Ion is an enterprise-grade content experience platform that empowers modern marketers and designers to create no-code interactive content experiences integrated with their CRM or marketing automation tools. Ion helps enterprises to build brand awareness and increase conversions and lead generation enriching their contact database with declared, high intent data. Ion helps brands launch quizzes, ROI calculators, assessments, interactive infographics, and other interactive formats in…
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Vyond
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Vyond (formerly GoAnimate) is a cloud-based platform for producing custom animated videos. It is used by educators as well as in business contexts by advertisers and content marketers, and for demos and presentations. Vyond has a drag and drop interface and includes libraries with thousands of characters, backgrounds, props, music tracks and sound effects. Users can also import their own audio, image, video or flash files using the import tool.
$49
per month
Pricing
Ion, by Rock Content
Vyond
Editions & Modules
Managed Services + SaaS
Custom
per year
Essential
$49.00
per month
Premium
$89.00
per month
Professional
$179.00
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Ion, by Rock Content
Vyond
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$5,500 per customer
No setup fee
Additional Details
ion’s Build Anything SaaS platform provides organizations with an entirely new and agile interactive content marketing capability. It enables non-technical marketers and designers to create, test and measure an unlimited number of all types of interactive content marketing experiences. It includes unlimited seats, experiences, tests, customization, phone and email support, analytics and more.
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.
As long as money isn't a major issue (this application is pretty expensive!), it's the best solution I've used so far for creating short explainer videos. It's pretty robust/full-featured and relatively easy to learn to use. Vyond is constantly adding assets and features, too. It would not really appropriate for making full-fledged e-learning, as there's no way to add any interactivity to it, and it's not something I'd used to create long, complex presentations.
In the newest version, the timeline allows you to control each asset individually in a way that mimics video auditing software like Adobe Premiere Pro or Camtasia
I love the way you can replace an object and the new object will automatically take on the formatting of the object it is replacing including, location, size, expression, duration on the timeline, etc.
I really enjoy the spotlights on other user's videos. Even when I don't have time to read the full article, watch the full video, or attend the webinars, this is usually enough to give me new ideas to try out when making my own videos
I appreciate the ample notice when things are changing. For example, the platform will be updated at the end of the year, but I have had access to the new format since June(ish) so I've had time to play around with it and get used to it. By the time the legacy format is retired I won't have any problems adjusting to the new format or functionality.
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.
The fact that it's on a cloud server means that sometimes the software can get clunky/slow.
There may be extra work involved if you have multiple characters talking in one audio file and you want them to sync their mouths with their appropriate lines.
Characters having multiple actions/expressions means multiple scenes, which can be very cumbersome to manage.
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.
I was recently at a conference where I learned that many of my peers also use Vyond, solidifying my opinion that it is the right tool for out needs. Further more, one of our content vendors also uses it, ensuring that I will continue to use it as I believe this will facilitate our collaborations in the future
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
This program is great when you have no video experience! There's only a little of a learning curve to the program. In general, the user interface is great and easier than using a program like Adobe premier. It's a great resource to use as a marketer.
Vyond is just an animated video creation tool. You have to use your video content and track its performance through other means. Because it is an online tool it doesn't hog your resources or slow down any other tools that I use. It is a stand-alone product and it doesn't need to integrate with any of our other tools. It does what it does and that is all we need.
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.
I haven’t had any issues that required me to contact their support team. However, I believe support in any product starts before you have to call for help. Vyond provides an option for priority queue when you have their professional option. This is great for folks who need things done faster, especially when businesses can’t afford any downtime. Their Live chat feature is also reassuring, because I don’t always want to spend time on the phone or on hold if their call volume is high and I need to solve an issue.
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.
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.
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.
Vyond is the best tool our company has used for creating animated explainer videos and social content. We have tried many other software solutions but Vyond offers the most options for animating characters, text, and scenes. Despite the lack of options for overall styles, it offers a consistent and professional video every time. Plus, Vyond it's constantly adding new templates to their already expanding library
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.
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
