Slab

Avantages

It does the basics of making searchable recipe cards for how to do things, including uploading documents/files

Inconvénients

There is nothing I don't like. I am sure programs that cost a lot more do more but this is a starter option for a small company

Avantages

We love how easy it is for everyone to create and find documentation. We tried many different systems to store documentation, but Slab has worked really well for everyone in the company. The integration with Slack makes it so much more convenient than always having to go to yet another system. We can frequently answer each other's questions with a Slab article, and when we can't, we try to create the Slab article right then and respond to the person with a link to the newly built article. This has allowed us to better expand our documentation and stop repeating the same questions.

Inconvénients

There are only a few minor things we found that would be nice such as the ability to attach files right to an article rather than having to upload somewhere else and linking to it. We also looked at other systems that had checklists which seemed like a nice feature, but we realized we wouldn't actually use that feature. Neither of these features has even been missed as we've been using Slab for months now, and the more we use it, the more we like it.

Avantages

My favourite things about Slab are:

- integration with Google Drive (including searches).
- searches don't just bring up where the term was found, but also highlight it in context.
- calendars, spreadsheets, and other documents can be embedded into documents.
- ability to add guests.

Inconvénients

My least favourite things about Slab are:

- it can be hard to know what to read and how to read it.
- images cannot be embedded inline with text.
- email addresses are not automatically parsed into mailto: links.
- there is no find and replace (within a post nor system wide).
- ordered lists cannot have paragraphs in between (without restarting the numbering).
- when cross-referencing other posts (by typing + to bring up the contextual menu and then starting to type), there's no easy way to link to a heading.
- there's no feature to check for dead links.
- when tagging teammates, it only uses their full name (there's no way to enter just their first name or put a shortened ID via one's profile).
- screenshots are outdated on their website (so what you see there isn't what you see in your account).
- there does not appear to be any document versioning.

Avantages

- fast search (it's really fast and precise)
- fast rendering of pages
- renders markdown in a very pleasing way
- an auto-generated table of contents is a great feature
- awesome customer service.

Inconvénients

It's still actively developing. Things might change here and there.
Integration still has rooms for improvement. I hope it supports integration with more on-premise solutions like NextCloud, and Mattermost.

Avantages

Very organized, clean and elegant interface. Very easy to write articles, to organize knowledge. The same article can belong to multiple topics. Pleasant to use for reading and writing. Individual pages can be shared publicly. Good cost-benefit.

Inconvénients

The main weakness is that there are many competitors in this niche, in particular Notion and Coda.io. Competitors have more integrations via API, features and allow embedding a greater number of file types.

Alternatives envisagées 

Avantages

It's easy to use with a wonderfully simple interface. Very easy to teach to peers and get them contributing in no time. The ability to search Slab, Slack, and Google Drive all at once is a lifesaver.

Inconvénients

It can be a little bit difficult to visually navigate between the different topics. The interface is very minimal so it's out of the way, but not exactly beautiful.

Avantages

Slab just WORKS. It achieved our major requirements:
* Live-updating for collaborative note taking (especially helpful in meetings and interviews)
* Access restrictions: some of our knowledge needs to be accessible only by certain users
* Great cut-and-paste: this was especially helpful in transitioning from Confluence, and in aggregating knowledge from other sources
* Reasonable pricing
* Stable: it just works! A huge shift from Confluence, which was constantly broken

Inconvénients

I miss columns and more advanced layouts, but they are not mission-critical.

I *really* miss embedding PDFs. Slab lets you upload images... but that's it. No other files. I REALLY hope this changes soon.

Avantages

easy and clean way to store your teams information. integrates with most everything.
we work with a lot of vendors, and slab is by far the easiest way to onboard them with all the info they could ever need.

Inconvénients

you need a champion. to speerhead getting onboarded and practicing regular hygeine. one you get over that initial internal user adoption bump tho, (i undestand this will sound weird) but people will get addicted to making sure your companies info and policies are correct.

Avantages

- easy of use, setup and management (domain sign-on, sections, familiar editor)
- slick and modern design lets you focus on what's important and forget everything else
- best in class editing experience, reminiscent of Dropbox Paper
- growing list of integrations with apps we love (Airtable, Paper, Asana, Trello, Slack...)
- powerful unified cross platform search (Slab, Slack, Google Drive)
- find always what you're looking with Slab's magical search

Inconvénients

- lack of text formatting (some can be accessed through keyboard shortcuts)
- table integration could be more complex
- sections can't be collapsed
- no user groups, though it's easy to add single users

Avantages

The design is very aesthetically appealing and design is easy to use!

Inconvénients

So far, our team has not run into any cons for this software. Any issues we have run into has been fixed in a timely manner.

Avantages

Slab is helpful in storing, sorting, and sharing documents with team members and clients.

Inconvénients

Sometimes the vast amount of documentation can be overwhelming. But the search feature is super helpful in overcoming that!

