Jonas B.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Create visually engaging storytelling pieces in hours that would otherwise take days to program. Incorporating photos, graphics, videos, etc. works straightforwardly. Especially in journalism, this greatly expands the storytelling spectrum with manageable effort. The tool is also regularly developed further, which is of course great.

What do you dislike about the product?
There is still room for improvement in the loading times and the compression of images and videos, so that the story appears more fluid for the viewer. A bit more flexibility and more features like timelines or a better integration of map tools (with text overlay) would be great. Also a code documentation would be nice, which could be used to make certain CSS or Javascript interventions easier.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand makes it possible to develop impressive storytelling pieces in a short time and with limited (human) resources. We have now content on our website which we wouldn't have otherwise.

Jad Z.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Easy to use, no coding required Pages always look great on any screen Very simple to adapt for mobile Allows you to focus on your story instead of wasting your time on tools that are hard to use

What do you dislike about the product?
Not for people who want to move a button 1 pixel to the right

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand enables me to rapidly create functional web pages, all the while having confidence in their seamless performance across various screen dimensions.

Molly S.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The ability to tell stories in an engaging and different way allows us to showcase our stories, photos and videos to our audience on web in a way we haven't been able to before. We are super excited to test shorthand and explore what is possible with the tool. On top of that, the shorthand team are brilliant. They are responsive and keen to help. We are new to shorthand and our success manager Morgan has provided great feedback on our stories to improve them and has provided brilliant support to our team. She has been responsive, helpful, and has either been able to answer all our questions or provide solutions.

What do you dislike about the product?
As we get familiar with the tool it can take quite a lot of time to build out our stories. The only other note is that the product is quite expensive.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Previously we have only had basic blog and news templates to display our content on our website and have not been able to showcase photo stories or content or produce long-form content in a way that is engaging to our audiences. Shorthand is a great solution to that problem for us.

Stuart F.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
As the title says, Shorthand gives us a way to tell more engaging, immersive stories. As a publisher, it gives us a way to provide a more premium experience to our audience.

What do you dislike about the product?
We've been using the platform for several years and like the way it is continually updated. But would love to see features that bring some additional interactive features that some other similar platforms have. Also, Shorthand always feels very desktop-first. That's fine. But often converting experiences to mobile feels secondary.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are always looking for ways to deliver a more premium experience for the content we publish. That's specifically where Shorthand fits in. Our creative teams regularly find ways to make the platform even more impactful.

Andrew N.
Star Rating: 2.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand has enabled us to give our print publications a lease of new life as we can now present them as immersive features with a slick and modern look.

What do you dislike about the product?
I'd like there to be more freedom in terms of moving items around on Shorthand, as it stands users are quite limited in terms of placement, and this isn't the best thing when using Shorthand to create online magazines.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand has given us a great platform to present our publications digitally. We still publish a flipbook magazine with every issue, but are finding our readers are now swaying towards our immersive issues done on shorthand.

Paolo P.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
You can create landing or minisites right away quickly and impressive at the same time. Obviously you can't manage them as they would be created with a CMS, but these are different products.

What do you dislike about the product?
Shorthand could grow so much with more modules to add inside their creative layout. I know that this could not be the right objective, anyway this could help a lot agencies and clients that need to create quickly different typologies of landing pages.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Quick creation of landing pages, or minisites with their new site collection builder. So quick creation and impressive. The final result is always appreciated from client side.

Nicholaus L.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
It was a great platform for creating high design presentation material for our C-Suite stakeholders to take them on a case study journey. The interface was super intuitive.

What do you dislike about the product?
I'd say, I wish there were more options of page styles and even more functionality...mostly because more just means we can use this in a multitude of ways. But it definitely outperforms several other methods, as-is.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The design and fluidity that it is capable of, is really allowing it to shine over other platforms.

Naomi M.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a fantastic tool for publishers looking for an interactive and highly visual way of telling stories. New features are regularly released meaning Customer service is great; when I've had any issues with the platform the team has always been very responsive and helpful.

What do you dislike about the product?
I can't think of many things to dislike about Shorthand.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We don't have in-house developer capacity to dedicate to creative multimedia articles, and yet there is appetite among our partners, clients, and our in-house news team for this type of content. Shorthand enables us, with very limited technical capacity, to tell the kinds of engaging, visually rich stories that we want to tell.

Quoc Minh L.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
It's very easy to make new beautiful templates and everyone can use it without any knowledge of coding. It saves much time and removes all burdens for the newsroom.

