Claris FileMaker 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

I like very much the tool as it's easy to learn, it doesn't need deep coding knowledge and it's very user-friendly. The community is great as you can find a lot of documentation and information to use it.

I love FileMaker as my primary CRM but the lack of integration with iCloud et al means that it cannot serve as a core part of my workflow. Right now, I'm obliged to keep my personal and business life separate which might seem fine on the surface but I would like to take advantage of Filemaker for personal projects too, which is hard right now.

We use FileMaker for everything. We recently installed an SMS system (as an API tagged to SendHub). We can now send messages, track messages, view threads, and analyze usage - all from within our CRM which was built entirely in-house in FileMaker.

I've been using FileMaker for 25 years and it's a tool that just keeps on giving.

I use it to manage contacts and expenses and I have built the database that a photo library use to run their business every day! I cannot fault this software!

Very stable ! We use it now on our Windows server and several Win and Mac clients.

I have been using Filemaker since version 1 in the 1980's when I was learning database design at university. The company has been gradually and systematically improving the product, adopting the best practices and technology. The price point has remained appropriate considering the value. Many of our solutions were started 30 years ago, and work just as well, or even better today. We also add new solutions and making processes more efficient on a daily basis. The point is that the investment in Filemaker for the past 30 years at this company has been completely worth the cost. For example, using Filemaker to automate our processes in our small company saves the cost of at least 3 employees out of 12. That is a 25% reduction in payroll for using Filemaker. There is a broad base of other companies and users that provide training, tutorials, and plug-in products that there is virtually nothing you cannot do.

This is perhaps an unusual review, based on 30+ years with FileMaker. As Editor-in-Chief of Australian Macworld, I used it to drive a Macintosh Products Guide describing all the thousands of software and hardware available to Mac users. It was a formidable project published in print by us annually. Apple at the time had tried to build its own, first in HyperCard of all things, but asked us nicely if they might borrow ours. Since then I have used FM for many purposes both privately and in business, primarily because you can have a new ad hoc database up and running in one day. Flexibility is its main advantage, combining search and report output in almost any combination you want. Example: for the Product Guide we first entered data for each product in appropriate fields, then exported the entire set tab-delimited to a text editor, performed advanced manual and automated editing using UNIX-based and GREP scripts, imported the (huge) and now textually clean file back into FM, then used report functions to re-export it with formatting codes for each field to a professional typesetting machine that could print 100 magazine pages without modification. That began in late 1980s long before FM became relational. Today and with FM of the 2020s, I often ask people why they use a spreadsheet where FM gives them better summaries and overviews. I gave up on accounting software for invoicing and built it in FM because there I could tie it to non-accounting to data, notes and full data on real estate properties, contracts, reminders and so forth, all available in one place. In a broadband company, we could track disparate sets of data on thousands of customers, from IP addresses and routers to subscription and invoicing data. With the same tool we could run the technical network and take care of the financials. Then, here is an oddball: For my sailing yacht I built an “inventory” db of permanent stores and current provisions. Clickable images of the interior allowed us to click on a cupboard and see what it contained, or vice versa we could find the location of a spanner by clicking on it. Food supplies were automatically updated as we consumed or purchased, and based on dietary tables it could calculate how many days they’d last. Travel logs were of course also implemented and timestamped. The point of these examples is not that it can be done, but that FM is so intuitive that you are tempted to use it. Numbers, text, images, sounds, web URLs, mail, who cares – they can all find their space. A Swiss Army knife. FM has limitations in large corporations, but for smaller work groups it is efficient, self-explanatory, and something we found invaluable: non-programmers on staff were triggered and motivated to learn more and contribute to developing. Some even became developers themselves.

Filemaker was amazing in that it let us have exactly what we wanted and nothing more. We could make interactions work our way rather than a generic way that appeased the masses.

Has worked great. Able to get out of it what we need.