BarTender Cloud – The Next Generation of Label Design

Seagull Scientific, the name behind the industry leading BarTender label design software, have been on a journey. Several years ago they realised they needed to set up their best selling label design software to operate in the cloud. Like other SaaS providers, Seagull decided to charge ongoing subscription charges rather than one off outright purchases. Their journey started with charging an annual maintenance charge on software purchases. The next step – in competition with their rivals was to create a proper cloud based solution.

Read on to see what’s so special about BarTender cloud, but first a little background.

In September last year we were invited to train to be BarTender Cloud resellers – with the launch of their new cloud product.

A couple of months later BarTender Cloud was further improved with the addition of the label design component.

Now BarTender cloud is a fully fledged cloud based label design application.

So What is BarTender Cloud?

If you’ve used any other label design app, then BarTender cloud works just the same – you choose the label dimensions and add elements to the design, like barcodes, text, images and so on.

BarTender Cloud is the same as the desktop app – except with a few added features.

Ability to design labels from your browser

Any browser. A browser on a tablet, a Mac (something BarTender didn’t previously do) or a PC.

If you want to print labels from your mobile device, that’s possible (though it isn’t easy to design labels). Use BarTender’s printing app for iPhone and Android.

Shared library of label templates.

Using the template library you can choose from hundreds of designs that experts have made for you – you just tweak it to meet your needs.

Not only do these save you time, but these designs comply with the rules of your industry. Filter the ever growing set of templates by industry or compliance standards.

You even get the required logos and industry specific barcodes.

Easy to get design expertise to help you.

No more sending files back and forth – simply ask your design expert to log on and design your label for you. (Let us help you with your cloud label design).

Centralised library of label designs.

In the past you needed to buy BarTender’s Enterprise edition if you wanted a centralised library of designs. Now you have that with BarTender cloud.

You can set access permissions – allow groups or users the ability to just print – or perhaps they can edit but not delete.

Retire old designs to a ‘retired designs’ folder and only give certain users access to the current designs.

Reduce Support Costs

No need to install software and support the software on your own servers. This is all handled by BarTender Cloud. Expert support can be provided quickly and easily by BarTender specialists such as ourselves – without us needing to be on site or needing access to your server.

Easily Share Label Printing

Have your manufacturing partners – in other countries – print your label designs on their printers.

Integrate

Using the Automation version of BarTender Cloud, you’re able to connect your label designs to Excel online, Google Sheets, Oracle, Microsoft Azure and SAP.

Just like the desktop version of the software, you establish a connection to your data source and link the elements of your label to the fields in your database.

Now you can capture data from across your organisation and feed it into your labels – one source of data for every label.

BarTender Cloud has prebuilt connectors so you can connect without the need for coding skills.

Print-driver free printing

With BarTender cloud, you no longer need to have drivers for your various printers.

BarTender Cloud will auto-discover your local and network printers and automatically print using one of nearly 8,000 Seagull Drivers specially made for thermal label printers.

BarTender Cloud Pricing

BarTender Cloud comes in two versions – Automation and Essentials.

Essentials lets you design labels and create data entry forms for your labels. You can connect to databases and you can print to any number of printers.

Automation gives you the ability to store more data – up from 2GB for Essentials to 5GB, call upon more data integrations options and a higher level of support (i.e. live chat and phone).

Interestingly, Seagull are charging based on the number of labels you print each year. Prices start for printing 10,000 labels and go up to over 250,000.

BarTender Cloud is charged on an annual basis with an initial ‘provisioning’ fee, which includes training to get you up and running along with two label designs made for you.

For exact costing, contact us here for an up to date price.