I Use This! Do you?

Over at I Use This I noticed we’ve got 14 users using Merlin.

For some reason this irritated me, because it can’t be true! I am sure there are several more Merlin users out there. I don’t mind revealing that I use this. Come out of your closets and tell me – do you?

17 thoughts on “I Use This! Do you?

  1. I think the pricing might play a part. Although I guess the software could be worth 145 for alot of people, its still a bit naive to charge that much money when you have a small userbase. My advice would be to cut down on the prices, or in other ways make it available cheap (coupons or whatever), just to build a userbase and awareness.

  2. I am not sure if I agree with you entirely there. For what you are getting this is very reasonable priced. Merlin 2 is a professional project management application and those are mainly the people we are aiming towards.
    Do not be mislead – our userbase is not small, but moreover I believe our users were unaware of this website ;-).

  3. I was totally unaware of this website…and to be honest..more than a couple dedicated to a single application tends to decrease my productivity.

    I use Merlin and am happy with the product in its current form, looking forward to the next release as it seems to be getting stronger and stronger and really happy with the speed of support when I get a problem.

    In terms of worth, £145 is pitched about right. Project 2007 is approx $450+ or in my currency about £230.

  4. I use this and plan on introducing some colleagues to the features during an upcoming project. The price is ok when you consider the feature-set.

  5. I’d never heard of “I use this” until your comment, but I have certainly heard of Merlin! I’m well aware there are more than 14 users for Merlin – it seems some people misunderstood Meeta’s remark.

    I’m very happy with Merlin and a user – thx. I tried to register with “I use this” and let it be known, but it seems they are having server problems right now. As for the cost of Merlin vs “the other(s)” – it is well priced, well integrated with leading tools on OS X and presents (for me at least) a unique and powerful workflow.

    Keep it coming – I love it.

  6. I’ll go click. 😉 FYI: Click on “I Use This” right to the left of where it says”Screenshot”.

  7. We’re a small consultancy house. We use Merlin2 to plan our customer projects & BaseCamp to manage a widely distributed team.

    One of thelarge IT companies I work with uses M$ Project and we can now interchange plans easily. That was an important part of my reason for buying Merlin2. [Until now I’ve been reliant on the (excellent) Steelray Proect Viewer – trouble is, it’s a one-way import operation & read-only.]

    But the poor guy who’s maintaining the project plan at the client end practically weeps with jealousy when he sees ‘his’ project on my screen – the visualisation just knocks the socks of the M$ Project. It’s just 100% better.

    Price alone is a crazy basis for deciding on a software product. Usability and elegance are the features you should be thinking about. And as you can tell, in my view Merlin2 leads the field. For what it delivers, the price is modest.

  8. I used to use it, then they “upgraded” to version 2, and I am expected to pay again? forget it. I am going to omni

  9. Hi Scott,

    Sorry to hear about your switch. However, our upgrading policy is a very good and fair one, if you consider you will be getting all updates within a series for free. Merlin 1 was on the market for a good 2 years before we upgraded to Merlin 2 and now all updates that come out in this series will be free. Even a BIG upgrade coming towards the end of summer. You won’t wanna miss that one 😉

    Furthermore, you are not expected to pay the entire sum again just a small fee of EURO 75. This is an exceptionally fair price when you consider the type of application you will be getting.

  10. No, no, I think the first comment on price has something to it.

    At today’s rates (8-15-2007), your product is going to cost me $195.25 USD for one seat. By comparison, as a startup, I can go to a company like Microsoft and get 10 copies of project (and a whole lot more) for only $100 more. This is definitely a major downer about merlin2, and in fact the main reason we haven’t purchased a bulk of them.

    I hate running parallels, but that’s what I have to do to keep the company monies working.

    Just consider the economics for a moment. Lets say I am a startup that needs 5 licenses. Even if you didn’t have value to any of the other software in that Microsoft deal, that would be $60 per seat per year ($300 / 5) for full licensed copies.

    With Merlin2, I would be looking at almost $1000 in cost. Even compared with other PM software on OSX, it looks expensive.

    I would REALLY like to be a customer, but to do so, I would need you to seriously consider some bulk discounts, and fair, U.S. based pricing.

