Comparison

BIMcollab vs Xenmark for drawing review.

BIMcollab’s document management, formerly BIMcollab Twin, is the document and model collaboration side of the BIMcollab Platform, which brought the company’s previously separate products together from 1 May 2026. Documents and models live in one place, issues are raised against them as Questions and Tasks with a responsible person, informed parties, labels and a due date, and everything a project has said can be exported to Excel.

Xenmark runs one job end to end: a drawing set goes out for review, comments come back against the revision they were raised on, and the review finishes as two documents — a plan showing where each comment sits, and a spreadsheet saying what each one means, numbered to match.

BIMcollab is bought by the team rather than by the review: the minimum purchase is ten licences, and its free guests are viewing users rather than people who can raise and answer issues. So anyone who has to comment needs a licence of their own. Choose Xenmark when the people reviewing are outside your organisation and the job is one drawing set rather than a modelling programme. A free Xenmark project may be all you need for the review.

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01

A trial that ends, against a plan that does not

BIMcollab gives you 30 days on Basic with 25 licences, which is a generous way to run a real review — and then a subscription starts at a minimum of ten users. The Xenmark Free plan is not a trial: it starts with one person, runs one active review from start to finish, and does not expire.

02

The people who comment do not need licences

BIMcollab counts free guests generously, one or two for every paid user, but a Guest is a viewing user: issue commenting belongs to the licensed issue roles. In Xenmark an invited person can reply and download the exports without paying, and the Project Manager can promote one to Editor to raise comments and pins.

03

The plan and the register come out together

BIMcollab exports issues in BCF, XLS, CSV and PDF, and all of a project’s communication into an Excel file. A Xenmark review produces a drawing with each comment numbered where it applies, and an Excel register numbered to match, from the same comments in one step.

BIMcollab vs Xenmark, row by row

Every BIMcollab claim below is taken from BIMcollab's own published material and was last checked on 29 August 2026. Software changes; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.

Two rows in this table go to BIMcollab, and one of them is a row we normally win. Every synchronised BIMcollab issue carries an Index, and deleted issues leave visible gaps rather than the later ones sliding up — which is the same guarantee Xenmark makes about its comment numbers. Stable numbering is not a difference between these two products.

The second is document versions, where BIMcollab does more than we do by default. “All annotation items from previous versions of a document will also be displayed in the latest version”, with a button to switch to the current version only. Every earlier round is visible on the newest sheet unless you ask otherwise.

It is also a much broader product: BIM models and documents together, Questions and Tasks carrying a responsible person, informed parties, subject, labels, a due date and a discussion, statuses of Open, Urgent, Answered, Completed and Cancelled, and exports in BCF, XLS, CSV and PDF with all of a project’s communication going out to Excel. Two things run the other way: the minimum purchase is ten licences, and a free Guest is a viewing user rather than someone who can raise and answer issues.

