Loved their app and service. They had a great user interface for making notes, writing documentation, writing anything, especially technical. A lot like Notion.so which is getting hugely popular right now!
Instead of adding new features that the community wanted, they redesigned and re-engineered the entire service from scratch. Data had to be migrated from the old site. Totally new site. Not better at all. It was worse. So annoying! After a couple years, it became as good as originally.
Then they redesigned and rebuilt their app again! They made it look sleeker and more modern, with a dark background, like a high tech IDE. But the functionality was completely missing. It is not like an IDE at all. It is not at all like Notion. Now, even Atlassian Confluence has better UI.
Atlassian’s Confluence meanwhile has been making the right moves, improving their UI, to be more like Notion - which is - easier to use, more efficient to enter titles, paragraphs, photos, tables, warnings, sub-pages, snippets, etc. Notion is still the best, but now I actually don’t mind using Confluence.
GitBook used to be second best UI. I saw them everywhere, gaining market share, moving up. Now it’s bad. I’d rather use some other simpler app like Ulyses or Evernote.
Maybe people like their new UI. But I don’t think so. The trends I’m noticing - focus on saving people time. GitBook now makes you click multiple times, and wait for a while in between clicks, just to make one edit in one file. I don’t think companies will just stop using them, because companies are not so impulsive. Companies are very patient. But, I don’t think they’ll get many new customers.
GitBook is far from dead now. But, the way they’re going, I imagine they’ll be struggling in a few years, as their customers grow tired of them, and switch to more intuitive platforms like Notion or Confluence. I can’t believe I’m saying Atlassian’s product is more intuitive. Crazy world right now.