Great product that is easy to use.

Our representative always responds to us in a timely manner. She is very helpful with any questions or Canto solutions that our university might be interested in.

Pros

I really like how easy it is to upload, organize and tag photos. The facial recognition feature is great when dealing with lots of photos of people, like we do as a university. It is amazingly accurate and will recognize people from photos when they were 20 years younger. It's very easy to search for photos.

Cons

I can't complain. We probably don't take advantage of a lot of features Canto has to offer.

Canto in a Marketing World

I use Canto every day and I have a good experience with it. Support is great, and I rarely find bugs.

Pros

Canto is just easy to use, it's got a great folder tree. It's easy to share content internally and externally. Easy to setup curated libraries. But what I love most, is they listen to customers and implement features their users want!

Cons

Wish there was a better markup tool, the one that exists is very basic. Wish I could send assets to a FTP server.

Practical tool but barely innovative.

Canto enables me to grant file access to many of our departments world wide.

Pros

Canto seems to be simple enough for even unexperienced users. It is clearly structured and all functions are easy to spot and use.

Cons

For a software that was recently developed it seems rather simple in style and function: we only received what we specifically asked for and there is nothing wrong with it but a bit of innovation goes a long way. Why not connect it with actual folders on our operating system Microsoft Windows like Dropbox: At some point, we will need to store all files somewhere anyway to upload them to Canto, why not allow a direct uplad from a designated folder windows without having to open the browser? Make that folder accessable via FTP connection, too to have backup access when Canto is down or when there is a browser problem. Image previews and navigating through Canto should easier: navigating through it takes time, sometimes you might select a wrong image due to bad visibility of small thumbnails and even going back one step wastes precious time due to loading time and selecting a new image. I would suggest a slide show feature like the standard picture viewer in Microsoft Windows. Same goes for Video previews. I like working with Canto but it always feels like we are working with a beta version, waiting for the shiny real thing to arrive.

Canto makes DAM a breeze

Canto has allowed our organization to better manage our digital assets, which in turn saves time and money. It can be extremely time consuming searching for images on a shared drive, but the search and tagging function on Canto helps our employees to be able to find images quick and efficiently. Sharing photos with external partners and stakeholders also used to be time consuming, but now we are able to share photos instantaneously through the share link or through the partner portal, allowing for external partners to feel like they are in the loop.

Pros

Canto was extremely easy to implement into our business. Previously, we stored all of our photos/videos/files on the shared drive, external hard drives and servers. Canto has allowed us to ensure all employees who require access to digital assets have access to them, regardless if they are at the office or not. We really like the convenient options for sharing files with external stakeholders, especially the sharing link. It eliminates the need to upload files to dropbox and worry about storage issues.

Cons

No cons. Each time I have had a technical issue, the Canto support staff has helped me very quickly and ensured my problem was fixed.

Canto Met all of Our Expectations and More

I think the amount of uses that we have found beyond our standard need case of storing and easily searching our large photos has been numerous. Easily sharing documents and links have been invaluable. Our training department is now using it to provide ongoing training to our teams, we have several portals for different use cases.

Pros

Canto has been easy to use and easy to get up and running. The simplicity of having all of our images in one place have been astronomical. The amount of time spent wasted looking for marketing images has been eliminated completely. That was our main purpose for selecting a DAM platform.

Cons

The only bad thing I can say was our onboarding tech wasn't really the greatest. Her training was not great. She was good at keeping her meetings and the scheduling, but when she was on, she had a hard time keeping track of where she was at with training. There was some wasted time. there.

Canto has been a total game changer!

Canto has been a game changer. We now have over 250,000 assets digitally stored and organized. I'm able to easily search and share for images without stress.

Pros

I can now share images to individuals or groups of people without being tethered to VPN, or large files on transfer sites outside of the organization.

Cons

There have been a few features that could be improved, but Canto listens to feedback and often implements the suggestions quickly, or has great solutions.

Canto - Best Decision of 2020

Canto reps are easy to reach out to and quick to offer help and trainings. This made set-up and rollout very easy. The interface and overall experience is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. And, most importantly, the functionality is exactly what we needed in terms of versioning, sharing, tagging, and search.

Pros

As a project manager, what I like most about Canto is the ability to search through metadata and quickly and easily find an asset I was looking for. I also like the ability to easily share assets, through email, dropbox, links, etc.

Cons

I wish the level of access we are paying for would allow more "power users" and more storage. But, we can always purchase more as the need arises.

Top Tier DAM

Pros

Canto is extremely user friendly, straight forward, and a great value. All support is provided in-house and they go above and beyond to resolve issues.

Cons

There is not a feature that Canto doesn't offer. CDN performance with faster loading would be my only suggestion.

A good DAM that could use a few updates

Overall I like the program and have had a great experience with customer service.

