Canto is the best DAM product on the market
May 22, 2021
Canto is the best DAM product on the market
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Canto
Canto is our main image repository for the entire company. We use it two ways, actually: We use a portal option for the general employee population, which contains limited images that we approve for company usage, and we use the main library and give access to select employees who need access to all images for use in various projects, media requests, etc. Canto helps centralize all company images and allows access to employees so it eliminates most individual requests from me.
- Canto consistently updates it's software, so they're always making it better and more efficient, user-friendly, etc.
- Provides a portal option that helps you control how your images are being displayed to users, which images can be seen and gives an aesthetic version for employees.
- Canto is very responsive to support requests, ticket submissions, etc., and will work with you until your problem is resolved.
- There's no size limit on files that you can upload.
- It works fairly quickly when uploading images.
- The download button is hard to find, a little obscure and I'm finding that employees are having a hard time figuring out how to download images without help/instructions.
- I had to write up detailed instructions for employees on how to use Canto. It's not exactly user-friendly and self-explanatory upon first use. You have to use it a while to fully understand all capabilities.
- When you do a search, there's the option where if you mouse over the search icon, a tool pops up allowing you to "search within" and the option to select other search filters. This is not easily findable. I have to tell people about it to narrow their search.
- Linking images together. We have photos of an entire process (beginning, middle, end) and it helps to link all the images together so they're easy to find.
- The many options for downloading images. Sometimes, our photographers upload TIF images and our general users typically want JPGs so it's very useful that they can download them that way.
- The portal option/feature was a must for our organization. It presents the best images in our library for the general user.
- It has improved efficiency by putting the task of finding images for presentations, projects, print materials, etc., into the hands of the users, rather than having a central person (which is me) be the contact who employees reach out to for image searches.
- It allows us to push the types of images we want employees to use (including our company logos) so they're not using images we prefer they not use in their projects. It gives us more control over what types of images are being pushed out.
- It saves on man hours used to manage our image repository, which was very archaic before we purchased Canto.
During our research for a product, we tested several different products including Intelligence Bank, Image Relay, Extensis and Box. Some of them could not provide us with a sandbox to test on our own so they were immediately eliminated. We had a set of requirements that we developed and most could did not pass that level. Requirements included the ability to control what users can and can't do, such as delete images, upload images into the main library without an admin reviewing first, cloud-based and where the servers were located with respect to our location, a backup plan if the servers went down, would we be able to download or retrieve ALL of our images back if in the future we decided to leave Canto.
Do you think Canto delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Canto's feature set?
Yes
Did Canto live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Canto go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Canto again?
Yes