BarTender Reviewer's Comments

Speed up every channel of your operation and satisfy demanding compliance and industry requirements with BarTender. Our “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” winning barcode label program, offered by Seagull Scientific, provides four licensing packages that support everything from full RFID designing/encoding to simple barcode generators. We looked at the Pro version which does not include RFID support but provides all other barcode font types.

We found BarTender to be the one of the most compatible barcode programs we reviewed. The newest version supports Oracle XML-based label integration and can read directly from SAP IDoc files and other applications that use XML based files. It also works with Microsoft ODBC and includes non-Window drivers for UNIX, AS/400, Sybase and Informix. Of course it also works with Access, Excel and other Windows tables.

This is an extremely capable program that is easy to integrate into your existing hardware/software scenario. If this program is compatible with the components, barcodes and applications that your company works with, BarTender is an excellent choice.

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Barcodes:  

No matter your barcode font needs, BarTender probably supports it, whether it is linear, 2D, Postal or RSS. BarTender provides linear and 2D bar codes such as UPC, Codabar, Code 39s, 93s, and 128s and Data Matrix. This program also supports some postal codes including Australian Post, Canadian Customs, Japanese Post, Royal Mail, UPS Tracking and US Postal.

In total we counted over 40 barcode types in the pro version; however, other programs like NiceLabel and Loftware provide some RFID abilities with their Pro version, but BarTender only offers this feature in their Enterprise edition.

Connectivity/ Communication:  

As mentioned above, BarTender is one of the most highly compatible programs we could find and supports most popular databases and printers. The Pro version can read ASCII and Unicode text files (quote and comma, fixed width and user-defined delimitation), SAP Certified Interface to IDocs and automatically parsed Oracle XML label requests. In general, the Pro version is compatible with Windows type databases, if you need other types consider the Enterprise edition.

BarTender has drivers for many label and thermal printers, including Avery, C.Itoh, Datamax, IBM, Intermec, Meto, Novexx, Paxar, Pressiza, Printronix, Sato, Tec and Zebra. In terms of serialization they all support basic increment, numeric base 10, numeric, alphabetic and alphanumeric increment/decrement by any interval.

BarTender is available in over 40 interface languages including Chinese, English, Dutch, German, Japanese, Korean and French, you can also easily switch between the languages.

Label Designer:  

BarTender offers powerful and easy-to-use design tools for creating unique labels with rich text, color, images and industry symbols. It has a WYSISWG design window, a drag & drop tool, automatic positioning, unlimited redos and much more to make designing labels easy. Of course it also has tools for rotating and outlining, thumbnail previews and much more.

To speed up the design process it has an industry specific font library, metric and US measurement systems, a library for organizing/ storing reusable components (like logos) and a library of compliance labels. The compliance labels include AIAG, HIBC, UPS, USPS, Wal-Mart, Sears and nutritional labels. In terms of text, it works in TrueType fonts, supports rich text formatting and can build white text on black background labels. It also has basic formatting tools like auto-size, scaling, tab stops and paragraph spacing. However, it would be nice if you could use specialized fonts, but the rotating tool and other design tools included in this program only work with TrueType. So if you want to use your own font, such as your proprietary, branded font, you have to import the words as images.

Label Design Ease of Use:  

BarTender has tutorials, wizards and embedded help to help you create barcodes and labels. We found the interface intuitive and we designed our first label without having to consult the help section.

Help/ Support:  

You can contact customer support through email, telephone or fax and Seagull Scientific offers free support for all of their versions. They also offer fee based onsite training and web training.

In our experiences, customer service proved knowledgeable and responsive and returned our calls. They also offer International support, so between their offices, software owners can utilize 24/7 customer care.

However, we would have liked to see more detailed help pages on their website.

Summary:  

BarTender Pro is a highly compatible and capable program that can easily help you increase the speed of your processes as well as the time it takes to design compliance labels. We found the label designer easy to use and they offer some of the best customer support terms available.