Canto vs. Extensis Portfolio

Canto is an excellent tool for organizing assets and searching for them in one location. I also really enjoy using the mobile version of Canto on my smartphone when I am on the go. Canto is robust and fast and it has been a major advancement in the way that my organization stores and shares assets.

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

• Allowing users to download a resized version of an image self serve (eg. for social media)
• Sharing collections where recipients can see and download high res images
• Tagging to make searches very simple and eliminate complete folder structures
• Tag all info about an asset in the data rather than trying to name images with this data

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

• I do with we could search for colors or items in Canto, for example red shirt photos
• We have a small team, but everyone needs different levels of access, I feel like there arent many levels of access as there could be

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

We are very likely to renew our service with Canto. This is because of the support we have received and what we have seen Canto do so far for our company. We are finally able to organize our assets well and maintain governance over all of our digital assets. It has eliminated time difference issues and is equipping people within our company with a lot of content for them to use and push.

Incentivized

Canto is about as easy to use as it gets. I have personally trained a handful of employees who are unfamiliar with DAM/marketing SaaS technology on how to use the platform for their needs. These trainings only take about half an hour (given they are using a very limited set of Canto's features), and afterward, they are pretty well-equipped to use the platform.

Incentivized

Canto is usually available, though sometimes goes down for 30 min - 1 hr. Usually resolved quickly

Incentivized

I've satisfied with the performance

Incentivized

I think Canto's onboarding process was really helpful. Our employees were able to utilize the system without excess training sessions which isn't always the case with some software. I also think that their customer support has proven to be super helpful when minor issues arise

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

Very knowledgable and accommodating trainers who listen to what you're asking and provide detailed yet simple instructions.

Incentivized

We didn't have a thorough enough plan for ownership of uploading and tagging and some of our tags were inconsistent which led to some regression in our usage. We tightened up that plan on our end and spoke with support team on Canto's end to establish some best practices and have a much better workflow now.

Incentivized

Canto was one of the most cost effective options and was the only one that included all of the features that we were looking for (AI tagging, facial recognition, PMS integrations, OCR text recognition, etc)

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

Canto is based on the West coast, so occasionally patches and planned outages happen during East coast working hours

Incentivized

• Through a public service-based portal we've created, we have decreased the number of simple service calls that our service reps receive, because customers are now able to access an online platform and help themselves. This frees up our service reps and give them more time to spend on other, more complex cases.
• Decreases the time spent looking for assets. Simply search Canto!
• Easily providing information to many parties that our business deals with has been very helpful in improving relationships.

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