Suitcase Fusion 7: It’s kind of a big deal

As a graphic designer, I have a small set of tools that I depend on and trust. Since fonts are the lifeblood of most designers, a great font manager is vital to our workflow. I’ve been using Suitcase for decades because I’ve found it to be the best all-around tool for the job. It’s compatible with all my design apps, it’s fast and stable, and it offers just the right amount of nice new features to keep me upgrading. I fear that my reviews of each new release are beginning to sound like a broken record.

Suitcase Fusion 7 is an evolution of an already fantastic font manager. Adding, auto-activating and organizing fonts is a breeze. Features like Quick Match (to find similar fonts in your collection that match the selected font), Fontspiration for viewing cool designs using a wide variety of fonts, and the ability to print font specimen pages all make for a strong foundation for Suitcase Fusion. But those features have been available in Fusion for quite some time. So rather than re-hash all of them, I encourage you to take a look at my previous reviews of version 4, version 5 and version 6.

At first glance it appears that little has changed beyond a great new icon (pictured above) that replaced a nice looking but out-of-place space helmet from the previous version. The second thing you’ll notice is that you no longer have a serial number to keep track of. You now simply enter your User ID and Password that you get from the Extensis website. It’s a one-time thing on each new installation, but the license is still a standard perpetual license not a subscription.

That’s not much of a sales pitch. How about this: Extensis has finally given motion graphics designers what they’ve craved for a long time. Fusion 7 works with Adobe After Effects.

But what if you don’t use After Effects? Why bother with the upgrade, you ask? Well let me tell you…

Two new features—and they’re kind of a big deal.

TypeSync
In the previous version of Fusion, you had the ability to backup your font database to Dropbox. This was handy not only for the backup, but if you used multiple Macs you could simply copy the database from Dropbox on your Macbook to have all the fonts you have on your iMac or MacPro. The problem was, it was a single database file. It was all or nothing. And depending on the size of your font collection, it could be time consuming.

Enter Fusion 7 with TypeSync, which allows you to live-sync your entire font library with your secondary Mac. When you add a font on one Mac, it’s immediately available on the other Mac.

And TypeSync works with your custom font Libraries, too. You can sync one, two or all of them. For designers who need to take their work on the road, a missing font can absolutely kill productivity. That’s why this is a really big deal.

Using TypeSync requires very little effort. You simply right-click on a Library and choose Enable Library Syncing. After a short time (depending on the size of your entire or chosen Library) the fonts are available on your other Mac with Fusion 7 installed.

For the record, Extensis allows two concurrent use installations of Suitcase Fusion 7 with the license—so this feature fits perfectly in a one user with two Macs situation.

TeamSync
Work with a team of designers? Extensis has also released a completely new service called TeamSync—a subscription plan that gives each team member a copy of Suitcase Fusion 7, and allows each team member to share fonts on their Mac with other team members via TypeSync.

In the past, font management for teams meant using font server software such as Extensis Universal Type Server. It’s great for large workgroups, but it’s expensive and somewhat cumbersome. With TeamSync, one team member uses a web-based dashboard to invite new users to the team via email, and assigns font libraries and sets that particular user can access. It’s all very easy to set-up and use.

Pricing and broken record remarks

Suitcase Fusion 7
Suitcase Fusion 7 will run on two Macs concurrently, and costs $119.95 for the full version or $59.95 for upgrades from version 5 or 6. Fusion 7 includes a free copy of Font Doctor for keeping your fonts healthy and happy, and runs on Mac OS X 10.9 through 10.11. Auto activation plug-ins work with Quark XPress 10 and 2015, Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, InCopy and Illustrator versions 6 through CC2015, as well as After Effects CC2015.

TeamSync
Suitcase TeamSync costs $8 per month per user. You’ll pay for a full year in advance, but when you add new users, the cost is pro-rated down to the day—making it easy for budgeting.

Because TeamSync includes a copy of Suitcase Fusion 7 for each user, there’s no need for a separate license and the operating requirements are the same as the stand-alone version of Fusion 7.

In closing
Just when I thought Extensis ran out of ideas for new features, they go and drop TypeSync on me. Awesome. I’ve been using for a few weeks now on my iMac running OS X 10.11.5 (beta) and my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.11.4 with no issues. The Fusion app runs faster than ever before and the auto-activation plugins work smoothly, too.

If you need a great font manager, and you have multiple Macs or work with a team of other designers you need to share fonts with, I highly recommend Suitcase Fusion 7.