Syncman

Yes it is. And if you're already using it and happy with the results then by all means continue. There are however several differentiating factors:

• Syncman by default lets you know before any changes are made. This allows you to cancel the sync if you think things have gone awry. Anyone who's ever used sync software that doesn't do this (ie. the built-in Address Book sync) will immediately understand why we think this is so important.
• Syncman offers one-way sync in addition to two-way sync. For many people one-way sync is their preferred strategy because it eliminates many of the typical problems of two-way synchronization like duplicates and potential data loss.
• I've had bad experiences with Apple based synchronization in the past and based on Syncman customer feedback lots of other people have as well. This is admittedly subjective, but I've received lots of comments expressing how much more reliable Syncman is over the built-in sync.

Yes.

This question is surprisingly difficult to answer, due to the concept of Accounts in the Contacts app. But here's how it should work, according to the Apple's limited documentation and my own experiences:

• Syncman will sync any contact that you can see in the Contacts app to your Google account. This includes iCloud contacts, Facebook contacts, etc.
• Any contact that Syncman adds to your Mac contacts will be added to your 'default' account. From my experience this will be your iCloud account if you have one configured, otherwise your 'On my Mac' account. If you have multiple accounts that could be your default account, your default account should be configurable somewhere in the Contacts preferences.

The documentation from Apple on all of this is practically non-existant, so if you find any behavior contrary to what I've explained above please let me know.

The fields currently supported by Syncman is quite limited:

• Name
• Company
• Title
• Notes
• Email Addresses
• Phone Numbers
• IM Accounts (AIM, Jabber, MSN, ICQ & Yahoo)

Please note that this does not include photos or postal addresses, among other missing fields. While I do plan to eventually support all possible fields, you should base your decision to purchase Syncman only on what it currently supports, not on what it may support at some point in the future.

Not currently. The roadmap for Syncman includes support for all contact fields as well as contact groups. However, I cannot give any estimation of when these features might be available, and you should not purchase Syncman if it's current features do not meet your needs. If you're interested in being notified when there's a new release, be sure to subscribe to the blog or follow @wateree on Twitter.

Not natively. One work-around is to use a product like SwitchUp to create a Syncman profile for each account that you would like to synchronize.