What do you dislike about the product?
I am happy with what Shorthand offers and I don't have anything to complain.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I do not have many coders in the newsroom while I need to produce many long-form stories which attract readers and make them spend longer time on the website. With Shorthand, my team can produce good stories as fast as 30 or even 15 minutes. In the past we could only produce one story every week. Now we can produce long-form stories every day.

Laura C.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
The most helpful things about Shorthand are its story editor —which allows non-coders to create professional scrollytelling projects— and the aesthetics of the projects —highly customizable with amazing results

What do you dislike about the product?
I'm overall deeply satisfied with my Shorthand experience, but if I had to say the least useful things about this software, would be the limited transitions in Reveal section. Besides, I'd like to be able to use videos in some sections in which, so far, only pictures are allowed.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It helps us to engage more our readers and it has upgraded the quality of how we showcase our content

Josh A.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand has allowed us to create super engaging web content without the need for more complex systems or having to get developers involved. The Shorthand customer success team have been most helpful in getting us up and running. The ability to publish in various ways is also a plus point. Shorthand's scrollmation and reveal sections are gamechanges, and used correctly can make web content jump off the screen.

What do you dislike about the product?
The fundamentals of the platform are excellent but we're still looking at ways to move beyond that, understand usage and readership data better and have more control as an adminstrator. But improvements are coming down the line.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Ability for non developers to create and publish engaging web content. Allows us to understand readership metrics and push the boundaries of the type of content we can create.

Eugene K.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is an effective tool for bringing your content to life. It makes content more dynamic and a better experience for the reader.

What do you dislike about the product?
It took some time and development to sync with our CMS (Ektron) but we managed to build it and works well.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Our research and reports were always a bit dull. Shorthand now creates more immersive and exciting content that looks better and potentially retains users.

Helen R.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a superb tool for quickly building microsites and immersive landing pages to showcase immersive digital stories or long-form content.

What do you dislike about the product?
I honestly cannot think of anything I dislike about Shorthand.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand allows us to integrate multiple content types (editorial, video, sound, social posts, imagery etc) into our CMS via a Drupal API. The tool is super-easy to use and enables non-tech savvy users to get quickly up to speed. We typically use Shorthand to showcase thought leadership events, long-form stories and to power the Careers section of our website.

Andrew E.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
I enjoy making the premium content we create as engaging as possible for fans. The platform helps us do just that.

What do you dislike about the product?
There is nothing on top of mind that I dislike about Shorthand.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand allows us to easily create premium longform content for our website. It helps us produce a top-level experience for fans, from presentation to taking the users on a journey when they explore an article created using Shorthand.

Will R.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
The continuious changes to the platform, adding new features to promote creativity across our content.

What do you dislike about the product?
Some of the rigid structures, I would be nice to be able to customise the pages a little more.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Stops reliance on Development teams, we can create engaging wesbites from little input from other teams.

Verified User in Online Media
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is great and makes it super easy to make very impressive looking stories that really come to life and engage audiences. It is really easy to use and the consistent additions and new developments means we can always keep our content fresh. The team at Shorthand are also very helpful and are incredibly quick to respond if there are any issues.

What do you dislike about the product?
There isn't much to dislike about Shorthand, and will be great to see the platform continue to develop more and more new features.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Making it much easier and much quicker to create impressive looking content for our website. It is also working well to engage audiences and keep them on the page for longer.

Joanna W.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is an excellent tool, that me and my team couldn't be without. It's intuitive, creative and visually appealing, and the support behind the scenes is also excellent.

What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing! I've had no problems with Shorthand so far.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With Shorthand, my team and I can tell stories in a visually appealing and engaging way. When we build something using Shorthand, we always receive excellent feedback.

David C.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Easy dashboard and simple story building platform

What do you dislike about the product?
Would like wider font selection to create better headlnes etc

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Allows stories to come to life - readers know they are in for a different experience when they use see a Shorthand feature.

Claudio L.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a powerful tool, we enjoyed creating with it since it is really user-friendly and minimalistic. It really helped us create engaging landing pages and improve conversions.

What do you dislike about the product?
nothing at all! It is a poweful tool and at the moment the only limitations I see are the ones related to image quality but overall it is great and I believe it will improve with the years.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
the opportunity to generate landing pages without involving external agencies and developers. It is helpful because it saves time and give us more freedom to structure pages the way we want.

Christina R.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
The templates and how easy it is to use!

What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing specific. Sometimes i got annoyned that i have to use a graphic designer for outstand concepts

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Creating long-form content without using a developer

Sorina M.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
I love how it allows you to easily create impactful stories in no time

What do you dislike about the product?
I would like it to have a wider variety of templates.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Impactful storytelling in journalism

Verified User in Hospitality
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is very easy to use and it makes our newsletter more engaging and easy to read. The images and videos are very simple to just drag and drop into the editor.

