Expensive and probably more features than we need but not sure what else there is.
March 05, 2022
Expensive and probably more features than we need but not sure what else there is.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Widen
It's super expensive. We'd been using Lightroom to tag images and SmugMug to distribute them and, honestly, if Lightroom was multi-user we never would have gotten Acquia DAM (Widen). We're using Acquia DAM (Widen) so a group of people can search through tagged images, download and/or share. These are photos used on social media and various brochures and publications. Acquia DAM (Widen) has a lot of features that we don't use -- like we don't expire photos when we send them to people, which would be more useful if we had a product catalog or something. We don't attach documents to assets, which might be useful if we had people signing contracts or something. We just photograph model releases and tag them with the subject's name which is less of a hassle (IMHO) than associating a release with a photo. So there's stuff it does we're not using that might make it a lot more useful for someone else. Our needs are pretty simple. As a database for finding photos, it's fine, but every time the bill comes I think "dang, this is really expensive."
- If you search for a keyword embedded in an image, it will find images with that keyword.
- Each image has a download button that will let you download the image.
- There's a "search within result" feature which is nicer than having to go back and add a new keyword.
- When you share images with someone via email, you have to enter their email into a database first. I've no idea why you can't just put an email address in and share the images with someone. Maybe it makes it easier if you send stuff to the same people a lot? Not sure.
- It's really expensive.
- The interface is a bit clunky. This is probably a result of me not using a lot of the features a lot and every time I want to do something, like figure out how to refine a search by metadata categories there's a lot of wandering around.
- It's really expensive. That's really the main drawback.
- Finding images by keyword.
- Uploading images into a database.
- The ability to get all of our files with the embedded Metadata back if we move to another product.
- People email less looking for specific photos from our collection.
- It's a good place to keep all of the logos that we use a lot.
- It's reduced staff interaction.
I'm not the one who makes the decision on this, but I suspect that if we find something less expensive we'll try that. I'm not sure how much of its current features we use, it might be 10%, or it might be 40% but we're doing everything that we're likely to do.
This might be our problem. We don't have multiple sales and marketing channels, we don't have API first tools, we don't have embedded code functionality and I don't even know what a Martech stack is. We just have like 10,000 photos that people need to sort through to find stuff to make a brochure. That's pretty much it.
I found them interchangeable. Not sure why we switched from one to the other, I didn't make the decision, but they were pretty similar.
Do you think Acquia DAM (Widen) delivers good value for the price?
No
Are you happy with Acquia DAM (Widen)'s feature set?
Yes
Did Acquia DAM (Widen) live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Acquia DAM (Widen) go as expected?
No
Would you buy Acquia DAM (Widen) again?
No