Free sample
The free DITA conversion sample is up to 25 pages of your own documentation, converted to DITA through the same pipeline we use in production, at no charge. You get back the topics, the DITA map, the metadata and the validation report, we review the output with you, and only after that do we talk about pricing. There is no rate card and no commitment.
Why the sample comes before the price
A migration is a trust decision, so we show you the output before we talk about budget. We do not publish a per-page rate, because the things that set the price differ too much from one body of content to the next: the source format, how much structure can be read back from it, how much reuse and conditional text it carries, and the CCMS it is going into. A proposal can only describe those drivers; 25 of your own pages show them. The guide to DITA conversion cost explains each one.
How the free sample works
- You send up to 25 pages. Any format we convert: a scanned manual, an old PDF, FrameMaker books, Word files. Pick the pages you expect to be hardest.
- We convert them to DITA, free. Through the same pipeline we use in production: rules first, AI where the rules cannot decide, then validation against the DITA DTDs.
- We review the output together. You see exactly what your DITA will look like: topics, DITA map, metadata and the validation report.
- Pricing, one-to-one. If the output meets your bar, we shape a pricing model around your volume, formats and timeline.
What to send, by source format
For most sources the conversion reads more than the text on the page, so what you send matters as much as which pages you choose.
| Your source | What to send |
|---|---|
| MadCap Flare | The Flare project as your writers use it, zipped. Variables, snippets, conditions, the glossary and the table of contents only resolve together. Published HTML also works, but less structure survives. |
| Adobe RoboHelp | The help project as a whole, with its table of contents and its topic pages, as a single archive. |
| FrameMaker, published help | The publish folder exactly as it was generated, as a single archive, including the publisher's own project and navigation files. A bare set of HTML pages is not enough. |
| Structured FrameMaker | The complete HTML export as FrameMaker produced it, with its images and the contents page that lists your chapters in order. |
| Word | The Word files themselves. If a document exists both as Word and as PDF, send the Word file: nothing has to be inferred, and nothing was lost in printing. |
| PDF, born-digital or scanned | The PDF. A scan goes through OCR first, and a read-only assessment reports the condition of the pages before any repair is done. |
| InDesign | The HTML export, as .htm, .html or .xhtml files, or a .zip of the whole export including its images. |
| Drupal | The exported site as HTML files, or the whole export as a single zip. |
| Sphinx | The built documentation site: the .htm or .html files, or a single .zip of the build. |
| Other HTML | The .htm, .html or .xhtml pages, or a single .zip of the HTML together with the images it references. |
| PowerPoint | The deck as .pptx or .pptm: one file, or a zipped batch. |
Markdown and DocBook sources are converted too. The full list, with a guide for each format, is on the document conversion services page.
What you receive
The sample comes back as the same kind of output a full conversion delivers:
- DITA topics. Your pages as topic-based DITA, validated against the DITA DTDs.
- A DITA map. The topics arrive organised under a map, not as a folder of loose files.
- Metadata. The metadata the conversion wrote into the topics.
- The validation report. The same kind of report that is part of every delivery.
- An honest assessment. What a full migration of this content takes, including when the answer is that it is harder than it looks.
What a customer-specific run adds on top, such as your style mapping, specialization, profiling scheme and naming conventions, is set out in the guide to DITA conversion services.
Which pages to pick
Pick the pages you expect to be hardest. The pages worth sending are the ones a proposal would stay vague about:
- the chapter with the dense specification tables;
- the topic tangled in conditions;
- the file with snippets inside snippets;
- the scanned appendix.
Add one clean chapter as a control. And if you hold a pile of scanned or unstyled documents that vendors have been declining, that is the pile we would like to see.
How to judge what comes back
The advice we give for any vendor pilot applies to ours. Write your acceptance criteria before you see any output. Run your own validation against your own schema, and do not take our report as the evidence for our work. Import the topics into a sandbox of your CCMS, where folder layout, ID conventions and asset references either work or do not. Ask an author to edit a converted topic. Then send one correction request and see what comes back. The full method, with a scoring sheet you can reuse, is in how to choose a DITA conversion vendor.
What happens after the sample
Nothing, unless you want it to. If the output meets your bar, pricing is agreed one-to-one around your volume, formats and timeline. From there the work can run in two ways: as a managed project, described under DITA migration services, or as conversions your own team runs on the same platform, the conversion portal. If your content is already in DITA and the question is how to publish it elsewhere, see DITA transformation services.
Frequently asked questions
Is the DITA conversion sample really free?
Yes. We convert up to 25 pages of your own documents to DITA at no charge. Pricing is discussed one-to-one, and only after you have seen the output on your own content.
Can I send a scanned PDF for the sample?
Yes. A scanned manual is one of the sources we name for the sample. Image-only pages go through OCR first, and scanned material needs more review than content from an authoring tool. The steps are described in scanned PDF to DITA conversion.
Is the sample converted with the real pipeline or a demo setup?
The real one. The sample runs through the same pipeline we use in production: conversion rules first, AI only where the rules cannot decide, then validation against the DITA DTDs.
Is the sample content passed to outside services?
Not for content from authoring-tool projects: it is processed entirely under our control. The one exception is PDF: rebuilding a final-form document into editable structure relies on a specialist cloud conversion service, and we confirm that with you before anything is uploaded. AI word repair on scanned pages is optional and sends only the flagged fragments.
Request your sample
Write to [email protected], or use the contact form on the home page. Tell us what the content is, which format it is in and which CCMS it is going into. We reply within one business day.
Related guides
- DITA conversion cost: what actually drives the price
- How to choose a DITA conversion vendor
- Document conversion services: every format we convert
- DITA conversion services: convert any legacy source to clean, valid DITA
- DITA migration services: legacy documentation into your CCMS
Send us 25 pages. The messier, the better.
We'll convert them to DITA free of charge — through the real pipeline, not a demo — and review the output with you. Then we'll discuss pricing one-to-one.
Get your free 25-page sample