What do you dislike about the product?
If the text box sizes were able to be editable, it could be better.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand helped our newsletter go digital instead of continuing to be printed every month. We are spending less and our members are reading more!

Andrea J.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The easy-to-use section templates and tools like "Projects" make creating stories fun.

What do you dislike about the product?
As a graphic designer, I want to create more complex designs, and we are sometimes limited if there are more flexible options to create more complex layouts without using codes.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand makes presentations come to life instead of using boring PowerPoint to present data/information. Keeps viewers interested and engaged with the content.

Gary W.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
I use shorthand for sales presentations. The feedback from potential clients is always positive and now and then clients do respond with a thanks for the professional proposal.

What do you dislike about the product?
Seems to take a lot of memory from the computer

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Vibrant sales presentations

Lars Ørjan N.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The simplicity. It is very quick to create something that is incredibly beautiful

What do you dislike about the product?
I've stayed up all night trying to figure out what I don't like. But I can't find one

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I stand out when I share links that are written in Shorthand. It creates a WOW factor and makes it easier to keep the reader engaged.

Verified User in Publishing
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
it is very easy to setup a longread article or a collection of them

What do you dislike about the product?
It does not include animations over the content or elements

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Publishing longform articles

Verified User in Financial Services
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Easy to build an expert-like site. Helpful account managers and tutorials on how to use.

What do you dislike about the product?
Not able to add Lead Generation to the page. I am hoping that this will be a feature that will soon be rolled out.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand provides an external link for our clients. It gives us one centralized place to keep our marketing/sales enablement material.

Marissa R.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
For ease in creating custom multimedia storytelling experiences, Shorthand is the way to go. Their templates allow for elegant and simple stories that any novice could quickly master creating, as well as the option for more technically nuanced approaches to create slick and professional designs. But what has been as impressive as their platform is their customer support. They are always quick, efficient, and treat me and my team with personal professionalism that is often lacking from tech companies. Our early missteps received kind understanding and the support team immediately took the time to adjust things on the back end for us. I definitely recommend Shorthand, particularly for other cultural heritage institutions, like ours.

What do you dislike about the product?
We are very satisfied with Shorthand. One point our users mention is that they miss breadcrumbs that would easily direct them back to the previous story they were in when advancing through linked stories (rather than having to click back to the original tab).

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand has provided us with an easy way to take our exhibition content and scholarly research and pair them with digitized cultural heritage collections to create engaging online stories for our the public.

Verified User in Higher Education
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Customer support is prompt and friendly. Shorthand is intuitive to use The presentation of stories is beautiful and encourages students to explore, experiment and be ambitious

What do you dislike about the product?
Uploaded media e.g. images are not stored in a library. This means that when the editor wants to move things around, it's problematic if they don't have access to the original media. Are we missing something obvious here/

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We were looking for a multimedia platform to showcase student work in a professional manner.

Verified User in Design
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Platforms similar to Shorthand are at their best when they are quick and easy to use; Shorthand's is both and what's more, it's a breeze to put together rich content in no time. Even better is the way they support you in everything you do. There's always the detailed Knowledge Base to hand and a personal account manager who supports and investigates any issues which may arise for us.

What do you dislike about the product?
There's a few limits, design-wise, and the ability to have more sections to work with would be nice, but on the whole, Shorthand has everything we need as an organisation.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Sign up for the free trial and experience Shorthand for yourself. The trial allows you to use pretty much everything that's available in the full version – you won't be disappointed!

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We regularly deal with infographics, charts and diagrams – Shorthand helps bring all of these to life with simple animations that help reveal information in a progressive and easy-to-understand way. A restriction on the number of sections a Story can hold can be a bit restrictive, but it does force our clients to hone and sharpen their content, which can only be a good thing.

Xandi E.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a fantastic no-code platform that allows us to showcase our creative work and storytelling. As a digital publisher, we can focus on the campaign objectives without having to tackle complicated codes and programs. The interface is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. Any user can figure it out at the first use.

What do you dislike about the product?
It would be great to have paid add-ons per story, rather than per subscription, because each campaign/story is unique in terms of objectives and budgets.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Shorthand is highly recommended for content creators and storytellers who want to focus on the visuals and design, rather than the coding.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With Shorthand, we have eliminated the need to outsource coding and progamming. We used to hard-code every microsite we create, and the back-and-forth with feedback and changes eat up precious time. Shorthand has allowed us to create beautiful and attractive pages without using a single line of code ourselves.

