Why switch to

I feel compelled to respond to your additional comment re: the offer from AlaMode, because if circumstances do cause you to have to change software, I would like to offer my 2 cents. 
I have no vested interest in which program you buy and use, and I am taking my time to respond to give you the (dubious) benefit of my personal experiences, realizing that not all will appraisers have the same perspective on this. It is my opinion, based on my experiences.

It’s obvious that some of the s/w preference issues are a little like a Chevy person trying to convince a Ford person that their vehicle is “better,” or a BMW person trying to convince a Mercedes owner that their choices were smarter.  Sometimes it’s personal choice; sometimes it’s just what you were introduced to early in your career.  Many times people are extolling the virtues of what they know best, without really having in-depth knowledge of the alternatives (other than something they’ve heard or read about or assume to be true).

I have had the need to use all 3 of the programs mentioned in your comments (ACI, WinTotal and ClickForms).  Clients and appraiser partnerships have caused me to buy and use each of these, so I have a fairly good, hands-on experience with each. I suffered through the learning curves, the tech support functions, and the shortfalls and workarounds for each of them.

From my personal perspective, I found nothing redeeming or useful about ACI. I found it buggy, unreliable, awkward, not intuitive, not feature-rich, and to top it off, the tech support function was awful so I couldn’t get fixed in a timely manner what needed fixing. Probably, not knowing anything about the other alternatives, I would have just continued on, learning to walk with a limp, hoping things would get better over time, and thinking all s/w vendors would have similar if not worse issues I’d have to deal with.

My next platform was WinTotal, and I felt like I had left the dark ages and come into the light !  The program was feature-rich, the tech support was responsive, knowledgeable, helpful (and even friendly and professional) and I never once looked back. But with the robust nature of WinTotal came a constant and never-ending set of issues and problems. I discovered I needed continual tech support to fix the on-going problems, crashes, freezes, etc. that were occurring.  They would issue a s/w “fix,” which would fix a stated problem then invariably create another. For 3 years I felt I had to keep that costly 24/7 service support option or I would find myself unable to  complete an appraisal due to the glitch du jour. Once again, I felt I had it better than with ACI, and that WinTotal’s problems would eventually be resolved and between my experience with the program and their tweaking of it, things would get better.  But all I found was that I was still stuck with having to maintain the tech support option, and kept paying exorbitant rates for their renewals and “options,” many of which I discovered weren’t really useful to me, or worth me having to suffer the learning curve to use the features. I felt like I had a very fast, exotic car, that cost me more to buy, more to insure, more to maintain, had more maintenance issues, but it was “capable” of doing 180 mph (on road where I could only do 65 anyway).

My next business association required that I purchase and learn ClickForms in order to be able to share files and conduct business between appraisal offices. Very reluctantly I entered into this arrangement due to my previous software experiences, but from the first day I noticed the easy of use, intuitive interface, unbelievable (almost infallible) reliability and stability, and I instantly stopped making calls to tech support. The bottom line was that I was getting through my reports faster, the quality of the output was equal to the other products so the client was not aware of any changes, and I was not having the constant tech support issues that were causing untold frustrations and delays in getting reports completed. I was feeling like a slave to my software with the other programs, but ClickForms has freed up a ton of my time, made me more efficient, and relieved a ton of frustrations stemming from downtime issues.
AND, all for far less money to buy and maintain!

I hope you, and others considering a software purchase decision or change of platforms, spends time not just listening to the marketing hype of the various companies, but to the appraisers who have actually used a number of different programs and has the reference points and experiences to talk about each of them and why they ended up with one over the other.  This has been my experience, and I realize WinTotal has the lion’s share of the market, but so far it seems that’s more due to their marketing than to the actual product offering. I measure it in time to complete appraisals, and ClickForms clearly has the other two beat in this area !

Good luck with whatever decision you make.

- Posted by George Bomely on September 14 th, 2005

Reprinted by permission