Acquia DAM (Widen) helps brands manage and distribute assets across teams, tools, and channels. A configurable metadata schema provides business-specific search and workflow capabilities. Plus, AI-powered auto tagging makes assets instantly findable. Content can be synced across systems using the API or pre-built integrations with over 50 tools, from creative suites to project management. Product-based companies can use Acquia DAM to build a unique 360º view of their product content. It…
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Canto
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Canto delivers digital asset management capabilities while offering an intuitive experience for teams. Canto's AI Visual Search enables users to search their brand libraries using natural language.
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Pricing
Acquia DAM (Widen)
Canto
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acquia DAM (Widen)
Canto
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
Optional
Additional Details
Guided or full-service implementation options and annual subscriptions based on capabilities required. Workgroup and unlimited user options available. Storage with Amazon Web Services.
Professional services available for strategy consulting, change management, administration services, design services, and managed integrations.
Canto's platform, supported by a flexible and transparent pricing structure, caters to a diverse array of industries. It empowers companies ranging from teams of 50 employees to global enterprises to fuel their content delivery, maximizing their ROI.
No other similar solutions tried in our company. But I made an online research and found out that Canto is a great digital asset management system for sharing files with external parties, that is extremely important to us.
While Canto Cumulus is a reputable DAM, users cite potential drawbacks such as a complex interface, customization challenges, integration limitations, scalability concerns, and reported issues with support responsiveness. These aspects should be considered based on specific …
Acquia DAM (Widen) had all the features we needed at a price that was not unaffordable. Also, having unlimited users and Admins is something few others have.
I've personally found the user experience with Acquia DAM (Widen) to be more intuitive and easy to learn. Once you get the hang of how to search the metadata, I think it's easier to find the assets you are looking for and truly narrow down your search.
There are a number of features that competitors provide that I would love to see incorporated into Acquia DAM (Widen) but the pricing for Acquia DAM (Widen) is the best value for us.
Canto
Verified User
Employee
Chose Canto
Canto was one of the most cost effective options and was the only one that included all of the features that we were looking for (AI tagging, facial recognition, PMS integrations, OCR text recognition, etc)
Canto functions a lot like our existing server/file storage system, so the transition was smooth. Canto was supreme in searching/tagging. The salespeople were also the easiest to work with.
CANTO is the best balance of functionality, performance and cost for a company like mine that has started a digital transformation programme. Adobe Experience is best in class but too expensive.
Canto proved to be the simplest and cleanest user interface in our opinion. The price was much less than many of the other options that offered the features (bells & whistles) we found unnecessary.
Widen was incredibly difficult to search through and the organization and interface was not user friendly. AEM didn't allow more than a small handful of users, so we never got to actually use it as intended.
Canto has created their own Adobe plugin while Widen utilizes a third party vendor. The Canto plugin is much more reliable and Canto is extremely responsive on issues and suggestions whereas Widen has to rely on a vendor.
Canto's customer service and the ability to adapt to our needs is one thing that sticks out over some of the competition. Many of the other platforms that were comparable to Canto's robust feature list and ease of usability were much expensive. Canto is continuously adding new …
Canto had the best features compared to the price of anyone and met our essential needs of ease of use, portals, meta data completeness. Libris came close to Canto in these features, but overall, canto won with pricing terms and portals. Brandfolder was a contender as well but …
Widen is a great digital asset manager internally. I loved the framework that the platform has. However, we created a main portal to share with our external partners so we could control what was private and what was public. The portal framework was not as user-friendly and we tried too much to make it like a website when it was meant to be a DAM. The main reason we switched providers is that we wanted to have the option to have a consistent framework internally and externally that was more user-friendly with better search capabilities.
Canto is an excellent tool for organizing assets and searching for them in one location. I also really enjoy using the mobile version of Canto on my smartphone when I am on the go. Canto is robust and fast and it has been a major advancement in the way that my organization stores and shares assets.
They offer valuable guidance and educational resources to Administrators
Their I.T. support is knowledgeable and responsive. And friendly!
They build community among Acquia DAM (Widen) Admins
They aren't as salesy and pushy as many of the other DAM Vendors that we considered. I don't feel like they are constantly trying to upsell me or take advantage. I hope this continues to be the case with the acquisition by Acquia.
Ability to manage several portals and allow different users access to each.
Ability to customize each Canto platform or portal to suit all needs.
The platform is very easy to use, and while there are more complex components to the platform, users are able to use only the basics and remain very successful.
Improvements in the cropping and editing features within Acquia DAM are essential to ease the workload for our graphic designers. The current functionality falls short in providing the necessary tools and precision required for efficient asset manipulation, not helping with that time management at all.
