Pexels vs. Ion, by Rock Content

The success of social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter depends significantly on the quality of the content used. Pexels maintains the highest quality standards for all content hosted on the platform... with High Definition, excellent composition materials only. Another great thing is that they provide you with an assortment of filtered content suggestions related to the selections. This helps save time.

Incentivized

I don't give 9 ratings easily. Anyone wanting greater user engagement would benefit from ion interactive. I can slap together a simple interactive tool for a social post easily. I also have a plan selector with complex logic built in that would have cost me $50k to build without ion. Now I'm able to duplicate it and make adjustments to use it for various other applications. We've created a couple dozen fun interactive tools for social posts and now we simply re-purpose them easily to create new ones frequently. I just created a new page for our website that we'll want to be fluid; so the site developers suggested we simply embed an ion tool to give us real-time flexibility. Marketers in other divisions are jealous when they see all the fun stuff we're doing--they're gradually becoming ion converts

Incentivized

• High-resolution images – Pexels is full of images that are high enough in resolution to look beautiful on their own, but also high quality enough to be combined with other images without distracting pixelization
• Stock videos – other free stock sites are often limited to just images, but Pexels has a wide range of videos available as well, which we use to plus up decks
• Good search functions – while not as robust as some paid sites, Pexels' search functions make it pretty easy to track down what you need
• Licensing – it's very straightforward to know what you can and can't do with a Pexels photo, which protects my company and our clients

Incentivized

• I love that ion interactive autosaves. So many of these platforms leave me terrified of disconnection or closing my laptop.
• This WYSIWYG actually works. I've yet to have a translation or code glitch.
• Fast load times are a huge bonus, as well as mobile-optimized display.

Incentivized

• I do think that the library should grow. For example, I was looking for an image of a living room with a fireplace and there were only a few options
• I get tricked sometimes because I see images I want to use but they are from some other company and they are paid
• Improve search understanding for multi-word searches

Incentivized

• no revert option/revision history if you make a bad mistake
• some simple styles that should be just there for you have to be made through custom CSS
• some of their template options have some pretty bad designs and are not usable beyond a basic functionality level/have to be completely reskinned

Incentivized

Because unless I find something better to replace it with, we're probably going to renew our contract. Ideally, Ion interactive can update Liveball so it's easier to use, more functionality that includes forms and javascript options currently not in place

Intuitive and simple interface.

Incentivized

Usability is straightforward, with extensive documentation and tutorials provided to ensure landing pages are built to specifications and can be optimized for performance. Built-in platform funnels give insight into customer dropoff, success/failures, and conversions (at a glance). Setting up a landing page can be done quickly and easily, with numerous integrations (CRMs like SalesForce, for instance) supported

Incentivized

Sometimes the editor can be a little slow.

The ION support team is amazing. There has not been a single issue they they could not solve for me. If there is a feature or request that they do not have, they have even, on occasion, created custom scripts for our team. *Update 6/5/17 - ION has continued to delight on multiple occasions. I appreciate their attention to detail and ability to solve whatever issue I have. After 3+ years of use and support, ION still has my full endorsement.

Incentivized

They offer a great amount of online training, videos, articles, etc. There is usually an answer available if you run into an issue. I would recommend taking advantage of the online training they offer. I wish I would have done it sooner.

Incentivized

There were a lot of things we learned about the tool once we really got in and got our hands dirty. Being hands-on was essential for our team to be able to utilize ION in the most effective manner.

Incentivized

Pexels has a few unique features that stand out, the most important being a 1-click download from the search results. No need to navigate to another page to find a "download" button. This reduces the time required to find and download an appropriate image. The search results load fast, with lazy loading, so there's no annoying pagination at the bottom. I often travel as I work, and at times my internet connection can be slow or unstable. This kind of feature may seem minor to some users, but when on a slower connection, it makes a big difference. If a search term is too broad, it can recommend related keywords to search for - this helps to find the right image faster.

I haven't had a lot of experience with templated CMS systems and was not involved in the original selection, though I was part of the renewal discussions. Most of the templates I've used have been html and created in house on an as-needed bases

Incentivized

Separate client portfolios enable scalability, however, some elements are still grouped for all accounts so it's difficult to scale for an ad agency with multiple clients. Would prefer totally separate sections of the platform for all clients with each element housed separately.

Incentivized

• Positive: the writing material when well illustrated gain more engagement.
• Positive: images can inspire better descriptions of scenarios and landscapes and therefore can make long texts more attractive.
• Positive: we saved a lot of time when writing.
• Negative: some images do not have enough quality for printing purposes.

Incentivized

• So far the impact has been positive, but as we are new to the platform that opinion is based on relatively few interactive assets.
• There hasn't been any negative reactions or impact from Ion as of yet, but as I said before it's still early for us in terms of usage (less than a year).
• We do really appreciate the level of complexity and customization available in the platform.

Incentivized