How to Select the Best Digital Asset Management for Digital Agencies

Are you aware of how much time your employees waste trying to track down assets? It’s estimated that employees can spend 20% of their workweek trying to track down internal information. Wondering how to improve this time spent on tracking information? Let’s deep dive into the best digital asset management software for agencies!

If you don’t have a centralized place for your digital assets, your employees waste time and money digging through old hard drives and servers.

Those assets should be easily searchable and accessible, and with the right digital asset management software, they can be. 

This article will discuss the best DAM (Digital Asset Management) software options for your business and delve into how it can help you and your business.

How to Choose the Best Digital Asset Management Software

Many different companies are offering digital asset management software. To determine the best for you and your business, you must first assess your needs. Do you need something affordable? AI-powered?

Where all of your assets are located? Are they siloed in different departments or across a million hard drives? DAM software will create a centralized digital asset library that is accessible, secure, and searchable.

Do you work with multiple file formats? With DAM software, you can upload pretty much any file type and track down old assets with ease. 

Once you determine your business’s unique needs and how a DAM can improve productivity, you can select the DAM software that’s right for you.

Why Does Your Agency Need Digital Asset Management Software?

As a digital agency, you have a ton of assets you need to manage and maintain. If clients are coming back for revision after revision, you need your team to know precisely which version they should be working on.

Losing important files and assets can also be detrimental to your business, costing time, money, and energy to recreate them. 

You also need your employees to find what they need quickly and share it between departments without fuss. DAM software can help you with this.

Each DAM software has its spin on the features available, but most cover these essential ones:

• Uploading
• Storage
• Adding Metadata
• Organization
• Download
• Advanced Search Options
• Sharing Content
• Security
• Access Control
• Version Control
• Reports and Analytics

All of these features will make tracking down content easier, saving you and your employees precious time that could be used to make it instead. You’ll want to do a digital asset management tools comparison to ensure you are picking the best option for your company.

Top 10 Digital Asset Management Tools

We have narrowed down the list of digital asset management tools with digital agencies in mind. 

If you are a small digital agency that wants to start banking assets or are a large company that hasn’t implemented any digital asset management system yet, there is something here for you

Pimcore

Pimcore is a free digital asset management software that was developed by a digital agency back in 2013. 100,000+ businesses trust and use Pimcore for their digital asset management. It is a great digital asset management software for a small business but can also scale as you do.

Moreover, you can consolidate and manage any type or amount of digital assets. Pimcore can improve your efficiency and automate workflows from beginning to end.

Pimcore offers three different pricing plans. You can look at different pricing plans and see what plans and features meet your budget and needs. A free trial of Pimcore is also available.

MediaValet

MediaValet is one of the top DAM contenders. Their cloud-based digital asset management makes sharing between departments easy. You can also have unlimited users, so you don’t have to worry about needing someone to sign out so you can use the service.

It has a centralized interface and AI-powered tagging for easier searches. You can search for assets using text, audio, and color recognition. This allows you to find the assets you need faster. Large files that can be up to 5TBs are no problem. 

MediaValet can be pricier than other options, but they can create a package that works for your company. 

The pricing at MediaValet reshapes based on your platform configuration, storage and integration needs. It has plans starting at $6,000 a year.

Brandfolder

Brandfolder is attractive for many businesses because it is straightforward to use. It has AI and machine learning to help you track content and how it’s being used.

Brandfolder also has specific DAM software on a case-by-case basis. They know how to service digital agencies and what their needs are.

Brandfolder offers two pricing plans. These are; Premium and Enterprise plans. While the Premium plan starts at $450 per month, get in touch with them for the Enterprise plan.

Canto

Canto delivers all the digital asset management capabilities many business needs while keeping the asset management experience simple and intuitive.

You can easily configure your assets in this centralized content library for your branding. All you need to do is add your assets to folders and albums. Then, this platform will automatically organize the content according to the asset type.

It also safeguards your brand identity with version control, state-of-the-art electronic surveillance, and user permissions. Canto has a simple pricing model, so you can start using Canto with no confusion.

Frontify

In today’s world, it is important to discover a centralized system for every digital asset, where anyone can find exactly what they’re looking for in a simple, clear, and efficient way.

You can upload, store, organize, find, and share any type of asset, sorted neatly into libraries, all with Frontify.

Also, with approval processes and governance in place, you can continuously give teams access to the use-case-specific assets and show how to use them turning question marks into efficiency. Frontify has many features but these are the more needed ones: asset rights management, collaborative workflow and content personalization.