Pros

Canto is easy to search and navigate through. The tagging function is helpful for organization.

Cons

I do think the overall design could be improved. The UI/UX design is plain. I also think that a desktop version should be available so you can access content offline.

Saved our company time and money

Overall experience has been great. Not having to send the same files over and over. Load it once and everyone can access the file(s) or we can create a portal as easy as that

Pros

Love having access to all of our files and images in one place. We don't have to look through Google Drive or Drop box or our Internal server anymore. Its all in one place and has saved us a tremendous amount of time

Cons

The platform can be a little faster when creating folders/albums

Canto is no-brainer for file storage/sorting/sharing

We are able to share whole folders if images with our team members as well as with outside clients from one platform. We assign work to each other from here as well. Sharing with outside clients is one of my favorite points. I can share a link to the content with them without having to reupload images to Google Drive or Dropbox or Onedrive. I

Pros

I really enjoy having the shareable links that can direct outside parties to folders that have their content in them. This way I don't have to use another third-party tool like Google Drive or Dropbox to share documents with clients. Downloading content is easy as well. The My Collections function is great in that it allows me select save files to the My Collections folder. This can help make it easier to find images and documents that I use most often. I also like being able to filter by keywords and tags. It is important that your team utilize these correctly and have unified definitions in place before using this, though. However, this can make it much easier to find what you're looking for.

Cons

The search function does leave something to be desired. I have found it hard to find past documents, images, graphics, etc. But honestly part of that could be just how our team names those folders and files. While the My Collections function is great, the Following and My Selections functions seem redundant. Another downside is that the shareable links that we use to share the content with outside clients does expire. I know this is for security, but if the client does not access the content in a timely fashion, which happens often, then we have to resend it.

Great product at a great price!

I priced a number of different applications including Canto. After doing a valuations on a product they narrowed it down to three, Canto being one of the three. After reviewing the other products and Canto I found that Canto provided for more capabilities it is substantially reduced cost. Canto has helped us to improve our ability to deliver contents to a very large Group of individuals within the university. This product has helped us to broaden our ability to share a message in a very powerful way.

Pros

This product helps us to deliver video in high-resolution images rapidly. In the past, this was a very time-consuming process but Canto has allowed us to create an amazing solution. As a result, we're able to deploy web and social media solutions dynamically as needed. This product helps us to deliver video and high-resolution images rapidly. In the past, this was a very time-consuming process but Canto has allowed us to create an amazing solution. As a result, we're able to deploy web and social media solutions dynamically as needed.

Cons

It took a little bit of time to understand the structure of the software, but after going through the deployment and using it I had a better understanding of it. Some of the features related to users and permissions within subdirectories were a little challenging to understand.

Saves time - very easy to collaborate + share and receive files online

Pros

Several features have really simplified my photo management role. Metadata is customizable to your needs - and while it takes careful thought initially, when set up is easy to apply. 'Upload links' allow outside people to add photography directly to the system in a controlled manner - this has significantly helped with timeliness and ease of receiving photography. I love the branding portal, and the versioning capabilities. I also love the Facial Recognition feature - no more tagging the same people over and over. The company consistently improves the software and innovates - releasing frequent feature updates.

Cons

While it is fairly intuitive, there are aspects (of the portals for example) that need to be explained to a new user - this can be time consuming. I have been frustrated that new features are sometimes expensive paid add-ons, even when they were discussed as 'coming' during the research process (features I thought would be included with upcoming releases). As much as possible, try to envision future features you will need and consider that in your contract discussions.

Stay Organized In Style - Great for Multiple Users

Overall the experience has been good - customer service is prompt and helpful and they respond quickly to issues. Overall it serve the purpose of organizing, tagging, filtering, searching, downloading and sharing. The feedback has been positive from other users, so long as they can find what they are looking for (and this is due to whomever is in charge, tagging, and doing the organizing). This is not a product that will take care of itself, you need an administrator that is working in the product on a regular basis to make it work.

Pros

We decided to use Canto because of many features including the design, customizability, customer service, large thumbnails, organizational structure, tagging feature, and portal for outside consumers.

Cons

You really need an organized person to keep this DAM working for everyone in your company/business so that the organizational structure makes sense. The less cooks in the kitchen, the better - one person should really spearhead the overall design, tags and org. Overall it works for High-Ed. Must pay attention to the little things (like expiring links to photos or albums) - can get tedious and redundant where you need to fix links if you don't pay attention to these things in the beginning.

