Bynder helps brands to distribute their marketing materials, manage creations and facilitate brand consistency.
Bynder is a solution for marketing that comes with best in class digital asset management, creative project management, brand identity guidelines, product information management and web-to-publish modules.
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Contently
ScoreĀ 9.2Ā outĀ ofĀ 10
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Contently is a SaaS content marketing platform from the company of the same name headquartered in New York, containing features a collaboration space, calendar, and workflow controls, engagement metrics, and rapid access to a high volume of original content from freelance creative talent, researchers, and journalists.
Contently has received approximately $12.3 million in funding since its founding in 2010.
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Pricing
Bynder
Contently
Editions & Modules
Enterprise Brand Portal
$0
User/Storage/Modules/Add-Ons
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bynder
Contently
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
The cost of Bynder depends on the number of users, amount of storage, and the modules needed.
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.
It's helpful for top of marketing funnel writing that we can sometimes lose sight of because we are so ingrained in the product day to day. Contently is also helpful for long written pieces and ebooks that will take a significant amount of employee time to put together. I avoid using Contently for mid to bottom funnel marketing writing because my team will often have greater insight into the product function or use-case or product release, making them more adroit to the tone of the written piece and able to produce the content quickly.
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".
Consolidating my work in one place to make my work life easier
Contently is unique from other content marketing organizational tools in one key way. It hands you a network of freelance professionals eager for delegated work.
You can search through a database of professionals to find the perfect person for your given project. Find individuals in your budget offering the exact skills and experience you need.
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.
It is incredibly user-friendly and easy to navigate. Once you poke around, you intuitively learn how to use the platform. Our company provided training sessions for all employees during our official roll-out, and everyone seemed to have a good grasp on how to navigate this platform. We have yet to hear about an employee having difficulty using Bynder, which is a big win
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.
I'm giving them a 10, but honestly, I've never reached out to them. I do see them putting out regular content on social media, so they might be responsive to questions there as well as regular customer support. In their posts and communication, they do seem to value their community, so hopefully, they have good customer support. And I've seen them asking for pitches from their community to publish well-paid articles during this stressful coronavirus time, and I really appreciate that.
WebDAM and Bynder merged, so we didn't have to choose between them. We found these two had the best templating functions, which was a must have for our clients. Their permissions and user group management also seem to be the most robust. We found their support, including site, documents and staff to be the most responsive
I also opened an account with Skyword in 2019, which is a similar service. The person that recommended it was a travel writer, and since I've done that as well, I thought it might be a better fit. To this point, I've received no work from it either, and don't hold out a lot of hope. As previously mentioned, where I think Contently does well is by giving you an online portfolio, additional resources like a blog for learning, and a rates database for publications.
Contently contributors have produced some great inbound marking posts and creative materials saving our marketing team significant time allowing them to focus on more strategic plans for the business.
The amount of time Contently has saved our internal creative writing staff has more than paid for itself!
