Plastic is several steps ahead of Perforce in branching and merging.
From regular branches to the smart ones, Plastic handles the process of parallel change more efficiently than Perforce.
Plastic branches are first class objects and branching is light and efficient. Perforce has a counterintuitive process for branching and some trouble to handle renames and moves across branches.

ACL based security system

Plastic is built around ACLs from the ground up.
Just a few clicks let administrators and project managers finely tune the security rights.
Perforce security system is limited compared to Plastic’s

Visualization

Perforce implements some branch level diagrams for repository hierarchies.
Plastic implements the well-known 3D version tree which lets users not only stay at the branch level, but zoom inside files and directories.
The Plastic branch explorer allows managing the entire branch and merge cycle visually, and is ready to handle thousands of branches, something out of the scope of Perforce.

Truly distributed development

Perforce solution is proxy-based, which doesn’t really operate seamlessly when the network is too slow or simply went down.
Plastic implements full replication and distributed support, which allows code to be modified in parallel, without restrictions, at replicated sites, and allows it to be reconciled (merged) later on.
Plastic is light enough to allow developers to run the server on a laptop, and then work totally disconnected but with full versioning capabilities.

Multi-server support

Plastic implements one of long awaited feature in Perforce: multiple servers.
Plastic servers can be configured to work on repository or workspace server modes, and then several servers can work together to improve performance and scalability.

Database backends

Plastic relies on well-known and stable database servers like SQL Server, MySql or Firebird.
This feature alone lets system administrator’s to get the best out of their existing IT infrastructure and finely tune the servers using well-known database technologies.

Evolution

Plastic has outperformed Perforce’s functionalities in just a few releases and there’s a bright future still to come.
Release after release Plastic gets faster and feature richer, and the team is open enough to welcome suggestions from their user base, and implement them at light speed.