Brandfolder vs. Canto

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
Canto
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
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.N/A
Pricing
BrandfolderCanto
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrandfolderCanto
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsCanto'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.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrandfolderCanto
Considered Both Products
Brandfolder
Chose Brandfolder
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 …
Canto
Chose Canto
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 …
Chose Canto
Canto is not the best DAM solution on the market. It feel sort of date and is based on older ways of working with assets. The performance and UX for the cost is not in alignment. I would highly recommend picking a different product for the price point. Other Dam solutions have …
Chose Canto
I have done demos with A LOT of other digital asset managers and chose Canto out of all of them. Most of the Digital Asset Managers I used all do similar things. They all hold photos, they all have some kind of folder organization, and some have searchability and tagging. But …
Chose Canto
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.
Chose Canto
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.
Chose Canto
We started using the two month trial and liked what we got out of it. Canto also seemed more eager to have us as a customer and was more willing to put in effort up front to take us through demos than the alternatives.
Chose Canto
Best of all in the combined areas of Function, Price, Support based on our 3 month vendor assesment.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
BrandfolderCanto
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Brandfolder
7.3
1 Ratings
11% above category average
Canto
6.6
10 Ratings
1% above category average
Dashboards10.01 Ratings6.710 Ratings
Data exportability5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Content analytics7.01 Ratings6.59 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings6.69 Ratings
DAM Features
Comparison of DAM Features features of Product A and Product B
Brandfolder
7.9
1 Ratings
3% below category average
Canto
7.1
24 Ratings
13% below category average
Uploading assets7.01 Ratings7.523 Ratings
Downloading assets9.01 Ratings8.224 Ratings
Categories10.01 Ratings7.223 Ratings
Asset storage10.01 Ratings8.123 Ratings
Asset sharing10.01 Ratings7.924 Ratings
Asset search9.01 Ratings7.424 Ratings
Tagging system10.01 Ratings7.223 Ratings
Content editing6.01 Ratings6.416 Ratings
Embed codes8.01 Ratings7.010 Ratings
Metadata7.01 Ratings6.720 Ratings
Collections10.01 Ratings7.421 Ratings
User access7.01 Ratings7.023 Ratings
Workflow automations5.01 Ratings5.69 Ratings
Related asset discovery2.01 Ratings6.613 Ratings
DAM Integrations00 Ratings6.713 Ratings
DAM API00 Ratings6.88 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BrandfolderCanto
Small Businesses
Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge
Score 8.8 out of 10
Adobe Bridge
Adobe Bridge
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.8 out of 10
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.8 out of 10
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BrandfolderCanto
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(6 ratings)
8.0
(253 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(18 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(95 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.5
(157 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(12 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
3.6
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
BrandfolderCanto
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.
Read full review
Canto
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.
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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
Read full review
Canto
  • 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.
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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.
Read full review
Canto
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
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.
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Usability
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
Canto is usually available, though sometimes goes down for 30 min - 1 hr. Usually resolved quickly
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Performance
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
I've satisfied with the performance
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Support Rating
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
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
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Online Training
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
Very knowledgable and accommodating trainers who listen to what you're asking and provide detailed yet simple instructions.
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Implementation Rating
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
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.
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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
Read full review
Canto
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!
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Scalability
Smartsheet
No answers on this topic
Canto
Canto is based on the West coast, so occasionally patches and planned outages happen during East coast working hours
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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.
Read full review
Canto
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Canto Screenshots

Screenshot of the Canto AI Visual Search to discover digital assets faster.Screenshot of asset discovery with AI Visual Search, using natural language to instantly find the most relevant images and videos in Canto.Screenshot of Canto's integrations, including Adobe Creative Suite, Hootsuite, Canva, and monday.com.Screenshot of sharing tools to push on-brand digital content to teams, channels, and platforms while maintaining control with access controls and digital rights management.Screenshot of the organized, searchable content hub, where everyone can always find what they need, when they need it.