Acquia DAM (Widen) vs. Adobe Marketing Cloud

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.

Incentivized

If you have a rather large budget and/or several clients to take advantage of the AMC, you would likely benefit from its all-in-one solutions. There are a myriad of excellent tools for digital marketing professionals to take advantage of within the suite, and creating a campaign becomes much more manageable for collaboration and execution through to reporting thanks to the suite's vertically integrated nature.

Incentivized

• 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.
• They're just plain nice people to work with.

Incentivized

• Content Analysis - Between the Pages report and the participation metrics which show what percentage of conversions a page was involved with, you get an excellent analysis of what content is important and effective, and what is not. With the ability to add up to ten metrics side by side, drill downs, and power tools like Ad Hoc Analysis, you will know exactly where you need better content.
• Pathing - Adobe Analytics captures every single path of every single visit of every single visitor and puts it at your fingertips. There are tools to aggregate common paths so you find out how frequent they are, lots of good page flow reports, and tools to pick out specific paths that will keep you from being overwhelmed. This has been absolutely invaluable to us as we have learned about how our customers are using our sites and which paths are leading to exits rather than converions.
• Customization - There are so many custom metrics and dimensions you can add and you can create segments based on all of them, along with the out of the box metrics and dimensions. You truly get an implementation that is specific to your company, your needs, your strategy, and your site.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Customer services could be improved for smaller clients. Adobe Marketing Cloud provides great support for most of its customers, however, it may not work well enough for smaller engagements.
• Adobe could offer multiple price options based on the usage, which is missing at the moment.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Although a powerful tool, Google Analytics has been catching up in capabilities and is much simpler to use. As analytics move to the spotlight, more sections in a company want to have access to it. However, creating straightforward reports/dashboards and sharing them with different groups is not a strength of Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Never had an issue where I was unable to access Widen.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We decided to stick with Acquia DAM (Widen) in the short term but will be reviewing the options this or next year to better integrate with Social, Web, and Creative team needs. We use Sitecore for all our web services, so it needs to be compatible with that, Social also needs to integrate but is not fixed on a single system, but Canva would be a good fit. The creative team always prefers local storage to link to rather than the cloud due to speeds.

Incentivized

I would say it is the leader in the industry and was easily the number one choice in two of the three places I have implemented a marketing automation platform. Hubspot is its closest competitor and ended up being the better choice for a membership association but the Adobe product can doo all the things and do them well. Just make sure you get all the discounts available before closing the deal.

Incentivized

Can not give an accurate rating.

Incentivized

• The Acquia DAM (Widen) helped our company transition more quickly to remote work, giving users access to files much faster than the company servers could.
• The Acquia DAM (Widen) has given non-web devs the ability to quickly build clean web pages that share out marketing resources and information.

Incentivized

• It has helped us track our ROI better and see costs versus revenue coming in directly from emails.
• A/B testing is very helpful to ensure the best email is being chosen to get sent out.
• Our deliverability has improved a lot.

Incentivized