The best bang for your buck if starting out

Prior to Canto, all of our marketing material used to reside on a shared drive accessible within the organization network. All brand manager would own folders within which they stored marketing assets - images, brochures, videos, 3D assets. This caused issues because - a) Simple folders = no tagging = very hard to search for assets; b) No version control, approval history, and random nomenclature made it hard to identify which asset to use even if found c) No access outside the organization, so could not be used remotely or shared with 3rd party partners and agencies; people would use wetransfer each time. d) Significant duplication of content, obsolescence, and storage consumption With Canto, all of the above get solved. We could enable access permissions to control modification, set up portals to share assets externally permanently, reduce storage with dedupes, and setup version control and a standardized folder structure and process. While this helped bring in significant efficiencies in process, the real win was in content management, tremendously reducing incidence or incorrect imagery used, safer, faster, and more effective development of ads and digital assets, and ensuring content quality.

Pros

Ease of single uploads, tagging to enable search, multi-folder assignment, deduplication, portal creation

Cons

Difficulty in bulk upload, downloading buggy, no mobile app version

We love Canto

Very simple and straight forward. No surprises. Friendly and fast to respond customer service who go above and beyond to ensure we have the best user experience possible. What you see is what you get and I couldn't be happier.

Pros

It's a visual, web-based DAM that is incredibly easy to use and assessable from anywhere. Canto is incredibly fast and responsive, with all sorts of plug ins and extensions to integrate your favorite browser, file transfer site or software application (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premier). The Portals & User Permissions allow a lot of fine tuning to ensure each user or team has access to only the assets they should. The admin controls couldn't be easier to use, making managing access through the system a total breeze. The simplicity is and emphasize on clean visuals really puts Canto above most other platforms we've used or demonstrated. Highly recommend others take the time to see what Canto offers and how your company can benefit from what it does best.

Cons

I don't have any, to be honest. Though it would be nice if a standalone application for advanced management existed, similar to how the Advanced Uploader application makes uploading large batches of files easier - would be nice if I could perform backups, re-arranging assets, etc. through an application for complex tasks. It's not essential, but I would absolutely be able to leverage something like that since mass re-organizing albums and assets through a browser can be sluggish and difficult.

A Good DAM Solution

We originally used personal hard drives and shared network drives for our asset management. Working with vendors for graphics was done via email. We've been able to transfer most of that over to Canto now. A week after launching Canto, HR came to use looking for photos of colleagues. Previously this would've taken hours to find what they were after. However, the AI Smart Tagging made it very easy to do a search for "people", then we added a couple of filters. Within minutes we had hundreds of photos that we sent to HR.

Pros

Interface is very intuitive. There is a really good balance between having a turnkey solution and being able to customize things. Custom tags and multiple ways of tagging assets was my biggest priority. There were a few solutions that provided more customization, but would've required more oversight as well. Our small team didn't have the bandwidth for that. Ability to create portals and upload links has been a gamechanger for us in asset distribution and collection. Just hosted a large community fundraiser. We gave each photographer an upload link with the option of some quick tags. We had thousands of images tagged and uploaded into the platform effortlessly. This used to be very time consuming for us.

Cons

Facial recognition is pretty weak. They are the larger customer of AWS facial recognition tool. If Canto switched to Google's tool, I feel it'd be much more reliable and function the way it's intended to. As of now, we just opt not to use it. Support could do a better job at recognizing the shortcomings of their product and recommending product enhancements. I often have to request multiple times for something to be an enhancement. I haven't had any follow-up yet, so not sure if they're going to implement things though.

Efficient tool allows our creatives to thrive

Awesome tool that has kept out large team aligned and on the same page.

Pros

• One source of truth for a wide range of assets • Prevents access and server issues with a team spread throughout the country • Easy to use and deploy, while constantly refining structure and strategy • Branded portals allow our employees to self-serve versus manually managing daily requests

Cons

• Interface can be clunky; needs a modern refreshed makeover! • More style guides to customize for different needs and brands within one organization

Robust features and multiple ways of access

What do you like best? The flexibility of deployment and implementation was paramount for our organization, as we ended up hosting the solution on premise due to our large file sizes. We love how the metadata is written back to the asset. Additionally, the various ways to access the assets through the web, through apps or through a desktop client made the user adoption go very smoothly. What do you dislike? Customizing the software during the installation and implementation phase was more time consuming than we had anticipated and with the new releases of software and portals we have encountered some delays and hiccups (we are working through them). Out of the "box" reporting is significantly lacking compared to the other options, but you can buy a 3rd party addin for that. What business problems are you solving? What benefits have you realized? The visibility on where are assets have gone and where they are going is greatly increased, in addition to increasing the visibility of knowing what assets we have while enabling a strong search functionality has decreased duplication of assets and increased productivity and efficiency.

Pros

The flexibility of deployment and implementation was paramount for our organization, as we ended up hosting the solution on premise due to our large file sizes. We love how the metadata is written back to the asset. Additionally, the various ways to access the assets through the web, through apps or through a desktop client made the user adoption go very smoothly.

