Brandfolder vs. HCL Unica

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Brandfolder
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Brandfolder, from Smartsheet since the 2020 acquisition, supports brands' content and creative assets with adigital asset management software that helps organize, control, create, distribute and measure creative assets across hundreds of formats including 8K video, documents, images and 3D.N/A
HCL Unica
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management tools including marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management.N/A
Pricing
BrandfolderHCL Unica
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrandfolderHCL Unica
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
BrandfolderHCL Unica
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Brandfolder
7.3
1 Ratings
11% above category average
HCL Unica
-
Ratings
Dashboards10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Data exportability5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Content analytics7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
DAM Features
Comparison of DAM Features features of Product A and Product B
Brandfolder
7.9
1 Ratings
3% below category average
HCL Unica
-
Ratings
Uploading assets7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Downloading assets9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Categories10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset storage10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset sharing10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset search9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Tagging system10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Content editing6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Embed codes8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Metadata7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Collections10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
User access7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow automations5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Related asset discovery2.01 Ratings00 Ratings
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BrandfolderHCL Unica
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MediaValet
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.9 out of 10
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Adobe Marketing Cloud
Score 8.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
BrandfolderHCL Unica
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(6 ratings)
9.0
(15 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(11 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrandfolderHCL Unica
Likelihood to Recommend
Smartsheet
It is so well suited for a cloud based DAM. It's loads so fast, works well in every browser. With remote work now it is so easily for our team to upload, organize, share, and view analytics on our assets. The best feature is the templating system which allows your designers to take what they design in Adobe Indesign and denote which areas are editable and it keeps the formatting, style, and fonts to the end user. The only other options on the market would require the designer to rebuild the design on a separate platform like Canvas. I wish the platform did more to help with handling videos. It doesn't display the runtime on a video, the specs, or play captions inline with the video. I also wish it would do media pushing to social media platforms.
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HCL Technologies
I think it is wel suited for a business with a lot of one on one relations in the database. For example a supermarket that sells products to a client and gives a reduction on that product. It is nice if the selection process is not to complex and does not involve to many calculations. It is also nice if it is very clear what you want to follow up. In our environment we have lots of many-to-many relations. for example one product is held by more then one client. And that client might have more of those products with other clients. These kind of situation demands for a lot of calculations with derived fields(*), and there things go far too slow. Unica is probably not such a good solution for us, because our environment is too complex, and so is to process of creating the selection, we often have to change things in the selection flows. Because of the complexity it is difficult to see what the flow is exactly doing afterwoods, it also takes to much time to modify existing campaigns. The interface is not handy to work with, if you have long lists of variables, of tables or derived fields(*) you have to scroll through trough them, you can not really search them or reorder them. You can not drag and drop fields or other objects like derived fields in the flow, what would be easy if you have to make frequent changes to the proces flow. When you copy objects something the content of the object changes because the links with other objects or lost. (*) derived field: field to calculate something
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Pros
Smartsheet
  • Documents such as contact lists and cooperative programs
  • Featured listings, agents, and maps are just a few examples of creative advertising concepts
  • Provides organization
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HCL Technologies
  • Ability to translate Multiple SQL queries into a very easy to use visual GUI.
  • Provides the ability to pre-define segments, run them once in off hours, store them in their own system tables for quick youth and a significant reduction in CPU utilization on the database.
  • It’s use of Reusable objects. Including user variables to pre-define calculations one time, macros that you can create and pass values to parameterize the SQL code And the creation of templates to easily replicate work.
  • It’s ability to bring in external data on the fly that can very easily be mapped into any flowchart.
  • It’s flexibility and creating UNIX script via triggers to automate sending of files to multiple vendors with different FTP sites
  • It’s flexibility in the output layouts that it can create.
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Cons
Smartsheet
  • If you have a large collection of images, like we do, and you go 2 or 3 pages deep and select an image, then close the image, the collection snaps back to page 1. It's pretty frustrating.
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HCL Technologies
  • Greater integration of real time (Interact) capabilities with outbound channels, in particular IBM eMessage Email & SMS delivery.
  • Additional outbound channels to be integrated into eMessage, including Facebook Fanpage & Twitter DM broadcasts. At the moment these are possible only through custom additional integration.
  • Support for additional marketing database technology, e.g. MySQL, Exasol, ParAccel, WX2.
  • Provision of database technology with software purchase, as Web technology (IBM WebSphere Express) is supplied for free, but no database is supplied - since IBM also market DB2, which is a supported technology it seems a shame.
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Likelihood to Renew
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
HCL Technologies
There are three main factors to renew a licence: 1) Cost to migrate to another platform would be rather expensive and time consuming, plus the requirement of retraining employees to use a new tool 2) It has been proven time and time again that it is a market leader in the space (10 years +) 3) It can be built upon, with the addition of additional IBM EMM modules - despite theories it does have very strong digital capabilities.
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Usability
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
HCL Technologies
I think it is easy to use, if you don't have to do to complex selections.
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Support Rating
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
HCL Technologies
I didn't use the Unica support since it is with IBM, only before.
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Implementation Rating
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
HCL Technologies
- We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart. - The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process
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Alternatives Considered
Smartsheet
Brandfolder has the best UI/UX for the end user and the administrator. The UI/UX is modern and not just a recreation of a folder system like old OS file systems. Brandfolder is so visual based and loads so quickly that makes it easy for users to find their assets quickly. The templating is totally unique when compared to other options on the market. The tagging system, duplicate detection, collections, and stacking files into an asset makes the platform efficient to manage and use
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HCL Technologies
The contact history and the response history are so powerful. You can track whatever you want to help the call center to push relevant offers to our customer. In addition, predictive models can be built, with patience, in IBM Campaign. If you have some complaints from the call center about any campaigns, you can easily validate it into the contact or response history.
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Return on Investment
Smartsheet
  • Cut down on time doubling time on assets
  • It took a long time to set up and train.
  • It is very expensive.
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HCL Technologies
  • It helps my clients drive their business which in turn, drives more profit for them.
  • It helps my clients determine what works, and what doesn't work, in terms of their social marketing campaigns.
  • It helps navigate proper budgeting through determining what clients' users respond to, and what they find unique.
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ScreenShots

HCL Unica Screenshots

Screenshot of End-to-end campaign managementScreenshot of Faster campaign creation