Esticom Reviews

The compiling of counts and bill of material creation. Along with scaling and doing linear runs.

The lack of being able to input deduct alternates.

The cloud bases structure and easy to use functions made this software power full.

Some recommendations are below.
1)If we can fix a color , legend size and shape for an assembly it would be great so that we dont need to select it all time.
2)Option to select a particular area for take off would be great.
3)Option to download all take off drawings to PDF at once.

It saves me money from not having to print tons of project plans and then storing them. Esticomm saves me time by insuring I get accurate counts and distances the first time! Plus I can work from the office, at the job site or at home, which I prefer not to do, because all my files are on their site.

Esticomm does a good job of constantly upgrading the software and making improvements. There are minor improvements I would make to the functionality of the software but they usually end up doing that automatically.

Being able to quickly and fairly accurately count, label, measure and itemize a project without having to print the plans, wait on the plotter or waste the paper. GUI is intuitive, streamlined and quick to use.

My only wish is to be able to save a template and apply it after I've started a project. I haven't gotten around to asking if that's an option but so far as I can tell, you have to copy a previous job or template and apply it before you create the project or upload plans.

This software is easy to use. We have the ability to add items and organize them. We are able to integrate the information entered into this software into our project management software which reduces the need for time consuming processes of moving information between softwares.

We would like this software to include the ability to show reports of the information from proposals entered based on date entered etc... We would like to be able to delete default items from the software for trades not related to ours. We are otherwise totally satisfied with this software.

This has saved me lots of time count data drops on plans. Best of all, customer like seeing what they are being quoted.

Sometimes Lags, Sometimes the page wont load.

Its super simple and makes life a whole lot easier to bid these big jobs!

I couldn't really find much that's to horrible about the product... Had many products already and some stuff just needed to be added which was super simple!

The auto-count feature for take-offs and the compatibility with excel

The formatting of the estimates you can create.

It's easy to use. We have gone from two to three days of putting together a bid to 2 to 3 hours. It's simple, clean interface, and the support is great. We've tested out 5 different softwares and this is #1 by far.
Oh and it's web based so feel free to access it from anywhere.

so far so good. No complaints. You can tell that this was developed by a low voltage company.

This software is awesome. It was easy to learn and easy to use. It offers all the features I need and keeps on adding tools that I want. I would recommend it to any Electrical estimator

The only functions missing that I would like to have is a highlighter and the ability to take a snapshot.

Ease of use. The navigation is simple, but effective!

Lacking a bit on the materials, but getting better with updates!

User friendly, I like how you can upload drawings too.

Sometimes I don’t have drawings, and then I skip to estimating, but then I have to create my assembly’s or parts, instead of picking them.

THE EASE OF USING THE TAKE OFF APPLICATION.

SOMETIMES USING THE TAKE OFF SYSTEM, FINDING THE ITEMS IN CATALOG IS TIME CONSUMING. I HAVE HAD TO GO ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE CATALOG TO FIND CERTAIN ITEMS.

This is very easy to use once you know what you are doing. It has helped a lot in my specific field compare to the other products out there.

wish there were more legend options to use.

This saves us a lot of time and helps us get accurate bids out quickly

Needs more symbols. The security symbols are lacking.

It is very user friendly
It makes proficient estimates
The value for money is 100%
It is easy to change and update your information

I wish there was one more "spot" to put costs. You can break out labor and material, but if we need to estimate drawings, permits or something "office related" we have to put it in labor OR material. It is sometimes difficult to explain when a customer sees the bid. It would be nice to have one more category

The first thing that pops to my mind that really brought us to Esticom is the cloud support. Super easy to share reports and actions with the team.

Creating the templates for our team did cause a bit of confusion. We eventually figured it out after referring to their website.

I really enjoyed the easy to use capability.

I found it somewhat hard to integrate our vendors pricing list into this software.

Easy to to Download and count plans and highlight fixtures.

measuring software may be lacking in how easy it is to use.

The ease of use mainly. After a few quick tutorials I was able to start doing my take-offs on screen. I created assemblies that made the job much faster and accurate.

I have to go to the Estimating page to create or add parts and assemblies. It would be nice if I could enter them from the take-off page. Minor change but would help out with the speed of take-offs.

I love the ease of use and how easy it is to teach team members to use the system. Anyone can get up and running in under 2 hrs at a moderate level from zero experience. They have done an excellent job with making the program user friendly.

There are features that the program lacks and it does not integrate with Autotask (our CRM). Hopefully it will in the near future.

What I like the most about the software is that it remembers the rates and descriptions we use in each of our estimates. This makes it easier to keep our quotes consistant.
We also like that we can bring in drawings and measure from there, before we had to either print them to scale and get the square footage or we had to upload them to a seperate software.
Also like that there is margin as the percentage. Not mark up. Most other softwares use mark up.

The only con we have with this software is that you cannot put different percentage margin on the labor side per line item. We can only do that on the material side.

Esticom has saved us a tremendous amount of time in our estimating process. With having auto-count and linear average I can get most plans done in minutes instead of hours now.

It took a little bit to dial in the percentages and cost for products in our area but now that that is done I only review costs with my vendors when they tell me their is going to be a change.

Esticom is very straightforward and intuitive. For a structured cabling business like ours, it couldn't be easier to place cable runs, supports, and mark our drops.

There are a few functions missing that would make it easier for us to use. One is the lack of a linear with drop only at the ends of the run. Instead it adds drops at every turn. Second is not being able to add temporary items on the estimating page. We have many items that we use but do not want in our catalog. Having to return to takeoff mode to add them is time consuming, especially if there are a lot of individual items we need for a project.

Lastly, I have had one issue where my drawing rotated under my takeoff. When I tried to rotate the drawing back, I was told I could not because it was being used in a takeoff. Since I was not too deep in the process I just started over. Can't imagine how bummed I'd be if this happened after spending hours or more on a takeoff.

It is highly functional!! If I could spend more time on customizing it, I would use it as my only tool for estimating from beginning to end.

Pricey. $99 per month is a lot considering there are critical things like Office and Adobe that cost so much less.