Renae B.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is an incredibly user-friendly web design interface that makes beautiful web pages and articles simple to achieve.

What do you dislike about the product?
We haven't encountered any issues or things we'd change with Shorthand yet!

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are finding Shorthand particularly helpful for larger form reporting, such as our annual Donor Impact Report. With Shorthand, our digital reports are visually comparable to the printed version - we are so happy with our digital reporting outcomes, we are aiming to offer only digital reporting from 2022.

Richard J.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
I teach Shorthand to students and have limited time to do so, but they find it very user friendly and are quickly able to get the basics and tell some impressive-looking stories.

What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing in particular really, this has been an effective product for us.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
This is the best digital tool I've so far used for this kind of storytelling purpose.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand is an easy way to introduce students to the creation of striking looking visual content, with a minimum of coding knowledge.

Verified User in Entertainment
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand gives us a new storytelling tool that fits our clients.

What do you dislike about the product?
Some of the scrolling features that reveal images, don't give me enough control of when the images are revealed

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
When we need to tell a complex story for a client, Shorthand helps us deliver.

Verified User in Sports
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The platform does a lot of the work for you - it makes the process extremely fast. The nature of what we need means that I can duplicate a story and have the next one made quickly.

What do you dislike about the product?
There are limits design-wise - this is obviously so that anyone can use it, but as a designer, you are used to a lot more freedom. Having to make graphics and infographics on a separate platform and then add them in as JPEGs doesn't feel like best practice, but it does still work.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It provides us with the means to send a digital programme to supporters. We could create a PDF and send this out, but we didn't want to do this as we wanted to make best use of the fact that this will be viewed on a screen. It means that supporters see images responsive to their screen size, we can send them straight to other digital content (youtube videos, website links etc) and it's just a better experience overall.

Damion D.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The system is very user friendly and takes no time to get to grips with the interface and capabilities - its all there for you. Options to embed enriched media from other software you might use like Infogram, and if you have coders you can embed your own creations. The support team have been great, quick, friendly and go above and beyong to help you get the best from the system

What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing, alls good, but hope at some point they continue to add new functionlity

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Creating engaging Marketing Insight articles for our customers without involving our tech teams

Verified User in Media Production
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
The support from the Shorthand team has always been prompt and helpful, whether it's a small problem or a big change to our template. It is an excellent platform that really elevates the design of our stories and reports.

What do you dislike about the product?
There could be room for even more customization and flexibility within sections when building a story.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand has improved the appearance and user-friendliness of our reports and long articles, with readers commenting on how much they like the new look and sponsors being increasingly impressed.

Daniel S.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is really easy to use to create lovely looking results, and the more you use it the more you find different ways of improving what you're putting out. The suport team are fantastic, really going above and beyond to sort out any problems and work with you to achieve what you want.

What do you dislike about the product?
There's nothing at all I dislike about it.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The content produced is much more appealing than an ordinary text-heavy page, with opportunities for multi-media.

Shalini R.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a great platform to help us make the most of our visual assets, doing them justice. I love the scrollmation features, keeping the user engaged, especially for longer-form content. Shorthand enables great collaboration for us at WaterAid, working closely with our photo, design and editorial teams. I look forward to creating more stories, exploring more features and capabilities.

What do you dislike about the product?
The only thing I wished I could have added were more visual blocks for CTAs back to our website at the bottom.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand allows us to create dynamic storytelling content, giving the user an immersive-type feeling that we can't yet achieve on our website alone.

Dominic E.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The flexibility is terrific. You can use Shorthand for simple photo-led pieces or as a platform for something a bit more ambitious. They're also constantly working on the platform, improving the UI and adding new components. Finally, the Shorthand team has great communication and will respond to help request almost immediately (regardless of your timezone).

What do you dislike about the product?
No major drawbacks. It does exactly what it should.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We have published photo essays, long-form features, and even interactive Escape Rooms. It's wonderful.

Verified User in Higher Education
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand has a simple interface and it's easy to create striking pages with rich media content quickly and with professional results.

What do you dislike about the product?
While an extremely valuable tool, a custom Shorthand theme is somewhat expensive for our state-funded budget. However, the capabilities and ease of use far exceed the value of cheaper options.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I would love the option to organize projects in the backend. Being able to stack or put related projects in a folder would be lovely. Shorthand has enabled our team to publish content quickly and professionally.

Stefanie S.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a very useful tool for any person interested in telling stories with an amazing design. It's easy to use, very intuitive. Also, their support service is helpful and fast.

