Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) vs. Image Relay

The service provision is good the accounts customer service is poor so I would struggle to give BC a better than average review, if only they could offer customers a better accounts service then the value would be much higher.

Image Relay is perfect for a creative team that is putting out a lot of content and always creating more. It works great with freelancers and has customizable access for different groups of individuals. I have not seen the PIM side of things with Image Relay. Management chose a different system for our PIM but it was prior to learning about Image Relay. The system we have for PIM seemed more robust for syndicating to multiple channels, however, it does not have the collaboration a creative team needs as Image Relay does.

Incentivized

• The Web Apps element of Business Catalyst is unique among hosted CMS systems. It helps us solve unique challenges without involving heavy-duty programmers.
• As a Hosted CMS, it has a lot of great features without a ton of cost or liability being taken on which is important to us.
• BC has a growing developer community and has made significant upgrades over the past few years, which don't end up costing us more, and would be very expensive or time consuming in a traditional CMS
• Our client's like that it is from "Adobe" and that it has Dreamweaver integration. This provides them with a level of comfort that helps us sell the project.

Incentivized

• Image Relay keeps things organized well
• It's SO easy to create upload links and send them to people when you need materials from them. I love that you are emailed when someone uploads to a folder you created.
• The support team is great at Image Relay too—I've rarely had any problems, but when I do or have questions they respond very quickly!

Incentivized

• I love web apps but it can be time consuming to get the bulk import file just right the first time
• Support is good, but the effort to research can be massive for unusual issues
• Metadata on blog posts and pages can require lots of content editing at a slow pace

Incentivized

• The AI tagging terms are too generic to really be helpful to us.
• When we did our initial upload the system couldn't pull in old dates, so everything has a date of the day it was uploaded. It will be a while before searching by "most recent" works properly.

Incentivized

Actually with Business Catalyst there is no renewal; once you are a partner, you are a partner for as long as you like. It is an investment in your business not simply a product you purchase...and as an investment in partnership with Adobe, both are committed to each other's success.

I believe once all of our staff see how efficient Image Relay is in managing our digital assets, there will be no question that the cost vs. value will mandate continued use moving forward. It literally will pay for itself in saved staff time, I believe.

Incentivized

Overall it is a "plug and play" interface. The majority of the work is done in other software interfaces. Managing billing, user roles and custom reports are all that you need to manage in the actual BC user interface. For my business this is an incredible benefit as I have to leave my preferred software less.

Incentivized

I didn't have to be trained to figure out how to use it, everything is straight forward which is important when you have a lot of external-facing users on this platform. The folders help you navigate what you have but I also use the search feature a lot if I'm not sure what I'm looking for.

Incentivized

very few issues with availability

Incentivized

Very few issues

Incentivized

The support provided by Adobe is excellent. Though the knowledge base, forums, blogs and online chat questions most all answers can be found. In the event that you are unable to find an answer or you have a unique situation simply post a question to the forums. These forums are regularly monitored by Adobe and its users.

Amazing. We are having a quick call once a week to be sure we are right on track. They answer all our questions right away and if they are missing something they will just find the answer and get back to us as fast as possible. There is no need to look elsewhere!

Incentivized

bcgurus.com kiyuco

Incentivized

Pretty easy to do

Incentivized

The Image Relay team was very helpful in guiding us through the process. Excellent customer service and guidance.

Incentivized

I would say that all things considered Adobe Business Catalyst is an excellent product. It does have some short-comings, but it is fantastic all around. It has a nice way of tying everything in your digital presence together nicely. If you do not have a ton of money to spend on a company website, and want things like e-mail marketing, analytics, a reliable web-site, then this is probably a very real option that should be considered. If you want a website that can grow with your company, this is also a great possibility. For smaller companies with less technical resources, I don't know if you could ask for a much better all in one solution. If you want something that can be completely customized, then there are better options out there, but they will be more expensive and require more technical knowledge to use well.

Incentivized

The decision really seemed to come down to the interface, the value, and the approach to innovating how the assets were stored and accessed. It was important to us that our DAM has plenty of features and options while also not being over-designed or overcomplicated. It needed to have a flow and logic to it so that we could do more while not being overwhelmed or lost in the product. In all of these areas, Image Relay really seemed to stand out among the rest.

Incentivized

It's easy to build small sites or large sites and there is lots of templating.

Incentivized

• Surprisingly enough and despite having a second, less expensive hosting solution, a majority of our clients prefer to use the Adobe Business Catalyst solution. We are then able to enjoy the commissions that are returned as we sign up new customers for annual contracts.
• Being able to store and utilize data that comes from web form submissions has been very helpful in customer retention since we became a partner in 2011. Since that time, we have only lost two clients. That's 3 times better than our other hosting solution.
• Our largest negative impact has come from having only one choice in SSLs. For example, we had a great client in a local and growing bank. We spent 2 months getting the web site built to their specifications and we were very clear on the SSL situation. However, once the site went live, problems arose. In the past they had submitted their site to search engines with their secure URL and that was all that was indexed. Then when their customers searched for their site and clicked on the secure URL, it either showed that the site could not be found OR it said that they were entering to a site with an unverified SSL. People would then call the bank and complain. We then had to quickly move their site to another solution costing us days of re-development time and resources.

Incentivized

• It is a huge time saver for our team
• It enables us to quickly share information and files internally as well as with customers and vendors externally.
• Being able to share files in real-time makes our decision process faster, more accurate, and far more effective.

Incentivized