Cons

Customizing the software during the installation and implementation phase was more time consuming than we had anticipated and with the new releases of software and portals we have encountered some delays and hiccups (we are working through them). Out of the "box" reporting is significantly lacking compared to the other options, but you can buy a 3rd party addin for that.

Robust features and multiple ways of access

What do you like best? The flexibility of deployment and implementation was paramount for our organization, as we ended up hosting the solution on premise due to our large file sizes. We love how the metadata is written back to the asset. Additionally, the various ways to access the assets through the web, through apps or through a desktop client made the user adoption go very smoothly. What do you dislike? Customizing the software during the installation and implementation phase was more time consuming than we had anticipated and with the new releases of software and portals we have encountered some delays and hiccups (we are working through them). Out of the "box" reporting is significantly lacking compared to the other options, but you can buy a 3rd party addin for that. What business problems are you solving? What benefits have you realized? The visibility on where are assets have gone and where they are going is greatly increased, in addition to increasing the visibility of knowing what assets we have while enabling a strong search functionality has decreased duplication of assets and increased productivity and efficiency.

Pros

The flexibility of deployment and implementation was paramount for our organization, as we ended up hosting the solution on premise due to our large file sizes. We love how the metadata is written back to the asset. Additionally, the various ways to access the assets through the web, through apps or through a desktop client made the user adoption go very smoothly.

Cons

Customizing the software during the installation and implementation phase was more time consuming than we had anticipated and with the new releases of software and portals we have encountered some delays and hiccups (we are working through them). Out of the "box" reporting is significantly lacking compared to the other options, but you can buy a 3rd party addin for that.

Working smarter not harder!

We are just getting started with Canto but LOVE it! We have over 15,000 assets uploaded to our system to-date and have only been using the product since March 1, 2020. Every day we are learning some new functions of Canto and how to better organize and tag our assets to make magic happen! Canto is worth the cost and I'm excited to keep exploring all the functions it has to offer to us and our clients!

Pros

I love Canto's Facial recognition feature! We have a lot of assets where we need to identify people and facial recognition has changed everything! now we can search for people by name and access every photo asset we have of that person! Game changer! I also love being able to relate files and add custom fields to assets. This has come in so handy when we need to connect people's images to their stories and FOIP information. Canto has really helped us work smarter and not harder to find all of the assets we have in a more dynamic way!

Cons

We have found the uploading of assets to be a little more work than anticipated. The Canto Connect desktop application is helpful but when initially setting up out canto product it is a lot of work. When you have over 20,000 assets to upload it takes a team of people to make that happen and a good amount of time to get everything uploaded.

User-friendly, Secure, Dynamic

Right from the start, the user-friendly nature of the platform ensures that all users, whether trained in asset management and best-practices or not, will be able to explore our content in a dynamic fashion, with very little training necessary to get their bearings. From a seamless upload/download process to an intuitive tagging and keyword system, Canto allows its Administrators full control during the process, including the option to customize additional metadata facets as needed, offering you and your team a curated experience. Canto has revolutionized the way that we store, tag, organize, and share our digital assets while at the same time securing their future integrity. The customer care has been excellent, and the Canto team is committed and engaged at all times.

Pros

Canto's user-friendly interface allows for an easy, intuitive platform to host, organize, and share all of our digital assets. Having something that is so intuitive puts all team members at ease, and increases their implementation of the platform in their day-to-day work.

Cons

Canto divides its users between three levels: Admin, Collaborator, and Consumer. There is very little that you can't do in Canto. A fully customizable experience for Administrative and Collaborator level users means a great deal of your DAM needs are met. I do feel that the Consumer-level experience can be expanded further, for example: with regards to facial recognition, a Consumer-level user is more than capable of identifying faces within a photograph, but the current constraints of the consumer level does not allow for this level of data input. Overall, this dynamic spark of the Canto platform is sometimes lost at the Consumer-level.

Canto DAM

We use canto to house all of our brand assets, collateral, graphics, videos, etc. Our entire company has access, so they don't need to bother the marketing team to provide graphics for them, they can obtain them themselves. We also have templates available on Canto, so stakeholders can create simple pieces on their own rather the disturbing the marketing team allowing us to focus on higher priorities.

Pros

It is very user-friendly. It's visual and easy to navigate. It has great search and filter features. You can send people directly to an asset without giving them access to everything.

Cons

You can upload a separate cover image; you have to use one that is already in your library; it has to be an actual asset. This is difficult if your fold of assets only contains font or color libraries, the thumbnails have no visual.

Good product for the price.

Generally a good program. Doesn't always work seamlessly and in exactly the ways we would want it to, however, Canto has provided our company with important capabilities for our price point and are responsive when we have issues that arise.

Pros

- Easy/intuitive layout and general interface that allows users to search via a search bar or through a more traditional folder layout. - Branding Customization - Customization of the tags/categories to our specifications (custom fields) - Very responsive to feature requests and program is updated with new additions frequently - Curated views allow us to "sort" our photos in an order that makes most sense within an album. - IT support is very responsive to issues. Makes sure to follow up with you to make sure things are functioning correctly.

