Bluebeam vs. IT Glue

The program is great for editing construction drawings, stamping/approving official documents and overlaying revised documents to see design changes. You can use it as an estimating takeoff tool, estimating database, document control, cloud document storage, the list goes on! Bluebeam poses many applications for the user to utilize for the desired needs. There may be some other software that has one specific function that can perform the specific task better, but Bluebeam is a holistic program with many tools for use.

Incentivized

It is best suited for an MSP but it is also best not suited for an MSP. It is well suited for folks with a minimal knowledge of a client and are attempting to learn what they can. Perhaps just bumbling about and can find the same thing consistently. At my particular work, we pay somebody full time to manage the system. I feel this is unnecessary.

Incentivized

• Once you set Bluebeam Revu as your default PDF handler, it launches immediately when clicking a PDF to open. The speed with which it opens documents is impressive.
• Creating PDF's out of other documents, such as Word, Excel, JPG's, etc. is simple.
• Digitally signing documents is a simple, secure process. You can keep your signature password-protected, yet still access it quickly.
• The Bluebeam Revu mobile application ( I use the iOS version on an iPad Pro), is awesome. Not only does it handle PDF's like you would expect it to, it allows for effortless digital signing of documents on the fly. Nice to be able to quickly sign a document and email right back out from the tablet no matter where I am.

Incentivized

• The UI has been set up perfectly, there is a sub-menu for every possible bit of information you wish to store.
• There are a number of excellent features such as the autohiding passwords and quick searching from anywhere on the page.
• The recent addition of the IT Glue is also an excellent feature, it features online self-guided courses to become a certified IT Glue user.
• You can create and group custom documents together.
• IT Glue can be integrated with a number of platforms such as Autotask.
• IT Glue also integrates well with N-Central to automatically populate the configurations tab with all the relevant Workstation, Printer, and Server information making client on-boarding a breeze.

Incentivized

• If you have several tabs open and you try to drag one out for a side by side view then you do not have all the modification options and you have to combine them back together.
• There is a lag time when hitting the print option.
• There is also a lag time when opening files, sometimes I think the window is frozen.
• I wish the basic version also had basic file editing, as in editing a document as Adobe does.

Incentivized

• Like many other MSPs we had the majority of our SOPs and KBs in Word docs. The best case scenario would be to simply drop those files directly into ITG without having to import them into the ITG documentation format. The import function is so broken as to not be an option because it completely ruins formatting and tends to drop images. Thus we have to manually copy/paste text and individually upload each image.
• They marketed the product as having true branding but that is stretching the truth. SSL is not an option so client-facing documents will give security errors in browsers. ITG does not appear to be concerned about this even though security is a major concern for all MSPs.

Incentivized

Bluebeam is a powerful PDF viewer and mark-up tool. We are more familiar with it than Adobe Acrobat Pro or other viewers, and it has more features geared towards construction document managers than Acrobat Pro does.

Incentivized

Overall IT Glue meets every need that we need it to. IT is easy to use and convenient and we have not had very many issues with it since the inception. I would easily recommend it to anyone who needs this software.

Incentivized

I'm constantly finding that Bluebeam Revu does more than I knew it could. And when I find something that it can't do, I've found that Bluebeam truly listens to its user base and will work to incorporate any good suggestion when feasible.

Incentivized

The interface is excellent and very easy to use. As long as the text you input into the system can be easily read, you will have no problem finding it with all the different categories offered. Sometimes, the slider on the right can blend in with dark backgrounds, making it hard to see.

Incentivized

Other than a few access outages, ITGlue is always up and available to us. Their ability to export Playbook, that contain our customers data, and securely send those over to them is amazing and are produced pretty fast. We have IT Glue linked with several other services and software and we have not found that it slows anything down.

Incentivized

Its hard for me to give a rating on this one as we rarely have to use the support feature for Bluebeam. However, when we have used it, they have been ultra supportive in helping us get exactly what we needed. I know another engineer was trying to figure out a feature and the rep gave a detailed tutorial on how to complete the task

Incentivized

No problems with support when needed it. Their answers on how to handle DR/BC situations when ITG is down are not stellar. They don't seem to get the business risks of their suggestions to just give the xls backup to engineers (aka give all passwords of ALL clients to engineers in an unencrypted flat-file where it is easy to copy, print, etc.)

Incentivized

We feel there is not another program out there that would compare to Bluebeam at this current time. Some of the other programs out there do not include studio or the overlaying process which is one of our main uses. The ease of hyperlinking makes this product stand out the most.

Incentivized

We chose IT Glue particularly because it's tailored to IT documentation. As a managed IT service provider, it's perfectly in line with what we were looking for. The flexibility and tagging in particular were the kind of features we were looking for. Confluence is very good, and can be used for a number of things, not just IT documentation, but IT Glue shines for that.

Incentivized

• A major positive aspect is being able to take your computer home without taking the entire set of paper drawings. They have made it so easy to navigate a set of drawings that I can work at home using only the digital drawings.
• Collaboration with owners and architects has been a great feature. Setting up a Bluebeam studio and having everyone get in and mark things up, then having the architect be able to go in and see what markups have been added, has made the constructability review process much much better.
• Even when not working on drawings, Bluebeam is a very good tool for working with standard PDF documents. The markup tools are very easy to use.
• The negative aspect is the takeoff function because some people would like estimators to use the Bluebeam takeoff because it would make their job easier down the road; however, the actual act of doing a full scale takeoff in Bluebeam would require much more time.

Incentivized

• We regret the purchase and have received little, if any, ROI.
• [In my expereience], the main feature we hoped to get ROI from (MyGlue) was so terrible we were embarrassed to roll it out to our clients.
• Because [I feel] it is slow and clunky, staff find quicker ways to access needed data so this is not used as much as we would have liked.