Countfire Erfahrungen

Future of Estimating

Vorteile:

Countfire is a dream to use. It does everything I wanted when I imagined a program to help automate the takeoff process, and they are still improving and adding more. The ability to hide the background and define zones are two features that make complicated plans go so much quicker. Out of the hundreds of projects we've completed already, very few have issues that hinder the programs functionality. But when something like that does pop up, there is always somebody to respond quickly and take a look. They always are happy to hear customer feedback and take suggestions. I can't say enough good about the team behind this software, they are going to change the industry. I can't believe a couple of months ago in 2021 I was still printing drawings and using a yellow highlighter.

Nachteile:

What I like least about the software is the output excel file is a bit complicated compared to what we are used to. I only count devices of one discipline at a time, there is really no reason for more than one sheet. After I download the take off from countfire I always delete about half the rows / columns and transpose the x and y.

Taking off made easy!

Vorteile:

Automatically counting multiple drawings at the same timeAbility to identify any issues/errorsConstantly adding new features

Nachteile:

So far we have had no issues wit the software. The only very minor issue was not receiving a notification of duplicate symbols on a set of drawings but still not really an issue

Sceptical at First

Kommentare: Very sceptical at first having always done things longhand and trusted my own ability. However having used Countfire and realised the time saving and accuracy it gives you is outstanding. The support is brilliant if you are unsure of something or want to do something a bit different. Overall a great asset to any estimating or project control division

Vorteile:

The ease of document loading and producing take off's

Nachteile:

I do not believe anything is missing. The hardest part is remembering to set the zones so you do not do a take off on the legend

Great Tool for Estimating

Vorteile:

So easy to take off all elements and easier than trying to mark up manually

Nachteile:

Nothing to add on this one that I have found at the moment

Game changing!

Kommentare: Fantastic!!Been using countfire for 4 years now and its made estimating a lot less laborious

Vorteile:

The constant improvements and the ease of accurate take offs! Countfire team are always looking for ways to improve the software and take on customer feedback very well!Its also a massive bonus for my business model that all take offs can be done online and no need for a printer! Enables the company to operate from anywhere very easily..

Nachteile:

A live catalogue of materials would complete this software. It would cut down time going out to get live prices on materials.

CountFire Automated Take-Off Software

Kommentare: I could not be more pleased with CounFire. It is fast, accurate, easy to use, and has cut my time to perform a take-off by a factor of 10. Some may question a factor of 10, but try it and see that drawing symbols when counted on one drawing are also counted on all other drawings within the project drawing package automatically. Orientation is not an issue, and items not picked up are easily identified and added to the correct symbol list. Check drawings are also supplied as part of the final report to assure all errors have been resolved.

Vorteile:

CountFire being a cloud based service gets you up and running quickly. CountFire Sales is there to get you started and introduce you to Technical Assistance and Training. The On-Line Help function is integral to the CountFire Platform allowing you to be able to function seamlessly as you work on projects. I can count drawing elements or make extremely accurate measurements in one tenth of the time I did manually without the cost of drawing reproduction. The Final Reports are perfectly formatted in MSExcel and ready for Bill of Material development.

Nachteile:

I am still looking for a Con. I thought that since CountFire is in Great Britain that communications might be hampered by five, (5) time zones, but this was not the case. CountFire was there 24X7 to solve my self-inflicted start-up issues.

Best Software in the market

Kommentare: It has made our estimating more productive and accurate.

Vorteile:

Its a lot more intelligent than other software's

Nachteile:

The cost is slightly higher than we would like to pay.

A great time saver

Vorteile:

Countfire works very well as quick take off tool when producing estimates, it saves a lot of time when working through large quantities of drawings, you only need to make small adjustments to the search criteria as opposed to going through every drawing and taking off by hand.

Nachteile:

There are some limitations in what you can and cant do, with some updates from the suggested features it would become a far more competent tool for a designer estimator like myself - in particular different shaped coverage indicators and a larger choice of symbols and colour choices would massively improve the usability of countfire.

New user review

Vorteile:

Its ease of use, it is very intuitive and quick to learn, support is always on hand for when you get stuck.