Cons

- Integration has been somewhat challenging figuring out how to get the searches to yield results in the specific ways we want. - Wish there were more specific/fined tuned permissions for individual users beyond the main 3 categories - Facial Recognition doesn't work that well and in fact we have stopped trying to use it. Sometimes the photos will be almost exactly the same (head shots for example) and it doesn’t recognize them as the same person or will misidentify. The interface when it comes to both applying and searching through names is also very clunky. Smart Tags – Have not been relevant for our business since most of our photos are of events not products we well. Our smart tags identify things like "human" "clothing" "accessories" which has no relevance to what people of our company will search. We end up having to go in and put in the tags manually.

Can be a file management blessing, if maintained properly.

Asset management with so many powerful features, they can become a burden: the learning curve is steep, even if you're doing simple tasks with the program.

Pros

Keyword tagging and album features are great and make organization so much more manageable for very large media libraries. The features offered are extensive and very comprehensive. Search filters also help users find specific files faster.

Cons

– The number of features presented all at once can be overwhelming. The home screen displays too much information, icons, and files all at once. – Multiple iterations of a design or photo file get repetitive when scrolling—A feature to identify those very similar files, then group + collapse them together would be an improvement. – Features can be easy to miss/forget with such an extensive system. - Shortcut options aren't available for the most performed actions for individual users (or organizations) - Downloads could be easier, without the extra popup screen—an option for one-click downloads.

Art Director Review of Canto

Overall experience has been very positive. Canto, for the most part has solved our sharing issues. DropBox and GoogleDrive weren't cutting it. We get asked all the time about Canto - clients, partners, etc. really like it. It's a great tool to have within a Social Marketing Agency.

Pros

- High quality visual display - Easy to share assets with clients - Search functionality is awesome

Cons

- One off asset links continuously break or don't work. - Support team doesn't do much. Does a lot of blaming issues on internet. - Program logs you out constantly. - Clients are unable to mark assets as approved or not approved. - You can't filter assets by comments, only if you are tagged. - The extras are pricey - admins, contributors, portals, etc.

Canto, where have you been all my life?

It's no exaggeration to say that Canto is My Hero right now! We finished migrating our assets and started using Canto just a few weeks before our US team was ordered to work from home due to the Coronavirus (our international team has already gone through this). I don't think we would have all been able to keep working with the product we were using before. With Canto, our domestic and international teams can work together seamlessly from anywhere. And those of us with access to domestic servers can continue to load new assets that were previously unavailable to our design team overseas. As a provider for the agriculture supply chain we are considered an "essential business" and this is becoming a very busy time for us. I'm grateful we've been able to get up and running so quickly, and that Canto is so easy to use that the learning curve is almost nonexistent. You guys rock!

Pros

The best thing about Canto is that it just works exactly the way you expect it to. Even before I went through the official training, I found it super intuitive -- easy to upload files, easy to find them again, easy to use them with a huge range of design tools (we mostly use it with Adobe Creative Suite). Version control is going to be very helpful for us. I’m also stoked that it’s so easy to customize for our workflow. And the customer service we’ve experienced so far has also been top notch -- friendly, knowledgeable, and FAST. Thanks, Canto!

Cons

Nothing yet! The default settings include a lot of options we won't need, so until we finish customizing the interface it's visually distracting to see them. Still, how can you complain about having "too many" options -- especially when it's so easy to focus in on only what you really want?

Software that does what it's supposed to … and little else

Overall, Canto is simply too cumbersome and glitchy for something that should be as "simple" as storing and quickly accessing photo libraries. I'd recommend more of a rows/columns type of user interface for albums, instead of the left side dropdown menu types of navigation. Compared to Canto, I'd prefer Google Drive or Google Photos for asset management.

Pros

Canto allows our team to store, share, and access digital assets and photography efficiently enough. Ability to create albums, tag photos, large storage capacity – all of these are appreciated and well-received.

