Autodesk’s Revit is a Building Information Modelling (BIM) tool. It enables architectural, MEP, structural, and engineering design, and provides analysis to support iterative workflows
$350
per month
Xero
Score8.4 out of 10
N/A
Xero is an online accounting software product for small businesses and personal finance. Its features beyond general ledger and double-bookkeeping include quotable invoicing, bank reconciliation, purchase order and expense management, and tax management. Third party apps can extend its features further.
$13
per month
Pricing
Revit
Xero
Editions & Modules
Monthly
$350
per month
1-Year
$2805
per year
3-Year
$8415
per 3 years
Early
$13
per month
Growing
$37
per month
Established
$70
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Revit
Xero
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Pricing available for monthly, annual, or 3-year subscriptions. Longer subscriptions offer greater discounts.
Prices in table are in USD and just apply to the US - other markets & prices are listed below:
Canada - Starter $18 CAD/month, Standard $45 CAD/month, Premium 5 $58 CAD/month
UK - Starter £14/month, Standard £28/month, Premium £36/month
AU - Starter $29 AUD/month, Standard $59 AUD/month, Premium 5 $76 AUD/month
NZ - Starter $31 NZD/month, Standard $66 NZD/month, Premium $84 NZD/month
Revit is very well suited to creating designs and construction documents for standard buildings. Buildings that need to utilize phasing in their construction process are also well suited to this software. Revit is not as well suited to buildings that have irregular shapes or components that need to be highly detailed.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The only time I wouldn't be suggesting it is to consultants or solopreneurs. I think it's too overwhelming unless you are experienced or have a background related to finance. So it's not that the product isn't powerful, it's that it can be too powerful. For all other size businesses it really is what you need to use to make life simple to track everything in your business. It definitely saves me time by having it all in one place and not multiple spreadsheets etc
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Revit allows users to create real buildings and is very much rooted in making functional buildings.
Revit allows users to collaborate both within their own firms and with other types of firms as well. This is particularly useful for coordinating buildings between architecture and engineering firms.
Revit integrates fairly well with other programs such as AutoCAD and Sketchup. This allows us to bring in elements modeled in other programs into our revit models.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The bank feed integration makes reconciling transactions easy
Once you load a template for your invoices, every client gets a professional looking invoice
Bill paying and tracking of payments is also easy; you load your bill into Xero, pay it through the bank, and when the transaction is completed it comes through on bank feeds. If you need to query when a bill was paid, it is all there in Xero
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Versioning - Revit is not backwards compatible. This creates issues if you are working with people who are using older versions as you cannot save to a previous version. I understand why this is and I do not see this ever changing, however, Its very annoying.
Autodesk - They are the 800 pound gorilla in the industry. The lack of competition inhibits development and it seems Autodesk has put more effort into its BIM 360 platform and Revit development has suffered because of it. I would like to see better competition so Autodesk would step up its game.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Having different email addresses for different parts of a customer's business (eg invoices and statements to different places)
Easily seeing the text of emails that have been sent through Xero
More easily archiving old pay items. Our HR software updates rates when awards are updated which means a lot of old pay rates are in the system and they have multiple clicks to archive each one. Clicking the ones to archive in bulk and then just click archive for all would be much more efficient.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
We will almost certainly be renewing all of our current seats of Revit and will likely be adding seats as we look to get more and more of our staff trained and using Revit. The software is starting to become the standard for our projects as we move forward as more and more of our clients are requesting or accepting use of it
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
In addition to the matters covered in this review, my reason for renewing this product is that Xero's functionality and the constant updates that the company provides, makes the software even more business friendly. The software therefore builds a brand loyalty among customers.
It is a professional environment, but far from easy and overly complex in many places. The system is often too deep in settings and overrides (see Visibility/Graphics in combination with linked files, filters, color overrides and view templates). I don't really like the dialog-in-dialog interface and its spartan looks. But it works well overall if you know what you are doing.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
As a standalone software, it allows users to fulfill most of the basic functions (e.g. transaction input and report generation) simply and conveniently. It also allows for multiple APIs to help augment various tasks that accounting-adjacent (e.g. claims processing). The cloud based model and portability to mobile devices allows tasks to be carried out in a more convenient way.
Revit seems to always be available when I need it. I have not experiences an outage. There are occasions where we need our internal IT department to trouble shoot a file on our Revit dedicated server and that sometimes causes a delay however that is not a software access issue
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.
