Minerva Reviews

Just check out this short guide I made for checking out:
https://minervaknows.com/app/guides/57b8834c-feb7-49ad-9644-9a8f1d5b1295/follow

Have some time on your hands? Check out this short How To on how Minerva can create interactive guides
https://mysoftwareadviser.com/articles/create-interactive-user-guides-using-minerva

It's NOT PERFECT, and buggy on certain websites and software products. Also unable to edit the guide after publishing. Moreover, the video generation should have been manually triggered after editing the guide.

Looking forward to their growth and future updates!

Cheers,
Mike
Certified LTD Junkie

Like most of you reading the reviews prior to my one, you would probably be deterred based on some of the experiences of others. From what I can see, unfortunately they all accessed the system when the server was having issues, hence why they had problems. Despite knowing this, I wanted to give the software a go as I still saw the value in it.

I have a SAAS company and confirm that the SDK was simple to install, and for me, worked immediately. I was able to create my first help doc and interaction, which worked straight away from within the app. The only thing that I saw was not working was in the video that was produced, it still had the Minerva branding. So I emailed one of the co-founders Joaquin, whom got back to me within an hour and resolved the issue for me.

I have been testing over the last few days and can confirm that for me, everything works as described and it is truely an amazing piece of software. If you are a SAAS owner and want to provide more personalization to your customers by essentially providing technology that is like a virtual 'hold your hand' walkthrough of your product, you cannot miss out on this. If you have any user that is of the older generation or looking to expand your user base to include more tech-illiterate people, this tool is a must.

Another thing I just discovered is that even after your video has been produced, you can still change the text descriptions per screen (and then their tech automatically does voice over on the video with the updated descriptions)... Crazy!

Overall, I hope people reading this at least give it a go. As a SAAS owner myself, I would hate to think people would write off my product because of something that wasn't really in my control. Things happen. Give it a go, you might end up being very happy like me.

I would like to share my honest review, I purchased this product the day they launched it then kept it on the side for a week, then when I came back I saw a few low tacos reviews so I thought I should refund it, but first I gave it a fair shot and tried it, and I can say, this is more than an amazing tool

Yes by reading the previews reviews it seems like they had some kind of issue but it seems like they fixed everything, anyways, I tried it, and it is a huge time saver, it is working just fine and I highly suggest to try it out yourself, also I highly advice who already purchased it during the initial issue to try it again now

Best of luck to the MINERVA team

Sorry to say I have to echo some the other reviews. Maybe my expectations were set too high.

I think Minerva shows great promise but IMO it isn't ready for my production environment yet. It kinda feels like I've paid (all be it a reduced rate of $139) to be part of a beta and report issues so they can develop their product.

I've contacted support and I can't fault Joaquin, Dan and the team, they have been on the case all be it a little slow at times (I read here they were dealing with an outage) PLUS I did cause some problems of my own. I didn't realise it can only be used on 1 single domain so I needed to change the email address for the account (my bad, sorry guys!).

So I spent 5 hours trying to get this implemented:
• Setting up the SDK and branding
• Creating 5 guides
• Trying to get help button to show in just one part of my system to onboard new users (I realised the only way was to custom code a resolution for this in my product). There are no page options to display the main help button. It appears everywhere or nowhere.
• Trying to figure out how to get the guides to show in a list after you click the help button. I gave up and had to contact support, awaiting an answer.
• This is the big one for me... I found at the end of the guide, which was on my product implemented via the SDK, a very large "Sign up to Minerva" type screen with a link to sign up to their product. It is trying to send my users that I am trying to onboard to my software AWAY to theirs! I'd expect it on a free version, not a paid version. A small bit of branding for tier 1 (small "powered by" or similar) would be acceptable... but this is large and directing my users away. I am fairly sure that this is a big oversight on their part and so I refer back to my original statement of feeling like I've paid to test a beta version so they can develop their product.

So in short, I lost 5 hours implementing something that turns out I cannot even use.

I will always work with the team before leaving a review. As a product owner myself I know how tough it can be to try and figure out all use cases and bugs in order to have a polished product to launch with. If you keep polishing, you'll never launch so it has to launch at some point., I get it. In the case of Minerva it may have just been a little premature.

Support got back to me and said that my big issue with the "Sign up to Minerva" screen sending people away from my product WILL be addressed and it will be removed which is good news!!

Once that is removed it is suitable for my use case of onboarding. I will start to use it more and hopefully they add more needed features. It can be a 5 taco product for sure, there are just a load more kinks to work out. Keep at it guys.

I will be keeping Minerva and look forward to more improvements.

But for now, it's a great idea.

I am not an Appsumo veteran. It's only been less than a year and I suffer from "compulsive tester" syndrome. With Minerva something very strange happens to me. I bought a Tier 1, upgraded to Tier 2, applied for a refund, and finally went back to Tier 1 (I'm not ruling out buying Tier 2).

I will try to explain my mental process, which is not easy in this case and even less so for a native Spanish speaker like me.

I was looking for an alternative to Tango, Scribe, Claap or Screenpresso (the latter is my favorite because of its price and its ease of creating gifs). I wanted something that would make it easier for me to create good tutorials for my courses. I think I've tried everything on Appsumo, so far the only thing that had convinced me somewhat, despite its many limitations, was FlowShare Express.

Well, Minerva looked very nice, but I also discovered that the so-called generated videos were never created. The hours and days passed... and then, nothing. Minerva's potential was immense, but the lack of tutorials, the lack of videos created, and the lack of customization (even with Tier 2 "Minerva" was omnipresent) made me request a refund.

After a period of reflection, I came to the conclusion that, despite its flaws, Minerva was totally unique and deserved patience. The work and the idea are commendable. It can be a tool that changes the rules of interactive guides and tutorials.

Things to improve:

- Basic: Being able to use the guides in my language. I have never understood why brands neglect translation into other languages, especially when with very little they would be able to multiply their sales and reach exponentially. Actually, the solution would be as simple as allowing the "Step", "Description" or "Time to complete" fields to be modified in the configuration... or simply offering the option in other languages ​​since there are very few elements to translate. Another possibility would be to be able to leave only the arrows to move forward or backward (what difference does it make to see "Step 1", than "1"?).

- Privacy guides: That "or all or nothing" is strange. Or I share the guide with everyone, or only with a specific user. Well, I'd love to share a link and that's it (maybe it can be done, but there's no tutorial on tutorials...).

- Finally the Video Guide option works! The result is very good, with background music and auto-generated voice. The problem for me: it's only in English. If your language is English, you are in luck! The videos are very good. I would also love to know if with a Tier 2 the videos would stop showing up with "Minerva" at the beginning and end of the video. Branding gets annoying.

Finally: I hope I'm not mistaken, I think Minerva will be something fantastic. I'm going to hold back and stay with Minerva waiting patiently...

To its creators: Courage! And here I am in case I can help you improve. I would love to see Minerva grow and improve to infinity and beyond. :)