Review: Versionate (v. Google Docs)

Read, yesterday, about the launch of Versionate, the latest from Y-combinator. From the publicity Versionate is sort of a combination of wiki, Google Docs and file storage. Unusually, this is a full launch, not beta, with free and various tiers of paid service. It seems like there’s now lots of web2.0 services taking on a basecamp like payment plan - down to the way those plans are presented and managed. I don’t have a problem with it, it’s actually quite a nice way to do things - just found it interesting.

My short review is this. It has potential, there’s a lot of functionality that’s worthwhile. Its ability to attach arbitrary files to any page, to accept word, pdf and other formats as well is very cool. Unfortunately it doesn’t provide an online way to edit excel spreadsheets - it can only display them which limits its usability as an office app replacement. And it straddles some middle ground of wiki-ness that gives the site a confusing flow. The UI itself has a lot of issues layered on top of a really ugly site. They have some token curvy corners, but it’s one of the ugliest web2.0 sites I’ve seen launched in a long time. All of these are fixable, but combine to make the service not compelling to me at this point. I’ll stick with Google Docs for now.

Click to read the full review…

When I first went to Versionate I was surprised at how ugly the site was. I mean, really ugly, except for a couple curvy corners and a basic gradient in the logo, none of the hallmark (superficial) beauty of web2.0 was present. But you know, that’s life, I moved on. I signed up for the free version (there is a free forever version or for each of the pay tiers there’s a free 30 day trial). Signing up was easy - you pick your third level domain (i.e. whateveryouwant.versionate.com) which is a great feature. Within that domain you get to pick your username - I presume it only has to be unique within your domain - not across all versionate users. Then you’re in, very little muss and almost no fuss.

I went in expecting a wiki like format, but it is a very unwiki-like in presentation. The page layout has a tab bar at the top for any open documents and the main area has a browse area to see all your docs (as well as the options to create new ones or upload files), and then two columns below that for a page and recent activity (with convenient rss feed).

The browse area is nice and lets you create folders and nest them. Has an OSX like hierarchy of folders, so you can see several open at the same time. Dragging and dropping allows for easy organization.

Then there’s the start page. One page is designated the start page, there’s no way to simply select a page to be start, in order to change it you need to delete the existing start page at which point you’ll be prompted to select a new one (there’s no docs of any sort for Versionate, so there may be another way to do it, but I couldn’t find it). The start page shows up in a slim column underneath the browse box. Confusingly, it is the only page that ever shows there - all other pages get a more full page version. The start page can also be viewed in this full page version by selecting it and opening it.

Full page is more wiki-like in that you can edit it and create links to other pages fairly easily. You must explicitly link text to a particular existing page, though, so in that sense it is not quite wiki style, but totally reasonable. Extremely, extremely annoyingly when viewing a page there is no indication at all when something is a link. It looks exactly like other text, making it effectively pointless, since you’d have to know what that link is to find it. Also every new page opens up in it’s own tab, so you’ll have to clean up tabs as you go along. The corollary to all this is that you must create a new page in advance of linking it anywhere, which is kind of the opposite of wikis.

The interesting feature is that you can upload Word docs which will behave like any other created page, you can link into it from a page (although they can’t link outside to pages, again reasonable, although it kinda breaks the paradigm of the wiki side of the site). Also you can upload any sort of file as an attachment to pages. Very convenient for keep track of things. I’d guess if I were using it, I’d mostly just use versionate created pages and attach word, pdf, images to them - each page would explain what those attachments were. Another cool feature of this is if you load up a doc, you can edit it inline with their fancy editor or you can choose to download it, edit in your desktop editor and then re-upload it. It’s clunky that you need to reupload the doc after you edit it, but again, that’s life. Also, unfortunately, it can accept and display excel files, but can not edit them in the browser which may be a deal breaker for some.

In order to test their permissions system I had to upgrade to the Business account ($25/month). Fortunately they have a 30 day free trial. The user system is granular down to the user. You can allow them read and write permissions on a per page basis, so you have a lot of control over who gets to do what. In their press they say they have group management as well, but I could not find any trace of it (again, their lack of documentation rears it’s ugly head). For users with basic needs, that’s probably fine, but lack of groups will quickly get annoying for anyone with more than a couple users who need differing permissions. But the promise is there - more than I can say for some other sites I know.

Overall I think this site really feels like a beta to me. It’s not polished at all and has a lot of rough edges, especially for a pay site. As a wiki, I think it fails - it simply doesn’t work well as a wiki. It breaks the paradigm in a few places. As an online office suite it definitely offers Google Docs some competition. By accepting a wider variety of document formats it beats G Docs (but the lack of editing excel spreadsheets in the browser is a real strike against it) and the option to use Word to edit them is nice - but personally I don’t need to use other formats and I use G Docs because I don’t really want to use a desktop app, so they aren’t compelling to me. And if you need spreadsheet editing capabilities then Versionate is out of the running.

It offers a complete traditional organizational structure with arbitrarily nestable folders where Google Docs now only offers single level folders. However, Google does allow you to have one doc in more than one folder, which I find useful as well. Versionate offers a different organizational tool with its wiki-esque browsing, but I think it’s a half-measure that doesn’t work for me. It needs to either go away or be made much more robust, with visible links and upfront and consistent placement. Browse and recent changes could be made secondary and simply links in the nav that flyout web2.0 style. And the tabs need to be optional, if one were actively using the wiki as the nav structure instead of the file browser, there’d be a lot of tabs opening up.

Versionate is an interesting site, with a lot of potential. Since my own needs for an online office suite and storage is basic I still greatly prefer the simplicity and polish of Google Docs. However, right out of the gates Versionate offers a lot more functionality so for people with much deeper needs this may fill the void. I’d suspect they need to go through a couple major UI changes (and write some documentation, even basic documentation!) and add spreadsheet editing before it gains real traction.

Jul 12th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: review · web app · web2.0