Bynder vs. Extensis Portfolio

We have numerous renderings for some of our properties that are constantly being updated. It was hard to keep track of the most current rendering since it lived in multiple locations with various employees. Creating a central location where we can regularly update the renderings without having to add a new file and re-upload solved the issue of questioning whether the rendering you were looking at was correct.

Incentivized

Extensis Portfolio is perfect for organizing photos as long as everything is keyworded correctly. If it is not part of a group's workflow to add a description or keywords to your photos, then you'd be dumping your photos into a pool with no way to search for them. Extensis Portfolio is best utilized when you give it the ability to help you search (by keywords yourself).

Incentivized

• User-friendly interface, clean and easy to navigate - this has helped with adoption and training so that staff feel empowered to use the portal.
• Completely customizable filters - particularly helpful for locating specific photos quickly.
• Storage - safe and secure web based storage, frees up tons of space on our org Google drive and server.

Incentivized

• Watch folders: Extensis allows for multiple watch folders to be commissioned on a variety of network connected data shares--NAS, direct connect external HDs, etc.. We have our workflow such that each photographer can upload their job into their own folder, and Portfolio automatically injests the image assets.
• Metadata injecting: a key component of our archiving needs are met with Portfolio's fully- customizatable and automatic metadata injection. This allows us to set standard fields across all the assets, while also allowing for custom variations in categories, keywords, and tags. Absolutely key to our workflow.
• Integration with Adobe CC is seamless through the built-in connector.
• Finally, the support team is OUTSTANDING! We absolutely LOVE our support engineer. We are a small org compared to the rest of his portfolio, but he always puts in the extra effort and takes the time to allow us to feel like we are totally supported.

Incentivized

• The search functionality sometimes is challenging
• Many reminders about cookies - more than normal in the US at this time (due to EU compliance) - can be frustrating and confusing for our end users as not all US platforms have this

Incentivized

• Learning curve. It can be very intimidating and difficult to learn for people who are not experienced with similar software.
• Ease of adding new users. It's currently a long process to bring anyone new onto the platform. We have to go through our DAM manager and only they have the ability to add or remove people.
• Thumbnail previews sometimes blank. Sometimes the thumbnails for photos don't load or need to be refreshed manually, which can be frustrating when needing to search through multiple folders and photos.

Incentivized

It is incredibly user-friendly and easy to navigate. Once you poke around, you intuitively learn how to use the platform. Our company provided training sessions for all employees during our official roll-out, and everyone seemed to have a good grasp on how to navigate this platform. We have yet to hear about an employee having difficulty using Bynder, which is a big win

Incentivized

When we were getting ready to switch vendors, WebDAM wasn't very responsive to my questions or my needs. They also sent me all the files on an external drive that was formatted for Mac and didn't even think to verify whether I had a PC (which I did) so the external drive was useless and I had to wait another week to get the updated external drive that was formatted for a PC that I could then use.

Incentivized

Because our organization tends to run software on older equipment, finding someone to support our particular configuration was a challenge. Additionally, trying to explain to someone In tech support about our issues was difficult because a lot of the issues were quirks within the software that had to be seen to be understood.

Incentivized

Once the issue was identified we looked at a damn lot of DAMs. Bynder, Media Valet, Webdam, Canto, Cumulus... I can't even remember them all. But that was the problem. There were too many. When one of our team evaluated Bynder he reported back vis a vis the legacy tools of Box/DropBox/Evernote... all of which had their adherents within our team and NONE of which came close to matching Bynder. So, the decision really became "do we switch now to Bynder, which everyone accepts, or do we spend a year thoroughly testing every other tool until we've broken up again into rival camps?" It was easy. If and when Bynder fails we may look again. But everything's going great now, so why open this can of worms?

Incentivized

We have been with Extensis for many years-- so the comparisons are outdated at this point. Companies like WebDAM, Adobe's Lightroom, mediavalet, and others, just don't have the robust catalogue management Portfolio does. There is a solidness and assurance of functionality we experience when using Portfolio-- nothing clunky or web-cloud shaky

Incentivized

• Bynder has saved our creative and Marketing departments hours of time overall by minimizing the amount of time we are searching for asset requests and empowering employees to find what they need themselves.
• Bynder has given us a platform to share lifestyle and product imagery that costs several thousand dollars overall; whereas before it was hard to share those assets in a way that they were utilized to their full potential. Now we don't have to wonder if we're wasting money on styled imagery or whether people are using it.
• Overall the peace of mind Bynder gives us in terms of employees only using approved assets is pretty priceless.

Incentivized

• Allows quick and easy image and asset searches.
• Has been an invaluable tool for our organization by freeing up database employees to tackle other tasks.

Incentivized