Item: Canto
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Canto for internal documentation of all types and for all departments. Use as a way to organize and improve the finding of correct documents

Pros and Cons

Flexible
Very powerful search engine (almost too powerful)
has features we can use

Search engine not intuitive
hard for my users to understand
VERY poor interaction with Adobe products, which we expected to be a main reason for us to get it

Return on Investment

Very poor ROI. Difficulties in using Canto have created such a bad taste in everyone's mouths that I can't even mention it by name.

While I think the platform is actually very good, the difficulties with our rollout and implementation (some of which were our fault) have made it very unlikely I can convince senior management to continue funding it. Whenever I try to develop ways of using features such as portals, the usual reaction is, "How can we do this without relying on Canto because we all hate it?"

Alternatives Considered

I used Canto Cumulus many years ago which is why I recommended Canto for us. We had hoped it would fit better with our very broad needs, but several people have recommended we pursue Media Valet, assuming we continue to look for a DAM. They feel it is more applicable to non-marketing departments.

Key Insights

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?

Did implementation of Canto go as expected?

Would you buy Canto again?

Other Software Used

Adobe Advertising Cloud, Microsoft 365, Asana

Likelihood to Recommend

The work with Adobe products is not good at all. Very unintuitive. When it brings in images, it renames them, making it unusable for other documents sharing the same graphic. Also brings in some images at low res, making them unusable for export. If we could get tighter integration with Google Drives, that would be great. Having to wipe out entire drives and then reimport them again is killing me. People get way too frustrated when searching. I can't seem to figure out how to restrict their searching effectively.

Canto for internal documentation

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Canto