Acquia DAM (Widen) helps brands manage and distribute assets across teams, tools, and channels. A configurable metadata schema provides business-specific search and workflow capabilities. Plus, AI-powered auto tagging makes assets instantly findable. Content can be synced across systems using the API or pre-built integrations with over 50 tools, from creative suites to project management. Product-based companies can use Acquia DAM to build a unique 360º view of their product content. It…
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Xinet
Score 7.0 out of 10
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North Plains Systems in Toronto now offers and supports Xinet, a digital asset management platform with an emphasis on collaboration and sharing. The California company Xinet, the platform's original developer, was acquired by North Plains Systems in 2012.
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Pricing
Acquia DAM (Widen)
Xinet
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Acquia DAM (Widen)
Xinet
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Required
No setup fee
Additional Details
Guided or full-service implementation options and annual subscriptions based on capabilities required. Workgroup and unlimited user options available. Storage with Amazon Web Services.
Professional services available for strategy consulting, change management, administration services, design services, and managed integrations.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Acquia DAM (Widen)
Xinet
Features
Acquia DAM (Widen)
Xinet
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Acquia DAM (Widen)
6.6
Ratings
7% below category average
Xinet
-
Ratings
Dashboards
7.20 Ratings
00 Ratings
Standard reports
4.90 Ratings
00 Ratings
Custom reports
5.40 Ratings
00 Ratings
Data exportability
8.10 Ratings
00 Ratings
Content analytics
7.30 Ratings
00 Ratings
DAM Features
Comparison of DAM Features features of Product A and Product B
Acquia DAM is well suited for large companies that need to organize and control the flow of assets being used by their teams and vendors. It provides much better control than file storage sites like Dropbox, where there's little control over what goes where and almost non-functional search functionality. If you're a smaller company, you may be able to get by or have someone dedicated to doing so, but for larger companies, it really takes a lot of the manual work out of it!
As a legacy DAM system, Xinet is great. But historically they have been slow to develop new features and they have allowed their competitors to take the lead with more modern features like video and digital/social support and more intuitive interfaces. It seems that most DAM companies have a cloud-first view on their storage, while Xinet, which emerged from on-premises servers, has only recently begun to move into that space. That said, Xinet is a niche product perfect for anyone needing to manage large, still photoshoots and rights-managed assets, and then share them with large teams since it is not based on a per-user pricing structure.
They offer valuable guidance and educational resources to Administrators
Their I.T. support is knowledgeable and responsive. And friendly!
They build community among Acquia DAM (Widen) Admins
They aren't as salesy and pushy as many of the other DAM Vendors that we considered. I don't feel like they are constantly trying to upsell me or take advantage. I hope this continues to be the case with the acquisition by Acquia.
The AI tagging is not very intuitive; if you upload 100 assets, you have to wait for ages to see if they have been tagged by constantly checking the field views over and over again. It would be good to have an AI tagging manager where you could submit and check tagging status.
For image downloading, it would be good to be able to select an image size rather than an aspect and then adjust the image to the size.
We would have jumped at the chance for SSO or Site Core integration, but the costs were so high it just was not worth it; we could have hired people to do it manually for cheaper.
Acquia DAM (Widen) is changing its pricing model and at this point, we are unsure whether it is a good thing for us or not. While we consider this a robust tool, we will take our time to evaluate the competitors.
Acquia DAM (Widen) is very intuitive, it does not take extensive training as some tools do to use the tool. Uploading assets, creating portals, collections and sharing are all very simple. Acquia DAM (Widen) also does not force you to fill out all of the metadata. You can fill out as little or as much as you would like.
Xinet is intuitive to use. It is perhaps the only DAM that features a traditional mounted volume, so anyone working in an environment with local servers will love it. Search is accurate and faceted searches allow users to narrow search results. Setup requires a lot of training if you want to leverage all of its complex workflow capabilities.
There have been a couple of rare instance where after I uploaded an asset, I was unable to rename it, or after uploading it it took a while before it actually appeared and can be viewed in the DAM.
The Acquia DAM support team is fantastic! Not only do we have an amazing customer support contact, the regular chat support is a great resource. Our CSM schedules meetings with our team regularly to ensure that we're meeting our goals. And the general support is great at responding quickly!
Support is handled by third-party server integrators. Our partner, NAPC, has always been there when we've needed them and also develops unique plugins to expand XInet's capabilities.
The training was very thorough. The recordings for all our traning sessions were provided to us so that we could go back and review. Our trainer was always available for follow up questions. Our trainer shared a spreadsheet with us as a checklist for all things that needed to be done to ensure proper import and setup of our assets and DAM.
It was a lot of work! But worth the effort to get our assets cleaned up and organized. Enough time and personnel need to be allotted for any implementation, but we had some advantage in having our assets in a previous DAM with attached metadata in XML, and our users were prepared with knowledge of our existing DAM at that time. Though old habits present their own issues, a company that is starting from scratch with no DAM has to think farther ahead about how it will organize and collect assets. Far more pre-planning with stakeholders would be needed for a company starting an implementation from scratch.
We started with the Widen system but ended up switching to Brandfolder. Brandfolder had the consistent interface across internal and external platforms. It was easier to use and search for assets for our internal team and brand partners. I preferred the Widen system's ability to share assets with direct links and the ability to add metadata upon upload.
We selected Xinet based on having a large number of potential users and wanted unlimited web seats. Paying a one time software fee versus a monthly seat payment was a big draw. Telescope was four to five times more expensive and was not feasible at the time. We liked Basecamp but we needed a local solution for storage, not hosted.
Xinet is a great platform to build off of. We use it in combination with Enfocus Switch which has greatly improved the automation capabilities and we use Xinet as the portal for external users. Our internal users very rarely interact with the Xinet GUI.