Cons

The Canto interface seems a bit clunky and glitchy much of the time. The left sidebar to navigate through albums isn't very intuitive or responsive. Often, when clicking on an album name to open its drop-down menu, there will be no response. So the use has to continue clicking and clicking on it. Scrolling down through each album's photos, the loading of preview images usually lags. And the longer you scroll through the pics, the more it lags. To bypass this, often you need to refresh your browser … which takes you all the way back to the top of the album … and you have to begin scrooooollling dooown through all the photos again. (I've tested several browsers – same issue with each one)

Perfect digital asset management software for our company with many divisions and different needs

We´ve been using Canto from canto since ... 4 years in our company. The time before the organization of our marketing material was not ideal. It was a problem to exchange data from division to division (national and international) - we used memory sticks or hard disks. For me, as a windows user, it was impossible to exchange data with a mac user - because we did not use the same network. Data was outworn and there was no version control or right system. Since we use Canto this belongs to the past! The software is extremely customizable and canto reacts very fast and professional to our needs. We`ve created wonderful processes - for example between Canto and jira (a bug- und issue-tracking-system from other software) - for example between our online marketing and graphic design divisions for the creation of web pages or newsletter. I can count a lot of examples :) !!! We use Canto in processes with external partners like design agency, freelancer, and photographers. They use the improved web client. Since we use Canto we have access to data from everywhere - this is a great advantage. We love the search function based on keywords (in any language). Canto will be permanently enhanced - the version 9.1 has a great adobe integration. A lot of people in my company use the batch processing function. Also, the comment function is a great advantage. We daily use it and we love it. It has improved our work!

Pros

- endless possibilities - answers for every case of use

A-Class product from Canto

Canto has enabled us to save time by increasing efficency across our core workflows within the marketing team. It gives us the ability as a young luxury brand to improve consistency in the quality and style of our digital assets.

Pros

Easy to set up and intuitive to ease. It was incredibly easy to implement across the organisation for internal and external stakeholders. Canto delivered on its promise.

Cons

Very little to dislike, perhaps if it was more focused on the hospitality industry it could build integrations with other elements of the Martech stack.

Great management system

A digital asset management system was greatly needed for NPC and Canto has been a good solution for us. We appreciated that they worked with our budget to come up with a plan tailored to our needs.

Pros

Canto helps organize our thousands of digital assets. We especially like that we can upload photos, videos, music, and Adobe files. It is helpful as a photo library but also in project collaboration.

Cons

Canto is not terribly user friendly. Customer service is great and is eager to help you, but some features are buried and if not in frequent use you'll find yourself asking for help for the same tasks.

Canto Review - doTERRA

This year we found ourself in need of a better DAM system, with our previous systems we had to pay a hefty price just to allow users to access the assets, it was not a visual system and it was very difficult to navigate the folder structures. With Canto we're able to get assets around the world to our international offices as well to our customers! This tool has been a great answer to the problems we were facing.

Pros

Tagging images is our favorite feature, we love how easy it is to search and find images. The overall folder structure and visual representation of your images makes usage simple for our employees around the world. We also love that we are able to add as many consumers to the platform as we want without having to pay for more users, that sets Canto apart from a lot of DAM systems.

Cons

We primarily use canto for images, however when we do upload documents it would be great it they were displayed more visually.

Canto has saved us countless hours of wasted time searching for assets!

Pros

Canto has saved us countless hours of wasted time searching across departments, servers, and computers for assets that are needed daily. The use of customized portfolios has helped us allow our end users to peruse and search galleries customized to their needs, all while protecting assets that are internal-use only from being seen.

Cons

Would love to see the option to copy metadata/tagging onto new assets in an album from those already in the album. This would be a time saver especially with multiple custom tag options!

Dependable and Easy to Learn

Overall it's been really great. It helps us store and share all of our high resolution images for our company.

Pros

I really enjoy Flight's user interface the best. It has been extremely easy for all employees in our company to quickly learn the ins and outs in a short period of time. I have received many compliments from employees spread across various departments about how much they enjoy Flight and how easy it is to use. This has greatly increased productivity of our marketing department by allowing other employees easy access to our assets. I also love the tagging feature! Tagging our location photography with our product numbers has been a game changer!

Cons

Every once in awhile they will implement new features that don't work great for my organization. For example, Canto gives you the ability to upload different versions of a file. However they add an extremely long extension at the end of the file. Say you upload a file called 'image.jpg' and you eventually want to add a new version. So you upload the new version, but the new file name becomes something like 'image.jpg.3823273827389273"

Canto is absolutely essential for our workflow

We couldn't do what we do without it. I love the responsiveness and friendly nature of the Canto team. This is integral to my creative post-production process.

Pros

Canto makes it easy to keep all of our creative assets in one place, and perfectly accessible by team members as well as the full company and clients. I was able to customize my interface perfectly for the needs of my team and our workflow. I am now able to run most of my asset reviews right on the platform, make sure that all assets are current, and organize/categorize appropriately.

Cons

I still end up using Vimeo for my video versioning and review process. But I upload the final assets to Canto. That said, I wouldn't be surprised if Canto rolled out a video review tool in the near future. Their developers are always listening to the customers' requests. It isn't unusual to ask for a little feature tweak and then see it implemented in the next build of their software. Incredible.

Easy to use, easy to locate digital assets

Pros

Canto has made it possible for us to eliminate the need for staff designers to find images for people across campus. With a 100-seat plan, we have been able to identify key users in departments who can locate and download their own images. With most of us working remotely during the pandemic, we have access to what we need when we need it. Batch uploading of images makes it easy to upload and tag images in a time-efficient way. Images can be saved in various albums - which is also super helpful.