Nachteile:

Some features aren't available, e.g. moving all zones together at once, it would be great to have it available on an app too, so you can work on PC and iPad when travelling, although very easy to use, some tasks are time consuming

A real time saver

Kommentare: Excellent product

Vorteile:

Saves days when completing take offs a very useful tool

Nachteile:

No issues at all, highly intuitive with no issues

Best Estimating Takeoff Software

Kommentare: I've only been using it for a month or so but it has been very nice. The support team is phenomenal. They are very good at fixing any problems you might face. There is also a feature request page that you can request new features and everyone can vote on them and then the Countfire team will work on implementing that feature. The Countfire team is very active and always looking for new ways to make the experience better.

Vorteile:

Features that I like the best: The Support: User Interface: I really like the clean simple user interface. It looks very nice and up to date unlike a lot of the competition. Autocount: In comparison to other software such as Livecount, Planswift, Bluebeam, eTakeoff, etc. Countfire is by far faster. I've used Livecount & Planswift the most. Countfire can do in 2 seconds what Livecount & Planswift takes 3 minutes to do. I can select a fixture type to autocount and it will find every fixture with extreme accuracy on every plan page in 2 seconds or less (Tested with a plan set of 120+ pages) Background Hide: Countfire has the ability to hide the background on a drawing. This is very useful when you have a messy plan set or when all the furniture and details are on the same page as the electrical. You can toggle it on and off. You can also define what is a part of the background and it will hide it. This makes it so much easier to see only the electrical stuff. Hide Counted Symbols. (Only works for symbols counted with autocount). This is a feature that most of the estimating takeoff software has but this does it in a much different way. It will actually hide the symbols that have been counted not just the digitizer count itself. This allows you to toggle off everything that has been counted and now you can see what hasn't been. This only works on the symbols that are counted with autocount. You can still hide the manual digitizer counts but it won't hide the symbol.

Nachteile:

The estimating side isn't as advanced as some of the other competitors but they are currently working on a big update that will fix most of that.

One Year In Review

Kommentare: The system is very easy to use which makes the familiarisation process quire easy.
With any new software you have to familiarise yourself with the peculiarities of the system and work with it to get the best from it which is what we have found with Countfire.
The first thing you notice is the speed and responsiveness of the auto count system which is so much better than other systems we have tried.
We have found Countfire to suit our business needs but there are improvements to be made and hopefully we will see this product develop further.

Vorteile:

Easy to use, fast, useful for auto counting from certain revised drawings such as lighting. Demarcation of drawings is a good feature.

Nachteile:

There is no 'back' button to help you correct mistakes - you have to rely on not saving changes which is not ideal. Recognition of different orientation of symbols is limited to 90 degrees only - expanding this would be useful. Typical small power symbol auto count can be time consuming because of how symbols are recognised by the system, this makes the auto count process unreliable particularly across multiple drawings - a manual count often becomes the best option which defeats the object.

Countfire - The go to Take Off software

Vorteile:

The product is very easy to use with excellent customer support if required and lots of tutorials if needed. the system is designed so that items can be counted with ease giving you a final number to evaluate.

Nachteile:

I would say that the system does not need improvements to state due to the presence of a ticket service which allows users to provide feedback on findings which are constantly reviewed by staff to make he service better.

1st review

Kommentare: My overall experience has been great.

Vorteile:

I think it is easy to use and faster then doing a count by printing and manually counting. I like the background drop it makes it easy to see all the things that need to be counted. Another pro is that by using CountFire i don't have to be printing the drawings which helps the environment.

Nachteile:

sometimes drawings take to long to upload in to the software. I would like to see improvements in the unjoining and joining symbols, the improvement could be that we the users had a choice in which parts of drawings we join or unjoin.

Electrical Takeoff

Vorteile:

Accurate and easy to use, managed software any issues you can contact the team

Nachteile:

Price, the software is expensive - however does save time which would need to be considered

Amazing & Friendly Staff

Kommentare: Countfire has saved me tons of time performing takeoffs. It is also very helpful in accomplishing a set of takeoffs for a project with a quick turn around time.

