That depends on your needs. You can find some very inexpensive stand-alone cataloging software that has a reputation for being far more robust than Lightroom. I recommend considering IDimager's Photo Supreme at least as a starting point.
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I'm not an expert but here are my thoughts. I could never get on with Bridge so was happy to abandon it and use LR. It's great for cataloguing and like a number of other folk I do a lot of my basic editing in LR. It's quick and easy. For the occasional photo that deserves (not many of them) or needs more sophisticated editing, I then use Photoshop CS6 (accessing it via LR so that the finished product ends up in the LR catalogue).