Bentley ProjectWise vs. Progress ShareFile

ProjectWise is good for really large projects with many team members. I would not recommend it for small projects or those with a small team of people working on them. It is best for technical people and those who plan to use it daily. There are better FTP options out there if you just want to use them for file sharing.

When we have a particularly large ad or job printing file that would "clog up" the email process, using ShareFile is very helpful. It's also useful for particular photographers we work with to upload a batch of photos all at once. Where it doesn't work as well for us is when trying to get clients to make use of a login to access folders. We find them reluctant to take on the learning curve. It works best for us when we just send them a clickable download link, and at most just require a tracking name and email address.

• It works for collaboration
• The backend is customisable to do work that other document management systems just cannot do.

• Secure File Storage and Sharing.
• Workflows to get customer/affiliate responses to comments on documents.
• I used to have the signature feature initially, but it was removed from the original plan, so I could only use it if I chose to select the higher plan price.
• I love the upload notifications and reports on user activity.
• The document storage versions are fantastic. I am the only user with Delete privileges, and I love that I can make those selections.
• Integrations with Microsoft 365 - FANTASTIC - thank you.

Incentivized

• many users cannot be in the same file at the same time
• files are not automatically freed upon closure
• copying files to another ProjectWise folder is complicated. There is an option to copy, another to copy to, etc.

• The web console is not the most user friendly site to use to get to, and send my files.
• We have had users that have not liked the change in workflow to get files from Progress ShareFile when they were used to just clicking on files on an email.
• That management of the tools are not the most user friendly. There have been some improvements but keeping up with certs and setting up new users can be more work than expected.

Incentivized

It's a highly effective and secure storage system, has robust workarounds for serving the various equipment limits of our users, meets high security requirements of HIPAA standards, significantly reduces our needs for producing paper trails.

Incentivized

ShareFile is so easy to use I was able to download all of my projects files and have them set up to sync before my supervisor could even come over to explain the process to me. It is a neatly organized and intuitive software that allows even the less tech-savvy to become power users.

Incentivized

The software has never been down when I needed to use it.

Incentivized

Easy to use, easy to integrate with Outlook. I only gave it a 9 because I have found that sometimes it does not play nicely with Outlook and can slow it down. But, when that happens (not frequent), I restart Outlook and all is well again

Incentivized

Citrix was generally responsive and helpful in solving technical issues. Like any cloud based SaaS product there is a danger that it may go down. This was a rare occurrence over my three years of using the product. The more common issue we encountered was clients forgetting their login which was easily managed through a forgot password functionality.

Incentivized

Good documentation for the API. With a little help from RS tech staff, any competent programmer should be able to integrate RightSignature with an existing system in a week or three. That help is easy to get as well

Bentley ProjectWise from a user perspective just does not stack up to even something as simple as Dropbox. ProjectWise is powerful, it is capable, it has a ton of features. The best implementation I have seen from Projectwise is where the admins unlocked everything and let the users do as they please defeating everything it stood for and using it as a big Dropbox account, though even then the user interface couldn't be improved still causing significant workflow delays. I would reluctantly leave a good company if they implement ProjectWise, I respect that it's powerful for system admins but it sucks for users. This means 2-10% of what it is used for is well designed while the other 98-90% of its functions are just bogged down by a lack of development in its user interface and I say this as someone who has periodically used it over the last 10 years and seen no effective improvement in usability. Bentley ProjectWise was one of the first I believe to do this type of system, but as is common with being the first is you don't keep up with the times and bring a lot of baggage with you.

ShareFile is easier and does what you need. I have moved a few organizations from SharePoint to ShareFile. Just easier. You can setup different areas for different departments, setup their permissions and it is easy enough for them to do what they want in their zones. The mobile app works great as well. So you can all the features you really use from SP, but just easier to setup and use.

Incentivized

I am a one person office. I have no idea how this software would scale to a larger office.

Incentivized

• It has saved us time in archiving and versioning documents
• It has saved us effort in backing up files and restoring them when mistakes are made
• It has had an overall positive impact on our bottom line by helping with file sharing and collaboration

• All of our clients and consulting engineers find ShareFile easy to use, thus complementing our business.
• Our staff also find ShareFile intuitive, accessible, and easy to use, making it an ideal, everyday indispensable desktop tool for everyone in our company.
• ShareFile can be linked to our firm's primary website as a placed for private use. We haven't found need for this yet, but might in the future.

Incentivized