Item: BBEdit
Rating: 10
Author: Courtney Birnbaum

Overall Satisfaction with BBEdit

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

BBEdit is our go-to software for wrangling text into a usable form for our publishing work. Our department is the main user of this software, and we find it excellent because of its free option and its variety of script functions to semi-automate our process to get text from many sources to adhere to our singular standards. We run scripts in BBEdit multiple times a day to process text for rosters, schedules and other sports information.

Pros and Cons

Pros

BBEdit remembers what I had open, so I never have to worry about losing work when I accidentally close the software. It will hold onto information almost indefinitely, so that the next time I open a program, I can access the information that I may have forgotten to save. Thankfully, its save function is also very simple to use, so I recommend still saving your work as needed.
Scripts are the most important aspect of BBEdit for the company I work for. Being able to import scripts and create new ones all in the same location are great.

Cons

One slightly annoying thing about BBEdit is the Currently Open Documents sidebar. If you open a second document, all documents are now tabbed with this column on the left, making you need to adjust your window to return to the window size you were using. Even closing all but one document will not remove the sidebar; it is only fixed when you close the software and open it again. Not a big issue, but worth mentioning.
Many of BBEdit's best tools are behind a paywall. We do not need most of these functions for our work, so I cannot speak on them from my limited use during the program's free trial period.

Return on Investment

BBEdit is the only way we can manage the quick turnaround required with stats and sports information for the NCAA championships, because it allows us to quickly adjust text into the spacing and style we need.
Without BBEdit scripts, we would have to work much later hours on championship deadlines, first structuring our information and then triple checking. With BBEdit, we save hundreds of hours of work each year.

Alternatives Considered

BBEdit holds a spot on my computer dock because of its reliable, functional and straightforward uses in text management and script processing. While a computer's default text program, such as TextEdit, has some of the same abilities as BBEdit, TextEdit lacks the appearance features and tools that BBEdit provides when running scripts, saving files and editing code. Text Wrangler is the older version of BBEdit, so we retired its use after our latest office computer upgrade. There are very few differences between these two besides that BBEdit is still supported, while Text Wrangler may be out of date or at risk. Additionally, it is not practical to open a large web designing program when you only need to update a line or two of coding, making BBEdit a better fit for us than Adobe web programs like Dreamweaver or Muse.

Support Rating

Updates are frequent and I can't recall any issues with broken programs or vulnerabilities. The team behind BBEdit is also generous with its free trials, allowing long-term free users to have multiple chances to sample its full software. I am unsure if I had issues how the support would be, only because I have not needed them.

Key Insights

Do you think BBEdit delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with BBEdit's feature set?

Yes

Did BBEdit live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of BBEdit go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy BBEdit again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

BBEdit's free version is great as an update to the group's previous product Text Wrangler, which, as that name implies, allowed us to manage any text to remove odd formatting and adjust the text to our specific needs as a publishing group. The paid version, which I am less familiar with, has considerably better tools if you are seeking BBEdit for coding purposes, as its HTML ability is much better than the free version I use more regularly. If you are looking for a word processor or other more polished text files, this is unlikely to suit. But if you want a simple program with surprisingly complex uses for preparing text for another program or writing code, this may be the program you need.

Comments

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BBEdit: The Text Wrangler We Know and Love