Vorteile:

I absolutely love the quick response from the members of the Countfire Staff. They are quick to respond and help resolve any issues you may have.

Nachteile:

I love everything about the Countfire Program.

Personal view of Countfire after 3 weeks

Kommentare: Its quick and easy to use. There are a few things which can be done to make it even better but overall its far more efficient than using paper and coloured pens.

Vorteile:

It is pretty easy to use once you are using it on a daily basis. It makes the take-off process a lot quicker and doesn't require the need for printing off a Forrest worth of trees for drawings, plus you don't need to keep a whole range of coloured pens handy.

Nachteile:

I have found that I have gone back to drawings that I have taken off first time around and noticed symbols which I did take off were not highlighted. That could be simply down to me not saving each time. However, I have had to go back through each drawing to make sure I haven't missed anything. There should be something in place to highlight anything that has been missed. It would also be helpful to have an option to pick regularly used symbols and containment so that you can save time not having to manually type them in.

Countfire Review

Kommentare: saves printing drawings out and buying highlighters etc, but also saves alot of time and so is very valuable.

Vorteile:

its made the takeoff process alot easier and ten times faster.

Nachteile:

an undo button would be great, also took abit of time to introduce new users and get them to fully understand the software.

Extraordinary

Kommentare: I feel have happy when new drawings coming in from companies I tender for simply because I know Countfire will help me getting the job done without much effort and in time.

Vorteile:

-So easy to use -You can count, measure, select -It saves everything into a spreadsheet

Nachteile:

It could have a small box in one of the corner where you can see where is the mouse when zoomed in, also it would be useful to the drawing number and title showing somewhere instead of having to go to the bottom drawing to check it.

Good, versatile, fast, ongoing development, active support

Vorteile:

The software is a good alternative to the usual means of working with large plans, as it saves a lot of time and space/printing materials

Nachteile:

One of the cons is the requirement of the chrome browser, since the additional software isn't supported by the IT Department.

Great software

Kommentare: brilliant

Vorteile:

the checks - and the excel output - this gives me the perfect platform to begin my estimation

Nachteile:

to be honest the is no features i don't like - really happy with software

quality time saving product

Kommentare: excellent quality service provided at all times

Vorteile:

The software has given us more time to produce quality accurate take-off's, enabling more productivity and scope to be successful with tender submissions

Nachteile:

fast effective easy to use tools, could do with a duplication tool to add additional missed items to the existing plan using the same icon

The product is easy to use and the support staff is amazing.

Kommentare: I have saved a lot of time on performing take offs.

Vorteile:

I like its chat option and the great support staffs fast response time. I also like how when I have a problem that I may run into one of the members of the support team will help me immediately. They can actually open and view the actual project I am working on and will send me a clip of how to get past what problems I may be having.

Nachteile:

Nothing. Everything about this software is amazing. The support staff has a quick response. They normally respond is less than 5 minutes.

I've never experienced technical support that countfire. Simply the best

Kommentare: Saves me tons of time and for someone that works 80+ hours a week, my time is very valuable.

Vorteile:

The ease of use. It is very easy to use once I learned the shortcuts and best practices from Countfire. Was up and running withing a few days 100% and it is saving me so much time. I did the a job the other day that was normally a 4 hour job and it took me 30 minutes by using Countfire and that 3.5 hours is very valuable to me.

Nachteile:

The only thing I'd like and it is really only for hotels, but to be able to find a certain room and count them and multiply out already in the excel sheet, but I use the counts for the rooms and easily adjust the excel spreadsheet in less than a minute, so it really isn't an issue.

Saves Time, Improves Accuracy

Kommentare: Overall this software has saved me a significant amount of time, and worry. while it is expensive, the time gained by using this instead of pen and paper is more than worth it. The support is excellent, and are happy to help with what ever you specific business requirements are, new features can be requested and seem to be added fairly regularly, it's nice to see a company like this crowd sourcing their development.

Vorteile:

The automatic counting of symbols makes this software an absolute life saver. Easy to use, easy to navigate, and easy to verify your results.

Nachteile:

Its easy to use, that however means that its not very customizable, while for most people thats great, more custom options for those that want it would be good.