Reviews

I was selected to investigate an ideal authoring tool for our company under very strict time frames. As usual Google produced more than enough results, but having had some previous experience with Adobe products I chose to compare RoboHelp 9 with my other shortlisted products. The technical features of each product were the obvious factors in making our authoring tool choice. However, one of the important criteria that often gets overlooked is the after-sales support offered by vendors. One of the outstanding qualities of the Adobe Customer Care team is that despite being only a potential customer, there was no distinction in the level of service and care provided. As an evaluating customer, I was completely impressed with their rapid response time, excellent product knowledge, and the passion exuded by the team to do everything in their capacity to help. Neither geographical location nor time zone differences posed any problems, the team was willing to go that extra mile to do their best for the customer. I am confident about the quality of support I can expect once I do become a customer. Personally, one of the most important aspects is that the support team has a friendly and positive attitude, which is extremely refreshing, particularly in the IT support industry. Thank you Adobe Customer Care Team!

I’ve helped over 100 authors and 65 organizations return to their longtime favorite, Adobe RoboHelp, by showing them how to use the Flare to RoboHelp Project Converter. So why did they abandon Madcap Flare and choose to come back to Adobe RoboHelp? Users missed the author-friendly ease of creating their projects. These are technical communicators who are quite comfortable with code, but they describe Flare’s interface unnecessarily “techie” and difficult to learn—interrupting their focus on writing. They felt it was safe and wise to return to RoboHelp because they have seen Adobe aggressively support it with four major releases since acquiring it from the Macromedia. They see the impressive standards-compliant features and productivity innovations which have made RoboHelp a natural and intrinsic part of the industry-leading Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

We needed a way to pull together the vast amount of documentation and data from various groups into a cohesive and easy-to-use document. We also wanted to provide our customers access to our breadth of APIs in a range of development languages in a user-friendly format. We selected Adobe RoboHelp because we needed robust capabilities and a highly stable platform that could handle such an enormous, complex document.

In late 2003, RoboHelp came to Macromedia as a part of the eHelp Corporation acquisition. At the time, I found myself in the unfortunate company of many users who thought RoboHelp was ‘dead’. It was such a sad day! What emerged was a lot of uncertainty about the future of any help content created using RoboHelp. While many users nervously began jumping a perfectly functional ship in search of a "tool with a future", I decided to stay the course. I knew that whatever the future held, my content was all in HTML and nearly any tool out there could work with HTML. RoboHelp never once stopped working for me, even during that uncertain time. Admittedly, I did begin trying alternative tools as I also believed RoboHelp had been ‘left for dead’. Unfortunately, there simply wasn't a tool I tried that offered the ease of use and overall friendliness RoboHelp had long offered. All of them were either based on Word or they seemed to offer confusing interfaces oddly oriented to pleasing application developers. Thus, I was very excited when Adobe purchased Macromedia in 2005, wisely saw value in the RoboHelp application and immediately started investing in further development of RoboHelp. I can only say that I'm quite happy with the results! After four great releases of RoboHelp since 2006 under Adobe's direction, it’s great to see so many folks realize Adobe’s long-term commitment to RoboHelp and return to their favorite tool after struggling for a while with ‘me too’ alternatives. Kudos to Adobe!

Adept Business Systems chose Adobe RoboHelp 9 because there were two features in particular that matched the company’s specific requirements: a) Dynamic User Centric Content b) External Content Search These two powerful features of RoboHelp 9 set the product apart from the other Help Authoring Tools that are currently available in the market. Even though some of the other Help Authoring Tools may have similar features, RoboHelp wins hands down when it comes to the simplicity and the usability of these features for an end user.”

As a provider of consultancy and user assistance solutions, one of our top priorities is to ensure that every client can confidently take ownership of the final solution. Clients really dislike surprises and must be comfortable with the tools we recommend. There are comparison tables for the various Help Authoring Tools available in the public domain, but they always miss three key points – usability issues, workflow and the learning curve. This is where Adobe RoboHelp and Adobe Technical Communication Suite always win hands down. The workflow is logical, the tools are easy to use – this means the client’s content contributors can get on with what they are good at. Adobe acquired Macromedia along with RoboHelp in 2005, and there were some subsequent questions about the future of RoboHelp as development had been put on hold under Macromedia. A few clients felt nervous and took steps to move to another Help Authoring Tool. Unfortunately, I watched many struggle with these new tools and then become reliant on very specific expertise – calling back a ‘specialist’ even to make simple changes to the project or workflow. Since 2006, Adobe has demonstrated a clear long-term commitment to RoboHelp. There have been as many as four new innovative releases with exciting cutting edge features. There really is no looking back now. RoboHelp and the Technical Communication Suite have a modern look and feel, and it’s so easy to modify the environment to allow clients focus on the features that matter most to them. With this level of commitment and market expertise displayed by Adobe, it is not surprising that clients and other users are returning to Adobe RoboHelp very quickly!

