Acquia DAM (Widen) vs. Canto vs. PallyCon

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

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.

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

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

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.

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

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Canto is usually available, though sometimes goes down for 30 min - 1 hr. Usually resolved quickly

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

I've satisfied with the performance

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

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

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

Very knowledgable and accommodating trainers who listen to what you're asking and provide detailed yet simple instructions.

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 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.

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

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!

Incentivized

Can not give an accurate rating.

Incentivized

Canto is based on the West coast, so occasionally patches and planned outages happen during East coast working hours

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

• 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.

Incentivized