Avantages

- templates
- document categorization
- series just rocks and is such a great idea to introduce!
- Content Map !! So awesome for quick access!
- groups - perfect for quickly sharing a particular document with multiple team members

Inconvénients

I do not have a con. I wish however there were more options for the Table of Contents feature.

Avantages

- Simple, Markdown based docs. You can copy-paste from a Github repo if you were originally using that to store your information -- or vice versa, if you decide your Slab docs would be better off living in a README.
- Sensible export with usable file-names -- no platform lock. If you don't like Slab, you can leave very easily. One click of a button grabs all of your documents in Markdown format and sticks them into a Zip file.
- Congratulatory thanks messages on your posts are a nice touch that helps you feel as though your docs are actually being used when someone thanks you for them
- Organization/team/user settings are simple and they just work. Don't have to play with a billion permissions to make sure users can read and edit docs. Inviting new users is very simple.

Inconvénients

- No warning/success/failure/note pull-blocks to emphasize certain information. That said, I suggested it to Slab's customer support team, and they said it is on the roadmap!
- Tables are not so good -- but Markdown tables in general are very simple, so this is more a Markdown limitation than a Slab limitation.
- Image handling is not so good -- you don't get to set alignments or text wrapping. Again I think this is a Markdown limitation rather than a Slab limitation -- you are trading the Markdown simplicity for some table and image control.

Avantages

Easy to get started, easy to use. You don't need a whole library of knowledge or even have thought about the perfect organizational scheme. Slab was a great tool for us when we were just getting started, has scaled with us nicely, and I can clearly see how it will scale with us further as we grow.

Inconvénients

Weren't many integrations to start, but have been adding them at a rapid clip.

Avantages

Slab is extremely user-friendly and easy to set up. It took no time to figure out all of the conveniently laid out features and start documenting my team's knowledge and organizing it using Topics (labels).
- The search is fantastic and extends to your Slack and GDrive if you give Slab the permissions;
- The roles and permissions settings are very flexible and you can compartmentalize your information and give access only to the people who should see it.
- The live chat support is the best I've ever encountered, and the overall customer service experience has been great: quick response time, helpful answers, positive attitude.
- The product has been continuously developing and improving over the course of the 4 months I've been using it, and a ton of functionality has been added as if per my personal request addressing all of my team's core needs (private topics, topic subscriptions and others).

Inconvénients

The only drawback for my team is lack of Gitlab integration, but I know it's a huge piece of functionality, so I hope as the demand grows it will be added.

Avantages

The beautiful, intuitive, simple interface

Inconvénients

Lack of permissions, which has recently been fixed with secret notes and guest access

Avantages

I find the real-time collaborative aspect great. The ease of single sign-on is great as well. You can easily import existing documentation from Google Drive where most of our documentation was.

Inconvénients

I will suggest easier integration from Google Drive, when you import the documents, the structure of it is not great and you need to do a lot of work to make it look the way you want.

Avantages

Markdown support and collaborative editing! We had previously used a tool named for mountain climbing, and editing text using their editor was horrendous. For a web tool made around teams, Slab does an excellent job getting out of the way when we start working.

Inconvénients

It’s sometimes unclear at first what to do with projects and posts, since they nest inside each other. I also haven’t figured out if there’s a way to specify a default post sort for all projects (descending by modified time would be best). Both are very minor.

Avantages

Allows more interaction and building off of the work from others on the team. It serves as a great library of information and can be read through easily.

Inconvénients

There are a lot of moving pieces and it can get overwhelming.

Avantages

You can write up and use a table of contents WHILE editing your document
Topics make it easy to tag a document for multiple teams and make it easy to find
Promising embedding feature for things like Docs and Sheets

Inconvénients

The edit vs. read switch isn't very clear to me, and I often click it back and forth to make sure I'm in the right mode

Avantages

Easy to use, customizable, and well adapted for companies seeking to have a central hub for documentation for the entire org.

Inconvénients

At first, it was challenging to figure out some of the product features that were available.

Avantages

Easy to navigate on the front end. Easy to categorize and update.

Inconvénients

Search isn't as effective but not a deal breaker given the price.

Avantages

It is an easy way to disseminate information to a broad legal team to make sure high value legal knowledge is not silo'd in individuals. It improves our overall efficiency as a firm.

Inconvénients

One of our use cases is a Quora type Q&A. However, it is not easy to capture Quora like functionality. This would help make the product more dynamic for our purposes.

Avantages

Work feels calm, cool and collected when I use Slab. I spend less time bouncing back and forth between tabs and more time *actually thinking* through the content of a doc. With their integrations, everything flows in so smoothly.

Not to mention, I spend way less time searching through my inbox, slack messages and Drive in order to find the thing I actually need - THAT is game-changing for my productivity and flow.

Inconvénients

I wish you could make some topics public so it could serve as a help desk!

Avantages

It has an awesome & crisp user interface, easy to use editor with tons of integrations and most importantly this app super fast unlike many collaboration tools I have seen that get really slow. I have enjoyed working on it thus looking forward to getting the paid version.

Inconvénients

Not that I can think of anyone right now. Would love Grammarly integration.