4 Best SaaS Digital Asset Management Tools of 2023

4 Best SaaS Digital Asset Management Tools of 2023

Overview

The majority of digital asset management software is cloud-based (i.e., SaaS): There’s no technical set-up or maintenance, updates are automatic, the DAMs come fully supported, all of your digital assets are (securely) stored in the cloud, and you can access your content from anywhere.

In fact, it’s hard to find on-premise digital asset management software because so many brands have transitioned to fully cloud-based offerings. Unless you absolutely need an on-premise DAM, it’s way more convenient to use a cloud-based DAM vs. an on-premise solution.

So in our post, we review four of the best SaaS digital asset management solutions, starting with our cloud-based DAM Brandfolder. At the end, we’ll talk more about SaaS vs. on-premise (vs. hybrid) DAM software, so you know more about these solutions as you shop for the best digital asset management system.

Brandfolder offers a robust digital asset management solution and hands-on customer support to guide you through the switch to our software. We have a 98% customer retention rate because we tailor Brandfolder to specific customer needs, and our DAM scales with you as those needs evolve.

#1 SaaS DAM: Brandfolder

Brandfolder is a fully online digital asset management software that’s rated 4.5 stars on G2.

Our DAM platform lets you:

Our product completely changes how you manage your assets. You can maintain a clean and organized asset library (without multiple versions of assets or duplicate files), quickly retrieve files when you need, maintain control over sharing with granular permissions, improve version control, and enable all of your teams to use content without relying on designers.

Cloud-Based Storage

All of the content you migrate to Brandfolder is stored in the cloud so you can free up storage space on your computer and access content from any device as long as you have your login credentials (we’ll talk more about security later).

We help you organize digital assets during onboarding, but the organizational structure is mostly straightforward:

The most convenient part of using Brandfolder vs. traditional cloud storage is the flat digital asset management taxonomy: You can store assets in multiple places (say in both a Collection and Brand Portal) without making duplicates, and you can search your entire asset library at once. There’s no digging around folders or trying to remember file names.

As you upload files to Brandfolder, our artificial intelligence, Brand Intelligence, analyzes the content of your uploads to automatically add metadata and tags. You can also add custom tags to assets or fill in more detailed info in the asset overview. For example, a lot of users add digital rights information in the asset overview so anybody who accesses the asset can view that info.

The combination of Brandfolder’s flat structure and automated metadata and tagging improve asset searchability so you can quickly retrieve files and discover new content that’s related to your search. Plus, Brand Intelligence re-scans your library, including the content of your files when you start a search, so it can populate everything that’s relevant.

Our DAM also has features to keep your asset library organized and neat as users access digital files and you acquire more content. For example:

Online Sharing Options

Brandfolder supports internal and external sharing and we provide free unlimited guest seats so you can share as often as you need without fees. There are two ways to share digital assets in Brandfolder: With user permissions or custom share links.

Permissions (as we just talked about above) let you share files with other team members and control what they can do in the DAM/how they can engage with your content. You can use permissions to share single assets or groups of assets like Brand Portals or Collections.

When you share entire Brandfolders, Collections, or Brand Portals, users have access to all of the existing files and any new content you add in the future. This eliminates the need for future sharing, as designers can simply add content to the DAM and others can access it as it becomes available.

Below are the four user roles: Owners, Admins, Collaborators, and Guests.

You can also create custom share links to send files to stakeholders and other people outside of your team. These share links can be copied and pasted across email platforms, messengers, workspace collaboration tools, and even SMS, so you can quickly share files without clunky downloads. Plus, all share links are trackable in Brandfolder’s reporting dashboard, so you can see who has access to your content.

Share links give you better control over external sharing, too, so you can:

Another perk to sharing files from Brandfolder is automatic asset updates. Any time you make changes to a file in Brandfolder, those changes reflect everywhere the asset is stored, shared, or published online — so everyone is always viewing the most current versions of your brand content. Global asset updates also streamline brand management tasks and help you maintain consistency in projects.

