Contractor Foreman vs. Hive

Contractor Foreman has been a great tool for managing a variety of projects, from home remodels to large-scale builds. It works especially well for keeping everything organized in one place, whether it’s estimates, schedules, or job costs.
One scenario where it’s been really useful is in managing multiple jobs at once. With several remodels and new construction projects happening at the same time, having a centralized system to track progress, store documents, and communicate with subcontractors has helped keep everything on schedule. It’s also great for estimating—being able to quickly generate and send professional proposals has made bidding much more efficient.
It’s especially well-suited for projects that require a lot of moving parts, like tracking permits and compliance documents. For larger jobs, like school construction, it helps ensure that all approvals, budgets, and schedules stay on track without getting lost in a mess of paperwork.
Where it’s less ideal is for smaller, one-off jobs where a full project management system might be overkill. If it’s just a quick repair or a simple remodel, sometimes it’s easier to just handle things manually. The mobile app could also be a bit more intuitive for on-site use, especially for field updates and quick changes.
Overall, it’s a strong tool for contractors managing multiple projects, budgets, and teams. It keeps things organized and saves time, especially on jobs that require detailed tracking and coordination.

Hive is a powerful tool for data analysis and management that is well-suited for a wide range of scenarios. Here are some specific examples of scenarios where Hive might be particularly well-suited: Data warehousing: Hive is often used as a data warehousing platform, allowing users to store and analyze large amounts of structured and semi-structured data. It is especially good at handling data that is too large to be stored and analyzed on a single machine, and supports a wide variety of data formats. Batch processing: Hive is designed for batch processing of large datasets, making it well-suited for tasks such as data ETL (extract, transform, load), data cleansing, and data aggregation.Simple queries on large datasets: Hive is optimized for simple queries on large datasets, making it a good choice for tasks such as data exploration and summary statistics. Data transformation: Hive allows users to perform data transformations and manipulations using custom scripts written in Java, Python, or other programming languages. This can be useful for tasks such as data cleansing, data aggregation, and data transformation. On the other hand, here are some specific examples of scenarios where Hive might be less appropriate: Real-time queries: Hive is a batch-oriented system, which means that it is designed to process large amounts of data in a batch mode rather than in real-time. While it is possible to use Hive for real-time queries, it may not be the most efficient choice for this type of workload. Complex queries: Hive is optimized for simple queries on large datasets, but may struggle with more complex queries or queries that require multiple joins or subqueries.Very large datasets: While Hive is designed to scale horizontally and can handle large amounts of data, it may not scale as well as some other tools for very large datasets or complex workloads.

Incentivized

• Estimate templates for that allow line items a broader scope of an estimate template to be selected.
• Training with CF is outstanding. Live chat as well as countless videos.
• Talk to text is a great feature for adding notes to a project.

• Simplicity, it offers a clean environment without risking the outcome. An example of this are the timesheets that allow a fast way to keep track of progress
• Interaction, the different options make it faster and easier to interact and collaborate in the development of a product. An example of this would be Hive Notes for meetings
• The different visualisations it offers allow to explore the best ways to affront your projects. I really like the Gantt mappings view to understand who can be contacted at each point

Incentivized

• Security and sensitive file visibility. Users with no permissions can have access to some hidden files.
• Daily log navigation. Users now need to exit one log entirely to view or check another, resulting in a significant waste of time and reduced efficiency.
• Customization options for reports. No options to set up and automatically send reports by email to specified users.

Incentivized

• Organizing tasks by assignees could be better. It's a little cumbersome to check off each person you want. Can you group these?
• I don't really use any view besides task view. Is there something better I could be using?
• It would be nice if attachments showed up in a nicer format, maybe with a preview?

Incentivized

Broken promises for 3 years. I'm done waiting for basic improvements to bring the app into anything close to an industry standard

Incentivized

Overall, Contractor Foreman is a great product, and I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface of everything it has to offer. It can be a little quirky at times, occasionally displaying a 'Bad Gateway' message, but we haven’t experienced any timeout issues in the past few months. As we continue to use it, I’m confident we’ll uncover even more ways to streamline our workflow

Incentivized

Its a easy tool, the best way to organize the workflow but has room for more improvements.

Availability was good, FUNCTIONAL availability was more spotty

Incentivized

Many times we had issues that turned out to be errors and bugs. At first, we would be told forcefully that there were no bugs, then we would document them, and we would get an acknowledgement but no apology for essentially either gaslighting us or being ignorant of their system

Incentivized

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)

Incentivized

Our CSR is easily accessible and they have support built into the app itself. They also have a pretty robust support site. We also took advantage of the free trial and learned so much by putting Hive through the paces and figuring out the best way to mold it to our needs.

Incentivized

Implementation was moderately difficult, it's the functionality and execution that are seriously lacking

Incentivized

There's just no comparing these two. I'm actually going to suggest we keep CE to my boss, and here's why: Clearestimates is perfect for what I just described. You have a little job that you just BOOM it's done? Put it into Clearestimates. That system does not care at all if you did it "properly." Now Contractor Foreman does so. much. more. than CE. It just does. You can do everything on CF (just not anything haha). Most businesses wouldn't need anything else, but since we're still growing, we do some handyman stuff every now and again that CE is perfect for, and we don't have to go through CF's really picky system to make sure every little tiny thing is correct

Incentivized

Hive is a bit different than Jira and Monday, which I used mostly. Overall does a great job managing project and helps with team communication. Removes dependency of asking team members for updates by going to conference rooms. With Hive, the team updates the status, and we can easily track it.

Incentivized

We had just 2 users

Incentivized

• Positive return for invoice/change order tracking
• Great price
• Prior to using Contractor Foreman we had to wait until the end to capture all change orders in one summary. Now, with the client portal, we can capture in real time and the client has visibility.
• We have been trying to reduce administration time in tracking field expenses and with Contractor Foreman our field crew can uplaod reciepts and track expenses right from their mobile phones.
• Punchlist - the punch list and To Do features are so robust we have drastically improved getting punchlists and small tasks completed in single trips without the wasted time and travel of multiple trips due to missed/forgotten items.

Incentivized

• Workflow Management will help you better move your projects along which saves time and money.
• Time tracking will allow you to better manage the hours and keep your contractors accountable.
• Overall visibility of projects allow you to keep your margins down and combat "bleeding" and hidden costs or surprises.

Incentivized