As a company, we like to keep up with the latest technology developments and provide our documentation specialists and developers with advanced tools for performing their jobs. Adobe RoboHelp and Adobe AIR offer us the tools we need to be successful as employees and as a growing enterprise software company.

Single-sourcing into Microsoft Word 2010 from Adobe RoboHelp 9 is as flawless for us as it was before. I really appreciate the option to choose DOC or DOCX Word formats. Thank you!

By using Adobe RoboHelp and delivering our help systems as Adobe AIR® applications, we can tap into end-user knowledge and make it available to everyone. And our authors and product experts can be more responsive to our users. It’s a big step forward.

My large documentation team clients often ask me about how to solve the problem of making sure everyone is on the same page because content changes so fast. The Collaboration and Review workflow in RoboHelp 9 makes so much sense because it uses Adobe Acrobat® technologies that are already familiar and easy to use.

We’ve seen a significant increase in our international sales, an increase in demand for our publications domestically, and we expect that growth to continue. It’s a direct result of our ability to produce and deliver high-quality EPUBs faster and more cost-effectively than ever because of the Adobe Technical Communication Suite.

Tracking alone is worth the upgrade for me. Now I can easily see my team’s changes and ensure consistency.

The new Resource Manager is so much more versatile, especially for multi-authoring teams.

The new Adobe RoboHelp Server 9 Web Administrator is a dream to work with and very easy to configure. The Feedback Analytics and the ability to publish to different audiences and get customized feedback reports will help us keep our content relevant and helpful.

Using Adobe RoboHelp and delivering our help systems as Adobe AIR applications has transformed the way we produce, maintain, and deliver the SDK to our customers. Having a single interface and a single, integrated kit, we can work seamlessly with our developers and deliver our customers a much more usable and higher-quality document with a quicker time to market.

“Adobe RoboHelp 8 empowers us to deliver more impactful help content and in the process, improve the usability of our products…. By using Adobe RoboHelp and delivering our help systems as Adobe AIR applications, we can tap into end-user knowledge and make it available to everyone. And our authors and product experts can be more responsive to our users. It’s a big step forward…. Our help review process is more interactive and efficient with help developed using Adobe RoboHelp and Adobe AIR, because we can provide a discussion forum for authors and reviewers. This drives more useful, higher-quality help content for our users.”

"While we used to be a RoboHelp shop, we opted to purchase another solution that claimed to outperform it. After a year of struggling with the other product and finally switching back to RoboHelp, I can honestly say that RoboHelp still holds the heavyweight title for ease of use, functionality, speed, and reliability."

"A tool is more than its functions. As developers and consultants, teachers and trainers, we have to live with the companies that make the tools we use or recommend. And here, with RoboHelp…Adobe stands out. They consistently honor relationships and commitments with people who are part of the larger community — especially their customers and partners."

"The improvements in Adobe RoboHelp…can only be described as massive. As an author who writes books and documents for audiences all over the world, I'm pleased to see…Unicode support, as well as a simple, customizable user interface that makes creating help systems and knowledge bases highly intuitive….clearly demonstrates Adobe's commitment and understanding of this industry."

"RoboHelp…is much more than a simple point release — it is a huge leap forward with new functionality you can see and use immediately and wonder how you ever worked without it. In the new Adobe RoboHelp…I keep uncovering new gems that have been on my RoboHelp wish list…From reusable snippets and a snappy new multiple document interface, to Unicode language translation support, Adobe has added another substantial product to their technical communications platform." John Daigle, President, Evergreen Online Learning, LLC "…anyone who has been involved with Adobe knows that this is just the beginning; their transparency and commitment to get users involved in the development cycle of RoboHelp is incredibly refreshing. We produce Policies and Procedures for the Housing Associations across the U.K….user-defined variables and advanced conditional content features in RoboHelp…allows us to quickly tailor content for each housing association without compromising the core content….make our job easier and allow us to meet the needs of each individual client without compromise."