Revit is a fairly graphics heavy piece of software. It is powerful in its capabilities but as a result it takes a lot of the graphics card, the memory, etc. For all that it can do and the specs of my computer I find it pretty good from a performance standpoint
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
On a good day, things worked but after upgrades, things began to slow and or not work at all at times. I coined the moving circle while I waited as the "Xero Wheel of Death". Sometimes it never stopped and force quitting was necessary.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Autodesk has always had a good support system in place. There is a massive user base for Revit, and there are thousands of forum threads and other discussions online about any and every problem that you could ever run into. For being such a large program with so many different options, there aren't many roadblocks or pitfalls that users can fall into.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Always respond and keep issues open until you are satisfied with the result. Generally good responses, in the past, I had some support responses that were really basic and really annoying. They type where "have your tried restarting your computer" style of answers. Well, of course, I went through all the basics before contacting them. Duh, but I suppose not everyone does. Otherwise, it would be a 10. The last year has shown a marked improvement in the support responses however.
The training was Revit Essentials and it was very beneficial. I would say that it is best to get the training right before you know you will be using Revit as learning the basis then applying what you learned immediately is the most effective and best value for your money.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The online training is hit or miss. I feel that its better to be live to be able to pace and ask questions to a live person as you are learning hwo to do things. Its not natural to learn Revit especially if you know AutoCAD so my suggestion is the live training
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.
Implementing Revit as your main drafting software (i.e. moving to BIM from CAD) may be a tough decision if you have learned drafting. It is a different way to approach and think about developing a project. However, if you are able to adapt to a new way of thinking and get used to it by working through a few projects than it is as efficient as CAD in most areas in general and will also be both better/worse in some areas
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
If it can be done, time the implementation near a new fiscal year so you can start clean. Otherwise, you have to go back and do historical data from the beginning of the fiscal year, which can be brain draining.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Revit is used primarily for creation of contract documents and documents that need to be used to build in the field. Sketch Up is great for a quick concept sketch, but lacks the details that Revit has which are needed to construct. AutoCAD is a great tool for details as well, but does not have as many building capabilities as Revit.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Each of the products I listed had their own list of drawbacks, but the one thing they all had in common, which was right on top of that list of drawbacks, was ease of use. I struggled to get myself accustomed to each system and struggled, but when it came to getting a client to even try and use it was when the true struggle started. Just found it easier to make use of Xero from the very beginning.
While I am not directly involved with the deployment of Revit, it seems that our internal IT department has appreciated the ability to increase or decrease the number of seats. I have never had an issue with the deployment if and when needed, especially regarding the availability of a set
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I have yet to fully stress test the product given the size of the company where I am using it. I am sure as we scale to more customers, more vendors and more reporting requirements, I will have a better understanding of what it is capable of in terms of bandwidth and processing
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Though implementation of Revit is usually front heavy which means a lot of effort is put in at the front end of the project, the return of investment towards the remainder of the project is really good. All the effort in decisions made at the beginning of the project pays off with Revit incorporating all the building information in the model so the team can glean from this throughout the life of the project is a major plus.
A major negative is the many false assumptions that comes with using Revit on a project. Just like any other computer application, Revit is only a tool. It's only as good as the operators who implement this tool. Revit is not a cureall for fixing all the problems that still can come out throughout the life of a design & construction project.
A major positive for our office involving the use of Revit is the ability for our staff from multiple offices to work on the same project central file. We don't need to maintain an expensive server. With the addition of Collaboration for Revit the entire project can be stored in the cloud for our staff to access and complete the project faster than ever.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Xero is a basic accounting system that performs basic accounting tasks easily and accurately. For that, it provides a positive impact on our day to day accounting operations.
Because of Xero's basic structure, I feel it lacks some of the sophistication that some users want and need. The ability to create unique custom reports would enhance the impact Xero would have on meeting business objectives by providing current and useful accounting information.
In my opinion, Xero's lack of focus on their customers - their users - is a real issue with me. In my opinion, those of us that are in the trenches that work with the system on a daily basis have to deal with the shortcomings of the system with the knowledge that Xero support refuses to address the operational issues that make their user's lives difficult. I feel if Xero would focus on truly making their software better from a users point of view, it has the potential to be a great system.
