Cloudinary vs. Image Relay

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudinary
Score 9.8 out of 10
N/A
Cloudinary is an image and video management tool enabling users to manage, optimize, and deliver images, videos and other media across every device and channel.
$49
per month
Image Relay
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
Image Relay Marketing Delivery keeps digital assets and product information in one place with the goal of supporting fast, seamless creation and delivery.N/A
Pricing
CloudinaryImage Relay
Editions & Modules
Media Optimizer - Scale
$49
per month
Programmable Media - Plus
$99
per month
Programmable Media - Advanced
$249
per month
Programmable Media - Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Digital Asset Management
Custom Pricing
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudinaryImage Relay
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CloudinaryImage Relay
Considered Both Products
Cloudinary
Chose Cloudinary
Cloudinary was without a doubt the leading application when it came to meeting our business needs. There's not much competition when it comes to scalable CDNs and for us it was an easy decision without much else to consider in terms of contenders in the market.
Chose Cloudinary
We evaluated Bitmovin, Fastly, Anvato, etc. There is no one solution that gives both photo/video transformation with realtime availability.
Chose Cloudinary
My experience with AEM has been limited to interacting with it through others, and so this information should be taken with that in mind, but my impressions from talking with the service engineers managing this system in our enterprise (in a previous role) was that it could be …
Chose Cloudinary
Cloudinary seemed to be the most sophisticated with the most documentation and platform support. Other solutions seemed to be a lot harder to implement, however, due to the good documentation and API samples on their GitHub we were able to implement it nicely. Additionally, …
Image Relay
Chose Image Relay
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 …
Chose Image Relay
The discovery process was by far the best with Image Relay. We did not have to waste time on several sales calls before they gave us a real demo and answered our specific questions. We got EVERYTHING we needed to know in the first meeting and that ultimately did help us make …
Chose Image Relay
Image Relay convinced us with an excellent pitch, a competitive price, and great support.
Chose Image Relay
I find Image Relay to be superior to all three platforms mentioned above. IR is faster, has a cleaner interface, has outstanding support, and is highly customizable. Image Relay just makes sense for us on every level. While there are other options, some free, nothing stacks up …
Chose Image Relay
I got a presentation from each and I felt the connection with Image Relay was better for me. Every need we had were covered by the Image Relay system. The presentation was really professional and we could feel that they knew what they were doing. Of course, the price was also a …
Chose Image Relay
We were using our in-house storage NAS system and Backup on DVD and hard drive. The issue is that we lost a lot of data by it either crashing or becoming unreadable. And it's very difficult to organize and share data. To share data we were using WeTransfer, but the issue is …
Chose Image Relay
Google Drive does not have the same capacity and functions that Image Relay has, so it is really no competition at all. I really enjoy all the functions that Image Relay has that other companies may not have considered.
Chose Image Relay
We compared Image Relay to a couple of other digital asset management systems and chose Image Relay based on a strong recommendation from the company that digitized thousands of our archived photos and documents. They noted that many of the features are similar product to …
Chose Image Relay
Image Relay's share function works similarly to these other products, which worked well enough for us. But Image Relay's share function makes the process of searching for, selecting, and sharing photos fast and seamless. There's also less need to clean out old files and photos. …
Chose Image Relay
Drive is good but the way to find and organize folders is less user-friendly. Sharepoint is not user-friendly at all. We Transfer is easy to share and download once but not as a permanent online library. I really think Image Relay is the best option to create a common space …
Chose Image Relay
We have always used dropbox or google drive and while they have served their purpose, they don't operate on the same level as Image Relay. The easy-to-use organization along with the ability to create your own APIs and do mass moves and uploads and distinct meta-tagging is key …
Chose Image Relay
We used Kwikee (which is now Syndigo I believe) for many years. Clunky interface and it was very slow to get new assets up. Image Relay was a very refreshing change!
Chose Image Relay
I have used several digital asset management systems in relation to archives work, and I think Image Relay is the most user-friendly and clean looking.
Chose Image Relay
I created a rubric to compare IR with Intelligence Bank and PhotoShelter. Some of the comparisons were close, but ultimately the intuitive user interface, price, and back-end programming (as analyzed by our web guy) helped us select Image Relay.
Chose Image Relay
Image Relay is much more user friendly. It is also much easier to upload files to Image Relay.
Chose Image Relay
Image Relay is much more user-friendly and easy to access. I struggled with Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Teams because it is so much simpler in layout and structure. You do not need to hunt around forever to find what you're looking for. It is also more cost-effective …
Chose Image Relay
Canto Cumulus was the best competition. It did a few of the things mentioned earlier a little better. We had chosen Image Relay before finding Canto, and have not felt compelled strongly enough to switch. If we were starting over, we might start with Canto.
Features
CloudinaryImage Relay
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Cloudinary
9.0
Ratings
23% above category average
Image Relay
-
Ratings
Dashboards9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Standard reports9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data exportability9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Content analytics9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
DAM Features
Comparison of DAM Features features of Product A and Product B
Cloudinary
9.6
Ratings
14% above category average
Image Relay
-
Ratings
Uploading assets10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Downloading assets10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Categories9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset storage10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset sharing10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Asset search10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Tagging system9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Content editing9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Metadata9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
User access9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
DAM Integrations10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
DAM API10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CloudinaryImage Relay
Small Businesses
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
CoSchedule Marketing Suite
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.1 out of 10
MediaValet
MediaValet
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudinaryImage Relay
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.9
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudinaryImage Relay
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloudinary handles pretty much anything you have related to images. From serving them up efficiently to adding transformations on the fly, there's really little this service doesn't do. Their pricing plans allow you to grow into the right levels and their website dashboards are very helpful. I would easily recommend this for all but the simplest of use cases.
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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.
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Pros
  • Cloudinary is the best in the market for photo and video transformations.
  • Cloudinary takes customer's requests for special features and implements them very quickly.
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  • 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!
Read full review
Cons
  • Currently, they don't have an officially supported Drupal module -so it's quite painful to implement.
  • If you have a site that has a lot of visitors then it's possible to get quite large bills out of the blue if you get a massive spike e.g. black Friday.
  • The UI for the backend and documentation could do with a lot of improvements.
Read full review
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
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.
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Usability
Cloudinary is very easy to use and offers fast way to upload your images, files and videos to their servers. Then they give you quick ways t implement those files or images onto your website using their API or just a normal URL. They also give you very fast ways to make edits to those files and include them in the url.
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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.
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Support Rating
We rarely use their support. But when we need it they are always there. They provide great consultation and suggestions to help us manage our costs and resources better. In the last 8 years perhaps we have contacted them 3 or 4 times - which is really really great
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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!
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
The Image Relay team was very helpful in guiding us through the process. Excellent customer service and guidance.
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Alternatives Considered
My experience with AEM has been limited to interacting with it through others, and so this information should be taken with that in mind, but my impressions from talking with the service engineers managing this system in our enterprise (in a previous role) was that it could be challenging to integrate effectively into a large-scale organization with demands on security. The biggest reason I selected Cloudinary was price-based; their free plan serves my needs as a freelancer quite well.
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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.
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Return on Investment
  • Images are essential to our product and using Cloudinary has allowed us to serve them up in a cost-effective and efficient way. Not having to worry about your images frees you up to tackle the real challenges for your product.
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  • 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.
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ScreenShots