OT: Alternatives to Extensis Universal Type Client

[ToriAnneke]

Hey folks,

Just curious if anyone out there uses other Font Management application?

I've been using UTC since version 1 and I personally find it very unstable and unreliable. I always cross my fingers when I need to use it.

Their support pages are pretty vague and not much feedback. I've been back and forth with Extensis support a few years ago and it comes down to uninstalling, restart, re-install and hope for the best. When it bombs out again, just repeat the solve.

Not really a sustainable approach for a 100+ user base of creatives and for a product with a hefty price tag along with an ASA.

So I am curious if anyone has a good experience with the product or maybe ditched for another?
Would love to hear back from you.

I really wish JAMF would get into Font Management software.
:)

[stevewood]

@pvader We've been using UTC since ver 1 as well, and while I did have a few times that I needed to remove and re-install prior to ver 4, I haven't had that issue much since. It was a pain in the back side, but I was able to automate it for the most part to where my users could uninstall/re-install on their own.

What problem are you seeing with it now? We still have issues with UTC not activating fonts or saying a font is active but then InDesign, or whatever other app, does not see the font as open. We've been able to fix that issue with a simple font cache clean and a restart. Again, it is a Self Service fix. And too be honest, it has been very few and far between for that. We are a 65 user install base of UTC.

So, just curious what else you're seeing so that I can keep my eye open.

[ToriAnneke]

Steve,

Yeah. I think I will make the it as a Self Service as well.

I'm having similar issues as you described with the Adobe Apps. It has gotten better since ver 3 I must say and like you they are far and few now.

I am curious though, how many fonts do you have in your UTS?

[donmontalvo]

We've been deploying UTS for years, leveraging AD groups to control who has access to which sets of fonts. From 100's to over 2000 users, including Adobe Font Folio and other libraries, and loosie fonts. Never had problems with it that we couldn't resolve with Priority 1 support from Extensis.

@stevewood wrote:

It was a pain in the back side, but I was able to automate it for the most part to where my users could uninstall/re-install on their own

I'm guessing you're leveraging the embedded headless plug-in installer script? :D

"/Applications/Universal Type Client.app/Contents/MacOS/Universal Type Client" --HeadlessInstallTriggeredFromInstaller YES

[donmontalvo]

@pvader wrote:

Their support pages are pretty vague and not much feedback. I've been back and forth with Extensis support a few years ago and it comes down to uninstalling, restart, re-install and hope for the best. When it bombs out again, just repeat the solve.

I'd be interested in how your server is set up, and whether that box is providing other services, if you're able to post details.

Also might want to have a look at:

Flushing Caches Best Practices

[stevewood]

@pvader We have just over 3000 fonts in one workgroup. We're running on a WIn 2008R2 VM that has 4 CPUs and 8GB of RAM. There's nothing else running on it, just UTS.

@donmontalvo as you can see above, we're only using one workgroup. But thanks for the heads up! :-)

[stevewood]

@donmontalvo No, actually I did not know about the headless installer. I was referring to uninstalling the entire app and re-installing. Using the .command that Extensis has on their site.

[ToriAnneke]

In the past I can say that UTC 3 & 4 (server) were set up in a Windows (me thinketh Server 2008R2) with the latest updates on VMware. Not sure on how many processors and RAM that was using though.

I am unsure how the UTS 5 has been set up. I do know it's a VMware Windows Server but will need to ask the dude who set it up on Monday for more particulars. The former UTS4 and now 5 service is using an AD group for its members.

We have a pool of 14,000+ fonts being served from the server. Me and the other dude are starting to think that maybe it way too many fonts for UTS/UTC to handle?

Yesterday I met up with a former colleague, BTW @stevewood Mark Kenny says hi :) and his UTServer has much more fonts. But we weren't talking fonts so it ended there. I just had a curiosity and wanted to peek.

Again, it has gotten much better since v3 I must say.

I started this post out of curiosity if other folks are using any other font management service but seems like Extensis is the top dog when it comes to font management. As well if anyone had good experiences with it and wanted to share.

Odd that Adobe, with it massive user base and font collections no longer does font management. Remember those days of ATM Deluxe ver 4.12?
:)

[donmontalvo]

@pvader wrote:

I am unsure how the UTS 5 has been set up. I do know it's a VMware Windows Server but will need to ask the dude who set it up on Monday for more particulars.

VM should be fine if they allocated enough memory to it. Sounds like you might have ASA, if so might want to request a remote session with a Priority 1 engineer to review the setup.

Remember those days of ATM Deluxe ver 4.12?

Yea, I miss Multiple Master fonts. :)

Don

[stevewood]

We were using Master Juggler back in the OS 9 days, and we loved it. It was lightweight, simple, and just worked. We then started moving to Font Reserve as we started getting bigger and needing more of a network manageable product. The typehouse I was working at during that time was in direct contact with the developer of Font Reserve and we were beta testing a lot of the upgrades. It was a good product, but nothing compared to Master Juggler.

[bentoms]

We use Font Explorer X Server, seems decent enough (last time i managed UTS was v2).

But their recommended deployment methods leave a lot to be desired.

[bpavlov]

At my last job (a publishing company) we used Font Explorer X Server as well. There was a person that was specifically involved in comparing a bunch of vendors for font management and this vendor was the only one who was willing to work with us to get features implemented that the company needed. It really came down to I think the fact that other vendors perhaps didn't think the payoff was worth investing in the features we were looking for (maybe we were big enough in their eyes, though the company was somewhere north of 3000 employees but I digress).

Can't say I ever had much trouble with FEX from what I experienced (but then again most font issues were directed to this one person who literally just did all font related requests). I can say this though. They were very scalable on the server side if you needed to setup different servers for different sites. I'm not sure if syncing was immediate but it was at least scheduled. I also recall that if there were problems we had they would work closely with our company to get a fix out and to troubleshoot. They have even sent out reps out to the company just to listen to whatever issues we may have had and to collect feedback and do onsite training for big rollouts. So at least their customer support was very good.

I'm not sure Extensis has been as scalable in terms of allowing for multiple servers and syncing yet. When that feature was requested at my last job they certainly didn't want to play ball. They seemed to have recently introduced some quick sync feature in v5 but we aren't on that version yet.

Anyways, with all that said I think Font Explorer X Server is certainly worth taking a look at. And I can swear there was a thread recently I read where a similar question was asked. I suspect you may get other vendors listed there.

[donmontalvo]

@bpavlov erote:

I'm not sure Extensis has been as scalable in terms of allowing for multiple servers and syncing yet.

Enterprise version with server failover offered with v4 and later.

Compare Editions

[#14]

UTS 4.2.3 here serving mostly CC2014 on 10.9.5 across multiple remote offices, it's been better than v3 ever was - if you're ever advised to uninstall and reinstall UTC, I recommend using their Uninstaller script which removes the local cache as well as the app (works fine via Casper).