"Easy to use."
DAM vs Dropbox
Compare DAM vs online file storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, One Drive, etc.
| Feature | DAM | Dropbox,etc |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing Centric. Typically focussed on managing marketing content rather than all files types. | Yes | No |
| Made For Marketing. Made for the marketing communications team rather than general office workers. While all staff can access assets, it's the marketing team who manage assets and the access to them. | Yes | No |
| Customised Portal. The ability to customise the web portal and landing pages that users use to access digital assets. Custom branding, brand guidelines integration, custom navigation and custom user journeys to content. | Yes | No |
| Preview rich media files in a visual grid. The ability to view the content of rich media files when searching without having to download them first. Like playable video previews, Adobe Illustrator previews, etc. | Yes | Varies |
| Smart tagging & organisation tools. The ability to work without folder 'silos' (If you want to work with assets across projects you don't want to be dealing with folders or duplicating files into multiple folders.) | Yes | No |
| Manage Asset Metadata. The ability to create and edit metadata about an asset/file, and use that as a search parameter. An absolutely vital feature when you have large collections of assets. | Yes | No |
| Brand Guidelines. Most DAM systems have the ability to treat Brand Guidelines as a special class of asset, ensuring that Guidelines are accessible alongside digital assets. | Yes | No |
| Approval Workflow. The ability to manage asset approvals. For example there may be some WIP progress media files, or files not yet approved for release. | Yes | No |
| File Syncing. The ability to keep a synced copy of files in a folder on your desktop and the online storage. File syncing can slow down local devices and requires you to allocate storage space for files on your local machine. | No | Yes |
| Storage Agnostic. The ability to work and integrate with multiple storage sources. For example the ability to upload assets from Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Microsoft One Drive, your local hard drive, your camera, etc without impacting your local hard drive's storage. | Yes | no |
| Flexible user roles. The ability to configure custom user roles and access permissions for access, albeit typically with costs associated with user licences. | Yes | Yes |
| Self-service. The ability for users to register, validate, search and request assets without intervention saving you time and hassle. | Yes | No |
| Customisable Terms of Use and Licensing. The ability to configure terms of use and licensing rules. | Yes | No |
| Share & Distribute securely. The ability to share or distribute assets securely to external users while still requiring them to accept terms of use, licence rules, usage instructions and brand guidelines before being able to access files. | Yes | No |
| Notifications. The ability to configure automatic notifications about Licencing changes, Usage or Licence Expiry to users who have download assets previously - saving significant admin time and reducing risk of misuse of valuable assets. | Yes | no |
| Reporting. The ability to report - usage, user activity, most popular assets, popular searches, etc. | Yes | no |
| No Software Install Required. The ability to provide all features without the need to install software on your local machine. | Yes | No |
| Lowest Per User Costs Typical per user costs across vendors relative to each other. | No | Yes |
| The Final Score | 16/18 | 3.5/18 |
