A No-Nonsense Review of Fieldwire

Fieldwire is a field management platform serving general and specialty contractors, project owners, and architects and designers. The platform brands itself as an all-in-one jobsite management software for construction teams.

Is it the right app for your company? Answering that question requires a closer look — and we’ve done that for you with this deep dive into Fieldwire. We’ll examine the app’s sign-up and onboarding, its mobile and desktop experience, test out all its key features, and explore pricing, user reviews, and even some alternatives that might be better-suited to your needs.

Ready for a closer look at Fieldwire? Let’s see if it really has everything you need for your construction business…

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What Is Fieldwire?

Fieldwire is jobsite management software for construction teams. It offers solutions for field management, project management, plans and BIM, reporting, and integrations. Its main offering revolves around centralizing and streamlining communication and collaboration between team members in real-time.

Fieldwire was acquired by the Hilti Group in November 2021.

Fieldwire Overview

Fieldwire’s features include:

Field management

• Task management
• Scheduling
• Punch list
• Inspection

Project management

• RFIs
• Submittals
• Change orders
• Document management
• Specifications

Plans and BIM

• Plan viewing
• As-built drawings
• BIM viewer

Reporting

• Reports
• Forms

Sign-Up and Onboarding

Signing up for Fieldwire’s free tier is straightforward. After registering your email address, the app collects information about your business type and size.

The page takes you straight to the dashboard, where a banner for Fieldwire’s Business Plus plan offers upgraded features.
There’s no initial onboarding video or step-by-step tutorial. (These are scattered across pages as you access them for the first time.) Instead, a red dot helpfully shows you where to start.

The Web App Experience

Fieldwire’s dashboard is pretty clean with a lot of gray space. A top menu bar consists of Projects, People, Account, Templates, and Tutorials. The main page (Projects) contains a widget for creating your first project and a tour for a sample project.

The rest of the menu items — People, Account, Templates, and Tutorials — are pretty straightforward. For the basic tier, ‘Templates’ is off-limits, though it is part of the overhead menu.

‘Account’ shows your plan details, user count, and API settings.

‘Tutorials’ houses a playlist of video how-to’s for specific roles: mobile users, project admins, project management suite users (available on the highest tier only), and account managers.

The Mobile Experience

Fieldwire’s mobile app replicates the web dashboard to a notable extent. The app opens to your Projects dashboard, which you can use to navigate active projects and tasks.

Selecting the active project opens the same left menu present in the web dashboard.

You can add new projects and sync projects in the app.

‘People’ follows the same format in the web version. You can invite team members and manage permission levels in the app.

Fieldwire’s mobile app is mostly geared towards document and task management. There was no time clock functionality in the Basic tier version we tested.

More construction companies trust Workyard for time tracking

Discover why

Fieldwire Key Features

How does Fieldwire’s ‘Projects’ Product Work?

Creating a new project allows you to drag and drop, upload your plans, or select files from cloud systems, including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, and others.

The ‘Projects’ dashboard consists of a main menu for field and project management, as well as a shortcut menu for tasks.

Field management

• Plans
• Specification
• Tasks
• Photos
• Forms
• Files

Project Management (available on paid tiers)

Tasks (shortcut menu)

• My tasks
• Watched tasks
• All tasks
• New category

Let’s go through each of the field management functions.

Field Management – Plans

You can create new plans and folders with additional actions, such as batch editing and exporting plans. Fieldwire includes a tutorial video to guide you through plan viewing and management.

You can also filter plans and control file versions of documents. Lastly, you can search for plans using the search bar on top.

Field Management – Specifications

You can upload specifications and select files in the dashboard. Fieldwire automatically divides specs into sections for easy viewing. It also annotates the latest specs.

Field Management – Tasks

Fieldwire allows you to create and import tasks into the dashboard. You can also re-open tasks, add checklists, and move tasks on and off plan.

The dashboard enables you to sort and filter tasks by status, category, assignees, and creators. The dashboard supports multiple views such as calendar, priority, and Gantt chart among others.

The platform guides you through these actions with a quick video tutorial when you open ‘Tasks’.

Field Management – Photos

Adding photos is a straightforward process as well. You can add 360° photos, attach them to tasks, filter and export images, and manage file tags. Another tutorial video walks you through these actions.

Field Management – Forms

Forms is unavailable to Basic tier users.

Field Management – Files

You can add files and folders to the ‘Files’ dashboard. You can also export and move files and manage tags.

Project Management

Though included in the ‘Projects’ functionality, project management tools were off-limits in the Basic tier.

How does Fieldwire’s ‘People’ Product Work?

A‘People’ helps you keep track of users under your account. You can invite users to specific projects and change their account roles. You can also remove users and search, filter, and export user lists.