What do you dislike about the product?
I can't see any bad thing about Shorthand, but if I have to name one is that it is not translated to other languages so it could be used in much more countries.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand makes it easy to tell a story with great design features without having to learn about programming or CSS. If you know CSS you can personalize even more the tool, but if you don't, you're going to have a great result also.

Verified User in Online Media
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
It's very easy to use and intuitive – and it looks great. The team are also extremely helpful when it comes to any issues.

What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes there are issues when embedding its stories on our own site, but these are usually resolved quickly.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use it for both commercial and editorial content on our website and it really helps to get us across a lot of information in an attractive way.

Mark T.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Visually striking and easy to use platform

What do you dislike about the product?
Slowdown when using large images and vid

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Save yourself some time looking at others and take the leap with shorthand. Works great across teams and allows you to quickly create visually striking content with ease of navigation and collaboration. Just make sure you practice the humble face you'll make when receiving complements, while being painfully aware that it only took you about 30 minutes to create something professional and unique.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Engaging students across longer periods, evaluating effectiveness with analytics to drive continuous improvement.

Verified User in Higher Education
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Support for new and potential future users.

What do you dislike about the product?
Capers, word counts, enforced feedback structures.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Teaching my students. I get to watch them grow..

Verified User in Renewables & Environment
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
The fact you could create an interesting scroll-read without having prior coding knowledge. Functional section layouts and easy ways of adding images and text. Alternative smaller screen versions and alt text for accessibility were useful additions. Good tips and supporting documents for safe areas, image resolution and effective file format. And live/recorded tutorials to understand the workings were a useful reference at any time. Customising options by allowing the user/client to add in the specific brand details – logo, font and colours. Prompt support from the shorthand team, especially technical and theme support Alex Marshall and Dawn Murden.

What do you dislike about the product?
I found the theme form quite complex without a visual reference and what each section/heading or body style would look like. It would be good if the form had visual elements built in to cross-reference the context of the style and colour, especially where they would be applied and how they would appear. And one other thing was not being able to have different height sections for text over media and scrollmation sections. Sometimes these sections aren't very long when they are broken up for layout reasons, so you end up with a lot of blank space. It would be good to have full and half screen layout like the title section for these as well. In some sections I found the alignment of the image containers (top and left) to the text column a bit off and this bothered me, all it needed was a light nudge to align.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
An engaging medium if the story is visually compelling and has supporting visuals and media to offer. Storyboard and plan the story on paper before moving on to building the visual.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
In the current circumstances (unpredicted 'pandemic') when we've lost human contact and sharing important reports and research via conferences, meetings with people using printed reports and other tactile means, shorthand helps bridge this gap by allowing a more user-friendly way of sharing a story and adding value to a report. As the report we worked with had many reviews and videos, Shorthands dynamic workspace with images, text and video aided a more interactive approach of telling the story.

Verified User in Oil & Energy
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand were very responsive to any questions we raised and always happy to confirm what was happening at each stop of the process.

What do you dislike about the product?
I don't have any negatives, our experience was 100% positive.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand have simpifiled the process of publishing content to our new domain and created redirects for all of our old content to the new sub-domain. This has saved our team hours of work re-publishing all of the content manually.

Michelle H.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
We needed help getting a story published on deadline and the customer "success manager" came through. Thanks Shorthand !

What do you dislike about the product?
I wish more people used Shorthand. It's a great tool.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It's a good tool for storytelling especially when you have good images. You don't need a lot of text.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is a really intuitive platform that makes it easy to produce engaging, beautiful digital content. The service is brilliant, with as much 1:1 support as you need.

What do you dislike about the product?
I can't think of any specific downsides other than relatively high costs which can be a bit tricky for my org.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Being able to have a platform for very longform content, with more easily customisable features than our own website. Engaging storytelling without the need for coding.

Verified User in Higher Education
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
I really like the visually attractive templates available and the fact that it's easy to use.

What do you dislike about the product?
Not a lot to talk about here once you get used to the concept of stories live in collections which in turn live in stories.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I'm able to create more appealing websites than on my business CMS.

Helena C.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The universe of possibilities it opens up for us, in terms of what we can do with our content. It's very flexible, and yet, it always looks cohesive and elegant. The user experience is wonderful every time. The Reveal Section has endless uses: we've published animated cartoons, interactive waterworks infographics, pie/bar charts and photographs. This range provides an opportunity to rethink content - what we can do and how we can do it - and to incorporate new methodologies into our conceptualization process.