  Xenmark BIMcollab
Starting a review
Can the person running the review start free? Yes — the Free plan runs one active review at a time, start to finish For 30 days, yes. The trial gives 30-day access to Basic with 25 licences, covering both issue and document management, plus a BIMcollab Zoom licence for the administrator. There is no permanent free tier: after the trial, a subscription starts at a minimum of ten users.
Do external reviewers need a paid subscription? No — the people you invite read, reply and download the exports without paying It depends on what they have to do, and the answer has two halves. Free guests are counted per paid user — one each on Basic, two each on Advanced and Enterprise — so a ten-seat Advanced account carries twenty of them. But a Guest is a viewing user: issue commenting belongs to the licensed issue roles, so anyone who must raise or answer an issue needs a licence.
Available platforms Any modern browser — nothing to install, and the people you invite join from a link Browser, with desktop plug-ins for the modelling tools on the BIM side of the platform.
How the review is structured
What the review is built from A numbered comment. Anything drawn on the page belongs to that comment rather than standing on its own. A document plus a communication item — a Question or a Task — carrying a responsible person, informed parties, a subject, labels, a due date, a message and a discussion. Only PDFs can be annotated: images and native DWG files can be viewed but not marked up.
Replies Threaded under the comment, each attributed and dated, with image attachments, and carried into the register Yes — each communication item holds a discussion, alongside its responsible person and informed parties.
Status workflow Open, In progress and Closed — three fixed states, and the status travels into the Excel register YesOpen, Urgent, Answered, Completed and Cancelled, with filters and search across them, and document workflows that can involve several reviewers.
Comment numbering Numbers are stable — delete comment 5 and the gap stays, so item 12 still means item 12 in every email and every export The same guarantee we make. Every synchronised issue is given an Index, and a deleted issue leaves a visible gap rather than the later ones moving up.
One issue, several drawing locations One comment can own several markers while keeping one number and one reply thread Yes, in the document workflow. One Task or Question can carry several shapes, text marks and arrows before it is saved. The separate BCF 2D issue model records one viewpoint per issue.
Activity history Every action timestamped and attributed to the person who made it Yes, and it is advertised on every tier. BIMcollab lists a “Full legal audit trail for documents, to do’s and issues” across Basic, Advanced and Enterprise, alongside the responsible person, informed parties and discussion carried by each communication item.
Revision handling Comments stay tied to the revision they were raised against, in one workflow Better than ours, by default. “All annotation items from previous versions of a document will also be displayed in the latest version”, with a button to show only the current version instead. Earlier rounds appear on the newest sheet unless you ask them not to.
Measuring and markup
Measuring on the drawing Length, polylength, perimeter and area, calibrated to the page scale Point-to-point distance in the DWG viewer.
Setting the drawing scale Pick a standard scale, type your own, name the sheet size, or calibrate from a distance you already know The DWG viewer measures point to point, working from the drawing as supplied.
Building your own reusable symbols Check, cross, attention, arrow and cloud — five fixed review symbols, not a custom library Yes — reusable workflow stamps. An administrator creates stamps carrying custom text, colour, date and time, the approver name and an optional QR code. They are approval stamps rather than a free-placement symbol library.
Measuring quantities for pricing a job Not included — measurements are there to explain a comment, not to cost work BIMcollab is a BIM issue and document platform rather than a takeoff product, and quantities are normally taken from the model rather than the sheet.
What comes out of the review
What you send back The two documents come out ready to send — there is nothing to set up first, because the review was structured that way from the start Exports, and good ones. Issues go out in BCF, XLS, CSV and PDF, and “all communication can be exported to an Excel file”.
Comment plan PDF The drawing with each comment numbered and shown where it applies A tile or list report. BIMcollab’s issue PDF presents the issues themselves; BCF exports carry the issue viewpoints.
Spreadsheet output An Excel file listing every comment, numbered to match the PDF Yes, and broadly. Issues export to XLS and CSV, and BIMcollab states that all communication can be exported to an Excel file.
Measurements in the export Drawn on the comment plan PDF where they were placed, and listed on their own sheet in the Excel file, kept separate from the comments Issue reports export to BCF, XLS, CSV and PDF, carrying the issue fields.
What you keep when the project ends A single zip file — every revision's exports, the attachments and the full activity log, downloaded and stored on your side Documents, versions and communication stay in the platform while the subscription runs, and issues can be exported to BCF, XLS, CSV and PDF at any point.
Branded reports Your company logo and text on both deliverables, inherited from Company Settings — Plus and Pro BIMcollab publishes a Power BI dashboard template that can be modified in Power BI — a separate reporting route from the built-in PDF, XLS and CSV issue reports.
What else each one does
Batch operations across many PDFs Not included — a review works on one drawing set at a time Yes — bulk uploads, bulk downloads, and filtered or selected issue exports.
Comparing two drawings against each other Not included — differences get raised as comments by the people reviewing Document versions are held, and annotations from earlier versions display on the latest.
Working offline Browser only, so you need a connection Offline model work sits in BIMcollab Zoom, a separate product from document management.
Storing documents long term Not what it is for. You download the exports and keep them wherever your project records already live. Yes — that is much of the point. Document management is part of the platform, with versions, workflows and the ten-user minimum that goes with it.
CAD integrations and creating PDFs from CAD None — a review starts from a PDF that has already been produced Yes, on the BIM side. BIMcollab publishes plug-ins for the major modelling tools, which is the ecosystem the platform is built around. Xenmark connects to none of it.
Connecting to a document management system No integrations yet — the closing archive is a single zip you file wherever your records already live It is one. Document Management is a module of the platform rather than a connector to somebody else’s.

What each one costs

The per-user figure is not the entry price. BIMcollab publishes Basic at €12.50 per user per month billed annually, Advanced at €18.75 and Enterprise at €25, with higher rates if you pay monthly. Beside those figures it states that a subscription starts at a minimum of ten users, on a single licence covering both issue and document management. So the smallest continuing Basic purchase is ten seats, not one — after a 30-day trial that carries 25.

Xenmark is €14.99 – €59.99 / month for the project rather than for each person, with a Free plan that runs a complete review. The two are not priced on the same axis: BIMcollab charges for a team that works this way all the time, and Xenmark charges for the review in front of you.

