Contractor Foreman is an online construction management software for contractors and boasts users among contractors in more than 75 countries.
$588
per year
LiquidPlanner
Score 8.3 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
LiquidPlanner is a cloud based predictive project management solution. Some key features include: Dynamic Timeline View, Workload View, and Real-Time Activity Stream.
$0
per month per user
Pricing
Contractor Foreman
LiquidPlanner
Editions & Modules
Basic
$588
per year
Standard
$948
per year
Plus
$1,497
per year
Pro
$1,990
per year
Unlimited
$2,988
per year
Free
$0
per month per user
Essentials
$15.00
per month per user
Professional
$25
per month per user
Ultimate
$35
per month per user
Enterprise
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Contractor Foreman
LiquidPlanner
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Plans are based on features and licenses needed. Plus, Pro, and Unlimited plans include a 100-day money back guarantee.
In this case, CF is the best of the 'OK so far' category in my mind. NONE of the software available today gets close to a truly effective, user friendly GUI and functionality set. I have used 7 different systems over the years, with the top 4 big names having the largest hours operating. Most have less functionality, others are severely overpriced and under featured. Still others are so complicated you need an entire IT department to implement them. Contractor Foreman does much of what it does the absolute best for the money, meaning this is probably the best value for construction management software I'm aware of. I believe I can say with confidence, that if CF does it, it strives to do it well, and continues to strive to get it better. Picking a feature or two that excels is rather pointless in a company with that outlook. THAT is a company I can get behind...
LiquidPlanner is amazing for any time of project management scenario where you have to manage several teams and details. Running a project through LiquidPlanner is so easy because it lets you break down the project into sections and folders and small tasks that you can assign to specific people. With a small to medium size team-- LiquidPlanner is amazing for organizing and tracking details. If you have a huge team or not a ton of details to track LiquidPlanner might not be right for you because it is a software that requires some good training to learn and has tons of functions that can be utilized so it seems better suited to be used by a smaller group looking to coordinate or for people who have lots of details that can be difficult to track.
Priority based planning. Every other planning software we've used relies on dates and therefore needs constant attention. Priority based planning means that the plan is always up to date.
Ease of use. LiquidPlanner has a very short learning curve. This is critical to getting team members to use it.
Forecasting. LiquidPlanner makes it very easy to run scenarios by simply dragging and dropping projects and reassigning resources.
Awesome Support. I get personal responses very fast. Usually within a couple hours. And, they listen and ask for more information.
The interface is messy and cluttered. The best way to find things and see what you actually want to see is the main Projects view which is also the most cluttered and hardest to maneuver in.
Clicking an external link someone posted in a comment or task description doesn't open in a new window by default, so we are constantly having to go back to get to LiquidPlanner again.
The way that the interface saves your state globally (rather than per tab instance) means that if you click a link from someone else to a task that's not yours, then it adjusts your filters on the Projects page. Then if you refresh another LiquidPlanner window where you were on the Projects tab, suddenly all of its filters are updated and what you were looking at may no longer be there.
It might just be the way that we use the system, but the Home and My Work tabs are fairly useless for us. They typically don't show the tasks we're actually looking for.
We may not renew LiquidPlanner's contract, but only because my company has recently been acquired and we'll be adopting some of the software that they're using to standardize process. LiquidPlanner's development team releases new features pretty often, so it seems like the gaps and inefficiencies are slowly getting smaller/less frequent
I rarely give anyone a 9 or 10 rating for service. The main reason for this rating is Contractor Foreman's dedication to improvement. To be completely frank, CF has fallen down on their tech help with me several times, but I am an exceptionally difficult user to service as I tend to use a product up to it's limits and want more. CF has actually addressed these wants several times (after waits that seemed interminable, but were actually pretty damn fast in the reality of software development)
They have been great in trying to come up with creative solutions to help us do what we want to do with the platform. I would say their support has been exceptional because we have hit them with some complex requests.
I've used Buildertrend and Conconstruct near daily for a little over 10 years. They were both pretty solid. But the price kept going up without much value being added to the software. As they grew, they didn't upgrade with the growth, so the sites became slower. Contractor Forman has all the functionality of the others, and several other tools that they don't. There are several tools our company doesn't even use yet that look great. It's not perfect, and the learning curve due to its increased capability is a bit of a challenge. But overall, it is superior in every way that mattered to us, and more affordable.
Miro is a more versatile tool, but not quite made for planning and organizing. LiquidPlanner is very intuitive, fast to learn and easy to communicate. The added value of prioritizing tasks, personalized boards and gantt charts are really important during the planning and design thinking in the business. LiquidPlanner is simplified yet more helpful.
We don't have to double enter our job information anymore (estimates, bills, labor hours) to show employees what they need to see. Specific access within Contractor Foreman does that for us.
It's taken us longer to learn how Contractor Foreman works within itself than we thought it would, so implementation is taking a little longer than ideal. However, we have been learning a lot along the way about the easiest ways to use the workflow that Contractor Foreman has.
LiquidPlanner really forces you to map out your workflow. For me, honing into a template that I can later adjust as needed has been huge, as there is less time at the beginning of a project trying to assign and figure out what needs to happen when usually it never changes.
Communication between employees, especially ones not immediately available in the office has been very welcomed. It helps having conversations documented in a public, logical place that is easy to find and refer to as the project continues.
Our productivity has definitely skyrocketed as we've really gotten a feel and committed to using LiquidPlanner daily. As we move forward, we continually try to add more and more ways for us to use the service.