Extras: Tools to Repurpose & Report on Digital Assets

Cloud storage and sharing allow you to make brand assets available to anyone who may need them. Brandfolder offers additional tools to fuel self-service and allow non-creatives to edit and reuse assets for digital projects. These include:

Brandfolder also has a built-in reporting tool so you can keep track of how others use your brand content. The main reporting dashboard shows key reports like top-performing assets and most active users. It also displays a real-time activity feed so you can monitor what users are doing with content.

You can quickly see data — like how many times an asset was viewed, downloaded, or shared. You can use these insights to see what type of content users pull for digital projects and identify content that isn’t getting as much engagement.

We even assign each asset a "score", so you can easily pinpoint assets that aren’t performing as well as others.

Integrations with Other Tools

Brandfolder integrates with dozens of other software so you can push content between systems and access DAM assets in other tools. Some of the tools we integrate with include:

We also have a smart content delivery network (CDN), so you can use Brandfolder as a single source of truth and publish content online from the DAM. And our built-in web-to-print functionality lets you create and send custom print orders from Brandfolder.

Security Protocol

Brandfolder protects your online data from threats with strict security features. Our digital asset management platform is SOC-2 Type 2 compliant and runs in the Google Cloud environment (which is considered the industry-best in terms of security standards).

We also use multi-region storage — meaning your data is stored across multiple cloud environments — to prevent data loss in case of a disaster. And we even provide custom storage solutions for enterprise teams.

In addition, Brandfolder supports single sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor authentication to ensure the right people are accessing your brand assets.

Onboarding Packages & Customer Support

In addition to our DAM product, Brandfolder offers hands-on customer support packages to make the switch to DAM software easier. We help you every step of the way, from the initial demo and consultation through onboarding users. You can choose the package that best suits your needs, and we’re always available to answer questions or make modifications to your DAM set-up after onboarding.

Learning how to use Brandfolder is easy, too; our DAM receives a 9/10 usability rating on G2 because our features are user-friendly and intuitive. Even when we update Brandfolder, we don’t make major changes to how existing features work, and we provide online tutorials for new feature releases. And because Brandfolder is a SaaS DAM, you’ll have access to new features and updates as soon as they’re released (without having to install new versions of the software).

Three Runner-Ups: Bynder, Canto, & MediaValet Cloud-Based DAMs

In addition to Brandfolder, Bynder, Canto, and MediaValet are popular cloud-based digital asset management solutions that are frequently mentioned on best DAM software lists.

Bynder

Bynder is a flexible DAM solution that is advertised for all business sizes (although they appeal mostly to enterprises). When comparing feature to feature with Brandfolder, Bynder offers a lot of what we do: Cloud storage, automation rules, online file sharing, extras like templates and video editing, and reporting. However, user reviews of Bynder say that implementation can be time-consuming and challenging because Bynder’s team doesn’t offer technical support for every user (it’s only available in the top tier package) and they can be slow to respond to support requests.

Canto

Canto offers a cloud-based digital asset management system but was one of the only DAM vendors in the past to offer an on-premise solution, too. Their on-premise DAM product was called Cumulus; and although Cumulus saw its end of life years ago, Cumulus users were shifted to a hybrid version of Canto’s DAM where they can still access some on-prem functionality.

Canto has always been a more popular DAM for small businesses because it offers all of the essential DAM functionality and the features are easy to learn and use. That said, Canto has since updated the product with more advanced tools, like built-in collaboration features, that appeal to enterprise and global teams.

MediaValet

MediaValet is an enterprise DAM that’s popular amongst marketing teams and designers with a high volume of digital media assets, however, this DAM solution can work for teams in other industries, such as healthcare and higher education, as well.

This solution appeals to large businesses and global teams because it has advanced features (in addition to the core DAM features) like a video studio and templating dashboard, and MediaValet supports unlimited users — so you can add as many people as you want to the platform.