RSMeans Data Online vs ProEst: Which is a better fit?

I love that they have a choice of industry standards or the ability to choose custom. The confidence you get from the calculation is great when trying to justify it to the client.

The online trial program was full of errors, The check out sequence was full of delays and errors, after finally purchasing it actually deleted my account on its own and still is unfixed.

The software is easy to use, reliable and fast. The data is accurate and helps me do my estimation in a much better and organised manner now.

Too costly - I paid $$$$ for the full blown version and it is missing some components. Such as LED light fixtures SF costs.

I like the many options presented to develop a comprehensive estimate. Customer Service is the best I had encountered with any cost related company.

The user management is terrible. If you regularly assign different people to use this software within your organization the features for managing that task do not work.

Jennifer J

Project Manager

Helps standardize an otherwise wildly unpredictable industry. I used this to help price ROMs (rough order of magnitudes) on potential incoming costs to help prepare or understand costing better.

Their price framing is bad as it leads you to believe the product is one price but the actual price is 2.5x higher for something that will actually function for real estimating.

Overall it is a great system, they have an awesome trainer that will work with you until you got it. Customer service is also real helpful.

Terrible schedule program; visually unable to have clients and vendors understand it.

However, if you like you can use simple unit takeoffs and apply a cost to them later. Proest can be as complex or as simple as you'd like for it to be and for the money, it's a pretty good program.

Mid way through my ownership they rolled out the cloud based application of the software and it was garbage, lost of glitches, very slow response, etc.

I liked that this software is very simple and easy, and we had free training sessions which was very useful. I also find the take off system and tools very powerful and the database is huge.

I do have one complaint which may seem petty, but it is an annoyance.

I have been using ProEst for the last year and have for the most part been very happy. The customer support has been very good.

Building an assembly from scratch is so difficult that they now have someone in house that does this for their customers because its so difficult, think about that.