Bynder vs. ThirdLight from PhotoShelter

We have numerous renderings for some of our properties that are constantly being updated. It was hard to keep track of the most current rendering since it lived in multiple locations with various employees. Creating a central location where we can regularly update the renderings without having to add a new file and re-upload solved the issue of questioning whether the rendering you were looking at was correct.

Incentivized

• Extracting content is where Bynder shines. My previous EverNote account reminded me of the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark -- warehouse full of stuff where clearly everything was lost once it was put in there. Bynder makes it easy to find and extract information especially because of the thumbnail views aided by the categorization tools. Since you can use these in combination everything is basically a complex Boolean search without needing to know how to write a complex Boolean Search.
• Easy I/O. Getting information into and out of Bynder is really easy -- follows the "don't make me think" rule. visual cues and clear buttons, etc. In fact, since I use multiple systems, I find it easiest to actually do file transfer TO MYSELF via Bynder rather than download or email files between my PC and Mac for example. That's how easy it is.
• Categories, tagging, last-used, most-frequent, hide/show -- there's a lot of flexibility in organizing your content. Technically, this kind of thing exists in every tool I've ever used... but it's the implementation that matters. UI design is vital to making this a valuable tool as opposed to a dreary step of "file retrieval".

Incentivized

• Link Sharing: One thing I wish Bynder had was quick link sharing for images or collections of images to share outside of Bynder. Currently you have to create a collection and send it via email to the person you want to view it. Otherwise you can make it public and share a link but then that collection technically can be viewed or downloaded by anyone. Since I'm used to the functionality of Dropbox, this is one thing that I feel is lacking.
• Public Media Center: Along the lines of the last comment about link sharing; one thing that would be helpful is a public media center. If we were able to tag what photos we would want to include there, along with downloadable logos, guidelines, PR, etc. There are workarounds but the functionality doesn't quite exist.
• Automatic Translations: We opted to keep all of our metadata and tagging in English, as most of our International partners do speak some English; however, it would have been nice to have an option to automatically translate any metadata/tagging for certain languages. We did have the option of automatically translating the main menu buttons but that wasn't much help. If we wanted metadata/tagging in other languages we'd have to input it manually for thousands of assets.

Incentivized

I give it the rating because the filtering system is an efficient way to search and it seems like everyone regardless of age would be able to understand this function of how to locate assets. For average users they will mostly just use it to search and download assets so they don't need to learn everything about it but as long as the designers know the usability better it should not be an issue.

Incentivized

When we were getting ready to switch vendors, WebDAM wasn't very responsive to my questions or my needs. They also sent me all the files on an external drive that was formatted for Mac and didn't even think to verify whether I had a PC (which I did) so the external drive was useless and I had to wait another week to get the updated external drive that was formatted for a PC that I could then use.

Incentivized

My team chose Bynder as it is not my role to decide these things, but it was chosen so that we would be able to send large files and packages to outside organizations like vendors. It was also a matter of storage limitations with OneDrive as we were bound to run out of space as the organization grows. Bynder allowed us to not need to worry about storage.

Incentivized

• More polished and compelling national marketing pieces due to greater and better use of photos.
• More polished and compelling regional marketing pieces due to regional staff members ability to access assets directly and select from full bank.
• Greater efficiency when designing pieces (easy to share assets with external designers).
• Increased use of marketing assets across regions due to sharability.

Incentivized