MerlinOne DAM Software

Pros

Merlin allows us to easily share photo assets with our network of Habitat affiliates in the U.S., and with our national organization offices in more than 70 countries. My favorite tool is the ability to share email previews of contact sheets containing links to directly download images. That gives us the ability to share collections of photos directly with our clients, without having to upload files to Dropbox. That’s a huge time saver for our team.

I also can’t say enough about their amazing customer service. They quickly respond to our questions, and the available training helps us get the most out of the service.

Cons

The more I learn about Merlin, the less I see that I would consider a negative. You can credit the customer service team for helping us through anything we don't understand.

MerlinOne has been great to work with. They've had exceptional support, regularly following up to see if we have any questions and addressing any issues we had. They been responsive to problems and have even provided on-site support in helping get us setup.

Pros

It has plenty of options when it comes to searching, and the search tools are robust. Fairly customizable for both administrators and the users. Has plenty of features for the price. Buying concurrent licenses instead of licenses for every user is a huge plus.

Cons

It's not without some quirks and bugs. We've experience some issues loading files into the system, and have gotten bugs when trying to manage keywords. Nothing that breaks the system, but does give users some annoyance.

Store large quantity of assets and categorize accordingly

Pros

We are able to store a large quantity of photos in the database and quickly search for assets. We can categorize the assets into "collections" and link photo assets with consent forms.

Cons

We've run into technical glitches with the web upload form and collections tool, and slowness within the platform. The overall management system is not intuitive to use.

Pros

The best part of Merlin one system is the ability to have all of our assets in one place. Our organization is trilled with the results.

Cons

The admin aspect is a bit difficult to understand but the customer support is great whenever there is an issue.

Pros

Once you figure it out, the system is very easy to use and retrieve content. Search features are great.

Cons

Does not generate permalinks to content/collections; they expire after 24 hours and thus cannot embed content collections on website.

We were one of the first nonprofits that MerlinOne took on, allowing us to get a huge amount of digital content off our file server and into a robust DAMS system that could help us track and share assets across three continents.

Pros

If you can do a Google search, you can search Merlin with little additional training. The interface is very user-friendly, and we have trained multiple staffers with varying levels of computer skills.

Cons

Metadata fields are very structured and somewhat limiting. Would like to tailor them more to our needs without incurring back-end programming expenses.

Pros

easy to search for photos as long as keywords were inserted properly. downloading a file is pretty fast.

Cons

a couple of glitches with being able to download lots of photos at once, customer service was quick to respond though

Pros

Has a great backlog of data and photos as it is an archive

Cons

Need OS update big time but dollars are short
unable to move all this to a different system
typing more

Pros

I like how easy it is to navigate and it makes finding what I need a lot easier than how we had the process previously.

The ability to make captions

Pros

The ability to add specific captions - it helps when we need to tag individuals that require a media release. It's something I can't do in my typical computer drives or cloud spaces.

Cons

It takes me a long time to label batch photos that need different captions and then organize them into collections. I've discussed this with my representative.

Pros

Honestly, the great customer service. It's been fantastic (
The photo quality is great and the metadata fields have been set up perfectly. It is a great CMS for our photos.

Cons

The search results can be challenging. Especially when looking through our historic archives which hold around 15k photos.

Pros

I enjoy the diversity of file supported file types and that they are all viewable in the software.
It's great for being able to share large quantities high quality photos. The multiple ways you can upload files to the system is great as well. Being able to search by any of the Metadata fields is incredibly useful (date taken, location, creator, subject info). The customer support service is fantastic, they can help with everything you could possibly need. They genuinely want their customers to get the fullest use out of this system.

Cons

I wish it had more of a file structure like a hard drive with individual folders instead of being one large mass of photos. If photos are uploaded with incorrect metadata they are very challenging to find. It's not the easiest software to use at first and takes a while to learn. If you aren't accustomed to using metadata in your photos, the initial workload will be huge as this system functions best when using metadata. Thankfully Merlin has amazing customer support that are truly concerned with making sure you learn how to use the system to its fullest potential.

Pros

User friendly and verity of way to search and find images with all the tools available. I have many ways to plan my future work load with this program.

Having our archive in one central place easy for the entire newsroom to access.

Pros

I love the ease of use and the ability to change image metadata on the fly. The ability to search wire and staff images in one place is also an added bonus.

Cons

My least favorite aspect about the software is the download times. There are times when downloads take an incredible amount of time to download. Zip files often break and I have to call customer support to fix it.

Ability to catalog our photos. Ability to upload and download photos. Ability to tag photos.

Pros

Most liked:
1) Ability to meet our needs for managing our photos in an efficient manner
2) Ability to search for relevant content
3) Support we received from vendor

Cons

Least liked:
1) Could have had more training and refresher training for our staff. Initial training was good but we needed more examples of how to use in our environment
3)

Pros

This software is able to adapt to our workflow and provide flexibility.
Support is super awesome and help at each time.

Cons

Older version of the software had problem with performance.
The user interface could be more explicit on some of the actions.

Pros

The collections and projects areas are great for organizing images. I love how quickly i can go through all may searches.

Cons

The auto update is necessary. But if i have it on takes me back to the top my search if im scrolling down.

Pros

The searchability functions allow me to easily call up assets based a variety of variables. Sending photographs over FTP has been seamless.

Cons

The interface is a bit clunky. The edit tool for photograph captions seems like it could be better optimized.

Pros

The software makes it so easy to go in and search for the assets we're looking for. We're able to bucket our photos into different areas based on the needs of the company, which makes finding what we're after even more effective.

Cons

We often have big sets of content to load in batches. Would like to be able to batch load more from the site itself vs. using an FTP for those.

Pros

Its very fast and the layout if decent. The video voice is improving and does a really decent job.

Cons

There are really no cons, other than the software can be too complex sometimes, but overally, its fairly easy.