files that nobody found user-friendly, and analytics lived in Google Analytics, away from the docs. The team wanted feedback and analytics in the same place as the content.

So their wish list was simple:

1. Publish changes fast.
2. Keep the Git-based translation handoff exactly as it is.
3. Bring feedback and analytics into the same place as the docs.

Why they chose Archbee

1. Publishing. There was no build cycle to wait on in Archbee. Whatever the update, the team edited, published, and went live in seconds, and the docs finally kept pace with the product releases.
2. Translation. Archbee replaced MadCap Flare for authoring, and nothing in the translation process had to change. The writers still pushed content to Git, the localization team still pulled it, translated it with Catalyst and TransPerfect, and pushed it back, and the docs team picked it up again to publish. GitHub sync kept Git at its center.
3. Feedback and analytics. Readers could rate each article using a simple “Did this page help?” prompt, while the team reviewed votes and comments through Archbee’s Document Feedback feature. With Archbee Insights, the team could also monitor documentation performance and reader search queries directly within the platform, reducing the need for separate analytics tools.

2. An Agtech Software Company#

About three out of every four online shoppers (76%) prefer information in their own language when making a purchase, and 40% won’t buy from sites in other languages (CSA Research, 2020, 8,709 consumers in 29 countries). So every language a product is missing is a group of buyers it doesn’t reach.

This team felt that gap, and translation was a struggle every sprint. In the sprint after new content was written in MadCap Flare, one team member ran all new and updated content through machine translation, with MadCap Lingo maintaining the translation database. The team described “huge overhead and unexpected deficiencies” in machine translation through Lingo, and the whole process had to be repeated every sprint.

Then the pressure went up. The company’s new leadership asked for every product and document to be available in nine languages as soon as possible. The team already had one help project in two languages, and that alone was stretching their build and publishing times. Seven more languages would mean even longer waits, and with one writer handling translation each sprint, most of that writer’s time would go to translation instead of writing.

So their wish list was simple:

1. Cut the manual translation work that came back every sprint.
2. Support nine languages without turning translation into a full-time job.

Why they chose Archbee

1. Translating inside the platform. With Archbee, the team could translate documentation directly where they wrote it. Archbee’s built-in AI translation converted documents into their chosen languages, so no one had to run content through machine translation by hand every sprint.
2. Managing nine languages without the manual workload. Archbee made it easier to manage documentation across multiple languages. AI-assisted translation reduced repetitive translation work, while the draft review step allowed the team to check changes before publishing. Instead of manually moving content between tools, the writer could focus more on creating and improving documentation.

3. A Fraud Prevention Software Company#

Documentation tends to grow with the audience. Developers get one set of docs, customers get another, internal teams get a third, and each audience often ends up with its own tool.

That’s how this team ended up with two. Their public API documentation lived in Apiary. Their user guides, quick references, operating guides, and policies sat in a separate portal behind a login. Two tools, two places to maintain, and no single home for any of it.

The setup was about to get more complicated. The team wanted to add their device API documentation, which had to stay behind credentials, while their public API docs stayed open to everyone. Their main authoring tool was MadCap Flare. What started as an Apiary replacement quickly grew into a bigger question: could the same platform become the hub for all of their technical docs? To find out, they had their writers start bringing MadCap Flare content into Archbee.

So their wish list was simple:

1. Replace Apiary for public API documentation.
2. Make one platform the hub for all of their technical docs, not just their APIs.
3. Keep public content open to everyone and everything else behind credentials.

Why they chose Archbee

1. API documentation moved into one platform. The team brought their public API documentation into Archbee using OpenAPI specifications. Endpoints, code examples, and interactive API testing were available in one place, removing the need to maintain a separate API documentation portal in Apiary.
2. One home for all documentation. Instead of managing documentation across disconnected tools, the team organized API references, user guides, and internal content into dedicated spaces within Archbee. They linked these spaces together, giving different teams and products a single place to manage and access documentation.
3. Public and private documentation, side by side. The team kept public API documentation accessible to everyone while protecting device API documentation and internal content with access controls. With options such as passwords, user accounts, magic links, and SSO, they could manage different audiences on the same platform without exposing sensitive information.

4. Is your team next?#

This quick gut check helps you step back and look at how your docs get made and shared. Each question comes straight from a moment in one of these MadCap Flare reviews, so if one makes you pause, you’re probably already where they were. It takes two minutes, and your answers can help you decide whether it’s time to start looking and what to look for when you do.

Answer honestly; nobody’s watching.

1. When you fix a typo, does it take longer to publish than it did to write?
2. If someone came to you tomorrow and said, “We need two more languages,” would your first thought be about build times?
3. Is there another team, like localization, that depends on how your docs move through Git, so changing tools feels risky?
4. Do your API docs live in one tool and your guides in another, one public and one behind a login?
5. Does reader feedback reach you as exports, with analytics in yet another tool?

If you said yes to two or more, you’re not alone. The teams in this post were in the same place when they started looking.

5. Conclusion#

None of these teams started looking because MadCap Flare stopped working. Across all three MadCap Flare reviews, the pattern was the same: their work changed, and the tool didn’t change with them. One needed small fixes to go live quickly. Another needed translation that didn’t take a full sprint. Another needed its API docs and guides in one place, with public and private content kept apart.

If any of that sounds like your team, you don’t have to figure out the move on your own. Bring your existing project, and we’ll show you what it looks like in Archbee, using your content and process.

Book a free demo.