Perforce P4 Reviews & Insights

Score7.4 out of 10

35 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Perforce P4 are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Users have adopted various revision control packages like Perforce, Git, and SVN to develop and store data independently. Perforce serves as the backbone of version control for builds, ensuring everyone has the latest content and code. It is easy to get started with Perforce, allowing users to pull the files they want. However, it can be challenging to perform more complex tasks like branching and integrating. Nevertheless, Perforce supports a rich GUI for most tasks and a command-line interface for automated or advanced tasks, making it suitable for users with varying technical proficiency.

Perforce is accessible globally and externally to product licensees, supporting all major features like branching, shelving, and p4web. The visual client of Perforce is user-friendly, presenting the directory structure conveniently and consistently across platforms. Its merge optimization feature is highly useful for day-to-day operations, providing efficient code merging capabilities. This makes Perforce ideal for agile development, big data services, and marketing materials across thousands of automotive dealerships.

Moreover, Perforce is scalable and suitable for small to enterprise-level projects. It integrates well within a .Net environment and is leveraged by several departments to track changes in software, documentation, and assets, providing quick access to change history and approvals. In industries like healthcare, Perforce Helix Core serves as the source control management system of choice for corporate products, internal applications, custom code, and configurations. Beyond version control purposes, Perforce is also used for collaboration and sharing software between independent developer groups within and across different lab sites. In addition to its version control capabilities, Perforce ensures the integrity of code bases by providing backup and revision control features.

Perforce P4 Reviews

15 Reviews

The standard

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

October 1, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Perforce Helix Core to upload and download files across our team. A place where anyone on our team can access the files and at the same time know who is working on which file so they don't work on the same file and overwrite it by accidently saving over the file.

Pros

A place to add your organizations files across all departments
syncing files on your computer
download and uploading files is fairly easy

Cons

an updated UI that is more modern
automate the process of updating files in real time so you don't have to manually refresh to see updated files
could simplify the literature in the preferences to make it more understandable of what the preferences are doing

Likelihood to Recommend

Its the standard for hosting an organizations files, but there is a lot of room for improvement for more throughtful design practices to help simplify the process of uploading and downloading files or checking in or checking out files. I feel there could be ways to help notify the user so instead of thinking of how Perforce Helix Core is working, Perforce Helix Core is showing intuitive visuals so that anyone can understand what's its doing without having to ask other people for help on how to use it.

Verified User

Employee (51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

This review is the result of anger due to the bad user experience in Perforce Helix Core P4V Desktop client

Rating: 1 out of 10

Incentivized

February 12, 2024

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

In my opinion, Perforce Helix Core is the most confusing and inefficient code management repo software that I have ever used. I often get stuck in unrecoverable mode in the desktop app, so I just create a new workspace to start from scratch. In my experience, it's contra-intuitive and hard to find details on the Internet how to resolve issues. I don't recommend using Perforce Helix Core. I think you would be much happier with any Git flavor.

Pros

In my experience, Wasting time
In my experience, Killing motivation
In my experience, Causing huge anger

Cons

In my opinion, Give up and switch to Git

Likelihood to Recommend

In my opinion, it's barely usable.

Pavel Petrov

Infrastructure engineer in Information Technology at Amdocs (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Great for Game Development, with Room for Improvements

Rating: 7 out of 10

Incentivized

December 31, 2023

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Perforce Helix Core as a source control for the development of our game. We use it for all the binaries, art assets, audio assets, and source code files for all our projects. So, almost everything. We also use Swarm to review code changes on the project. It works great with Unreal so we are also using Unreal Game Sync to ease the sync for all users.

Pros

Source control of binary files
Ease of use
Artist-Friendly
Locking of assets to avoid merge problems

Cons

Version control of code files
Branching is too dificult
Sometimes is very slow
GUI is not the greatest

Likelihood to Recommend

I would say that for a game development studio seems like a really good idea because it's easy to use for artists and etc. There are some difficulties with how to handle branching and multi-branch locking, but all version controls can present similar problems. One of the biggest issues is the price which cannot be accessible for every studio.

Luiz Wendt

Software Engineer in Engineering at Timberline (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

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Perforce Helix Core meets the need!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 1, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Perforce Helix Core across the entire organization. We leverage it for source control on all of our corporate products, all internal applications, and to store custom code and configuration which we or our partners create I association with product implementations at hospital and Healthcare sites around the world. We have created automated systems to allow implementation configuration items changed by clinical users to be versions behind the scenes without their requiring any technical knowledge on how to use Helix clients.

Pros

Intelligent integration between branches.
Simple CLI for scripting.
Easy to use web portal for code reviews.

Cons

Options for integrating changes between classic depots and graph depots (Helix4Git).
Provide REST APIs for fetching or manipulating data in Helix Core (e.g. Jobs, changelist queries, etc.).

Likelihood to Recommend

We have found it to be well-suited in all cases except those where Developers are highly predisposed to only using Git. For this case we are starting to experiment with Helix4Git and hope that this will make management easier and at some point he hope for clean integration paths between Git and Classic depots so that development teams can collaborate on code even while differing on the source control paradigm they prefer to use.

Verified User

Manager in Engineering (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

16 years of experience

Perforce Helix -- Easy, Fast, and Rock-Solid

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

November 9, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

At my organization, we have several departments using our implementation of Perforce Helix. Perforce has made it easily possible to track changes to our software, documentation, and assets for over two decades. Whenever there is a question as to why a change happened, who approved it, what exactly was changed, it only takes a second or two to find out. Due to combining different organizations, we also use other version control software for some projects, but Perforce Helix is the best, by far.

