More on MediaWiki Competitors
Measurement, Software August 4th, 2008Since I placed up my post about MediaWiki I have received some feedback from individuals and companies. I have now tired out more than half a dozen products and services. What stands out is that every product out there offers close to the same features and functions with variations that are often subtle rather than overt. In the end I have two findings.
- It is clear that even my completely unknown and haphazard blog is immediately noticed by those who monitor on their focused topics. Kudos to Atlassian for solid proactive monitoring and marketing efforts.
- There appears to be solid agreement outside of the world of the techno geek that platforms other than MediaWiki are easier for the end user.
Two folks have contacted me to supplement my original review with products they find useful - Mindtouch Deki and Atlassian Confluence. Both of these products clearly target the same market as Socialtext to provide a more usable and supported environment then MediaWiki. Both products seem to offer solutions worthy of investigation for those considering Wiki products.
Here are some things I noticed.
- MindTouch’s offering of a free & open source version and source code as well as a free personal Wiki hosting is a great marketing win.
- MindTouch’s marketing clearly to people who tend towards the open source spectrum. The easy to use free hosting also is very inviting to those who want to get started quickly with experimenting and need a simple quick solution to get running.
- Altlassian has a taken an alternative voice and is focused on IT audiences. It’s Wiki offering is clearly packaged as one solution of many they offer to enterprise workgroups. And while they offer similar hosted and license options as others, the marketing focus on features bespeaks their expectation of readers’ familiarity with why one would want a Wiki. Atlassian’s free 30 day evaluation (rather than offering any free personal hosting option) supports this IT focus as well.
Lessons learned:
- There are many many options potentially better than MediaWiki.
- The marketers are targeting their message to different organizations to provide differentiation via message for a product set that is rapidly becoming a commodity.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Thanks for the review and “kudos.”
August 5th, 2008 at 9:14 am
Also to point out a few more things about MindTouch. First, our website is powered by Deki. This gives you an idea how good looking a wiki can really be. Think super agile CMS! Second, we recently converted all of Mozilla’s Developer Community from MediaWiki to Deki, including active content and templates! In short, anybody with a MediaWiki site can now upgrade to Deki and keep all the content and history intact! Of course, like everything else, the converter is open source as well. Enjoy!
August 5th, 2008 at 9:27 am
Hi Dan, my name is Alan Lepofsky, and I work at Socialtext. Above you mention that Mindtouch, Atlassian, and Socialtext are going after the same market. While there may be some overlap, I wanted to point out that Socialtext has recently evolved to be much more than just a wiki company. With the introduction of Socialcalc, Socialtext users now have an integrated online spreadsheet which supports wiki markup. That means you get much more than just another web based spreadsheet. Instead, you can now embed wiki pages (or links, or sections, or…) into cells. Vice versa, you can embed spreadsheets, or even cells or ranges of cells into wiki pages. It is amazing. Socialtext also now offers Dashboards and People, providing a custom home page experience (that can also contain Google gadgets, RSS feeds, etc) and profile information about your business colleagues. Socialtext’s platform is avilable either hosted, or can be placed inside a company’s firewall via an appliance. Zero admin is a good thing, vs. just providing software for customers to download, install, configure, and manage on their own. Finally, Socialtext has a professional consulting group that can work with customers on best practices, helping ensure successful use of the products. It is not just enough to put it out there, you have to solve a business need in order for users to adopt any new technology. If you’d like a demo, or any more information, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
PBWiki has also come up as a posisble solution. Checking them out I find that PBWiki certainly has a vocal community that enjoys the service. PBWiki certainly is a package that has a greater level of awareness that any of the others I have mentioned.
And while PBWiki has a fair pricing model for smaller sites, the cost for larger sites seems very much out-of-whack when compared to alternates. Before I would use this service for my clients I would want more detail as to potential corporate account discounts because when you have around 50 users the monthly per user pricing just could not carry for my clients.
August 15th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
You might want to look a little more closely at MindTouch Deki. It has functionality and benefits NO other product delivers. If you watch the first demo video on this page: http://mindtouch.com/demo this will be immediately clear. It’s short, give it a looksy.