What do you dislike about the product?
Depending on what you want to achieve, it can be the right tool for you or not. If you want total freedom to design user experience and interactivity, this wouldn't be the right platform. But for newsrooms without coding capabilities, this is as good as it gets.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
If you think this can be the right fit for your needs, do it. Get Shorthand. If you use its sections creatively, the possibilities are endless for what you can accomplish with your content. You get a flexible and elegant user interface, and strong backend processing capabilities. It is also easy to use, scale and incorporate into your production pipeline. With Shorthand you can stop worring about the software and focus on creating the best content. It's an overall superior product.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are able to publish interactive, engaging and informative stories eficiently and without having to code. As a small newsroom in a country like Venezuela, our resources are limited. We face many constraints, from internet speed to hiperinflation, that make having a full-time programming team impossible. Shorthand allows us an array of content possibilities that work well with our needs and capabilities. The content is easy to upload, and therefore, the process is easy to incorporate into our pipeline, and several sections provide the opportunity to build interactivity through good design. Shorthand allows small newsrooms to build big stories.

Andy H.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
The relative simplicity of the system - it's very easy to find your way round. And it's pretty intuitive too. Where it's not, there's normally some kind of help page or article that points you in the right direction. Also like the preview option to check your work as you go along and that you don't have to constantly save while putting an article together. When Ive' encountered technical publishing-related issues, I'm pleased to say the help desk has been pretty quick to respond on the whole.

What do you dislike about the product?
The lack of ability to make adjustments such as font size and column width within templates. Some built in image editing software would be useful too. For some articles you have to crop an image in so many different dimensions so that works well in all the different places - desktop version, mobile version, social channels. We've had some issues with a recent update at Shorthand's end which means articles look good in preview but when published the images are all pixelated. Apparently it's an issue at our end with our webservers but, to my knowledge, we weren't warned in advance that there could be disruption.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Get your theme right from the start. And explore how others have put Shorthand to use - it will stimulate ideas.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The ability to display not only data in a much more engaging way, but general content too. Articles are clutter-free, easy to digest and a pleasure to lazily scroll through. We've not really had the ability to do that before and consequently traction of our long-form reads has increased.

Andrea H.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
I love how easy the platform is to use and how speedy their help service is to help (on the few occasions we have needed it). They have been super accommodating of us and are always willing to help!

What do you dislike about the product?
There are a few things we wish we have control over (such as how the responsiveness works and some custom styling), however I know on higher plans this is available, and shorthand . The other thing I have found challenging is that the pricing structure changes every year, this being said, shorthand has always been willing to help and find a plan to suit our NGO budget.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
I would highly recommend it. The team has been amazing over the 3 years we have used them.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We have moved our Annual Report to Shorthand which has been amazing and a really engaging way to engage our supporters. More recently we are using it for more digital assets that we are needing to be more engaging and something different for people for are being bombarded with NGO asks.

Rich E.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
The platform is super easy to work with and has some brilliant features. Connecting different social platforms to help layer stories and embed videos from youtube. The technical support and help is great too.

What do you dislike about the product?
I would recommend the Pro licence, although it's more expensive the additional features are worth the cost.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Workstreams are much better, making digital case studies more engaging and connecting social platforms.

Jayvik P.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
It’s easy to use with simple guides (if needed) to on-board other team members. You can really push your creativity as the various options, especially tailoring content just for desktop AND/OR mobile, allow you to provide a unique experience for your users to consume your content/information.

What do you dislike about the product?
The limited networks offered as sharing could be expanded, to truly reach the masses. Only one user can be editing at one given time so sometimes limits collaboration.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Ensure you have a well laid out content strategy and plan to produce high quality Shorthand pieces, as well as having enough design/creative support to really bring it to life.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We are trying to ensure our users absorb crucial info and take real notice of the message in our storytelling. The benefit with Shorthand is the creative ways you can achieve this really ensures users retain that information.

Verified User in Tobacco
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
That they reply to your emails, queries straight away

What do you dislike about the product?
Once, they cancelled a meeting unilaterally

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Easy to use, straight-forward process

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
technical stuff, practical tips on how to make the story better

Paul J.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
I like not worrying about making an story/page responsive - the preview shows the end product for the majority of devices, and the setting the focal point takes care of the rest. I like finding creative ways to combine sections. Still finding them a year into using it! Tech support are suberb too.

What do you dislike about the product?
There have been a few occasions when the positioning of text on a Text Over Media section feels limited. I usually get around this by editing the image but I'd like to suggest having 5 horizontal placements instead of the current 3.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We can create stunning stories in such a short space of time. It's easy to use with a good selection of sections and also handles custom html, css and javascript when needed.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is very intuitive, easy to use and the product is awesome.

