Countfire Reviews

Central storage of all takeoff documents. No more boxes of rolled-up plans cluttering my office. I would typically fill 1-2 boxes every month, so it really has reduced clutter and the overall appearance of my office. It definitely saves money when you consider that you no longer have to plot jobs that you don't win. That is a lot of paper, toner, and wear on your plotter.

The software is very easy to use and you can be fully trained on all of the keyboard shortcuts and navigation in less than a week. After about 5 jobs, you will very confident that you aren't missing any devices during takeoff and will have your own workflow for getting a takeoff done.

The developers are constantly making improvements, adding features, bug fixes, and you get pretty routine feedback when one of your feature requests are considered or implemented.

Customer and Tech support is top-notch and very responsive, and everyone seems to be very well trained on the product. It is also a very small team, so you will typically be speaking (texting) with someone you're familiar with.

The software is 100% cloud-based, and from my early conversations with the sales team, is the heart of their mission and will never change. That alone is not a negative, however, I feel that some of the processing could (and should) be done on your local machine and then pushed to the cloud to create the "output package". Moving between pages of a PDF is not as fast as scrolling in your preferred PDF reader. It's not slow, but there is definitely a pause before you're ready to work on the next sheet. It seems they could have better control of the user interface if there was a PC-based client option.

If you need support, the time difference from Eastern US to the UK can sometimes be a challenge, but the support team is absolutely great and will respond back to you outside of their normal working hours, assuming they aren't sleeping.

All support is initially done through an in-app chat bot that will recommend that you go read articles based on your questions. I will admit that most of the time, the recommended articles DO contain your answers, but I personally just like to call and talk to someone. I realize this would put a strain on their resources though, so I rate this as a very small negative. I would rather support maintain their current level of quality than be burdened with phone calls over minor issues. If you do have a major issue or prefer to speak to someone, you can ask for a call and they will call you.

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

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

I like that it saves me time on larger projects that have a lot to quantify, as well as making measurements easier and quicker.

I have had the odd drawing where it doesn't pick up the symbols very well.

it speeds up my take offs on a daily basis.

sometimes it doesn't pick up some symbols

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.

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.

Helps produce accurate take offs and minimizes mistakes.

Drawings can be very slow to load and can be waiting a while.

- clear cut user interface with everything hotkeyed, and the hotkeys labeled in plain sight
- PHENOMENAL customer service and support (I requested and had a feature built and deployed overnight, etc., etc., etc.)
- Documentation from another planet (over 25,000 words of concise walk through material
- Redundancy (the way projects are delivered after being processed eliminates worry and most potential for error)
- Data manipulation (the data spit-out from a project comes post-pivot table, saving us a step in formatting to get our numbers straight)
the list goes on and on - simply amazing!!

Will and the boys are a phenomenal team, awake at preposterous hours of the morning solving issues that could wait, etc. just amazing!

I found Countfire very easy to use and the speed of takeoffs for various systems saved valuable time. The online chat and support is fantastic too.

there are a few quirks but that wouldn't stop us from using.

Countfire is easy to use and the customer service team ensure this is always the way. I like how the information is collated and keep things organised.

I dont like how you cannot quickly check quantities without processing the take off then downloading. If there was a quick check function then that would be a lot easier for things like sending my luminaire enquiries before i complete my take offs. I understand the risk with not having the checking function doing this but i would be happy to take the risk. Matching overlaid drawings with the zone function is a tedious task and i got excited when i saw the overlay function appear but this function isnt great so zoning remains my least favourite task.

I really enjoy the fact that it can save so much time! Once you highlight a symbol on one drawing, that symbol will automatically be highlighted on the next, it is such a time saver! It is also very easy to use! After a 1 hour training session, I was confident to get started!

As we specialise in fire alarms, it is often that we need to design fire alarm systems for buildings, and we also amend predesigned designs as they're not compliant. It would be great if you can add a feature that can remove a symbol, and replace it with something else. That way, we as a business could do the whole takeoff process for every system on countfire!

Countfire makes the process of estimating so much easier. Take off and drawing review can now take minutes rather than hours allowing myself and the other staff more time to build our relationships with clients. The drawings output is easy to read and check for any areas missed by designers. The software is modern and easy to use. When I have had to speak to support on the rare occasion it was easy and any issues solved within minutes.

I would like to be able to group the takeoffs into a "folder" whereby a certain client or consultant information can be together to make it easier to find once you have alot of live or pending projects.
Otherwise I cant fault it.

It saves an incredible amount of time when doing takeoffs and the other features make it much easier to complete many time consuming tasks. Also the countfire team shows you all of the ins and outs so you always know what you are doing.

No negatives at this time.

We use solely for the count of off drawings for tendering projects, this has saved immense time for even some of the largest projects, we are able to add additional points and measure accurately to check the designs were supplied. We are then able to provide the spreadsheet produced with our tender with a comprehensive list of where the information came from.

If the drawings are not made correctly then the software does struggle to read all symbols this though probably is more down to the original document than Countfire problem,

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.

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.

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.

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.

The new feature to overlay drawings to save time taking off similar drawings more than once.

Can be long processing some complicated drawings.

Its very easy to use and speeds up the take off the process substantially. The info you get afterwards speeds up inputting of tenders.

I would like a great selection of colours when do very large take offs.

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

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

Easy to use fantastic tool , great support service when you need help

It would be an advantage if you could free hand and write comments on your dwgs . Maybe this can be an update

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

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.

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

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

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

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