  Xenmark BIMcollab
Billing unit Per project capacity, monthly Per user per month, billed annually or monthly, with a ten-licence minimum
Entry point Free — one active review, start to finish, no card Basic — and the minimum purchase is ten licences
To run a review yourself Free €12.50 per user per month billed annually, ten licences at least
Paid range €14.99 – €59.99 / month €12.50 – €25 per user per month billed annually; €19 – €39 billed monthly
Invited reviewers Free — no per-user charge; 5–30 project members depending on plan, and the person running the review is one of them Free guests, counted per paid user — one each on Basic, two each on Advanced and Enterprise. A Guest is a viewing user; commenting on issues needs a licensed role
Tax basis Including VAT EUR · VAT basis not stated on the plan page

Xenmark — current as of 29 August 2026. BIMcollab — checked 27 August 2026. Both sets of figures are in euro, which makes them look more comparable than they are: BIMcollab’s plan page states no tax basis at all — neither including nor excluding VAT — while Xenmark prices include it. A euro with an unstated tax treatment cannot be set against a euro that includes VAT, so nothing here is adjusted in either direction. The ten-user minimum belongs beside every per-user figure above: the smallest continuing purchase is €1,500 a year on Basic, €2,250 on Advanced and €3,000 on Enterprise. Those totals are BIMcollab’s own per-user rates multiplied by BIMcollab’s own stated minimum, and nothing else. The 30-day trial on 25 licences comes first.

  • Basic €12.50 per user per month, billed annually — Per user per month billed annually, or €19 billed monthly. One free guest per paid user.
  • Advanced €18.75 per user per month, billed annually — Per user per month billed annually, or €29 billed monthly. Two free guests per paid user.
  • Enterprise €25 per user per month, billed annually — Per user per month billed annually, or €39 billed monthly. Two free guests per paid user.
  • Trial 30 days — Basic, with 25 licences and a Zoom licence for the administrator
  • Smallest Basic subscription €1,500 / year — ten users at €12.50, or €190 a month on monthly billing
  • Smallest Advanced subscription €2,250 / year — ten users at €18.75, or €290 a month on monthly billing
  • Smallest Enterprise subscription €3,000 / year — ten users at €25, or €390 a month on monthly billing
  • Minimum subscription 10 users — one licence covering issue and document management

When Xenmark makes sense

  • The reviewers are outside your organisation. Invited people reply and download the exports without paying, and a Project Manager can make one an Editor to raise comments and pins — rather than a free guest being limited to viewing.
  • You need one review, not ten licences. A Xenmark review starts with one person on the Free plan.
  • You want the register and the plan to be one act. The Excel file and the numbered PDF come out together, numbered to match, rather than being assembled from separate issue exports.
  • Measuring is part of the review. Length, polylength, perimeter and area against the page scale, with the values on their own sheet in the same Excel file.
  • The work is drawings rather than models. Xenmark starts from a PDF and ends with a handover, with no model, no BCF and nothing to coordinate.

When BIMcollab is the better choice

  • The drawings are part of a modelling programme. BIMcollab holds models and documents together, with issues that reach both and plug-ins into the major modelling tools. Xenmark takes PDFs and knows nothing about the model they came from.
  • Earlier rounds should stay visible on the newest sheet. Annotations from previous document versions are displayed on the latest version by default, with an opt-out.
  • Issues need owners and dates. A Question or Task carries a responsible person, informed parties, labels, a due date and a discussion, with statuses of Open, Urgent, Answered, Completed and Cancelled.
  • BCF matters to you. Issues export in BCF as well as XLS, CSV and PDF, which is what makes them portable between BIM tools. Xenmark produces nothing in BCF.
  • The team is ten or more people who work this way constantly. That is the shape the licence minimum assumes, and at that size the per-user rate is reasonable.

Questions people actually ask

Is BIMcollab Twin still a separate product?

Not as a separate purchase. BIMcollab has brought its previously separate products into one BIMcollab Platform, effective 1 May 2026, and the document and model collaboration capability that was Twin now sits inside it alongside issue management.

“BIMcollab Twin” remains the term most people search for, which is why it is named here. When you look at the plans you will see the Platform names — Basic, Advanced and Enterprise — with Document Management and Issues Management as modules.

Are BIMcollab guests free?

Yes, and more of them than you might expect — but they are viewers. Free guests are counted per paid user: one for each paid user on Basic, two for each on Advanced and Enterprise. A ten-seat Advanced account therefore carries twenty free guests, not two.

The limit is what a Guest can do. A Guest is a free viewing user — removing a licence from someone turns them into one — and commenting on issues belongs to the licensed issue roles. So for an external reviewer who only needs to look, guests are generous. For one who has to raise or answer an issue, a licence is needed. In Xenmark invited people reply and download exports without paying, and the Project Manager can make one an Editor who creates comments and pins.