What do you dislike about the product?
The is not much to dislike about Shorthand, perhaps the blocks can be mildly restrictive at times but then again, that makes for a very user friendly experience for beginners.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand is helping us to create extremely engaging and impactful stories.

Fred G.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
The people who work there are really great - helping out with any problems quickly and giving time for long calls when we have had questions.

What do you dislike about the product?
I guess if pushed I'd say the cost, but then it does a huge amount - so I can see why

Recommendations to others considering the product:
It's worth looking at all the tips - they have a huge amount of material to help you understand the potential of shorthand - plus they're favourites on pinterest is useful too.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
As a digital agency - it's been a great new way of telling stories for our clients - I like the fact that it combines all the different elements together to create a compelling package. S

Tyler N.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
An excellent storytelling tool that is stable and powerful. Wonderfully responsive support from an outstanding company. Shorthand's generous support of journalism education is helping prepare the next generation of journalists.

What do you dislike about the product?
There are very few things I dislike about the product.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Shorthand to teach my students how to approach more advanced presentation of longer-form journalism projects. Using the same tools as major media organizations is an important step in preparing them for their future careers. Students are very satisfied with this product, and from an administration perspective, it works very well.

Eszter S.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand is an online storytelling system, easy to use, and custom designed for clients. with the pre-defined styles the visual identity is always respected. Used by a designer, magic can happen. I have been using Shorthand for 4 years now and never had a problem that they could not solve and the help is always very fast.

What do you dislike about the product?
Once the style is defined, there is not much room for change.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Your decision should be based on the publications you plan to produce (length, frequency, etc)

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Giving offline publications a new life, not the usual pdf viewing. Publications can be done without hiring a designer.

Verified User in Performing Arts
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
I love how easy it is to use, and I love how visual the platform is

What do you dislike about the product?
At times the backend can take a while to load if using big files etc

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
How to tell stories in a compelling way - including audio, video and other rich media all in one place

🗞 Joshua H.
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand makes it drag-and-drop-dead easy to build beautiful web pages with photos, video, animation and more. Powerful customization tools keeps each piece looking fresh. And the customer service is fast, friendly and extremely helpful.

What do you dislike about the product?
The biggest downside is that it's outside of our standard editing workflow and CMS. Although Shorthand can do integrations, those go only so far.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Shorthand makes it possible for people who lack coding skills to nevertheless produce really beautiful and well-functioning multimedia web pages. This democratizes our digital production and allows us to produce beautiful work more easily and more quickly than before.

Stina B.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
It's easy to use for non-techy people, with very little training they can produce beautiful storytelling projects. If you have access to a graphic designer or know a little bit of code you can produce even more spectacular looking content that works a dream on mobile too.

What do you dislike about the product?
Nothing. Whenever we have wanted to push the boundaries of what is possible with the tool the Shorthand support staff has always been supportive and their response time is super fast. If there is one thing we would love the tool to have in the future it would be to have the ability for multiple editors to edit stories simultaneously as we often collaborate on stories with people in different countries, but there are ways around this so is not a big issue for us.

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Get graphic designers to work on your Shorthands together with good content producers and you will create stand-out content.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
For online storytelling, especially on mobile, you need the product to be easy to consume but also have enough interactive elements to make sure that the user stays and reads as much as possible. Shorthand gives you an incredible arsenal of versatile tools to produce engaging content and the fact that it does so without you having to rely on developers saves you money and enables your content creators to feel more ownership of the production process and in our experience has also led them to produce much more inventive content. Ultimately it saves us money and it allows us to produce better content that is easy to consume for our very diverse audiences. We often collaborate with people who have very little experience with tech so the fact that Shorthand is so easy to learn how to use is great. We run workshops for human rights defenders where we teach them a lot of different communication tools and Shorthand is always one of the most popular ones! Several of our Shorthand projects have won and/or been nominated for several awards. Our story called 'Visualizing Yemen's Invisible War' was shortlisted for the Information Is Beautiful Awards, which is one of the biggest data visualization prizes, you can have a look at it here: https://www.yemenpeaceproject.org/invisible

Alex B.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
As a student newspaper Shorthand has been a valuable aid in improving our digital media content and giving our editors more creative ways to present their articles. The guides created by Shorthand have been invaluable in bringing members up to speed with the best practice when using it. We have only ever had one small issue and support was quick and incredibly helpful.

What do you dislike about the product?
We haven't found any downsides so far, completely satisfied with the experience so far.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The Wordpress editor that we use has its limitations when we want to present important stories/investigative journalism, especially when it requires a lot of media. Therefore Shorthand gives us the chance to fully realise projects. For example we published an investigative piece on how our University was withholding information despite freedom of information requests, and Shorthand gave us an excellent platform not only to present media but also data in a digestible way.

