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Plastic SCM

Plastic SCM

Overview

What is Plastic SCM?

Plastic SCM is a full stack version control system that aims to make software configuration easy. It focuses on enabling dev teams get work done by facilitating branching, diffing and merging. The vendor says that for those purposes it provides…

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Plastic SCM has found a variety of use cases among individual developers and small project teams who are looking for efficient code …
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Pricing

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Cloud Edition

$6.95

Cloud
per user

Team Edition (on prem)

$9.95

On Premise
per user

Enterprise Edition

$23.25

On Premise
per user

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.plasticscm.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Plastic SCM?

Plastic SCM is a full stack version control system that aims to make software configuration easy. It focuses on enabling dev teams get work done by facilitating branching, diffing and merging. The vendor says that for those purposes it provides cross-platform apps and GUIs with:

  • Branch explorer
  • Diffing and merging tools (both syntactic and semantic)
  • On-premises and cloud repo management
  • Code review
  • mergebots (last mile DevOps merging automation)
According to the vendor, it is used:
  • across industries
  • in enterprise companies with world wide distributed teams
  • in companies with vendors and contractors embedded in their workflows and tight security requirements and complex deployment setup
  • among video game studios, big and small, that use Unity, Unreal, Ogre or any of the available popular engines

It can handle big files (over 2 GB), it has lock features to avoid concurrent work on files. It also caters for artists and designers – or anyone working in a centralized why for that matter – by providing them a separate, fully featured app called Gluon: a point and click GUI that abstracts them for the complexity of version control while allowing them to work with devs easily. The vendor says they provide on prem (Team Edition) and Cloud (Cloud Edition) installations and everything in between, with hassle-free implementation and prices in range of 60% less than their main competitors.

Plastic SCM Features

  • Supported: branching, diffing and merging tool
  • Supported: Branch explorer
  • Supported: mergebots (last mile DevOps merging automation)
  • Supported: Gluon: GUI for artists and designers that work centralized, with lock features and support for large files
  • Supported: Repo management
  • Supported: Code review
  • Supported: Changeset explorer

Plastic SCM Screenshots

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Plastic SCM Video

Plastic SCM is a version control to help teams focus on delivering work, one task at a time.

Plastic SCM Integrations

Plastic SCM Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Plastic SCM Customer Size Distribution

Consumers25%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)20%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)15%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)40%
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(8)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Plastic SCM has found a variety of use cases among individual developers and small project teams who are looking for efficient code management and version control. Users appreciate the ease of use and the availability of a free pricing tier, making it accessible to a wide range of users. The graphical user interface, or GUI, of Plastic SCM has been particularly helpful for non-coding individuals, allowing them to understand the continuous integration/continuous deployment process more easily. It simplifies organizing CI/CD pipelines and provides convenient access to repositories, making it an excellent alternative to GitHub.

One of the key benefits of Plastic SCM is its ability to handle scaling and versioning code effectively. It assists with continuous deployment and monitoring, effectively resolving issues related to repositories like Git. Users find merging and creating pull requests straightforward, thanks to the intuitive features provided by Plastic SCM. Its semantic functionalities, such as refactor detection, have proven helpful in resolving complex diffing refactors. In game development, Plastic SCM offers robust version control for managing Unity-made projects with large file sizes.

While Plastic SCM has received positive feedback for its affordability and branching system, some users have encountered issues with search times or occasional crashes. Additionally, certain users have found the nomenclature and interface of Plastic SCM confusing and not as user-friendly as they would prefer. Basic actions like shelving and merging can require repetitive steps and sometimes result in error messages. However, overall, Plastic SCM remains a popular choice for source control, cloud storage, collaboration in SaaS projects, and centralized code repository management in businesses across various industries due to its scalability, performance on the WAN, access control features, and support for version control, branching, and merging in simultaneous developments.

Easy to use and user-friendly: Users find Plastic SCM easy to use and appreciate its intuitive user interface, allowing for quick task completion. Many reviewers have stated that they found it simple to navigate and work with the software.

GUI provides visual environment: The inclusion of a GUI in Plastic SCM is highly appreciated by users as it provides a visual environment that helps them navigate and work with the software more easily. Several reviewers have mentioned that the GUI enhances their overall experience with the tool.

Low learning curve: Plastic SCM is praised for its low learning curve, allowing users to get started quickly and without much difficulty. Many users have mentioned that they were able to adapt to the software easily, which has helped them save time and be productive from the start.

User-Friendly and Learning Resources: Many users have expressed that Plastic SCM is not user-friendly and lacks a good source of learning, making it difficult for them to get started with the software. Some reviewers have mentioned that the initial setup process can be tedious and complicated, especially for those switching from simpler version control systems.

