Redesigned User Interface. Various skins are available.

Full UNICODE Support.

Enhanced Reporting (summary report, errors logging, plus other reporting enhancements, including average bandwidth consumption and total copied/deleted/added bytes logging). New Status/Execution Summary windows are displayed after the job is completed. Preview window is also available.

Access open and locked files and databases, including Outlook, Quicken, etc. (Windows XP/2003 only).

New VVLauncher can be run as a Windows service, without users logged in.

New subfolder filters in the comparison window.

Improved encryption (with 256 bit support). 

The price for ECMerge Standard is 27.30 €. ECMerge Pro version costs 40.95 €. Educational discounts are also available. Besides, active Open Source project developers are encouraged by free licenses.

ECMerge 2.1.72 provides the following benefits:

Fast: Ellié Computing Merge compares the documents in parallel when they are launched from folders views and profits from Hyper-Threaded as well as Double-Core processors.

Easy to use: Ellié Computing Merge highlights differences in side-by-side views and text blocks that are conflicting. Full undo/redo is provided. You can save your work at intermediate situations for text files as well as for folders.

Source code review: Compare source code to older versions and identify what has changed. Java, C#, C++, Visual Basic, Perl, PHP, Delphi, etc. Syntax coloring helps you to merge by avoiding typo errors.

Merge: Merge your changes and those of your co-workers based on a common ancestor into one copy. One-click to merge a block of text. Editable output. Unlimited undo/redo.

Folder comparison: Analyze differences between 2 or 3 folders hierarchies or ZIP/RAR archives and synchronize them, locally or through FTP/FTPS.

Integrate it in your development environment: Call Ellié Computing Merge from your SCC solution to perform comparisons and merges. Configure periodical batches to generate reports that will help you in evaluating the next branch integration task. Launch a comparison on any file or folder from your file system with the Windows Explorer Shell Extension (Windows only). 

SmartSynchronize is a powerful and user friendly tool for file and folder comparison. It contains standard file/directory comparison and synchronization functionality, as well as advanced three-way comparison and conflict reconciliation capabilities.

Pros:

- Two- and three-way comparison
- Auto merge functions
- Unicode support
- Comparison methods: by line, by character, by C/Java identifiers
- Linking lines between comparison blocks
- In-panel editing
- Custom encoding selection

- Folder tree synchronization
- Compare folders by file contents
- File/directory filters by name or extension

    Cons:

- No custom syntax highlighting
- No converters for MS Office or PDF files
- No support for binary files comparison
- No support for byte-by-byte comparison
- No text filters
- No file filters by size, time, or attributes
- Insufficient report functionality
 

Overview

SmartSynchronize provides powerful three-way comparison functionality at a very reasonable price. However, it still has some areas for improvement. For instance, SmartSynchronize lacks binary files support, MS Office and PDF files converters, as well as byte-by-byte comparison. We should also point out insufficient report functionality, which is crucial for many professional projects.

We think that SmartSynchronize is a cost-efficient solution for medium-sized development projects, which don’t involve binary files comparison. Our rating for SmartSynchronize is 8/10.

Price: $ 39.00 USD (FREE TRIAL)

Diverse comparison methods
Three-way comparison
Text navigation
Report functionality
Merge functionality
Integration with version control systems Yes
Folder comparison
Folder hierarchy synchronization
Custom file filters
Byte-by-byte comparison