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BarTender

Score7.6 out of 10

20 Reviews and Ratings

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What is BarTender?

Seagull Scientific in Bellevue offers BarTender, a barcode software solution, supports label design and printing, as well as barcode reading and RFID tools.

Categories & Use Cases

Reviews

What users are saying about BarTender.
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BarTender - tending to your label application efficiently!

Incentivized
Normand WhiteheadView profile
Senior R&D Eng. Technologist in Research & Development at Trilliant Inc (201-500 employees employees)

Pros

  • Can create macros to test ranges of serial numbers
  • can be linked to electrical test stations in assembly of electronic modules

Cons

  • A bit difficult to see actual template positioning of elements when designing labels

Most Important Features

  • Extensively customizable
  • Automated for MFG and assembly applications
  • Facilitates shipping operations

Return on Investment

  • Increased accuracy and consistency
  • Improved speed of batch printings
  • Customization permitted adapted features for our unique applications saving time and efforts

Alternatives Considered

LabelRIGHT

Other Software Used

LabelRIGHT

BarTender for Manufacturing

Incentivized
Darren Clarke
IT Support Technician in Information Technology at William King Ltd (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Intuitive - Loads of Options
  • Easy to Use - The documentation included is easy to Follow
  • Reliable - Very minimal issues

Cons

  • Resource Intensive - Can use a lot of resources
  • Pricey - But you get what you pay for
  • Licensing can be quite difficult to understand

Return on Investment

  • Ability to Design and Create Customer Specific Labels
  • Able to link to different file repositories
  • Ability to design labels for different media types

Other Software Used

Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Microsoft Azure, Splashtop Remote Support

BarTender: Printing Med Device product labels in real time

Incentivized
Brendon McGovern
Program Manager in Manufacturing at Cogmedix, Inc. (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • The ability to design labels quickly with templates or from scratch
  • The ability to use a database to print a large quantity of labels with various data inputs is critical for our requirements.
  • The ability to serialize is really convenient.

Cons

  • Sometimes using custom labels can be difficult to incorporate into a label if the template is made from scratch.
  • Often have issues trying to print the same label from different computers
  • It can be irksome to figure out why some text gets cut off when it shows up within the print bounds on a template.

Return on Investment

  • It has allowed us to reduce COGS by printing labels in-house on a blank template vs. having a printing company do it.
  • Specifically printing labels that have Dates of Manufacture on them is important for Med Device. Being able to print on the floor in real time is key for accurate labels.
  • The ability to print large volumes of data quickly is key to limiting the time someone has to spend making labels.

Alternatives Considered

Brother HL Series, Zebra Desktop Printers, Zebra Industrial Printers, Zebra Mobile Printers, Citrix Gateway (formerly NetScaler Unified Gateway) and Adobe Acrobat DC

Other Software Used

Adobe Acrobat DC, Zebra Industrial Printers, Zebra Desktop Printers, Zebra Mobile Printers, ADP Workforce Now

Bartender is an industry standard and does what it intends to do, however, there is better value out there

Incentivized
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (51-200 employees employees)

Pros

  • Very flexible.
  • Lots of automation options.
  • Scales to very high volumes.

Cons

  • Very clunky UI.
  • Resource-heavy application.
  • Confusing array of sub-applications.

Most Important Features

  • Great automation.
  • Bartender templates are very common with ERP/WMS systems.
  • The reprint console is a nice feature.

Return on Investment

  • Increased IT complexity
  • Automation cost savings
  • Required more server resources than anticipated to run effectively.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations (Dynamics AX), Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), PDQ Deploy

BarTender Label Printing by the Thousands

Incentivized
Verified User
Executive in Corporate (1-10 employees employees)

Pros

  • Automation: BarTender Print Station provides a great way to present label templates for mass printing to non-technical end users.
  • Data input at print time: we're able to input dynamic values that constantly change, just before printing labels. This increases efficiencies and is crucial in our production department. It's easy to do, and we can lock it down to specific templates.
  • Serialization: being able to easily run batches of serialized labels, and trusting that they’re accurate, is very important. BarTender does this very well.
  • Label design: Creating bee labels in BarTender Designer is intuitive and robust. With its many collaboration features, we can do a lot within our complicated environment. Many labels, many variations, and they are all easily handled by a designer.

Cons

  • Licensing: argggh! Their draconian licensing model can stop you in your tracks if you’re not careful. It’s per printer, not seat, so errant print jobs can exceed your licenses. Be careful!
  • Interaction with the cloud: we recently moved to Box and have yet to figure out a way to utilize Print Station with our cloud database. If there’s a way to do it, it’s not well documented.
  • Support: if you’re not paying for premium support, expect an email response within 24 hours. Telephone support is good, but we’ve sometimes had to leave a message and wait...

Return on Investment

  • At $500 per additional license, we are hesitant to piecemeal one more license at a time when we don’t need it. Their licensing model is punitive, so ROI is only favorable when you strictly manage your environment.
  • In the big picture, considering that we print thousands of labels weekly, BarTender is a great investment. We could never readily print this many labels manually, and it interfaces with our SQL database well, providing automation where we need it.

Other Software Used

Microsoft Office 365, Zebra Desktop Printers, Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Power BI

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