Cons

While competitively priced against similar products (and less than others we looked at) it's a fairly substantial financial investment.

Open Up Your Drill-Down File Library

Overall, we had a digital library that was just too large to handle--Canto was a great choice to solve our problem.

Pros

Where traditional file explorers used natively in Windows and Mac fall short is when you have files that aren’t linear—they are best found by searching for them through multiple different routes. File explorers do not allow for that, and instead rely on user memory to find the correct folder and drill down into the correct location. Finding photo’s or videos when you have a large library, especially when many of the assets are ones you didn’t take, becomes almost impossible without a tool of some kind. Canto swoops in and allows users to ditch the folder method of organization and instead rely on keywords, tags, and other metadata to quickly search and find what you need.

Cons

Canto's different method of organization and searching means that you have to diligently fill in every tag or missing piece of information for every asset you upload into the system; if you’re looking into getting Canto, that likely means you have thousands or more files that you now need to individually update. On top of that, certain fields and UI choices feel a bit clunky, which hurts the most when it bogs down the uploading process.

Great Product for Photo Storage

Dealing with the actual company has been fantastic. We had an issue on our end with the invoice and they were and helpful. They helped us sort out the issue and made it so we would never run into the issue again.

Pros

Canto has many great product, but this one is perfect for those who are struggling with photo storage and management. We use Canto to store, tag, organize and search for our photos. As a company with many events it's perfect for tagging and finding our participants. Their facial recognition has proven to be an excellent asset to us.

Cons

The system is great, however it can get bogged down with resizing photos to thumbnail, slowing the scrolling speed when manually looking/ searching for photos.

Great collaboration workspace

Pros

Awesome asset management tool to collaborate on with coworkers. Whether its within your team or collaborating with other teams, its the best way to keep all of the assets and comments/copy in one place. Before Canto, everything was done over email and messages/assets would be lost. With Canto, things are trackable and always in one place. The searchability function helps save so much time when lookin for specific tasks. love working in Canto!

Cons

This is a bit of user error, but when a coworker comments directly to someone else, they need to comment their @name for them to get a notification otherwise you never know they made a comment

Canto is a great digital asset manager for the price!

We just signed a contract extension with Canto becaue we have been very happy with the service they provide. They are alwasy willing to take our feature requests seriously and are always working to make sure we are getting the most use out of the tool as possible.

Pros

The three major items that drove us to choose Canto as our DAM were the friendly and effective customer service, their ease of setup and customization, and their constant drive to update and make their software better. Both our account manager and the Canto IT team are quick to respond and always willing to do what is needed to help us achieve what we need.

Cons

We had some issues early on in the setup/implementation phase as we didn't feel like we were provided with adiquate information as to what was needed for our trainings. However, once we got into the process things became more clear and everything went smoothly.

Everything in one place!

Canto is a super robust tool and has made the sharing and organizing of visual assets much easier.

Pros

Canto has made it easy for us to have all our usable photography accessible in one place. It's super easy to put together and share a customized set of images and logos.

Cons

Cropping and resizing is cumbersome for new users.

My Experience with Canto DAM

We've had a very positive experience with the platform overall. We're nearly 4 months into our subscription and still feel like we're at the tip of the iceberg. We're anxious to utilize the client portal feature and have our install teams remotely uploading images from our work sites to be curated and cataloged.

Pros

The ease with which metadata tagging can be accomplished is likely the greatest strength for our use of this product. We've managed to create a keyword/tag database that now allows us to navigate our full media catalog with ease, and has made our workflow infinitely more streamlined. The branding guideline and adobe integration is definitely an additional benefit we're looking to utilize to its fullest shortly.

Cons

We operate in a segment with non-standard products so, unfortunately, we can't use the "smart tagging" system to its full potential.However, for tagging the "minutia" (As we call it) within the photo, but not necessarily the focus, the smart tagging system is great.

It's all about organization

Our expierence with Canto has been great. They continue to develop features and customer support is very helpful. The biggest value for our team was being able to find images and videos when we need them for our projects and super simple assest shareing with our team and outside designers.

Pros

We needed a solution to get our ever-growing photo and video library under control. Canto offered the most robust yet easy to use system for organization of our digital assets. File/folder trees, albums, smart albums, keywords, tags, facial recognition, and most importantly duplication detection that actually works.

Cons

as a relitivly small business Canto was an big expence for us espically when compared to the relitive low costs for online storage like dropbox or google drive and google photos.

Simple but effective

Some of the other DAM products we looked at were way too complicated. This is easy to use which means we use it regularly.

Pros

It's really easy to use. I can quickly upload assets, tag them, and make them accessible to our users. The search feature is powerful enough to make it so you don't really need folders.