What does it cost to run a document review in BIMcollab?

More than the per-user figure suggests. Basic is €12.50 per user per month billed annually, Advanced €18.75 and Enterprise €25, with higher monthly rates. Beside them BIMcollab states that a subscription starts at a minimum of ten users, on a single licence covering both issue and document management.

So the smallest continuing purchase is ten seats — though the 30-day trial runs a real review on 25 licences first. Xenmark is €14.99 – €59.99 / month for the project rather than for each person, and the Free plan runs a complete review. BIMcollab’s plan page states no tax basis; Xenmark prices include VAT.

Does BIMcollab export comments to Excel?

Yes, and generously. Issues export in BCF, XLS, CSV and PDF, and BIMcollab states that all communication can be exported to an Excel file. This is one of the stronger export stories in this set of comparisons.

In Xenmark the plan and the register come out of the same comments in one step: a drawing with each comment numbered where it applies, and a register keyed to those same numbers. That pairing is what makes a row in the spreadsheet findable on the sheet.

Does BIMcollab keep comment numbers stable?

Yes. Every synchronised issue is given an Index, and deleting an issue leaves a visible gap rather than closing it up — which is the proof that the remaining indexes are not renumbered.

That is the same guarantee Xenmark makes about comment numbers, so this is not a difference between the two products. Anyone comparing them on numbering alone should look at what the number is carried into instead.

Can BIMcollab annotate drawings, and what about versions?

PDFs, yes — with rectangles, ovals, lines, text, arrows and PDF annotations. Images and native DWG files can be viewed but cannot be annotated, so the list of formats it opens is longer than the list it lets you mark up.

On versions it does more than Xenmark by default: “all annotation items from previous versions of a document will also be displayed in the latest version”, with a button to show only the current one. In Xenmark a comment stays tied to the revision it was raised against and the revisions sit alongside each other in the review, which is a different way of keeping the history rather than a better one.

Is Xenmark a replacement for BIMcollab?

No. BIMcollab is a BIM platform — model coordination, issue management across models and documents, BCF, document management with versions and workflows, and plug-ins into the modelling tools. None of that is inside Xenmark.

Xenmark covers the part where a drawing set goes out to several people for comment and something structured has to come back. For a team already coordinating a model, it is not a substitute for the platform doing that.

When should I choose BIMcollab instead?

When the drawings belong to a modelling programme and issues have to reach the model as well as the sheet. When BCF export matters. When issues need owners, informed parties, labels and due dates. When earlier annotations should appear on the newest version automatically. And when the team is ten or more people who work this way all the time, which is the shape the licence minimum assumes.

About this comparison

We sell Xenmark, so this is not an independent review. We have tried to describe BIMcollab accurately, and every BIMcollab claim on this page rests on BIMcollab’s own help centre and plan page. The documents are named below. Capabilities and pricing change. BIMcollab feature information was last checked on 29 August 2026, and the pricing on 27 August 2026.

Sources used for this comparison

BIMcollab’s help centre articles are linked, so the claims here can be checked against the source each one rests on. The plans page is named rather than linked. Several claims on this page count in BIMcollab’s favour and are quoted as they were found — the 30-day trial with 25 licences, free guests counted per paid user rather than per plan, a full legal audit trail on every tier, and annotations from earlier document versions appearing on the latest version by default.

  • Preview, annotate and collaborate on documents (BIMcollab help centre) — the annotation tools, that only PDFs can be annotated while images and native DWG files cannot, and that “all annotation items from previous versions of a document will also be displayed in the latest version”
  • Features overview (BIMcollab help centre) — that “issues can be exported in BCF, XLS, CSV, and PDF file format”, that “all communication can be exported to an Excel file”, and the statuses Open, Urgent, Answered, Completed and Cancelled
  • Setting up your trial (BIMcollab help centre) — “30-day access to BIMcollab Basic subscription”, 25 licences for team members, a Zoom single licence for the trial administrator, issue and document management both included, and that a paid subscription starts “with a minimum of 10 users”
  • BIMcollab Platform plan matrix — the Basic, Advanced and Enterprise prices, the free-guest counts stated per paid user, and a “Full legal audit trail for documents, to do’s and issues” listed on all three tiers
  • One Platform FAQ (BIMcollab help centre) — the unification of the previously separate products into one platform from 1 May 2026, and that a Guest is a free viewing user created when a licence is removed
  • BIMcollab Platform plans page — Basic €12.50, Advanced €18.75 and Enterprise €25 per user per month billed annually, or €19, €29 and €39 billed monthly, with free guests counted per paid user. The page states no tax basis anywhere. Named rather than linked

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