ION

RATING:

4.0

(28)

About ION

ION by First Resonance accelerates manufacturing for companies building mission-critical applications in hardware. ION reliably move parts, workflows, and data through manufacturing while ensuring accurate data capture at each juncture. ion's unique aBOM (as-built bill of materials) data structure captures both part and process traceability required for fast-moving companies.

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2022
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.

ION Pricing

Starting price: 

$335.00 per month

Free trial: 

Not Available

Free version: 

Not Available

Ion Dashboard Overview
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ION Reviews

Overall Rating

4.0

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4

Customer Support

5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

3.5

Most Helpful Reviews for ION

1 - 5 of 28 Reviews

Wade

Airlines/Aviation, 501-1,000 employees

Used weekly 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

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed July 2020

Clean, intuitive, feature rich, and constantly improving!

The team is very supportive, blazing fast response time, and it has greatly improved our shop floor activity tracking.

PROS

Easy to deploy and get acquainted with. Integrates well with our developing company process. Feature implementation, changes and fixes are extremely fast.

CONS

Some functions are not super intuitive, but are still maturing. Not a major con but a function of a developing software platform.

Reason for choosing ION

Team Support, Cost, Functionality, paradigm change compared to historical and monolithic MES systems.

Reasons for switching to ION

Software was very limited in functionality, did not include many of the functions required for our MVP, and the team was not willing to customize.

User Profile

Charlie

Verified reviewer

Aviation & Aerospace, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

3

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed June 2021

Ion is a powerful manufacturing workflow tool with a very bright future.

Even where Ion has rough edges, it is far superior in usability and feature richness to the competition. In the months we have been using Ion the robust feature roadmap has been borne out. Every update increases usability and functionality, though sometimes comes with some workflow changes. I can unreservedly recommend this software. It is good now with the potential to be great. I have had a very good experience with the First Resonance team and believe they are an excellent team to work with.

PROS

The traceability, work instruction, and issue ticket modules work together well and provide the needed functionality. The Ion team is highly responsive and actively adding features. They provide real time support on both bugs and usability concerns. The technician facing interface is highly functional. Setting up and scaling the software instance is easy. The First Resonance team makes export control compliance easy.

CONS

The GUI can be very clunky on older modules. Minor program errors are not uncommon while working in the tool. Data entry from our PDM system is very manual and time consuming. The lack of strong mobile support is a significant opportunity for the software, but a frustrating omission at the moment.

Ian

Airlines/Aviation, 201-500 employees

Used weekly 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:

3

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

3

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed July 2020

Ion User Review

Ion has done a really good job at providing us what we need when we need it. Very responsive and amazing customer support. Ion has also helped us create a tool that can aid in data capture far better then we were doing before.

PROS

Ion has great features for developing work instructions fast. It is very easy and intuitive to use. I like the data field collection option that Ion gives you which helps better track the data inputs that need to be captured when executing processes. I also think the nested step functionality is great and helps organize the work instruction a lot better in addition to the dependencies functionality.

CONS

I feel that some of the data field validations are not fully developed. Min/Max values can be mistakenly entered and in result the operators using the work instruction may not be able to capture process data correctly. There are often bugs when new tools are released and although these are usually corrected pretty quickly it slows down the operators when performing work. Editing functionality when creating work instructions could use a lot of improvement.

Reason for choosing ION

Easier to set up. Ability to customize our work instruction development and MES system with the First Resonance team.

Ben

Airlines/Aviation, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed June 2021

A good product with a lot of room to grow

PROS

The interface is simple and the software is generally pretty easy to navigate. Creating items and procedures is smooth and I can generate work orders with no problem. The First Resonance team is responsive and updates are dropped frequently, so issues that I might have one week may get resolved the next. Always nice to wake up to new functionalities and have an evolving UI.

CONS

The filtering is not great. Creating items or work orders is easy enough, but going back and finding work that was done previously is not an easy task. At the moment, this generally consists of scrolling through long lists. The search bar also is a little inflexible and queries have to be precisely defined, otherwise, it's back to scrolling through a long, long list. It's also not apparent what's going on in the backend of Ion and it's easy to mess up links among different items that are linked (i.e. it is pretty fragile).

Sohil

Machinery, 51-200 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed May 2021

Easiest way to set up a production workflow

ION has brought great value to our company. It's very easy to use and set up. The customer service is amazing! The team really listens to your feedback in order to improve the product. If ION can't do something you need right now, it will likely get added or there is a sufficient work around. Highly recommend using ION!

PROS

ION is super easy to set up! You can get running with it within a few days and immediately make an impact on your production workflow. Having your work instructions directly in the software and not in some other system is a huge benefit. The ability to track the as-built BOM and collect data during the execution of runs is extremely valuable.

CONS

There are some edge cases and bugs that still need to be sorted out. There are some features that are lacking like in app reports, but there are good workarounds until they get a chance to implement it. Consumption of material for 3D printing applications needs to be improved.