TrustRadius Insights for Claris FileMaker are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Pros
Seamless Integration: Several users have praised Claris FileMaker's ability to seamlessly integrate with other applications, specifically highlighting its commendable integration with the finance application MYOB. This integration feature has eliminated the need for manual data entry, saving time and improving accuracy in timekeeping processes.
Data Integrity and Confidentiality: Reviewers have expressed their satisfaction with Claris FileMaker's capability to maintain data integrity and confidentiality through its integration with MYOB. This aspect is highly valued as it ensures the security of sensitive financial information.
Improved Productivity: Many users have found that the integration between Claris FileMaker and MYOB has enhanced their overall productivity. The ability to integrate with other applications has significantly improved workflow by saving time and increasing efficiency. Users appreciate how easily Claris FileMaker integrates with MYOB for various business needs and requirements, showcasing its versatility and adaptability.
Develop cross-platform database applications (Windows, Mac, iOS, and web).
This allows my company to launch an application that allows all employees to communicate with customers to provide the best services and technical support to improve the performance of the service provided to the customer and to communicate with customers and employees in solving problems or making suggestions
Pros
Ease of creating a database for employees
It is easy for developers and IT specialists to improve the performance and manufacture of applications
Ease of following up on customers and monitoring their opinions, whether positive or negative
Cons
Some updates in languages, including Arabic, are missing
When sending long emails, it is not the easiest thing
It needs to be a little faster
Likelihood to Recommend
It is perfectly suitable for many different projects, making it easier for developers to track customers, help them in the best way, and provide a database to provide better service otherwise Not very suitable for large projects that need a lot of complex systems that are important to have available, but it is rather useful
Claris' FileMaker software suite provides the backbone of our entire business operation, and virtually all transactions company-wide are handled by the database built on the FileMaker platform. It handles everything from CRM, to generating quotes, contracts, invoices, and handling all equipment inventory needs, etc.
Pros
multi-user support
database integrity
simple user interfaces
Cons
speed
efficiency
better utilization of web/cloud support (its coming, but roll out has been slow it seems like)
Likelihood to Recommend
Claris as an open platform offers so many options for rich database development to accomplish any task within almost any business application you could throw at it. I cannot think of a scenario where the options Claris affords couldn't suite
Filemaker is the heart of our organization. It runs every department in one to degree or another. For each department, we have automated processes which have cut down on hours of work for our organization. Each business work flow is highly custom, and therefore an out of the box solution was not going to work. Filemaker has allowed us to put in place a solution that is tailored to the way we like to do business but also allows us to grow and change process flows quickly that wouldn't be possible using standard development technologies.
Pros
Develop custom solutions very fast
Simple to use for non-developers
Easy rollout of solutions company-wide
Easy setup of server to host custom solution
Cons
Developer features need to be beefed up - namely adding the ability to search code for a phrase or keyword and the ability to do the same in the "relationship graph" in the database.
Add ability for users to edit the same table record at the same time by version control.
Allow Filemaker Server to use more than 1 core; currently multi-processing is not supported and it can be tricky to find just the right server to support the application you've built to the fullest capacity.
Likelihood to Recommend
Despite limitations, Filemaker Pro is perfect for a company which is in constant flux and which requires a custom work flow which an out of the box solution doesn't provide.
One example is that my company requires orders to be submitted where based on product type, purchase location and company category all impact the price that is charged. I've used several e-store solutions and most of these are very cut and dry. You can have a product with 1 price, the only exception is a coupon code. Filemaker allowed us to create an store that allows our users to create an order based on our crazy pricing structure.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
FileMaker Pro is used as a replacement for Microsoft Access databases for my customers. FileMaker Pro provides multi-user access, better reliability in networked deployments, installation directly on IOS devices. FileMaker Pro data files also offer much greater data capacity of up to 7TB per file compared to the 2GB file size limit of Microsoft Access. Automated conversion from Access to FileMaker Pro is performed with FmPro Migrator Platinum Edition software.
Pros
Greater File Size - 7TB per file, compared to 2GB per file with Access .ACCDB files.
Reliable multi-user networking thru Peer-to-Peer or server based implementations.
Improved developer productivity.
Capability of being run locally on IOS devices with the free FileMaker Go client software.
Cons
It would be nice to have some automation improvements.
Likelihood to Recommend
FileMaker Pro is well suited for low-code situations where a custom app needs to be customized for specific customer needs.
FileMaker is used across our entire organization. The original use for FileMaker was as a timecard database. Over the years the use of FileMaker has grown to cover many different parts of our business. We manage all the graphics that are produced in FileMaker. We manage projects in FileMaker. We create packing lists and keep track of shipments in FileMaker. FileMaker touches almost every aspect of our business.
Pros
FileMaker can be easily customized so that it can be expanded to cover additional roles in a company or to just do simple layout changes.
FileMaker can be easily picked up by new programmers/developers. The software is designed in such a way that a half day's worth of training can get a new person started building their own databases.
FileMaker has a large community of users that do a fantastic job of supporting folks who are new to FileMaker. There is considerable support, samples, and videos on the web for anyone starting out.
There are a lot of professional developers located around the country that can help with any FileMaker development needs. They have always been more than friendly and willing to offer help and suggestions. They have the heart of teachers.
Cons
I think the folks developing FileMaker are true Apple enthusiasts at heart, so a lot of little issues that crop up for Windows users are not address very quickly. It also seems like the Windows version gets treated as secondary, which is odd considering that the majority (95+%) of people using FileMaker use it in a Windows environment.