UE4 Plugin Performance: The UE4 plugin for Plastic SCM is criticized for being slow and unreliable. Users report long waiting times for basic file operations and syncing projects, as well as frequent crashes of the UE editor. This has caused frustration among users who rely on this plugin for their Unreal Engine 4 development workflow.

Lack of Branching Options: Several users have mentioned that Plastic SCM has limited branching capabilities compared to Git. They feel that the lack of frequent branching and merging capabilities in Plastic SCM makes it less flexible and efficient for managing complex codebases.

Perforce has received several recommendations as a good alternative to more robust version control systems like git, especially for projects that are not using Unreal/Unity. Here are the three most common recommendations from users:

  1. Users have praised Perforce for its reliability and efficiency in managing non-Unreal/Unity projects. They appreciate its stability and find it efficient in handling large files and multiple branches and streams.

  2. Many reviewers have highlighted Perforce's user-friendly interface, which makes it easy to navigate and collaborate. They find it intuitive to check-in and check-out files, track changes, and resolve conflicts.

  3. Users express satisfaction with Perforce's excellent support and integration options. They appreciate the helpful documentation, responsive customer service, and frequent updates. They also find the integration options valuable for seamless integration with other tools commonly used in software development workflows.

Overall, users recommend Perforce as a suitable choice for projects that don't require advanced features offered by other version control systems like git, particularly in scenarios where Unreal or Unity engines are not being used.

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are developing a big, distributed product for an aviation giant. So the business is complex and so is the technical implementation. A team of 25 people are working on it. So a distributed collaboration is required for systematic development. Plastic SCM is providing us the same environment which is most suitable for our development requirement. It supports the version control for our project and the branching and merging solution for the continuous and simultaneous development. In this way team is able to leverage the best efficiency.
  • Branching
  • Merging
  • binary freeze or locking
  • decentralized behavior
  • Efficient for large projects as well, really fast and quick
  • Versioning and controlling the repositories
  • No administrative tool, so a lot of manual work need to be done
  • Quite often the workspace for Plastic SCM disappears and its weird
  • Its not easy to use initially as it requires a knowledge and some efforts
  • Its not preferable for the small projects as to set up and use takes a lot of efforts
Plastic SCM is well suited for the distributed development environment, where branching and merging can easily be handled. Its a good tool for version controlling, especially for a big team which is contributing to a big project simultaneously.

Situation where Plastic SCM is not at all well suited are : If the project is smaller one and need to be handled by couple of people. So in that case setting up Plastic SCM and educating people to work on it is not at all efficient
  • Best for distributed systems
  • It goes very well with the giant repos
  • Functionality to lock/freeze files/binaries to avoid the merging conflicts and issues
  • branching and merging
  • graphical visualization of repos to get better understanding and insights of branching
  • Its not good for smaller projects
  • Its a bit complex to understand at initial stages so requires some effort to learn tool
  • but if project is big and a lot of people are contributing simultaneously then in that case it multiplies the power of team
Jacob James Salzberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as a tool inside Unity. It's great to keep things organized as an alternative to GitHub/gitlab/Bitbucket. Moreover, for huge projects with lots of assets, scripts in the range of dozens, code trees ranging 5k+, it's a very reliable and already integrated tool in our workflow.
  • Version Control
  • Organizing Workflow
  • Transparency
  • Interface
  • Documentation
  • Learning curve
  • Unity integration
Gluon is a beast - it's the best tool out of plastic scm. It's a bit centralized so the cons/pros are very straightforward. Our default workflow is now much easier for every single artist. GitHub was much more complicated and eventually less tech savvy peers would need to ask for help whenever we had issues with our repos.
  • Gluon
  • Cloud Server
  • Branching
  • Security
  • Unity single click usage
  • Easy to use
  • Cheap
  • Better than git for us
  • Artists love it
Plastic has best integration with unity - zero issues, native, straightforward. GitHub feels more stable but for smaller and or indie teams plastic s version control feels much more under control - you click, you feel safe. moreover, there is no need for extra tools such as gitkraken, gitlab, Sourcetree, fork, etc. it is really easy to develop games this way.
Gulam Gaus Warsi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My team uses Plastic SCM for version control, to collaborate our SaaS project within other team members working on the same software. We use it to store our unity projects on cloud. So Plastic SCM helps us to control every branch. Besides the features, it has a nice and friendly GUI.
  • Version Control
  • File Locking
  • Branch Resolution
  • Complex
  • Could be easier on integrations
  • Lot of menus
Plastic SCM is moderately easy to integrate into any software application, provides multiple branching features, shelving the pending work and transition to another branch quickly. If you are in game development, and your project tree grows to tens of gigabytes easily, I highly recommend you to try out Plastic SCM, it's designed with binary files and huge repository sizes in mind.
  • Version Control
  • Easy Merging
  • UI
  • Saves time
  • Processes get less complicated
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