Comparison of 14 Digital Asset Management (DAM) Platforms – Part 1 of 2
Learn the differences among the industry-leading Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform providers.
Published January 20, 2022
Last updated February 23, 2022
Digital assets today come in various forms, and their continuous mass production can complexify the marketing world. This is especially true in the climate of remote-first teams, where effective collaboration requires intelligent workflow design and organisation.Â
As a supportive technology – Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform – is a solution that can host and organise all varieties of digital assets.Â
Digital Asset Management is a repository of media assets such as;
- images,Â
- videos,Â
- documents,Â
- spreadsheets,Â
- presentations,Â
- animations,Â
- diagrams,Â
- emails,
- and more.
The purpose of DAM is to facilitate content storage and management, yet, DAMs do tend to have multi-modal offerings supporting many content-related processes.Â
For example, team members get to access the latest or in-progress versions of media assets, enabling feedback-driven content creation workflow. Different departments can utilise assets in their specific context or repurpose parts they need. Additionally, DAM can help increase asset control between various departments, helping the content governance causes. Lastly, a centralised content repository can ensure alignment between team members, departments, partner organisations, or anyone involved in business operations and can benefit from a company-wide digital asset repository.
Therefore, an effective DAM will be easily navigated by any department or external partner, intuitively organised, and readily searchable. In this article, we will note supported asset types, ease-of-use, user type and use case, content production process (review, approval, updates) and its added capacity or integrations with other systems (CMSs, PIMs or creative tools) as critical differentiators among the platforms.Â
In the first part of this blog series, we will be comparing:
- Adobe Experience Manager
- Aprimo
- Sitecore
- Widen (acquired by Aquia)
- Bynder
- MediaBeacon
And in the second part, we will compare:
- Salesforce Experience Cloud
- MediaValet
- Bloomreach Experience
- Kentico Xperience
- Progress Sitefinity
- Liferay Digital Experience Platform
- Acquia Digital Experience Platform
- OpenText Experience Platform
The solution’s compatibility will eventually be your business’ decision that you can measure against your requirements. However, we will inform by following our knowledge of the market offerings and useful technology enablement.
Comparison of 6 Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions
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Adobe Experience Manager (Assets)
Adobe Experience Manager Assets is part of the broader offering of Adobe Experience Manager that helps marketers optimise and automate cross-channel digital experiences. Its native integration with Adobe’s Creative Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud can benefit enterprise-level marketing and sales teams. The DAM, therefore, can host a variety of activities, from editing, filing, and delivering digital assets to enabling the entire content production workflow. The ability to host both in-progress and final versions of assets is the platform’s added value.
Adobe Experience Manager Assets lets you track activities within the systems, providing greater control and visibility. Businesses can set up their own permissions and licensing models for asset management.
Adobe Experience Manager Assets is scalable to host millions of digital assets, supporting various newly-emerging formats, such as 3D. The user experience is intuitive and doesn’t require a lot of training, which is what we rate high on our comparison scale.
Aprimo
Aprimo acts as a complete digital asset management platform, content production facilitator and marketing management platform. So in one centralised place, brands can access their completed files, track ongoing content projects, tailor custom workflows, and view content performance.
Aprimo’s strengths include strong support for core DAM capabilities like search and digital rights management. The solution offers robust integrations with leading business systems such as Salesforce, Adobe, and Slack.
Sitecore
Sitecore is a digital experience platform and content hub, offering a content repository and other functionalities such as content planning, production, collaboration, and management. Sitecore evolved its offering by buying a DAM platform called Stylelabs and integrating it into the company’s portfolio as Sitecore Content Hub.
The system has an intuitive user interface. It can readily integrate with solutions such as Salesforce and Microsoft through Connectors, plus the company offers Content Hub JavaScript SDK for further development and integration with third-party solutions. As a result, Sitecore Content Hub is considered a highly scalable DAM solution fitted for many businesses.
Widen
Widen offers workflow automation capabilities focusing on digital assets, product information (PIM) and video asset management support. Widen started as a standalone DAM solution, whereas recently, the company combined DAM and PIM into one system.
The solution offers capabilities to automate and simplify the digital asset management and content production process, from creation, review, approval, and distribution.
Considering functionalities, Widen is a sophisticated DAM solution that can meet the complex needs of enterprise organisations with end-to-end asset management support. It offers features such as AI-metadata support, version control, granular governance controls and enterprise platform integrations with creative tools.
Note: Acquia acquired Widen in September 2021, adding a fully integrated Widen DAM as part of the Acquia DXP solution. However, both solutions can still be used separately or together. Find more info about the acquisition here.
Bynder
The product at its core has essential digital asset management capabilities, with the option of add-ons for brands that want to do more with it, so Bynder’s solution can scale to fit any company size.
One of the newest features is Dynamic Asset Transformation (DAT), which connects the DAM content engine to other company solutions, streamlining the entire asset management and optimisation process.
Bynder has an in-house support team with 24/7 availability to help the solution implementation and adoption, ensuring businesses mitigate any unnecessary efforts and enjoy a light user experience.
MediaBeacon
MediaBeacon offers a strong digital asset management platform integrated with workflow tools to assist the work-in-progress assets and shorten the content speed to market. Capabilities help facilitate the content production workflow including the creation, review, and approval process. MediaBeacon also integrates with leading industry solutions such as Adobe Creative Cloud to further optimise the content production process.
It provides a 3D asset view with enterprise-grade searchability capacity and the ability to control individual, group, and role-based permissions. MediaBeacon’s 3D content support is particularly notable because MediaBeacon caters to CPG companies with 3D packshot models.
Final thoughts
Even though we took extra care to provide the latest information available in early 2022 for the above solutions, companies should always perform an in-depth review for themselves, as SaaS solutions tend to upgrade multiple times per year.
In our next part of this comparison blog post, we will look into the second batch of solutions, including Salesforce Experience Cloud, MediaValet, Bloomreach Experience, Kentico Xperience, Progress Sitefinity, Liferay Digital Experience Platform, Acquia DXP, OpenText Experience Platform.
And if you require a more in-depth solution overview that is tailored to your use case, reach out to our team for a chat. It’s free.
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