Subsection – A tool for creating support docs for SaaS | Hacker News Reader

Subsection – A tool for creating support docs for SaaS

subsection.io

69 pointsoctobereleven36 comments

If you're pitching a managed platform for documentation, then the documentation for the product itself has to look and behave brilliantly. It's the showcase for your product. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to do that. The website seems to have a confused mix of styles and it quite hard to read somehow. Also, grammar is super-important in this domain - I see SaaS has already been picked up, but it's also super-weird to see the plural of Documentation being Documentations. Reading the terms and privacy is also hard work - there's lots more work on grammar required here, too.

The focus seems a bit blurred, too. The claim is that it's for Support, User Guides, Knowledge Bases, Documentation and Change Logs. But the features list also talks about multuple Blogs. It's not at all clear where they fit in.

Also, being misled is a massive turn-off. First you say "User Guides + Knowledge Bases + Documentations + Changelogs", but then caveat it with "Currently offering User Guides only". But then later on the same page you say "Apps like Intercom, Crisp, and Helpscout, offer only one aspect of support pages and that is Knowledge Bases. Subsection covers all four: User Guides, Knowledge Bases, Documentations, and Changelogs"

You don't cover all four, you _plan_ to cover all four in the future.

Thank you so much for your well founded critique. I will take all your comments and improve these areas you have mentioned.

Your feedback is gold!

One super-simple improvement would be to include a link to your documentation in the primary navigation of your website. I can't even find it!

You are absolutely right. It should be up there.

It’s currently all the way down on the footer: https://subsection.io/guide

It’s still being worked on as Subsection is only about a week old and still deploying features as we speak.

You should flesh out your your own docs before showing it off. For the people that are buying documentation products they are comparing your product to many others including open source tools which come with substantially more evolved demonstrations of what they do.

Throwing stuff over the fence works for some markets and is generally encouraged by HN, but it doesn't for a lot of markets which have substantially more money to spend on these kinds of solutions. In return for more money, you need to withstand basic scrutiny.

You are right. We need to move faster in that direction, as few other commenters have noted earlier.

Thank you for taking a look at it.

I decided to try it out (I recorded my initial impressions here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdmB0JnNF3s).

The software itself is pretty slick. Currently we're using Crisp Chat's help docs for our SaaS, as well as a static site generator for our API docs. I think this could reasonably replace both.

One thing I really like is the layout. Having general topics on the left, as well as anchor based menu in each article is super helpful.

Thank you so much for recording this. I appreciate it a ton.

It’s incredible to look at it from the user’s perspective. And happy that you found it useful. Gives me a few ideas on how to improve certain things.

And to compare it to Crisp, that’s just amazing. Would love to see Transistor’s help and api docs on Subsection at some point.

This was great!

The idea is solid but as someone who is in the market for something like this, the product doesnt currently inspire confidence. Specifically, you’re a tool to create User Guides and yet you haven’t created a user guide for your own site. If you don’t have user guides for your own service that indicates a few possibilities:

- the tool is too difficult to use for even yourself to be worth it

- you don’t use your tool deeply so you don’t have intuitive understanding of what is needed to be improve

- you don’t actually take user guides seriously and think they are important for a company to provide

When looking at this kind of service I’m evaluating on two levels: my customers experience, and my authoring experience. By not having your own user guide filled out I’m unable to evaluate the end customer experience (search, navigation, etc).

I know you’re in beta, but I don’t know why you’d do a show HN without at least having your own user guide filled out. A big wasted opportunity.

> Specifically, you’re a tool to create User Guides and yet you haven’t created a user guide for your own site.

This was my exact thought. It's nice to have an easy-to-start demo, but I was expecting at least a link to a working (user-side) example.

Oh, sorry you missed that.

On homepage there is a guide to one of my other apps, blogstatic, using Subsection: https://blogstatic.io/guide/getting-started

And the Subsection one, which I am currently adding info to: https://subsection.io/guide

Subsection is about a week old and still improving it while in Beta.

Even that blogstatic "guide" is just one page.

It seems to me you're throwing a bunch of barely-built stuff at the wall to see what has traction to then actually build out. I don't think HN is a good way to do that. This now feels like a waste of everyone's time.

Sorry about that. Did not mean to look like I am doing that.

Subsection is about a week old and I am slowly building out the guides for both our apps.

Also, there are currently two users who are using it to build out their User Guide and they will hopefully publish soon, so I can share their guides.

I think that’s a bit harsh. HN should absolutely be a place to try stuff out, as long as you’re clear about it. OP was mostly clear, even though the homepage copy might not be ideal.

Somehow I have missed your comment. Wanted to thank you the support. And, fixed most of the copy as we speak. Stating clearly the stage the product is in and what's to come. The intention was "to promise", but I can see now that some of the copy could have sounded as if everything is ready now. An honest semantics mistake.