Integrating Other Business Apps With Fieldwire

Fieldwire integrates with the following document and project data management systems:

• Google Drive
• SharePoint
• Box
• Dropbox
• OneDrive
• Hilti ON!Track

It also provides an Open RESTful API for enterprise customers and others who want API access to any of Fieldwire’s paid plans.
At the time this review was conducted, Fieldwire’s page also indicated upcoming integrations with Microsoft Teams and Power BI.

Fieldwire Might be a Good Fit for You If…

…you’re mostly running construction firms relying on architectural drawings for large-scale projects.
Fieldwire effectively and efficiently centralizes building plans, drawings, photos, forms, files, and reports for project collaboration.
However, if your main business doesn’t hinge on using architectural designs, you might want to look for other solutions better suited to your team’s needs.

You Might Not Want to Use Fieldwire If…

…you’re mainly concerned with managing mobile teams across project sites.

Based on the free tier we tested, Fieldwire’s ‘field management’ tools revolve around centralizing and streamlining document and file management. The Basic tier had scheduling and tracking functions for tasks, but not for employees.

In addition, its ‘People’ product is a simple directory of users with no apparent functions for time tracking, job costing, and scheduling. Again, we’re talking about features available in the Basic tier, but most of what we’ve seen leans toward serving construction firms who use and manage architectural drawings for large-scale building projects.

More construction companies trust Workyard for time tracking

Discover why

Fieldwire Cost/Pricing

Fieldwire offers a free basic tier and three paid tiers.

Its base paid tier, Pro, includes a decent range of field management features, including plan viewing, task management, and reporting capabilities.

Its highest tier, Business Plus, includes the works, including RFIs, change orders, and submittal management, among others. Both tiers include unlimited projects and sheets.

Fieldwire Reviews

Fieldwire users say the platform works well for planning and task management. However, they also cite Fieldwire for being too rigid in both functionality and per user pricing.

iOS user Bshanabe says Fieldwire is very good for planning and task management, but the platform needs more functionality and flexibility in pricing:

iOS user Bshanabe says:

Practical, helpful and easy. Just needs more… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

We are using Fieldwire for Plan and Task management. That’s its strengths.

…The major drawback is it needs more functionality. The higher level includes forms. That’s ok, but Fieldwire needs to work towards being a full-fledged ERP-style solution similar to Procore. For subcontractors, I think it’s better than Procore. But not for GCs.

The second drawback is the pricing model. Per user pricing is not bad, but everyone (including outside guests – like subs) have to be paid for like any other user. That eliminates plan sharing and collaboration.
If you are a sub or need focused plan and task management, Fieldwire is very good.

Android user Nathan Bradfield says Fieldwork’s communication tools for Android app stopped working:

Android user Nathan Bradfield says:

⭐⭐⭐ 
I have started the conversation with the support department about the loss of instant notifications between android devices (2 months ago)Thus far I have heard nothing in the way of a fix for this. Support has tried to get me to do the same steps over and over with the same result. There are no real time communications allowed on Android devices. The loss of this key feature is impeding our ability as a company to use fieldwire as primary communication for projects. Still rely on Text and talk.

Fieldwire user Curtis A. says Fieldwork didn’t work very well for his needs:

Capterra reviewer Curtis A. says:

Capterra Review:

Field Wire ⭐⭐⭐ 
Overall: It didn’t work very well for what I needed it most for, which was for building as builds for the customer

Pros: It was fairly easy to import files into Field Wire.

Cons: It was limited in its ability to mark up prints for as builds.

Our Score (and Why We Chose It)

Based on our sign-up and onboarding experience with the free trial, here’s how we scored Fieldwire:

Top Alternatives to Fieldwire

Fieldwire brands itself as an all-in-one jobsite management software for construction, but other alternatives offer many (if not all) of the same dedicated features.

The Bottom Line

Fieldwire brands itself as “The all-in-one tool for the jobsite.” But based on what we’ve found, the platform leans heavily towards serving construction firms using architectural drwaings for large-scale projects. The company gives a hint about its true purpose: 

“Fieldwire is the place where the entire project team… comes together to collaborate and share information in real-time.”

If we’re talking about document and file management, then Fieldwire does the job. It has dedicated solutions for uploading and managing documents, images, 360° photos, drawings, reports, forms, and other files.

However, if we’re going to take the ‘all-in-one’ proposition to mean features beyond document management, such as scheduling, time-tracking, job costing, and others, Fieldwire falls far short of the mark.

For those in the construction industry or other fields requiring specialized functionalities, exploring alternatives might be beneficial.

Workyard offers tailored solutions with features like GPS time tracking and advanced project management tools. It’s designed to meet the unique needs of construction admins and ensure efficient project execution.

Click the links above to see how it works, or sign up for a free trial of Workyard today to streamline your project management and time-tracking processes.