Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

ShepherdJS VS Help & Manual

Compare ShepherdJS VS Help & Manual and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

ShepherdJS logo ShepherdJS

Guide your users through a tour of your app.

Help & Manual logo Help & Manual

Help & Manual is a documentation authoring tool that allows you to create a single source text and convert it into a number of other target formats.
  • ShepherdJS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-29
  • Help & Manual Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-07

ShepherdJS features and specs

  • User Guidance
    ShepherdJS allows for creating guided tours and feature introductions, which can help in onboarding new users or guiding existing users through new features effectively.
  • Customizability
    The library provides a wide range of customization options for the appearance of the tour steps as well as their behavior, allowing developers to tailor the user experience to meet specific application needs.
  • Ease of Integration
    ShepherdJS is designed to be easy to integrate with modern JavaScript applications and supports various JavaScript frameworks such as Angular, React, and Vue.
  • Accessibility
    It includes built-in features to enhance accessibility, ensuring that tours can be experienced by all users, including those with disabilities.
  • Community and Support
    ShepherdJS has an active community and is backed by frequent updates and bug fixes, which can be valuable for developers seeking support and reliability.

Possible disadvantages of ShepherdJS

  • Learning Curve
    Despite its ease of integration, there can still be a learning curve associated with understanding and implementing the full range of features ShepherdJS offers, especially for new developers.
  • Dependencies
    ShepherdJS has dependencies that need to be managed, which can sometimes lead to conflicts or increase the difficulty of the setup process in certain environments.
  • Performance Overhead
    Implementing tours in a web application may introduce additional DOM elements and require JavaScript execution, potentially impacting performance, especially on resource-constrained devices.
  • Limited Offline Capability
    Like many web-based libraries, ShepherdJS requires a browser environment to function, which can limit its effectiveness in offline scenarios or in cases where network connections are unstable.

Help & Manual features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Help & Manual provides a WYSIWYG editor that is intuitive and easy to navigate, allowing even non-experienced users to create professional documentation without needing extensive training.
  • Single Source Publishing
    The software allows authors to publish documentation in multiple formats from a single source, such as HTML, PDF, CHM, and more, which streamlines the documentation process.
  • Integrated Version Control
    Built-in support for version control systems like Subversion and Git enables efficient collaboration and version tracking, making it easier for teams to manage changes and developments in documentation.
  • Multi-Language Support
    Help & Manual supports multiple languages, making it a versatile tool for creating documentation for a global audience, including features for translation management.
  • Extensive Customization Options
    The software offers a wide array of customization features, including templates and skins, to match the look and feel of documentation to corporate branding standards.

Possible disadvantages of Help & Manual

  • Cost
    Help & Manual can be relatively expensive compared to other documentation tools, which might be a barrier for small teams or individual users with limited budgets.
  • Complex for Advanced Features
    While easy for basic tasks, some users might find the advanced features complex and challenging to utilize fully without significant learning and experience.
  • Limited Mac Support
    The software primarily supports Windows environments, which can be a limitation for teams that predominantly use Mac or require cross-platform compatibility.
  • Resource Intensive
    Help & Manual can be resource-intensive, potentially requiring significant computing power for optimal performance, which can be an issue on older or less powerful machines.
  • Steeper Learning Curve for Customization
    While there are many customization options, the depth of customization available can make it challenging for users to utilize these features without a thorough understanding of the software.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to ShepherdJS and Help & Manual)
User Onboarding And Engagement
Document Management
0 0%
100% 100
User Engagement
100 100%
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Document Management System

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare ShepherdJS and Help & Manual

ShepherdJS Reviews

8 Best Usetiful Alternatives and Competitors That Are More Professional
Shepherd.js is not a fully developed 3rd party tool like most of the other alternatives that I listed. It is an open-source library to make it easier to create simple product tours.
Source: userguiding.com

Help & Manual Reviews

We have no reviews of Help & Manual yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, ShepherdJS seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

ShepherdJS mentions (10)

  • 7 best product tour JavaScript libraries for frontend apps
    Shepherd.js is a simple JavaScript library aimed at easing the process of making user tours in web applications. It has a clear, intuitive interface wherein you describe your tour step-by-step, which helps improve the tour UX and enhance user understanding: Shepherd.js offers extensive customization options and seamless integration with your application. It prioritizes accessibility with full keyboard navigation.... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Using React Shepherd to build a site tour
    In this tutorial, I will show you how to use React Shepherd to easily implement a site tour on your website. React Shepherd is a lightweight wrapper library for Shepherd.js that allows us to create a walkthrough of a website — either parts of the site or the whole application — by using dialogs that represent steps that you create. At the end of this article, we will have a functioning site tour as shown in this... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Guided Tours Solution for Your Web Application
    Shepherd is a powerful and customizable open source JavaScript library for creating interactive tours and onboarding experiences in web applications. It uses another open source library Floating UI to render the dialog tours. It offers a simple setup process, dynamic content support, the ability to create custom actions and events, and theming and styling too. More importantly, it is responsive too and never goes... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Reddit: Help us design more content to onboard users
    Using/building something like this would go a long way (https://shepherdjs.dev/) and could also have the benefit of keeping the tours in parity with the current L2 UI. Source: over 2 years ago
  • What is the UX term for those pop-up boxes which helps users with their first few tasks after finishing onboarding?
    We’ve called them Product Tours https://shepherdjs.dev is good. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Help & Manual mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Help & Manual yet. Tracking of Help & Manual recommendations started around Jul 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing ShepherdJS and Help & Manual, you can also consider the following products

Intro.js - Simple Javascript framework for adding screen tips

Dr.Explain - Dr.Explain software is a help file authoring tool.

UserGuiding - Create in-app experiences with the most straightforward product adoption platform — quick implementation, lasting user engagement.

HelpSmith - HelpSmith is a help authoring tool to create CHM HTML help files, manuals, and PDF documents.

Userlane - Digital adoption platform with interactive guidance for software applications allowing anyone to understand and master any software from the get-go.

Adobe RoboHelp - Adobe RoboHelp empowers organizations to deliver engaging help and policy content across mobile devices, formats, and platforms.