Cons

The branding and color schemes aren't as easy to customize as I'd like.

Great asset for your value!

I really enjoy Canto I think it is an amazing product especially for the value.

Pros

Canto is super easy to use and makes on-boarding team members super easy. It has great commenting features that helps us with retouching and approvals. One of my other most favorite features is the edit tool to make one asset live in multiple albums etc.

Cons

I wish the interface was a bit more current some of the navigation seems a bit antiquated. For example you can't go back within the canto interface you have to go back on the browser. It is also really sensitive to internet so if you loaded a bunch of sub folders and it refreshes the browser it does not remember where you were.

Canto is almost too good to be true!

We are using Canto to upgrade and replace our old server. We are gaining much for digital storage, we are able to access things easier and everyone has the access, not just some. It is increasing our security which is always important . It is giving us the ability to have access to files, plans, drawings and photos while in the field when we weren't able to before. It is nice that we can log on through an internet-based system.

Pros

I love that it has the ability to upload very large file folders and still keep the exact file structure while doing so. I love that it holds so much information and documents that are now easily accessible for everyone that needs it! I love that it allows you to put in an infinite amount of tags because we all know that when searching for something everyone is going to call it something different. I think their security is a big plus as well! I love that you can upload any type of file into Canto and then also be able to view it, this applies to CAD & DWG files!

Cons

I feel that the software could be a little more finetuned to have the ability to smart tag photos and documents a little better, based on more common knowledge.

System management and support services

The system is not "heavy" on the infrastructure -it works how you would hope asset management would work. On a few occasions, we have needed to reach out to support for help and they were everything you could hope for. In one instance, my client was not sure if they still had a support contract, but they also had an issue causing some business impact. Due to some turnover and changing of rolls, my client could not find the correct ownership information either. Canto support helped get my client their historical invoices, get them back on a support contract, and help solve the problem. It's important to note: support helped me solve the problem, before my client paid the invoice on the contract. I really thought that was impressive, that Canto recognized the severity of the situation, and was willing to help, when they were perfectly within the right to not help.

Pros

After getting the old system upgraded, my client was able to offload some of the work the creative team previously did, to an account services team. That team was able to fulfill client requests for images without getting the creative group involved. It helped speed the responses to clients and vendors as well as balance the workload.

Cons

So far we have not had any internal issues or complaints!

Top notch product with great UX and at a reasonable cost.

We did our fair share of research before deciding to go with Canto. We ultimately decided to go with Canto because of the ease of use (good UX) and because of the competitive price. We are considered a small business, and because of that, we could not justify the price tag associated with other DAM systems. Canto suited our needs perfectly. We needed a repository of our best photos, organized in such a way that allowed us to easily search what we were looking for. Onboarding was really simple.

Pros

The ease of use (UX) and reasonable price tag were easily the deciding factor for an organization our size (less than 50 people). Being able to add metadata, include geo-location of the photo, and managing duplicates/versioning are some of my favorite features of Canto. It also doesn't hurt that I can access the DAM assets using some of my favorite Adobe products.

Cons

Building out the folders can feel a bit clunky, but you quickly get use to it. Dragging a 'collection' from one folder to another folder isn't really as simple as I think it should be. Preview mode can seem a bit soft, but I suppose this doesn't bother me too much since the purpose of the DAM library is to help me select which photo I want to use for an ad or to build out a website, for example.

Best option for DAM products

Company is well established, it has a robust Help feature that includes video tutorials, it's fairly intuitive and I'm learning new things every day because it offers so many features. I also like the continual updates that occur. We gave a presentation to our management this morning and the update Canto pushed out over the weekend actually improved our presentation and, as the main administrator/gatekeeper, it saves me time.

Pros

Canto DAM met all of our needs that our selection team identified in our research and testing. There are so many things I like about it, it's hard to select just one! I work with a lot of photographers who contract with us so creating a link for them to upload their images directly into Canto is a huge time saver.

Cons

The download button is so small and not easy to see/find. I had to add to our user instructions what the icon looks like and where to find it.

Canto is a very user-friendly DAM

Overall, Canto has been a great DAM to use and their customer service is very responsive. I would recommend this to other image professionals.

Pros

We moved our image library over to Canto about 2 years ago and I have found it to be a reliable and easily navigable platform. It's very easy to use and out of the three DAMs I've worked with, professionally, it's the easiest and most straight-forward interface.

Cons

I have very few complaints. I would love it if we could customize the branding of the platform a little more and it would be nice if there was an option to make the lightbox preview files were a little larger. (There is an option to make them larger, but the difference between the smallest view and the largest view is negligible.) There is also an issue trying to rename files once they have been uploaded. That still doesn't work. If you need to rename a file, you'll have to rename outside of Canto and re-upload.