Dan D.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
The software is extremely easy to get to grips with. After a short trial we were up and running and making compelling web pages, making rich and dynamic content.

What do you dislike about the product?
There some minor improvements that we would like to see that are being planned - autoplay for YouTube videos for instance.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We have access to some great photography and people to share their stories and our CMS wasn't really able to do that high level of content justice. It's early days but we are looking to improve user engagement and give supporters a compelling product every month in the Wilderness Journal - our newsletter.

Justin T.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand makes it easy for writers to share stories, but also for developers/designers to create exciting new audio-visual experiences. The amount of resource needed to develop original online stories can be daunting, but Shorthand shortcuts the otherwise prohibitive development process.

What do you dislike about the product?
Downloading the raw page code was an important part of developing our stories, however this is no longer available in the standard plan we're on. This would make it easier for us to maintain code on our repositories/domains.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Our own website has limitations with the CMS it uses. Shorthand allows us to bypass that to create interesting stories with heavily customisable components. At times, we've hit limits with this (from a dev perspective), but Jamie and the team have worked with us to create custom components and workarounds to help realise our otherwise unwieldy (creative) ideas.

Tove S.
Star Rating: 4

What do you like best about the product?
If you have an issue or just a question about what is possible or how one could make a desired outcome - just pop in a question and they get back to you with a solution almost before you press send! They really look after their customers.

What do you dislike about the product?
The mobile version could be better, smoother.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We make articles that needs more attention with Shorthand. Important issues that we want to raise and have people stop and actully get the message, see the fasts and either want to share with their friends, or be engaged enough to donate to make the world a better place.

Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management
Star Rating: 4.5

What do you like best about the product?
I like the simple WYSIWYG layout and the ability to create flip book style animation with flat illustrations.

What do you dislike about the product?
Changing information within sections like multimedia captions is a bit clunky.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We can now easily create immersive multimedia stories that feel part of our website.

Elijah N.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Ease of use and endless possibilities!!!

What do you dislike about the product?
With certain sections only headers are allowed to be used when the possibility of using other sizes would help (Paragraph sizes for example)

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Various issues have been resolved and created specifically for our business allowing us to create beautiful websites which have bespoke coding.

Nick B.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The platform allows the creation of agile stories - without cast amounts of programming and development work. Bringing these elements to life is important - customers want an online experience, where they can be given an engagement to learn. In control - under an agency model - everything costs. With Shorthand, the costs are fixed and we define the producer. This means we can match the stories, to the best storytellers.

What do you dislike about the product?
Load times can lag on bigger stories - but this may down more to our desire to create advanced published stories!

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Able to react to events and opportunities in real time - making immersive content in a very quick speed.

Verified User in Higher Education
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The ease by which we can edit/alter templates and stories within the platform. Makes review pretty easy, too.

What do you dislike about the product?
None yet. We've found the platform extremely easy to use.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We used Shorthand to create a web presence for an anniversary, setting it apart visually from our branded web properties. There are some brand elements included but the tool gives us more functionality than we would have used with our own CMS.

Fen S.
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
The ability to create engaging content for our clients & the ability to wow clients by transforming their content.

What do you dislike about the product?
I would like to have more freedom with the backgrounds on the sections, the ability to upload patterned backgrounds. To have body copy as an option on text over media.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
For clients we are solving the issue a lot of them are having, the out dated .pdf'. Also bringing content online, shorthand has allowed Rostrum to develop our offering and provide more digital based campaigns.

Verified User in Education Management
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
Shorthand has a really seamless interface and is very easy to use. The smoothness of the finished product makes you work look extremely professional. I also love the excellent and rapid customer support we have received when we encounter a rare problem.

What do you dislike about the product?
I have not yet encountered anything I dislike about Shorthand.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We can provide high quality online content to our students and teachers, which they find engaging. The main benefit has been not having to learn a web design programme or having to use HTML to produce our resources - we can focus on the content itself instead of the technical issues.

Verified User in Online Media
Star Rating: 5

What do you like best about the product?
User-friendly, clean, multi-functional, high quality final product, aesthetically pleasing, adaptable

What do you dislike about the product?
Publishing ZIP file system, inability to crop photos within back end, need to manually republish changes (amendments not instantly publishable to front end)

Recommendations to others considering the product:
Highly recommend. It is very easy-to-use with intensive training made available by the Shorthand team and it has really breathed new life into our website stories.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Option to create more visually dynamic, attractive and engaging stories with varied multimedia