Coda vs. Yamdu

Coda is great to build a place for your users to go to and see information. It is easy to navigate through and the variety of content creation is great. However, it is not always easy to create what you want and there is a lot of playing around and learning. Coda also sometimes misses some functionality which is expected. For example, downloading a list of users that have access to the platform. Being able to send push notifications when a new page has been created etc. Overall it is a good tool to use just be prepared to invest time!

Incentivized

Even for a small business like mine, Yamdu really felt like a one-stop shop for everything. It's hard to find a comprehensive software for film/video productions, but Yamdu has everything we need. The only thing that really held us back was the cost, ultimately. If anything, I would love a storyboarding feature that let you set the time per shot and build out a sequence in pre-production. I used Storyboarder for this currently and it's very helpful, especially for music videos, to be able to build out a storyboard, set a music/audio track to it, then play it back in real time and see the pacing of the shoot.

• Flexibility. It's easy to get started on a small scale, but add more complex organization strategies as needed.
• Integrations. It's simple to ingest data from sources like Zapier for time-saving automations.
• Useful components. View table data across different formats like cards or custom detail views.

Incentivized

• Crewlists
• Callsheets
• Breakdowns

• It takes getting used to in terms of how the formulas per column is implemented, in contrast to how we build tables in Excel. For organization/team purchase, it would be worth considering having a training for the core team of users. Right now, we do a lot of self-learning.
• Inability to email charts or image without these objects being hosted on a third party. The community has been great in providing workarounds but it would be much more convenient to be able to have such ability natively.
• APAC Support. I'm based in Malaysia, due to timezone differences, even with a livechat implemented, the support for each step and conversation takes up to 24 hours per response. Having some hours covered in our timezone would greatly improve customer support experience.

Incentivized

• More specific financial management reports.
• Creation of some instant messaging software for the team.

Coda is definitely something that has been proven to drive positive impact in our organization. We have many divisions that can benefit from this that we have yet to explore. It would definitely be worth renewing.

Incentivized

Coda can seem either really useful or really useless. The extremes of both ends is driven by what our own understanding of what we want to implement. If we lack this understanding, it will be easy to misunderstand Coda's usability especially in the wrong context.

Incentivized

So far in the past year, we haven't had situations that Coda has gone down for us which is great.

Incentivized

We haven't done any integrations - the initial part of our experience we found that for docs with complex formulas, the page tends to load slowly but in recent months, Coda has improved and optimized the loading times in general and we generally don't find any problems in terms of speed anymore.

Incentivized

Mainly due to timezone differences. I think Coda's support in general is well implemented and executed. They know their stuff and are helpful. But since I'm not in the same timezone, solution rates are slower for me, and that's not something I prefer. I work in customer service, too, and more often than not, time is important. Shortening the solution time would be a much greater experience.

Incentivized

This is one of Yamdu's strongest points.

I'm relatively inexperienced but this experience is meaningful. It would have been nice to have some guidance from Coda so that we understood more on Coda's purpose and potential.

Incentivized

While all of the products listed have great features and platforms, there was always one thing missing from them that I would need to get from another application. Coda was the first one we used that really combined some of the best parts of those products and allowed us to use it in one place. I also appreciate the flexibility of creating your own framework and workflow, unlike in other tools where you have to follow how they capture data and organize projects.

Incentivized

At the time, there really wasn't anything else like Yamdu. Especially as, in Celtx's case, at that time they weren't doing Excel/CSV exports of shot lists in the A/V format, something we required for what we were shooting. I understand that StudioBinder has increased its featureset the past few years, but Yamdu always felt like the most robust option and more familiar with the film/tv world.

I think scalability is definitely good here since it's based on number of doc makers. Implementation into each dept becomes simpler. That being said, due to the nature of our work, we find it easier that we have a "super user" and then a team of other doc makers. This would make the doc creation and management more efficient.

Incentivized

• Increased insight for all stakeholders involved--both in terms of overview and details
• Better grip on issues and escalations--reduced friction, confusion, and higher clarity on status, next actions, and ownership.
• Reduced time required by those who need to maintain all information. Record (a detail) once and use multiple times.

Incentivized

• Positive impact, centralized place with some good tools for film productions
• Negative impact, not that flexible and as expected and strict pricing policy with little flexibility