Top digital asset management (DAM) solution vendors to consider in Australia

Purchasing a DAM in Australia is not an easy task. After you’ve learned what things to consider when you’re starting your search for a digital asset management solution in our previous article How To Choose a Digital Asset Management solution in Australia and with many solutions available worldwide, let’s take a look at the digital asset management (DAM) to consider from within Australia.

Please note, for the purpose of this article we can’t include every DAM vendor that might be available in this region, instead we have chosen solutions that represent popular choices in Australia based on our research and feedback we have received from organisations. If you’d like us to mention additional solution choices, please let us know in the comment section.

And full disclosure here – we are a certified reseller for one of the solutions on this list – Canto, so we might be slightly biased however it is up to you to decide which solution would be the right fit for your organisation as it is definitely not one-size-fits-all kind of decision.

Canto

Founded over 25 years ago, Canto is a pioneer in the digital asset management industry. Their flagship on-premise solution Cumulus is still popular with large enterprise organisations (you can read more on Cumulus here). But to adopt to the changing needs of their customers they developed a lighter-weight cloud solution Canto in 2014. With a large customer base globally, Canto has experience and resources, and are a well trusted DAM vendor by small to medium size organisations worldwide and in Australia to manage their brand assets.

Canto’s focus is on DAM for brands and education sector with their technology built around maintaining brand consistency, global distribution, advanced metadata and search functionality.

Things to know:

Built on AWS technology with free functionality updates several times a year.
Intuitive easy to use interface.
Solid branded portal capabilities for internal and external curation of assets.
Mac OS and Windows integrations, DRM, archiving/ expiry support, asset use reporting, Cloudfront CDN.
Rudimentary audio and video support.

HIVO

Founded in 2015, HIVO is 100% Australian based. It started as an image database used by photographers at a design agency and grew into a complete digital asset management solution. Today it helps agencies manage their digital assets and seamlessly deliver finished files to their clients. Developed and supported by OKMG digital consulting agency, HIVO’s strength is in helping creative teams during production, approval and delivery of design projects.

Best suited for a small to medium size organisation/ team with a focus on creative design delivery.

Things to know:

Built on open-source technology.
Good editing and design capability for images and videos, as well as creating assets from within.
No DRM, no reporting and analytics, no API, no IPTC metadata support.

IntelligenceBank

Australian owned, in 2009 IntelligenceBank started out as a digital content sharing solution for marketers but has since evolved into a marketing operations solution provider. Built for content marketers, this DAM lets you manage, create and distribute creative content and digital assets. In addition, you can take advantage of their complimentary add-on platforms for brand management, project management and compliance.

Suitable for small and medium size organisations, IntelligenceBank will improve your marketing operations, although the addition of add-on platforms will come at additional cost.

Things to know:

Built on proprietary technology in house, hosting provider not known.
Automatic keyword tagging feature and Facial Recognition for images.
Advanced creative collaboration tools for internal and external teams.
Reporting and analytics is basic.
Lack of available resources results in introduction of new features much later than competitors.

Collaboro

Similarly, to HIVO, Collaboro team come from agency background and their main focus is on marketing, design and media agencies. It is the only known full-service DAM provider in Australia. In addition to their video-first and rich media focused cloud-based digital content management solution, Collaboro include an offline data storage, uploading and tagging service.

Best fit for organisations with large rich media/ video content that would like to outsource their digital content management to a third party.

Things to know:

Built on MS Azure.
Advanced AI tagging technology combined with human tagging service.
Concierge service – physical pick up of files and delivery to off-site storage.
Tagging and keywording entrusted to 3^rd party might not work for everyone and could lead to searching difficulty if not familiar with the keywords used or the logic behind file organisation.

Ready to talk to us? 1300 886 238

Bynder

This major DAM provider originates from the Netherlands but has quickly taken over the global market with their enterprise level feature-rich digital asset management solution. Bynder targets marketing and creative teams in advertising agencies, and medium and large enterprises. Their focus is on creative teams to produce, source, manage, distribute and analyse rich media from within the DAM.

Best suited for marketing, creative and branding professionals to help accelerate video and other content creation and distribution while ensuring brand compliance.

Things to know:

Built on AWS.
Extensive intuitive workflow capabilities.
Publishing on demand, smart template tool to create branded materials.
Integrations into most other systems.
Additional modules could make price prohibitive for some organisations.
Set up and implementation can take longer than other SaaS DAMs.

Lookatme

This Australian DAM vendor has been around DAM marketplace for a while. Lookatme focuses on providing simple low-cost asset repository with basic DAM functionality. Very few independent resources found on their technology, functionality, security and reliability, no transparency in what is used to achieve the promised capabilities. Lookatme is best suited for organisations that are looking for simple DAM functionality and don’t need more advanced features.

Things to know:

Proprietary technology, not transparent.
Easy to use interface.
Fast keyword search.
Developing software and new functionality inhouse can lead to costly software updates for customers.
Limited budget prohibits innovation.

MediaValet

Based in Canada but has had a big focus on Asia-Pacific region, including Australia and New Zealand, in the last few years. MediaValet is an enterprise-level DAM and focuses on large organisations with sophisticated needs for their DAM. It is built on MS Azure technology with many data storage locations available globally and offers a direct Office 365 integration.

Best suited for large enterprises and high-volume creative production teams.

Things to know:

Built on MS Azure.
Supports large media files (up to 5TB).
Direct MS Office integration allows to work on documents within the DAM.
Creative Spaces desktop-to-server-to-cloud feature to speed up production of rich media and creative assets.
Cost prohibitive for some organisations.

Summary

Going through the digital asset management solution selection process can be daunting. From the leading solution providers to niche and market newcomers, the sheer volume of offerings can be overwhelming.

It’s a big purchase.

Make sure you do your due diligence for what you need your DAM to do, what pain points it needs to address, who will it serve and what features and functionality it needs to have.

Consider who you’re purchasing from, what are their business objectives and does your organisation fit into that model. Otherwise you might find yourself not on the same page as your supplier.

And while we couldn’t include every DAM vendor in our list, these 7 vendors can get you started.

All information provided in this article was sourced from publicly available information and might reflect our opinion/ experience. We encourage you to do your own research before selecting a vendor.

If you still need help in DAM selection process, get in touch with us at 1300 886 238 or email info@databasics.com.au.