They have got plans for everyone from small scale-ups to large businesses. The plans are called: the Starter plan is  $79 per month and the Team plan is  $279 per month. Also, there is a free option.

Cloudinary

Cloudinary streamlines digital media and asset management to provide better customer engagement. The DAM tool specializes in providing services for individuals, small teams, and small businesses.

The highlighted features are content upload, content storage, real-time content editing, and personalized delivery.

Cloudinary comes with an advanced dashboard that offers online reports, intelligent automation, and a content delivery network And also secures your digital media with automatic backup and revision tracking features.

In addition to the many integration abilities, it also offers four pricing plans: Free, Plus, Advanced, and Enterprise. The prices vary between $89 – $224 per month.

Widen

Widen is excellent for businesses of all sizes. It has a fast search, with automated search functions to make finding what your team needs easy.

It also has asset rights management, making it easy to track when contracts need updating. Batch uploading ensures you won’t have to sit there watching all of your assets load one at a time.

Widen is more expensive than some of the other DAM software but has many features and integrations that could make it worth it for your business.

The Widen pricing model is designed to support expansion. You can choose from one of these three options as your starting point: Workgroup DAM, Workgroup DAM and PIM and Enterprise DAM.

Bynder

With Bynder, you can configure your workspace to work for you. It supports all types of digital media, and you can download files in whatever format you need, saving time on file conversions.

Bynder also allows you to track usage rights and expirations, ensuring you never use an image or video with an expired contract again.

You can try a free trial to make sure it works and scales with your business as it grows. 

All plans Bynder offers focus on helping organizations accelerate digital transformation and elevate digital experiences by maximizing the value of your content in a growing visual economy. Bynder has three pricing plans and the price starts at $450.00.

CoSchedule Asset Organizer

CoSchedule is great for digital marketing teams, and it comes with the whole marketing suite. You can share assets seamlessly internally and externally, and the calendar function can help things stay organized.

CoSchedule offers three different marketing plans. The forever-free marketing calendar helps see everything in one place. The PRO plan includes an advanced marketing calendar with unlimited social media, content and marketing project publishing and the price starts at $29 USD, per user/month. The last option is a family of agile marketing products that helps you coordinate your process, projects, and teams. For more information, please contact CoSchedule’s sales team.

Asset Bank

Asset Bank has excellent support and makes switching over easy with its onboarding service. It is easy to use and organize with highly customizable options for your business needs.

You can use a ton of third-party integrations to make sure everything you use, including CMS systems, can interface with it seamlessly.

Their pricing has been tailored to offer the best features for the best price. They offer two pricing plans: Professional and Enterprise. The Professional option is for businesses that are serious about DAM and need a system that is flexible and scalable. This plan’s pricing is $899 per month. The Enterprise plan is for the ultimate in DAM solutions and is perfect for global businesses. The price of the Enterprise plan is $1999 per month.

How to Compare Digital Asset Management Software?

A digital asset management system is a tool for the entire company and there are many considerations to take.  The better you incorporate and connect your digital asset management systems, the better workflows you will establish, empowering efficiency and cost savings across the entire business.

Choosing the best digital asset management tool for your business is crucial. That is where doing a digital asset management review comes into prominence. It covers the performance, features and benefits you expect from DAM. While doing it, you need to make sure your DAM reviews need to be accurate. 

Also, there are certain criteria you should consider while choosing the right tool for your business;

• User interface, 
• Usability, 
• Integrations,
• Pricing.

Regarding these considerations below mentioned, we wanted to compare these most preferred tools Pimcore and Mediavalet. Since these two are mostly known as the best digital asset management tools in the market, there are differences in the many features they offer. Let’s take a look at the core differences between these DAM software!

• Mediavalet is far superior to Pimcore in terms of integrations, as it integrates WordPress, Microsoft Office, Hootsuite, Adobe and much more. 
• Mediavalet serves small businesses, medium businesses, and large businesses while Pimcore is focused on medium and large businesses.
• Mediavalet offers a free trial version while Pimcore offers a free-forever plan.
• Mediavalet has an asset category and a comprehensive asset library, while Pimcore does not offer these features.
• While Pimcore offers multi-channel distribution, management and marketing possibilities, Mediavalet does not provide these opportunities.

If you are stuck between these tools, it is better to consider your core needs and how these two platforms can fit your needs best.

Pick a Digital Asset Management Software That Works for Your Specific Needs

We hope this has helped clarify some of the digital asset management software options you can choose. Digital asset management is so crucial for small to large agencies. It saves you time and money in the long run.

If you are looking for additional tools to make your digital agency more streamlined, check out our search! It makes it easy to find the things you need to streamline workflow.