Compendium (discontinued) vs. Contently

Oracle is great for a very basic blog. The look of ours was designed and built on the back end/code side, so I'm not sure if there are a lot of clean, modern templates like you see in a lot of blogs today to choose from or not. It has been great having a number of authors who can write content directly in the platform and then submit it to our content managers for scheduling and publishing. I think the biggest issue people may have with it is the look of the interface. It needs an update.

Incentivized

It's helpful for top of marketing funnel writing that we can sometimes lose sight of because we are so ingrained in the product day to day. Contently is also helpful for long written pieces and ebooks that will take a significant amount of employee time to put together. I avoid using Contently for mid to bottom funnel marketing writing because my team will often have greater insight into the product function or use-case or product release, making them more adroit to the tone of the written piece and able to produce the content quickly.

Incentivized

• Workflows are a functionality in OCM making sure that the approval is given by the right person in the right job before it's on it's way to the next step and in the end, publishing!
• Template functionality in OCM allows for easy copying and adjusting, allowing you to re-use best practices quickly!

Incentivized

• Consolidating my work in one place to make my work life easier
• Contently is unique from other content marketing organizational tools in one key way. It hands you a network of freelance professionals eager for delegated work.
• You can search through a database of professionals to find the perfect person for your given project. Find individuals in your budget offering the exact skills and experience you need.

Incentivized

• Some of our authors have trouble figuring out how the workflow works. It takes a little bit of searching to find where to set a page for approval. They also have trouble locating where to schedule blogs to be published.
• It's not the most user-friendly design. When you log in, it feels a bit dated and take a bit of time to get acclimated to where everything is located.
• The organization of the backend code files seems very disorganized.
• Finding any sort of tutorials, demos, site help is challenging.
• Maybe the worst part is trying to contact customer support. There is a lengthy registration process for their separate support forum that requires approval. I've had a couple support instances there have been left unresolved and and closed without any offers why.

Incentivized

• There are only two layouts you can choose from. I wish there were a few more choices for this, as the options are simple, but lacking.
• Sometimes when I paste a link, it doesn't pull the correct picture or description from the page. It has pulled weird things I've never seen before and I have to go back in and manually fix them.
• The option to purchase a domain without the .contently at the end?

Incentivized

Easy to use, and supporting several permutations, the CM suite is an excellent solution for a mid to large size business. It's meant to be used by a team, and the functionality can work across websites and landing pages. There's also the high benefit of translation management, providing support for localized products.

Incentivized

It has never been down since we have used this software.

Incentivized

To be perfectly honest, every one of my concerns and problems has been handled by the support team in a very timely manner. If they could not fix my issue they assured me it be addressed in future updates.

Incentivized

I'm giving them a 10, but honestly, I've never reached out to them. I do see them putting out regular content on social media, so they might be responsive to questions there as well as regular customer support. In their posts and communication, they do seem to value their community, so hopefully, they have good customer support. And I've seen them asking for pitches from their community to publish well-paid articles during this stressful coronavirus time, and I really appreciate that.

Incentivized

Don't forget about customer service once you have a closed the sale with a customer. Oracle seemed to not care about our needs/timeline after we gave them our Purchase Order

Incentivized

While OCM was a lot more money, they were able to prove to us that they are a much better solution to use and worth the extra cost. The reporting, capabilities along with the analytics that was easy to download was a big discussion factor for us.

Incentivized

I also opened an account with Skyword in 2019, which is a similar service. The person that recommended it was a travel writer, and since I've done that as well, I thought it might be a better fit. To this point, I've received no work from it either, and don't hold out a lot of hope. As previously mentioned, where I think Contently does well is by giving you an online portfolio, additional resources like a blog for learning, and a rates database for publications.

Incentivized

• Resolved approval issues
• Reduced overhead and redundancy when it came to teams collaboration
• Made it easier to share analytics and results with management

Incentivized

• Contently contributors have produced some great inbound marking posts and creative materials saving our marketing team significant time allowing them to focus on more strategic plans for the business.
• The amount of time Contently has saved our internal creative writing staff has more than paid for itself!

Incentivized