Ion, by Rock Content vs. Unsplash for Brands

If you want to choose a quick start template and fill in the fields with your content, Ion will be fantastic for you. We've done this with whitepapers and quizzes and it's been great and extremely easy to use. If you have an exact idea of what you want, and a background in web development, you may get frustrated. Ion has some quirks that make it tricky to fully customize - everyone once in a while I really just want to go into the HTML and make some changes, but can't. If you are looking to reuse a piece of content for specific targeting (industry or account-specific), Ion is great. The dynamic substitutions are great and very helpful.

Incentivized

I love that I can get real-time and trending content made available on current events. When writing 5-7 articles a day, a good image to support the context of the writing really drives the message home to the reader. Unsplash offers an easy way to search for images that I can use to boot visual engagement, images that are from the field and that resonate with the audience.

Incentivized

• Quick Starts make it so easy to get started.
• Real-time updates are awesome and save a ton of wasteful process.
• The combination of user friendliness for simple things and the flexibility to do more complex things is great.
• Chat support is excellent and deeper-dive support has been super helpful.
• The ability to use these tools in the cloud or embedded has given us tactic flexibility.

Incentivized

• Unsplash consists of a great selection and good variety stock photos.
• Unsplash offers curated collections.
• Unsplash offers great advertising options to creators.

Incentivized

• Ion University, while stacked with a wealth of information, is difficult to navigate from a troubleshooting perspective. The tutorial videos are all very helpful, but they are also very long. Sometimes I would want to search for how to address a particular issue I was struggling with and it would be a two-minute segment buried in a 45-minute video.
• Again, getting back the self-guidance side of things. I think a lot of the tutorials are set up in a way that makes sense to Ion, but not as much to the end user.
• I think the controls admins use when creating new users could be a bit more straightforward.

Incentivized

• Would like to see more variety for commonly searched images
• Indications if you've used the images before on the site and when (dates, challenges)
• Information on the photographer/creator

We use it for every landing page and we plan on only doing more dynamic content creation. We dont see that option coming in-house any time ever in the future. ION has a very robust platform for us to work with that really allows us to do more for our customers in regards to having the one-to-one conversation.

Incentivized

I need to learn a little more about the product and its capabilities before I give a higher review. However, the availability of image trending is far superior to Getty or Getty Enterprise.

Incentivized

Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported

Incentivized

I think the usability is awesome. The UX and simplicity is great and allows you to quicky find a suitable image. Compared to, for example Shutterstock, it's way more accessible. The added collection feature is also nice, since they are relevant for the time of year. The quick filters on the top are useful as well. And the download is always fast.

Incentivized

Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.

The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.

Incentivized

They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.

Incentivized

There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.

Incentivized

I was not the decision maker to choose this over Uberflip, but the UI is much more appealing to me. It's incredibly easy to use, clean, and from a backend standpoint, it requires little to no tech savvy'ness. Our team has really enjoyed using it and has required no training what-so-ever.

Incentivized

I would say that Unsplash for Brands is a lower-end budget and easier option for projects. Again, if you need something very specific - whether it's in industry, pose, subject, or environment, then you'll likely want something a bit more expensive with a larger library available. That being said, we've been able to tackle a number of projects with Unsplash for Brands.

Incentivized

Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.

Incentivized

• Though we have not had the service long enough to see any measurable outcomes, we've been able to create interactive web content faster than ever before
• The speed with which we can build interactive pages and re-use assets has been critical as projects we've done with Ion have made their way around and more and more internal clients have said "me too" for their own projects
• It is very pricey at $28K for the base annual subscription (dropping to $24k after the first year), so depending on your budgetary situation, that may make no sense for your team--but we had contract money set aside for a company to build us a microsite for around the amount, so we just used it for Ion instead and will now be building the microsite ourselves using it

Incentivized

• Excellent for using photos for content creation, keeps things fresh yet still on brand for our program's needs
• Ease of use, directly implemented in the program to directly find an image without needing to leave the site
• Perfect since it's free!