Bluebeam Revu

RATING:

4.7

(962)

About Bluebeam Revu

As an award winning leader in innovative, collaborative, Cloud-based software technologies that streamline construction planning and building projects, Bluebeam's set of solutions have set the standard for excellence since 2002. Architecture, engineering, and construction teams from over 130 countries with 2+ million users have relied on Bluebeam to deliver the technical tools they need to advance projects, fine-tune budgets, and collaborate in real time on even the most intricate details of any build site. The company's flagship solutions, Bluebeam Revu® and Bluebeam Cloud®, help users get more done in less time with powerful PDF creation capabilities, multi-format uploads, quick-and-easy markup solutions, real-time tracking of annotations, and on-the-go reporting fo...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2024
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.

Bluebeam Revu Pricing

Basics: Essential tools for marking up and managing your AECO office and project documents - $240 per user, billed annually. Complete: Everything you need to manage and optimize complex AECO projects at scale - $400 per user, billed annually. Core: Comprehensive tools for managing and collaborating on small- and mid-sized AECO projects - $300 per user, billed annually.

Starting price: 

$240.00 per year

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Not Available

Bluebeam Revu Desktop
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Bluebeam Revu Reviews

Overall Rating

4.7

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4.5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4.5

Most Helpful Reviews for Bluebeam Revu

1 - 5 of 960 Reviews

Ryan

11 - 50 employees

Used more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

Reviewed May 2021

Excellent quantity survey tool

User Profile

Gregg

Verified reviewer

Construction, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed July 2021

Move Over Adobe, Bluebeam is Better

A great alternative to Adobe…much more user friendly and affordable.

PROS

Bluebeam has better features and is easier to use than Adobe. The cost is much less when you consider payments are not indefinite.

CONS

Nothing bad to report. Bluebeam is far superior to Adobe. So far we have not found any flaws in the software.

Reasons for switching to Bluebeam Revu

Bluebeam works better with our with our other programs and internal system.

Audrey

Civil Engineering, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2022

Such as useful tool

A useful tool I've been using since 2016. The private consulting industry has basically embedded this software into their workflow. Sadly, probably due to its cost, the public sector/client dont tend to use Bluebeam or they have the entry level version without all the features.

PROS

Bluebeam works perfectly with drafting and producing drawings through Civil 3D. It's quick and convenient to use for engineering drawings. One particularly great feature, is the ability to calibrate your own scale and measure quantities to scale. It is a great tool for producing markups and redlines on PDFs to share with the team. Before the pandemic, we occasionally did the markups and comments by hand, now it's exclusively all through PDF markups.

CONS

When they have yearly program version updates, they tend to change the UI around so it takes some time to relearn the Bluebeam features. For the polyline feature, it's annoying having to press enter to finalize the command and save the line drawn (especially if it's not a close polygon). I use this tool daily and it's extremely annoying when I lose my line! I would love it if they made it so a right-click during the command saves and exits so I can complete the entire command with my mouse.

Reasons for switching to Bluebeam Revu

It's still important to have Adobe Acrobat as well since some (government/official) forms only work properly with Adobe.

JEFFREY

Construction, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

3

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed December 2019

Great software-Terrible customer service

The customer service-technical help is just horrendous. Their 'technicians' are just phone operators, many with very bad attitudes (if I worked for a company with these policies I'd be grumpy too!) but read on... Anything beyond the very basics like opening the program or setting up menus are completely beyond their abilities. To make matters MUCH worse they have no escalation policy at all. Read that again; a SOFTWARE company has zero escalation policy. Who you get, regardless of whether they can actually answer your question, is who you get (I was TOLD this -it's recorded too- by an operator! If they don't know something (most of the time) they put you on hold for 5-10 minutes while they go ask someone who supposedly does. Invariably there is a follow up question (or more likely, they just have the wrong answer) and so they put you on hold for ANOTHER 10 minutes. When you ask to be transferred to the person they obviously keep putting you on hold to ask, you are rebuffed. Ask harder, in fact DEMAND to be connected to a qualified tech often enough and they will revoke your service contract. Read that again, if you complain too much they will FIRE YOU instead of fix their internal problems! Eventually I was able to work out an 'email only' connection to a senior tech who actually HAS the answers, but by revoking my service, they also robbed me of my updates so I can't even benefit from all the work I've put into helping them improve their product.

PROS

It is hands down the most powerful PDF editor available today. As of v. 2018.6 they have fixed MOST of the issues that made it crash (but not quite all) and I can operate this software for an average of 9 hours a day without too much cursing at the screen. Takeoff is WYSIWYG and once you learn the product, very adaptable to whatever way you like to work. Another terrific feature is the 'slipped plans' feature where you can slipp addendum plans together with existing plans and transfer all of your current takeoff without loss. No other takeoff software allows this kind of functionality. The ability to automatically generate 'links' within the drawings (from flags to the correct page indicated by the flag) is also very valuable. Other programs DO provide this, but Bluebeam is much more accurate and faster.

CONS

The exporting function. Only allows limited functionality (.csv .xml .pdf and print) and Nemetschek refuses to work with us to provide access to the API so we can truly integrate the takeoff with our ERP system. It functions but it could be SO much more. The tech help was TERRIBLE! First, they refuse to help unless you grant them remote access to your machine ( I won't). Then they cant actually do their job. See below for a full description;

Reason for choosing Bluebeam Revu

Much more powerful, built specifically for the kind of work I do

Reasons for switching to Bluebeam Revu

The company I went to work for did not use OST and asked me to research other options that may be better. The service problem I did not discover until too late.

Matthew

Construction, 501-1,000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed January 2024

BlueBeam Revu

the product makes it easy to measure, mark up and make amendments to drawings during the design process without the need to have expensive CAD software

PROS

easy to use, inexpensive and has great features

CONS

I sometimes struggle to find features, but that is because I don't use everything all the time, and it is a very feature rich product

Reasons for switching to Bluebeam Revu

cost and features are better with BlueBeam