Considering my point above, I would also point out that a lot of how FileMaker works seems to be driven by a small number of people who feel like the software should behave a certain way. Rather than offering users the ability to customize how they want to use the software, global changes are made that force users to adapt to a new way working that is opposite of how they have worked for many years. Changes like this have driven me nuts in the past and make me wish that they would just allow customization of how users work instead of forcing one particular point of few.
FileMaker developers are not inexpensive. If you need to bring in help from a third party, expect to pay $100/hr. at a minimum. There are a lot of free resources, local clubs/groups, and places to get free advice, but expect to pay a lot for professional help if you need it. There just aren't enough developers around the world to drive the price down.
Likelihood to Recommend
FileMaker is great for start-up businesses, small business, and even mid sized businesses. I would say that FileMaker is well suited for small to medium sized environments (1-200 people). You could definitely go bigger than that, but the level of expertise and planning significantly increases when you do that. Because FileMaker doesn't scale very well with really large companies, I would avoid using it for large companies who want a solution that goes across a large amount of employees.
I develop a wide variety of solutions with FileMaker pro (medical, agricultural, transport, trades, questionnaires, web applications including business applications and blogs, etc.). I deploy FileMaker to Mac and Windows desktops, web browsers, and native iOS and Android applications (Android applications are a lot of work, however). FileMaker is very versatile and powerful, yet simple to get started.
Pros
FileMaker deploys to all mainstream internet connected devices very easily with a drag and drop interface builder that requires no coding for simple systems (PC, MAC, Mobile phone).
FileMaker is great for sharing information in teams.
FileMaker is simple enough that regular users (e.g. mechanics) can create their own simple databases if you let them!
Cons
FileMaker Server is suitable for hundreds of concurrent users at a time with a *well developed* system but not thousands. In general FileMaker is good for small to medium businesses, teams, or for rapid prototyping large scale complex applications.
FileMaker has a good suite of basic graphical charts but for more complicated "B.I." style dashboards, it is good to integrate your FileMaker data with another system which is easy to do.
Likelihood to Recommend
FileMaker is well suited for creating business management applications, e.g. ERP systems like job scheduling, customer management etc., and for remote access applications e.g. for staff that is on the road. FileMaker's ability to accept signatures on an iOS mobile phone and scan barcodes etc., makes it exceptionally good at rapidly developing powerful remote applications on iOS.
We have developed a standard financial solution with FileMaker. FileMaker is a very flexible product to build apps that deploy as classic desktop applications, as well as web and mobile apps. FileMaker is designed as a rapid application development tool to automate the process for small or mid-sized businesses, departments or teams.
Pros
You can rapidly build custom apps with FileMaker.
FileMaker custom apps deploy easily on desktops and laptops, web and mobile devices.
It has an amazing ease of use from an end user's perspective.
For developers, it has a great toolkit builtin, which allows for short development cycles.
Cons
The developer IDE still has some room for improvement.
OAuth integration is possible, but only with a fixed set of providers.
More documentation on the innerworking of the FileMaker database engine would be welcome.
Likelihood to Recommend
FileMaker is particularly suited for small to medium sized businesses, departments or teams. It is not suited for massive and large scale applications used by hundreds of users. The web technology - called WebDirect - is very powerful, in that it lets developers deploy a web solution without any knowledge of HTML, CSS or Javascript. However, also, in this case, WebDirect is not meant to deploy large scale web applications or websites.
We are a FileMaker development consultancy so we use FileMaker every day to create powerful, customized solutions for our clients. By using FileMaker, we can address a vast array of business needs for our clients in ways that off the shelf software simply can't.
Pros
Data entry, tracking and access
Customized business solutions
Flexible reporting
Mobile data access
Cons
Speed - FileMaker provides for very rapid development and deployment by integrating both a database engine and a front end environment in one package. Because of that, the speed of the database engine is slower than a raw platform like SQL or Oracle.
Web Access - While FileMaker provides some great tools for quickly and easily sharing data via the web, it isn't a true web development platform and is difficult to scale large enough to handle external customer access for large customer bases.
Likelihood to Recommend
FileMaker has been designed for years to provide a flexible platform for developing customized solutions easily. It is one of the most rapid platforms available for developing powerful database solutions for businesses. Using FileMaker we can develop extremely user-friendly solutions in less than a quarter of the time and for a fraction of the cost of developing via SQL or other similar platforms.
Because of the speed and flexibility, FileMaker is ideal for small to medium sized businesses or for small to medium departments inside larger companies.
At Soliant Consulting, we use the FileMaker platform to solve business problems for our clients. We've built solutions for a wide array of customers. I've worked on projects for departments within a large organization and small businesses. We help reduce manual work and automate repetitious and error prone processes. Internally, we use FileMaker for all important aspects of our business - time tracking, invoicing, reporting, and much more.
Pros
FileMaker Pro excels at searching and sorting data right out of the box. You can easily take a spreadsheet and import it into FileMaker Pro and you'll be able to work through your data much faster than through other software.
FileMaker benefits from a single product for both backend data storage/data modeling, and the interface. And the interface tools are user-friendly.
It can grow with your business. The FileMaker Platform allows you to add more customization and features over time. This can be budget friendly and allow for building a solution in phases.
Cons
FileMaker Pro is slowly working on improving their interface to match the fast moving internet capabilities. While it's moving in the right direction, there are some graphical capabilities it lacks.
FileMaker Pro does not have a built in version control mechanism.
FileMaker Pro does not have a centralized security module for multiple files.
Likelihood to Recommend
The FileMaker platform can be used in a wide range of situations. It can be used as a data silo, similar to Excel, where it's used to quickly compile data. On a larger scale, it can benefit multiple users who are interacting with the same data - accounting, supply chain, procurement, general business management, and so on. It's a really great tool for customizing your business' workflow, instead of forcing your business to follow the workflow of a pre-built app.
