Bluebeam Revu is a PDF management, control, and editing tool. It enables collaboration and markup within shared documents across projects’ life cycles and has takeoff and bid creation capabilities.
$240
per year per user
Wondershare PDFelement
Score 5.0 out of 10
N/A
PDFelement is a document management solution from Wondershare Software headquartered in China.
$79.99
per year per user
Pricing
Bluebeam
Wondershare PDFelement
Editions & Modules
Revu Standard
$349
per seat
Revu CAD
$449
per seat
Revu eXtreme
$599
per seat
PDFelement
79.99USD
per year per user
PDFelement
129.99USD
one-time fee per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bluebeam
Wondershare PDFelement
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
For Individuals:
Yearly Plan: $79.99/user;
2-Year Plan: $109.99/user
Perpetual Plan(one-time): $129.99/user
For Teams:
Yearly plan starts at $109/year for 1 user
For Education:
Yearly Plan: $47.99/user;
Perpetual Plan(one-time): $99.99/user
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Bluebeam
Wondershare PDFelement
Considered Both Products
Bluebeam
Verified User
Administrator
Chose Bluebeam
I select Bluebeam Revu when I have to as directed by the client or the owner. Otherwise, when the user does not need such a specific or robust piece of software, I usually go to one of the less expensive competitor's PDF editors. They suite our needs just fine and cost half …
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.
It's a wonderful asset to have when you lose your original Word doc, etc. so you can still edit a document (and not have to start from ground zero). That feature alone is why I bought this product and why I will continue to recommend.
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.
PDFelement provides the same powerful features as Adobe Acrobat, but the interface is easy to learn and use. The product is extremely intuitive, which saves our clients from becoming frustrated as they learn the product.
PDFelement Pro's ability to create fillable forms with the click of one button is one of our clients favorite features. I was impressed at how accurately PDFelement performed this task and the ease with which these fields can be edited, if needed.
Security is more important than ever these days and PDFelement provides the encryption and permissions to protect documents quickly and easily. I especially like the batch encrypt feature, this makes it easy to protect multiple files with the same password.
PDFelement makes it easy to extract the data from form fields. This is a huge plus for our clients.
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.
I wish there was a lighter program for just reviewing a document and then to transition seamlessly to an editing mode. It takes a few seconds longer to load than Preview on my Mac, and based on that frustration, I use Preview to view documents.
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.
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.
There is a lot of learning. Although some of the functions you can probably pick up relatively quickly, some of them, including compressing the size or using a different language, remains a myth to me.
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
PDFelement is always in contact with me, by email and by giving constant tips and recommendations. But what makes me give you a 10, was the outstanding support service received on July 9th by one of your support professionals Amanda, who helped me with a tariff issue, and makes me [rate] your product.
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.
I didn't try or buy other programs, but did a good bit of research on them. I went with PDFelement because of the lower pricing, and because of the rich features I learned it had. I also appreciated the great customer service I received from reps in the community forums, which showed me they have an aim in keeping their customers happy - which is always good to have when using fairly complex technical apps.
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.
For me, it's been very important to me that my business as a pet sitter and dog walker not leave a negative footprint on the environment. To that end, it's been very important that i'm able to do as much paperwork as possible without using paper. PDFelement is wonderful at helping me meet those goals.
