Professional
BarTender® 2021 edition comparison
| General | Starter | Professional | |
| Streamlined installation | Easy installation for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of BarTender® | • | • |
| Ease of use | Intuitive, easy-to-use user interface, translated to more than 20 languages | • | • |
| Quick start | A collection of configurable, industry-focused, ready-to-use BarTender documents | • | • |
| Comprehensive help system | A complete how-to library, accessible both through BarTender and on the web | • | • |
| Intelligent Templates™ | Design and automation tools that leverage data to reduce the number of label files | • | |
| Included printers | BarTender is licensed by printer — contact your authorized software vendor to obtain pricing | Up to 3 printers | 1+ printers |
| Unlimited users | Enable multiple users to print labels from any networked PC | • | • |
| Support | Starter | Professional | |
| Standard Maintenance and Support | Upgrade to the latest BarTender version free, and get live technical support by phone and chat during business hours with a guaranteed 24hr response time. Access to online resources, plus technical support by email | Includes 1 year | Includes 1 year |
| Printer drivers and monitoring | Starter | Professional | |
| Drivers by Seagull™ | More than 6,500 printers and output devices supported to enable high-performance printing | • | • |
| Print optimizations | Improve print speed by taking full advantage of printer-based features such as serialization, barcodes, real-time clock, static data and graphic caching | • | • |
| Status monitoring | Reports information back to Windows regarding printer/print job status and error conditions | • | • |
| Printer configuration and diagnostics | Perform printer management functions in BarTender, bypassing the printer front panel | • | • |
| Other printer drivers | Print to any printer that has a Windows-based driver | • | • |
| Email alerts | Automatically notify IT managers or other operational team members if labeling problems occur | • | • |
| Template design | Starter | Professional | |
| Easy WYSIWYG template design | Design tools make it easy to create and print professional labels and documents | • | • |
| New Document Wizard | An easy-to-follow wizard that ensures proper document settings for quality and printing performance | • | • |
| Fonts | Versatile support for OpenType, TrueType and native printer-based fonts | • | • |
| Text formatting | Familiar, Word-like tools for you to easily create and format text | • | • |
| Text transforms | Add flair to your text objects with a variety of effects, such as fading, inflating, slanting, and more | • | • |
| Shapes and lines | Choose from over 50 shapes and 100 line style combinations | • | • |
| Text wrapping | Create dynamic text that wraps inside and around shapes, objects, document borders and more | • | • |
| Unmatched barcode support | Easily create greater than 100 linear and 2D symbologies and standards | • | • |
| Barcode human readable | Highly configurable human readable text and character formatting options | • | • |
| Graphics and images | Import more than 70 graphic formats, including AI, PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF, EPS and GIF | • | • |
| Symbols | Choose from a wide variety of included symbols and industry-based symbol fonts | • | • |
| Tables and grids | Create tables and grids to organize text, barcodes, images and other objects | • | • |
| White-on-black printing | Switch objects from black-on-white to white-on-black printing with a single click | • | • |
| Front and back template design | Create two-sided “duplex” printing with separate designs for the front and back of your template | • | • |
| GS1 Application Identifier Data Source Wizard | Build barcodes in seconds using the latest GS1 compliance standards | • | • |
| Full color support | Design commercial quality labels using PANTONE and data-sourced colors | • | |
| Intelligent Templates™ | Starter | Professional | |
| Layers | Template objects may be stacked, hidden and reordered when created on uniquely identifiable layers | • | |
| Conditional printing | Create data-driven automation rules that specify when different objects, layers or templates in your document will visibly print or become hidden | • | |
| Template selector | Conditionally print one specific template when multiple templates are available in a document | • | |
| Data sourcing and databases | Starter | Professional | |
| Date and time | Dynamically source dates and times from Windows or clock-enabled printers | • | • |
| Data validation and processing | Specify data validation rules and automatically correct data or issue warnings | • | • |
| Concatenate data | Create text and barcode objects that combine information from multiple data sources | • | • |
| Basic database connectivity | Connect to Excel or a RFC 4180 standard CSV file to import variable data into your template | • | • |
| Simple serialization | Increase or decrease your serial string data by increments of one (1) | • | • |
| Enhanced database connectivity | Connect document designs to over 20 data sources such as SAP, Oracle, MS SQL, Azure SQL, XML, Excel, text files and more to print dynamically | • | |
| Advanced serialization | Create serial numbers that support alphanumeric, hexadecimal, and custom sequencing patterns | • | |
| Embedded database tables | Create your own database tables that travel with your BarTender document designs | • | |
| Database filters | Print select database records using convenient query and filter options | • | |
| Database sourced tables | Easily create tables using data from a database or external file | • | |
| Dynamic data preview | See how your document handles real dynamic data during the design process | • | |
| Dynamic graphics and images | Automatically source images for printing based on selected database records or queries | • | |
| Create a database | Build your own database from scratch using intuitive tools included with BarTender | • | |
| Write back to databases | Write back to SQL-based databases to keep track of printed records, serial numbers and much more | • | |
| Data-entry forms | Starter | Professional | |
| Database record selection | Select or query the correct database records at print time using helpful form controls | • | |
| Powerful form controls | Make data input and selection easy by leveraging over 15 highly configurable form controls | • | |
| Keyboard and mouse input | Use keyboard and mouse commands to select or enter data into forms at print time | • | |
| Scanner input | Use a barcode scanner to input information to data-entry forms at print time | • | |
| Image capture | Capture images at print time for ID cards or event badge printing | • | |
| Data validation | Reduce user input errors by introducing data validation and error checking | • | |
| Printing, encoding and exporting | Starter | Professional | |
| Print productivity | Print labels and documents to any Windows-based printer | • | • |
| On-demand printing | Print labels and documents on-demand | • | • |
| Batch printing | Batch together dynamic print jobs that can use one or more BarTender templates | • | • |
| Print preview | Review your dynamic print jobs before printing | • | • |
| RFID, smart card and magnetic stripe encoding | Encode RFID tags, smartcards and magnetic strip cards as easily as adding barcodes to your template design | • | |
| Native PDF generation | Generate PDFs without installing third-party PDF drivers | • | |
BarTender Release 11.2 R1 and later versions