Pros

Perforce is fast.
It is easy to use.
It is easy to administer.
There is nothing that can beat it when it comes to flexibility.
Support is top-notch.

Cons

Perforce (the company) needs to market itself better.
While their Support is the best there is, account management could be better.
They could be better about notifying users of new features.

Likelihood to Recommend

While Perforce Helix is the best version control software out there, it can also be used to track your documentation, training videos and materials, and requirements. If you have strict compliance requirements, it can be used to ensure that those requirements are satisfied.

Perforce Helix is incredibly flexible and can meet the needs of individual users as well as companies with thousands of users.

Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

20 years of experience

Great Once It Is Set up

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

March 14, 2020

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Each lab site has its own set of developers that operates independently but we are moving towards more collaboration and sharing software between the groups. One site has standardized on Perforce and won't do any software development without using it and other sites are now moving towards using it based upon the experience of the current Perforce users. We use it not only for multi-developer teams but also as a way to back up code bases and do revision control.

Pros

Version control
Source code control
Automated builds

Cons

Difficulty of setup
Multiple packages needed for installation
Lack of available training

Likelihood to Recommend

Once you get used to it, it is straightforward to use and it has a very large feature set for a free software package. It is free for small teams to use, which helps with a larger adoption later down the road. Also, Perforce seems to be the defacto industry standard so once you learn it, you should be able to use it at other developer positions.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

Great Code Version Control

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

September 30, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Perforce is the main code version control tool that we utilize at our company. It is incredibly useful to keep track of our code history and branches. The visual client is very easy to use and presents the directory structure in a convenient way. It is easy to install on any system and the user interface is consistent across platforms. Perforce has great merge optimization that is extremely useful in day to day operations.

Pros

Merge algorithm is smart and utilizing the visual interface to do merges makes them easier to digest.
Easy to set up on multiple platforms and architectures and is well supported on all of them.
Visual interface has many tools and customization options that help to optimize and personalize workflow.

Cons

Updating Perforce is somewhat challenging, especially on Linux Systems.
Sometimes settings disappear.
In order to customize the font settings, you must restart the visual client.
Perforce could display its progress in a clearer way.

Likelihood to Recommend

Perforce is a perfect choice for large or small corporations who need a code version control tool. It is highly capable of handling the tasks that a version control tool should with the added benefit of having an easy-to-use visual client with the option of the command-line interface. It is very useful when doing a lot of merges and branching as it has a good workflow for resolving any conflicts. It is also good if you prefer using visual interfaces since it is built by the same people and is optimized to execute common commands and workflows.

Kaleb-John Loo

Senior Firmware Engineer in Engineering at Spirent Communications (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

Dependable and fast version control

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

October 25, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Having a solid source control solution is a necessity for any software company. The product development department for my organization uses Perforce for software version control. It solves a core business problem for our department by allowing us to track changes made to the main codebase, as well as branch new versions of said codebase.

Pros

The Perforce visual client makes it easy to track changelists and file history
Very stable with high performance
Diff tool makes identifying code changes a snap
Works nicely with Visual Studio via plugin

Cons

Performing integrations is somewhat confusing for new users
Managing multiple workspaces can get difficult
Backing out changes can be problematic if split across multiple changelists

Likelihood to Recommend

Perforce is great for managing a large scale codebase with a fairly large engineering team. It is fast, powerful, and has solid security features to lockdown specific branches. Perforce is best suited for established software companies with the resources to set up and maintain a Perforce server. Due to the difficult setup, cost, and learning curve, Perforce is not a great fit for small software development team or startups.

Hank Jones

Associate Software Quality Assurance Engineer in Quality Assurance at Omnitracs (1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

View profile

Perforce from a QA perspective

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

October 16, 2017

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently, everyone on our Development team uses Perforce, including QA. It's our primary source control app.

Pros

It's been incredibly reliable. I can't think of a single bug I've run into in five years.
Helpful integration APIs that allow me to use it with other apps.
Its Diff tools are easy to work with and helpful.

Cons

The UI can be hard to navigate for people new to the product.
It could do with some simplification in areas such as connecting to servers, etc.
UI seems dated.

Likelihood to Recommend

I haven't run into any scenarios where the app wouldn't be suitable for something, but our small team depends on it and it hasn't let us down yet. I don't have any experience using it for larger teams, so I don't know if it's as useful in that respect or not.

Matt King

Software Tester in Quality Assurance at Alien Skin Software (11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

View profile

Enterprise-level SVN software

Rating: 6 out of 10

June 3, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Perforce, for many years, was the primary version control tool in our organization. In the product department, we recently have switched to different software, but we still use Perforce for custom projects. Perforce is integrated within a .Net environment (ASP.Net and ASP MVC projects). Perforce is very scalable; it can be used from small projects to enterprise level projects. It has a learning curve, but after spending some time, it allows for fast and easy use.

Pros

Perforce Visual tool (P4V) is very extensive and pretty well organized. Perforce has a built in history tool.
Very good history view: you can see when your code was last changed, committed, and by whom.
You can add a lot of columns and history view, and sort a file by any of the columns.

Cons

I was having a hard time learning it. Even if you are an experienced developer, there is some learning curve.
Can be slow when working with large data sets at once.
When working on multiple workspaces on the same machine, Perforce can make it difficult not to mess up the code.

Likelihood to Recommend

The files view and history view are very clear. You can configure the information you want to see by adding new columns (from very large set of options). It makes work on versioning very pleasant. I use it to see my last changes, then compare with the current version, or I can see who has overwritten my version and ask that developer for details of his/her changes. This history view also gives an easy way to compare two chosen versions and revert to the version you need in just seconds.

Filip Witkowski

Web Developer in Research & Development at TMP Worldwide (501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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