As Extensis recently wiped out the user forums, there’s no central place for users or potential customers to get help from the community or to warn of the perils of upgrading to version 8.
In a nut, it’s terrible. If you’re looking for a font manager, don’t invest in Suitcase Fusion 8.
I have saved this post I made to the Suitcase forum. I hope it helps save somebody from Suitcase…
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A common thread in the forums is the observation that Extensis doesn’t seem to know how the community uses their software. And after months and months of inaction, what other conclusion can be drawn?
Bear with me, I have a lot to get off my chest. Read on…
After reverting back to 7 and keeping a watchful eye on this forum for Extensis to set things right, it appears Suitcase in whole, or as a single-user product, may be coming to the end of its life. We saw the same thing with Extensis’ Portfolio (now strictly an enterprise offering). We’ve seen Adobe abandon Freehand and Fireworks after the Macromedia acquisition. Now they’ve kicked Muse to the curb (not that I care about Muse). And who can forgot the hubris of QarkXpress in the late ’90s? (https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/01/quarkxpress-the-demise-of-a-design-desk-darling/)
I bring up these corporate decisions to kill off, or handicap products to illustrate what happens when a company stops paying attention to its users and, in the end, lose customers to the competition. Or worse, create new competitors these Goliaths never saw coming.
There was a case to be made for dropping Freehand: It was a direct competitor to Illustrator. Those of us in the Freehand community at the time viewed it as an anti-trust thing, as there were really no other viable alternatives to Freehand and Illustrator. And boy were we pissed. But, in the end it was killed off and we had to make due with AI. This is where my contempt for Adobe was born. Like Extensis, the lengths they go to to ignore their user community are superhuman.
But Fireworks? This is where Extensis really needs to pay attention. When Adobe dropped my beloved web design tool, it forced everyone into Photoshop. PS is terrible for web design, and guess who spotted that? The makers of Sketch (Hey Extensis? Where’s the Sketch plugin?). Now Adobe has dropped Muse, and with Dreamweaver a hot mess, is still trying to birth XD.
The world is moving on from legacy software companies like Adobe and Extensis with a new generation of software developers building tools they want to use (RightFont, Sketch, InVision Studio, Webflow). When you start looking around at the competitors — especially the newer ones — you get a clear picture of what the developers want for themselves, and what Extensis is missing, and what Extensis is emulating, albeit poorly.*
So, in the spirit of moving on, I have done a little bit of looking around at the competition in font management. This is purely from a Mac perspective, and the features I demand from a contemporary font management platform. If anybody spots something wrong or left out, add it in the comments.
As a side note, all other font management platforms I’ve looked at tout speed. They are clearly reacting to the sluggish Suitcase experience we all suffer through day-to-day.
What I want from a font management app in order of importance:
• List View (this would have never been on this list, let alone number one, if not for v.8)
• Tags/Metadata
• Cloud Sharing (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.)
• Family fonts together
• Speed
• Free-form comments
• Auto Activation
• UX observations driving UI decisions (I’m happy to live with an outdated UI for a killer UX)
_As of 04/18_
**Extensis Suitcase Fusion 8**
_Mac/Windows_
https://www.extensis.com
Product Video: Ø
$119.95/59.95
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS IC AE) NO QuarkXpress Support!
Cloud syncing to Extensis controlled servers
Typekit & Google Font integration
No List View
Customizable Tags
Claim: “Browse, preview and select fonts easily” (Pfft!)
**FontAgent**
_Mac/Windows_
https://www.insidersoftware.com/font-managers/fontagent-mac/
Product Video: Ø
$99/$59
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS FL AE IC), QuarkXpress, Sketch, Microsoft Office, Mac Apps (Keynote, Pages, Numbers), Affinity (Photo & Designer)
Cloud syncing to FontAgnet controlled servers via FontAgent Sync
Typekit, Google and SkyFonts integration
List view – they call it Table View
Metadata! Metadata! Metadata!
Customizable Tags
Free-form Comments (OMG — I’ve wanted this like forever – you can attach comments to fonts like its history, what it pairs with, what project you might have used it on!)
Claims: “Style. Smarts. Speed. More of What You Need.” “Modern, Adjustable Interface.” “Explore Using the Table View.” “Lightning-Fast Font Searches.” “More Metadata = Smarter Searches.” “Free-Form Comments and Tags.”
**FontExplorer X Pro 6**
_Mac/Windows_
https://www.fontexplorerx.com
Product Video: Ø
$99/$49
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS IC) and QuarkXpress
Provided Free Adobe CC Plugins for all registered users with last release of Adobe CC (Unlike Extensis)
NO CLOUD SYNCING (Not that I could spot)
Typekit & Google Font integration
List View
Customizable Tags
Integrated Font Stores
Claim: “FontExplorer X® is the simple, speedy way to find and organize all of your fonts.”
**RightFont**
_Mac_
https://rightfontapp.com
Product Video: https://youtu.be/8caPhZqcFfU
$39 (Normally $49)
Syncs with **_any_** cloud drive apps/services such as Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud/Box/OneDrive/Resilio Sync/Adobe CC/Amazon Drive including local shared folders
Typekit, Google Font, Font Awesome, Ionicons, Material Design inclusion/integration
Auto activation for Adobe CC (ID AI PS FL AE), Sketch, PowerPoint, Keynote, Affinity (Photo & Designer)
No customizable Tags – Plans on adding tags in next release according to an email exchange with RF
There appears to be no list view (But haven’t downloaded to check)
Claim: “3x times performance improved in RightFont 4” with 10,000 fonts activated
**FontBase**
_Mac/Windows/Linux_
https://fontba.se
Product Video: https://youtu.be/XCpqkaTJ49I
Free — Upgradable to “Awesome” unlocking additional features — $3 per month/$28.80 per year/$180 Lifetime
Syncs with Dropbox/Google Drive/iCloud
Doesn’t have font auto activation (at least they didn’t mention it)
There appears to be no list view (But haven’t downloaded to check)
Claim: 4.25s lead-time of FontBase with 60,000 fonts
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That’s all I got. Add your own thoughts to this thread and maybe we can all move on to something better. And again, this is from a Mac perspective. I didn’t cover Windows options such as High Logic’s MainType.
_And…_ if there were anyone who could craft an Export/Import font tags/styles/foundries/metadata thingy that allowed users to jump to new platforms with ease, that would rule the world.
**PS:** To Extensis: I spend my days at a medium size Ad/Web agency working for the biggest REDACTED on the planet (among other big REDACTED companies). We deliver bug fixes and site enhancements DAILY to the e-comm platform we built and maintain for them. What’s your deal? Is it that your lead developer spends half his day on Twitter losing his mind over politics? Or is it a leadership team with no skin in the creative services game? Maybe it’s your board of directors, driving pure profit as the only metric of success, and bleeding all value from Extensis? Maybe it’s all these things and the absence of the early, entrepreneurial, founder-driven spirit that pervades our startup culture? Maybe everybody’s just phoning it in, with the wealth of product insights found on this forum never getting to the C-suite?
*It’s crystal clear Extensis sees a combination of FontAgent and the new upstarts RightFont and FontBase as their competition — or at least inspiration for the lousy UI of Suitcase. RightFont and FontBase appear to be geared more towards product design teams who typically don’t need access to the number of font alternatives visual designers need.