Try BeyondCompare or continue living in BC
May 22, 2018

Try BeyondCompare or continue living in BC

Joseph Tozzi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with BeyondCompare

BeyondCompare was used by our development team mostly as a diff tool for use with Git version control. It is a far better solution than the default mergetool utility included with Git and makes handling difficult merges easier to deal with.

Pros

  • Ability to compare files, directories, FTP sites, cloud storage (Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon S3, Subversion and WebDAV) and archive files (tar, gzip, bzip2, Microsoft CAB, WinRAR, Zip, 7-zip, and IMG/ISO disk images).
  • 3-way text merging. Allows you to see the original file, the remote version and your local version all at the same time to reconcile differences.
  • Ability to synchronize folders.
  • Can be configured to work with version control systems.
  • Works on Windows, Linux and OS X.

Cons

  • The interface can be a little overwhelming at first.
  • During a 3-way merge, BC does not make it obvious which files are which so it gets confusing at times.
  • Saves time by making merging easier
  • Saves money by having less errors merging
There are a lot of options when it comes to file comparison tools with some being free, however, you will be hard-pressed to find another tool that does as much as BeyondComare does for a nominal cost (~$30-$60). For a thorough comparison see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_comparison_tools.
BeyondCompare is great for handling file differences for a large variety of file types. It is indispensable as a merge tool for version control systems, especially when dealing with difficult merges. And it also serves as an archive utility as it allows for the synchronization of folders.

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