    What makes your product expensive is the exchange rate, but also the lack of volume pricing.

    Just wanted to back up the first comment on this page, because I felt like the guy got brushed off, and he’s speaking a very real frustration for us.

    Another thing that’s got me worried. The new time tracking application is nice, but it’s not realistic that every one of our contractors and employees is going to be running on osx. We have 15 people, and about half of them run Linux or Windows on the desktop, and don’t have osx. Since I can’t get clients for time tracking working on anything but osx, it’s pretty much a write off. I would really like you to consider more real-world, less osx-centric (read: cross platform) solutions for the future, because they’ll be a lot more useful for real world businesses.

    Those two factors have kept us from purchasing, and we have been forced down the road of using Project (which I loath).

    You know, on further consideration, I guess I would even be willing to pay the higher price if the solution was a slam dunk for us (and it would be, were the client components available cross-platform, and it could handle time tracking and time sheets). I’m happy to lay down the cash if a solution solves a core business problem, but that cross platform bit is just a total show stopper.

    Thanks,

    Jonathan

  11. I’ve been a heavy user of MS Project and explored iTask, Omniplan, Fast Track, et al. Merlin by far provides the best combination of features, UI and cost. I cannot speak to cross-platform issues as we are an OSX office.

  12. to answer Jonathan Lambert.. It’s true it is OS X centric but as far as I can’t tell MSProject is WinOS centric so argument is moot…
    On the other hand, it’s true that a bundle price (say 3 seats) would be a good incentive (esp with network feature showing up)
    More users you need? What about some language support other than English and German… (French/spanish for a starter). We’re a french company and not everybody (!) masters english for one and all templates/reports to translate is a time consuming task.
    That said Merlin is the best I have tried and I have no reason to change

  13. I have planned to have the French localization ready since over one year, but it look like I have not much luck with French guys. Three different guys had started the translation independently but no one ever finished his work. It is very disappointing! OK, it is a lot of work to do, but at the end it is “just only a translation”.

  14. I am looking into a project management software right now. I was intrigued by what Jonathan lamber said… but it is not quite true. If you qualify to become a microsoft partner, then it looks like you can get good deals. (from MS: The Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS) is available exclusively to consultants, value-added resellers, value-added providers, system integrators, developers, system builders, hosts, and service providers who are enrolled as Registered Members in the Microsoft Partner Program) But my company does not qualify, so I can get a 25% rebate on MS product as a small business when buying more than 4…. even with this rebate, Merlin costs substantially less.

  15. Interesting thread, strange that no one talks about how well Merlin can talk to Microsoft Project.

    We have been using Fasttrack for some time which works flawless with MS Project (version 9). I just downloaded the demo of Merlin and see there is an import and export feature but how well does this work?

    Why do I want to know? We are ALL Mac but ALL our clients are Windows based, we need to be able to work together on files.

    Can anyone elaborate on how well Merlin works with MS Project?

  16. Responding to Gerard’s post. Merlin does a pretty good job of support MS Project files.

    Now keep in mind that .MPP format is a closed proprietary format so being able to read it is difficult and not 100% error free. Regardless of that, Merlin can open the majority of .MPP files you have. I recommend you download Merlin and try it out for your self. In the rare case when .MPP file doesn’t work, you can save your MS Project file using MS Project XML format, which is a well documented schema. Merlin supports the schema fully so you should have no problems.

    Exporting to MS Project works quite nicely because you can export your Merlin project file to MS Project XML format. We took great care in making sure as much information as possible is put in the MS Project XML format to avoid information gaps. For example, Merlin auto-levelling uses levelling delay just like Ms Project so if you export you Merlin file to MS Project XML, you will get the same levelling delays.

    Hope this helps :).

  17. I notice when exporting XML file for use in MS Project that I was getting a error message that would stop MS Project from opening the file. I checked the xml file for errors and discovered that if you used the “&” in naming a task that this created the error. Remove the”&” and the file opens fine.

    Merlin is easier to use than MS Project but being a MAC product only has stopped me from convincing my bosses that this is the way to go. I am the only one that has a MAC in the company. Now I am forced to use a Windows PC.

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