Acquia DAM (Widen) vs. Dropbox

Acquia DAM is well suited for large companies that need to organize and control the flow of assets being used by their teams and vendors. It provides much better control than file storage sites like Dropbox, where there's little control over what goes where and almost non-functional search functionality. If you're a smaller company, you may be able to get by or have someone dedicated to doing so, but for larger companies, it really takes a lot of the manual work out of it!

Incentivized

Dropbox is great for everyone. Data on a hard drive is no longer secure. Learned the hard way when a hard drive fried. It's great for families, students, artists, entrepreneurs, consultants, small businesses, startups, graphic designers, and photographers. Did I leave anyone out?

• They offer valuable guidance and educational resources to Administrators
• Their I.T. support is knowledgeable and responsive. And friendly!
• They build community among Acquia DAM (Widen) Admins
• They aren't as salesy and pushy as many of the other DAM Vendors that we considered. I don't feel like they are constantly trying to upsell me or take advantage. I hope this continues to be the case with the acquisition by Acquia.
• They're just plain nice people to work with.

Incentivized

• Ensures documents are up to date, even with multiple users accessing the same documents.
• I love that if a team member accidentally deletes a file, I can find it and restore it.
• I like that I can edit from the web or have the app downloaded.

• The AI tagging is not very intuitive; if you upload 100 assets, you have to wait for ages to see if they have been tagged by constantly checking the field views over and over again. It would be good to have an AI tagging manager where you could submit and check tagging status.
• For image downloading, it would be good to be able to select an image size rather than an aspect and then adjust the image to the size.
• We would have jumped at the chance for SSO or Site Core integration, but the costs were so high it just was not worth it; we could have hired people to do it manually for cheaper.

Incentivized

• I’d like to be able to hover over an image/document and have it expand/enlarge without actually opening it
• I’d love to see a carousel that lets me thumb through more quickly
• I’m almost always in thumbnail view. I’d like to see them re-organize automatically when something is moved or deleted instead of leaving an empty space.
• AI options for photo editing.
• Easier pdf markups

Acquia DAM (Widen) is changing its pricing model and at this point, we are unsure whether it is a good thing for us or not. While we consider this a robust tool, we will take our time to evaluate the competitors.

Incentivized

Even though it has its shortcomings, Dropbox is an exceptionally useful product for simple file sharing. It’s intelligent design and user-friendly interface have continued to facilitate project completion. However, as we expand, we will probably look to other solutions for storage and sharing as we undertake larger and more intensely collaborative projects

Acquia DAM (Widen) is very intuitive, it does not take extensive training as some tools do to use the tool. Uploading assets, creating portals, collections and sharing are all very simple. Acquia DAM (Widen) also does not force you to fill out all of the metadata. You can fill out as little or as much as you would like.

Incentivized

It works extremely well, and we have never had any issues with connecting or sharing files. It's very easy to use, and any team member can share, add, and delete files to a virtual drive. This is extremely helpful, and it's an amazing tool to use, ensuring everyone can connect and work together effectively.

Never had an issue where I was unable to access Widen.

Incentivized

There have been a couple of rare instance where after I uploaded an asset, I was unable to rename it, or after uploading it it took a while before it actually appeared and can be viewed in the DAM.

Incentivized

Dropbox is really useful, you can access any file from anywhere and you can upload and even edit files online, but, sometimes it can be slow. Downloading, uploading, and syncing is a bit slow, it can take several minutes. Furthermore, the search engine for large amounts of data can be slow too and it is not powerful.

The Acquia DAM support team is fantastic! Not only do we have an amazing customer support contact, the regular chat support is a great resource. Our CSM schedules meetings with our team regularly to ensure that we're meeting our goals. And the general support is great at responding quickly!

Incentivized

They immediately responded like in an example that I gave where one of our staff members accidentally deleted the whole Special Hope Network Dropbox, we immediately contacted Dropbox they walked us through the steps of how to retrieve the information and luckily enough we were able to retrieve the entire Dropbox and we have had back and forth with Dropbox on what to do when an employee leaves how to remove them how to add another employee.

The training was very thorough. The recordings for all our traning sessions were provided to us so that we could go back and review. Our trainer was always available for follow up questions. Our trainer shared a spreadsheet with us as a checklist for all things that needed to be done to ensure proper import and setup of our assets and DAM.

Incentivized

I did not personally take any training for Dropbox so I am self taught but I know when our Vice President selected Dropbox, he personally did do some training modules on it and I'm assuming it was very easy and simple to understand since he now acts like he is a pro at it!

It was a lot of work! But worth the effort to get our assets cleaned up and organized. Enough time and personnel need to be allotted for any implementation, but we had some advantage in having our assets in a previous DAM with attached metadata in XML, and our users were prepared with knowledge of our existing DAM at that time. Though old habits present their own issues, a company that is starting from scratch with no DAM has to think farther ahead about how it will organize and collect assets. Far more pre-planning with stakeholders would be needed for a company starting an implementation from scratch.

Incentivized

I needed to stay current in improving my daily operations. Dropbox
was suggested to me by a former colleague two-years ago and I've been using it just fine ever since.

We started with the Widen system but ended up switching to Brandfolder. Brandfolder had the consistent interface across internal and external platforms. It was easier to use and search for assets for our internal team and brand partners. I preferred the Widen system's ability to share assets with direct links and the ability to add metadata upon upload.

Incentivized

I prefer the layout and visual aspect of Dropbox as it mirrors my files on my computer. I feel that I am more organized, and it's easier to find my files in Dropbox than it was with Google Drive.

bc i think box.com is better and more affordable

• Acquia DAM simplifies global access by offering an intuitive platform for easy asset uploads
• With centralized storage, sharing becomes seamless, fostering efficient collaboration worldwide.
• Utilizing Acquia DAM, I efficiently apply metadata for accurate categorization, enabling easy reference to past content whenever needed.

Incentivized

• I access my Dropbox account from anywhere—any computer, my smartphone —is very accessible while still secure.
• I would like it to be more editable with existing projects. This could be just me.
• I would like it to integrate better with other systems, such as email and Office.