[ Subsection is free to play with, without needing an email ]

Hey HN friends,

I have created this tool for any Saas that is currently missing Support Docs or wants to manage them all from a single spot.

Support Docs, such as: User Guides, Knowledge Bases, Documentations, and Changelogs.

The project started with me looking into how to create support docs for my other apps and couldn't find one that does it all.

Then found out that user guides and knowledge bases do rank pretty well for bottom-of-the-funnel customers = Subsection was born.

Currently you can only create a User Guide as I'm in the midst of deploying themes for KB, Docs, and Changelogs.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

I would love to use it actually, but would want to have some pricing or long term garantue.

Thanks. There will be pricing after the Beta. I want to base it on what users are able to pay for something like this.

Could you share a bit about what aspects of it you would use and what would be a good price for your Saas?

I was thinking of spinning op a Docusaurus v2 for a while. But was annoyed by the forced markdown editing for my team mates who are not devs. Gitbook is okay alternative, but forces you to pay per user. But just decided to go for gitbook now, it's basic plan is actually ok.

I understand your careful approach, but I would just set pricing for now, at the moment I don't want to invest all the time of setting up docs and then you having it shut down.

Fair points. Yes, will try to soon have a better understanding about the pricing and post it up.

“Teams” is something I am trying to launch shortly so users within a company can collaborate on various docs.

I hope you get to keep Subsection in the back of your mind, and once you feel we’re here to stay, I would love to have you and your team on Subsection.

I am Val and you’ll most likely find me on the chat support.

Don't get discouraged by HN's negativity. The product may be a little rough around the edges but it's starting to look great, congrats on being on beta and good luck with the rest of the path.

Thank you. I really appreciate that. I look forward to improving it and fixing the areas some HNs have pointed out. Also, I am happy people are taking the time to look at it.

Please don't ignore accessibility. Docs that aren't accessible are a big no-no and a dealbreaker for my company. I've had a quick look at your own userguide and the results aren't good.

https://www.accessibilitychecker.org/audit/?website=https%3A...

Even just the basics of alt text and sufficient colour contrast need fixing. This suggests accessibility hasn't been considered at all.

You are right! Absolutely embarrassed that I didn’t thoroughly look at the accessibility aspect of it.

That is the next task in line. Please, check it again soon, to notice the changes.

Some thoughts about your onboarding:

> Try a Free Demo / NO EMAIL REQUIRED

Ok, sure! I’m assuming this is a demo of documentation created in Subsection, so I’m not sure who would expect it to require email anyway. Click

> Free Demo

> Email is not required to test Subsection!

> Start

Ok, an entire screen to say that again? There’s nothing to do on this screen, so it seems completely unnecessary. How can “no email required” be the most important information about the demo anyway? But sure, click

> Demo Created

> You can now create your very first guide!

> Next

Another screen that says nothing and where I do nothing? I don’t even know in what way a demo was “created”. I just want to see what the documentation looks like, but I guess this is a demo of an admin interface. There’s a slow video here showing me things I can’t do on this screen. Am I supposed to memorize what happens in the video to use on a different screen?

After this I get into the admin UI which seems straightforward - I didn’t play around much with it, but it doesn’t look too complicated. You should jump here in a single step after I click the demo button on the landing page!

Great, points! I agree that it could be quicker.

I wasn’t so sure about including the second step before creating the Demo, but that was sort of my safety so people don’t “accidentally” create it.

And, overall it could be less steps for sure.

Thank you so much for this feedback.

One of the most important aspects that doesn't seem to be covered here is data retention and ownership. Looking through the settings page I don't see any ways to eject and backup all the documentation that was invested into the project. Downloading the data as markdown or as a git repo is pretty important to be able to trust it won't be lost if you disappear or out grow the features of the service.

Great point! Adding this to the list. I agree that it’s very important to have this functionality in, so users can be free to move away at any time without feeling tied to the tool.

I'm in the market for one of these. Right now all alternatives that have embeddable forms and chat are weirdly expensive. Gitbook would be fantastic, but if you want to include some kind of help desk you're forced to take users off site. Which is a decision I can't quite understand. I mean, users go from the application, to gitlab, to an offsite help desk just to get an answer.

You're right. A ton of hoops for the user to jump around. In Subsection I'm solving this by having the support docs sit under the main domain.

Really love the way you handled the demo.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Congrats! Small nitpick. Saas should be SaaS otherwise it looks like a misspelling.

Ah. Will change that. Thanks for noticing it. I never know fore sure.

Can this be used on premise?

It will be online only. Sorry about that.

Not that I’m against “on-premise”, but it’s much easier to deploy updates this way.

Thank you for taking a look at it.

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