ACD Systems Reviews

ACDSee used to be the gold standard for managing and browsing photos, but now it's a nightmare. I dropped serious cash on the complete ultimate package thinking I was getting the best thing out there and I ended up with a dud. The database is painfully slow and keeps failing, the interface is confusing, the editing tools are poor, everything about it is badly managed, and customer service is useless. Save your money and don't bother.

I've been loyal for roughly 20 years, but honestly it feels like they replaced actual developers with marketing staff. Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 is a complete mess. It's slow, doesn't follow Windows standards, and support just tells you to buy the newer version. Why would anyone keep paying when they've repeatedly given us garbage? I haven't found a solid replacement yet. To be fair, I genuinely loved this software until Pro 5 started renaming files to random numbers. Then upgrading to Ultimate 2023 was supposed to fix the Pro 5 problems and add UHD support, but it turned into an absolute nightmare. The company's refusal to provide real product support is pathetic. At this point I can only guess the original team left years ago and some investment firm took over with no regard for customers.

I'd steer clear of this company. They won't even provide two licenses so you can run the software on your desktop and laptop when traveling. That tells you exactly how much they value their paying customers.

Over my 12 years with this software, I've had to purchase 3 separate licenses because the program would start crashing after 2 or 3 years of use. I'd uninstall and reinstall, enter my license key, but it would say the key was invalid. This happened twice, and while I initially thought maybe I was doing something wrong, I reached out to support via email only to get nowhere. Nobody ever responded. Companies behaving this way should face serious scrutiny just like Samsung and Apple have. There are free alternatives like INFAREVIEW out there, and I'd rather donate money directly to those developers instead.

Do NOT give this company your money. Since the earliest versions, the program has crashed when dealing with certain image collections. It wasn't fixed in 2022 and still not fixed in 2024 when my external HDD keeps turning on and off whenever I try to edit. My drives spin up and down 40 times while editing multiple photos. They're both huge drives and losing them would be catastrophic for my irreplaceable data since I can't back it up due to the size. Every time Windows gets reinstalled the program claims you're registered on too many computers. The response from their support was basically to buy the new version. So each OS reinstall means either purchasing an upgrade or dealing with endless nagging, freezing and slowdowns. This is a scam. I'm willing to pay for software but this is how they treat me because I can't afford frequent upgrades.

The customer service was terrible, and ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac was equally disappointing. I bought the 2021 version and it constantly crashed on MacOS Big Sur. Since I'd purchased it right before the 2022 release came out, I asked about a free upgrade or at least a discount, but got nothing but generic automated responses. Most reputable software companies offer a free upgrade or discount in situations like this to keep customers. Not them. Now I'm stuck with buggy, outdated Mac software that was useful for just a few months and cost me 50 dollars. Don't say you weren't warned.

I've used ACDSee Photo since it started and it's a capable program for organizing pictures. But over the last few years the company itself has gone downhill. I get flooded with spam emails every single day and can't opt out because if you try to unsubscribe they keep sending more. Every message has the same formula: buy our amazing deal today only, coming straight from the CEO. When a CEO's main activity is blasting customers with spam, it makes you wonder what's going on. I used to buy Ultimate every year but I've cut back to buying every few years now. The new features aren't compelling and prices have skyrocketed compared to the beginning. If there wasn't so much spam I'd probably give them a higher score. Update: It's basically impossible to stop their emails since they use tons of different addresses to send from, so you can't block them. That's genuinely terrible spam behavior.

They started blasting me with unwanted emails out of nowhere. I'm not even a customer and have zero interest in their product. Companies that pull shady tactics like sending unsolicited spam deserve to be called out for it.

This company produces solid photo and video editing software. They've been around forever and pack their software with tons of features. The only company that really outperforms them is Adobe, and their prices are way more affordable.