Enhancing the onboarding experience, we propose creating more video tutorials for Acquia DAM. These visual guides, covering topics from account setup to collaboration features, offer dynamic, step-by-step learning.
To improve the onboarding experience, we recommend expanding introductory tools and templates in Acquia DAM. Introducing more user-friendly features and providing a variety of templates will empower new users to navigate the platform with ease, fostering quicker proficiency and enhancing overall usability.
The brand templates add-on is very difficult to use. It sounds great on paper, but when you actually try to use it you find out it's very clunky and limited.
Adding fonts to style guides is difficult. Would love to see some sort of integration with Adobe and Google fonts.
Duplicate finder only finds exact duplicates, so if a file has been run through processing of any sort it doesn't find it (ie Photoshop, Lightroom). Would be great if it could have some sort of optical duplicate finder.
Acquia DAM (Widen) is changing its pricing model and at this point, we are unsure whether it is a good thing for us or not. While we consider this a robust tool, we will take our time to evaluate the competitors.
It's a fantastic product and we get a lot of mileage out of Canto. I would 100% say that we plan to renew our subscription and have not explored any other digital asset management tools. It has all the tools we need, seamlessly connects with Adobe products (out primary design tool) and continues to innovate.
We used to have to respond to any email questions from our library users about how to find assets. With Acquia DAM (Widen), the system is similar to online shopping, workable with keywords for those who like to search that way, or with filters for those who like to browse.
Canto is about as easy to use as it gets. I have personally trained a handful of employees who are unfamiliar with DAM/marketing SaaS technology on how to use the platform for their needs. These trainings only take about half an hour (given they are using a very limited set of Canto's features), and afterward, they are pretty well-equipped to use the platform.
There have been a couple of rare instance where after I uploaded an asset, I was unable to rename it, or after uploading it it took a while before it actually appeared and can be viewed in the DAM.
It's very seldom that I have to reach out for support, but when I have, there are quick solutions and follow-ups to make sure the system is working how it should be. My customer support team is also great at reaching out on a regular basis to keep me up to speed on emerging features I may be able to leverage to improve my experience.
I think Canto's onboarding process was really helpful. Our employees were able to utilize the system without excess training sessions which isn't always the case with some software. I also think that their customer support has proven to be super helpful when minor issues arise
The training was very thorough. The recordings for all our traning sessions were provided to us so that we could go back and review. Our trainer was always available for follow up questions. Our trainer shared a spreadsheet with us as a checklist for all things that needed to be done to ensure proper import and setup of our assets and DAM.
It was a lot of work! But worth the effort to get our assets cleaned up and organized. Enough time and personnel need to be allotted for any implementation, but we had some advantage in having our assets in a previous DAM with attached metadata in XML, and our users were prepared with knowledge of our existing DAM at that time. Though old habits present their own issues, a company that is starting from scratch with no DAM has to think farther ahead about how it will organize and collect assets. Far more pre-planning with stakeholders would be needed for a company starting an implementation from scratch.
We didn't have a thorough enough plan for ownership of uploading and tagging and some of our tags were inconsistent which led to some regression in our usage. We tightened up that plan on our end and spoke with support team on Canto's end to establish some best practices and have a much better workflow now.
Compared to Google Drive, the DAM platform stands out as a significantly advanced solution, offering additional features that elevate the user experience and functionality. While Google Drive excels in basic file storage and sharing, the DAM platform goes beyond these fundamentals, providing enhanced capabilities that cater to diverse needs.
Dropbox is not as organized as Canto is. This is very impactful to help us stay consistent and to stay proper when managing our digital assets. Moreover, the ease of navigation is a lot better than Dropbox ever was, this is a big reason why our company has been using Canto for SEVERAL years.We do not want to leave Canto!
The central area for all images and videos is excellent. It has helped improve brand visuals and reduced requests on creative teams.
Due to our small user base (50), many features are not fully used by our business, the small user base is mainly down to costs and budgets set at the start of the year which is a shame as the benefits would be great but the step in costs is too great to transition effectively.
Uploading photoshoots can be tricky due to restrictions on upload and edit counts.
Covid: We all worked from home. It was a major impact for us to stop using a sketchy VPN that is slow and painful. We all became so much more efficient in our work.
Sharing assets: Our company has grown substantially in the past 3 years. Having Canto means that we can easily share assets with our worldwide divisions. We are leading the way on this as the companies we acquired are using archaic servers. We will bring everyone in the Canto world to better manage our assets.
Control: Prior to Canto, people were misusing images - not using the right ones, not using watermarks. Now it's all preventable and we are seeing better quality images used appropriately.