Canto Reviews & Product Details

Portals are our Client's favorite feature. It enables the Client to stop spending time responding to internal and external requests for assets. The upload links allow the Client to receive assets from external parties in one organized location. Any somewhat tech savvy employee can become an administrator. The admin panel is feature rich, yet the layout makes it very easy to use. Categorization and terms do not require a computer science degree to administer. Configuration can be completed without needing to engage technical support. For PowerUsers and end-users, it could hardly be made simpler. Canto has struck a nice balance between the familiarity of the folder structure and the efficacy of metadata. I think they found a sweet spot that accommodates the vast majority of users. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The project management-related capability is not as robust in Canto as it is in some competitor products. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very visual

Ease of finding files

Ease of viewing files

The smart way to find the assets

Friendly to share

Integration with other platforms to export

Can choice the quality of the asset

Like / Dislike the asset

Canto is very intent, you can understand the functionality and its features the more you use it, however training with the tool team was a differential, having support in the use of platforms is essential. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Excessive steps to successfully save files

Difficulty creating my own groups in a library

No integrations to import assets

Absence of comment field in assets

Could also group creatives by recognition, like Google functionality of similar standards.

The viewing of PNG files for example could be applied on a standard background allowing recognition.

Could have a feature to already export the selected assets in presentation mode, like an album Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

After years of getting by with a server-based media drive, it's been a huge boon for efficiency to have a cloud-based digital media storage solution. The search feature alone has saved us days worth of productivity. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Load times are occasionally a noticeable issue, though those challenges are mild. I do wish there was a simpler way to group collections/albums. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We use this to offer a DAM to our client. We maintain all of their assets and this allows them to have access to the resources we have organized and optimized for them. One of the features I enjoy is the custom client facing portal that is branded for the specific client, while maintaining a separate branded portal for internal use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can be difficult to keep it maintained. That being said, new features like Google Drive sync is making great progress in making this a flawless system. Once all of it is completed, I will never need to upload files to it again as anything I save to the Drive will automatically load into Canto! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto is exactly what they said, it's easy to use, it's supported well, and the cost is extremely competitive. In addition to all those factors you also see the features that most of their competitors are charging additional fees for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only real limitations that I've run into Weir band with and that was more to do with the environment that users were in then the actual application. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the ability to search for different projects by name and get a sense of what projects are able to be shared publicly and in what context. I also like that everything is in one place that is accessible from anywhere in the world with an internet connection. I appreciate that I can brand the platform as an admin for my company so that when my colleagues interact with it they feel like they are directly engaging and interacting with our company as opposed to a third party host or another site hosted elsewhere. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dislike that it can get messy fast if the project owners do not upload the correct information or tag things incorrectly. For example, if the person who uploads a project defines a tag as one color when it actually is a different color, that can pose issues in marketing materials when we incorrectly identify something and the project is wrong in printed materials. It can make us look bad to clients as a result. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love the search functionality. It's super quick and easy to find the assets I need. Also, the share links are awesome. Everything is very user friendly.

I love how you can create share links and toggle their settings. Now, we can share videos with clients and not worry about them downloading the videos. This is also much quicker for everyone. The client can watch the video on a web browser, instead of having to download it, and depending on the video size, this can take quite some more time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I wish you could quickly share "My Collections" with anyone, like create a shareable link to a collection, instead of having to select all the assets within a collection and then creating a share link.

I wish some of the tools were more readily available. For example, I have to select an asset, then the select all button will appear, so I need to make 2 clicks to select everything, when I wish it could be 1. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Several features have really simplified my photo management role. Metadata is customizable to your needs - and while it takes careful thought initially, when set up is easy to apply. 'Upload links' allow outside people to add photography directly to the system in a controlled manner - this has significantly helped with timeliness and ease of receiving photography. I love the branding portal, and the versioning capabilities. I also love the Facial Recognition feature - no more tagging the same people over and over. The company consistently improves the software and innovates - releasing frequent feature updates. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While it is fairly intuitive, there are aspects (of the portals for example) that need to be explained to a new user - this can be time consuming. I have been frustrated that new features are sometimes expensive paid add-ons, even when they were discussed as 'coming' during the research process (features I thought would be included with upcoming releases). As much as possible, try to envision future features you will need and consider that in your contract discussions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best features (there are many!) are keyword tagging, file conversion and downsize options on download, and albums features (files can exist in more place than one).

Integration with outside contributors, contractors, and agencies is great and very simple.

Filtered searches/filter are also very handy when looking for one specific file type. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto can be clunky to work with, especially if you don't have the time to sit down and watch onboarding content or video tutorials on how to navigate the program. The number of features is EXTENSIVE, but they can get overwhelming to work with on the day to day.

Maintaining all the files and keeping everything up to date is also imperative for Canto to work its best, which can get time-consuming. This, however, is not much different to other asset management sites out there, though.

Multiple iterations of a design or photo file get repetitive when scrolling—A feature to identify those very similar files, then group + collapse them together would be an improvement in the scrolling experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Assets are accessible by those who need to be dealing with them. Assets, which include photography, video, presentation, and branding, can be added by everyone within our organization. Being able to have contributions in an organized, secure, and fast way has allowed us to utilize that material for reaching our target audience with general ease and directness. Through having all our data assets in one place we have been able to communicate our brand in mission within our organization effectively and consistently. This has also allowed for us to reference the same file without wondering who has the most recently edited content. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is sometimes difficult to navigate through out the various sections of the software. Integrating with presentation software has not been seamless. When I want to save as a asset to reopen and edit is not real easy on the go. When I first started using Canto my account was mistakenly crossed with another brand page, which made it difficult to get to the content that was relevant to me, that seems to have disappeared since. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very easy to use. UI is well built. Canto team is always available to help if difficulties. AI for tagging is really effective Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

API can be hard to use if you don't have an expert development team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Canto interface is relatively intuitive, but does have a bit of a learning curve initially. The interface is very icon-based. All features are represented as icons and require hovering over to understand what the icon actually represents. One fantastic aspect of Canto is that it allows for locking down content very easily. The sharing settings are particularly robust and offer a variety of custom fields, expiration being a key field. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Certain aspects of the user experience are not great. There are a ton of icons and some of them that you think would mean one thing actually mean something else entirely. It is also not clear which folders or assets can be shared and how. I often find myself looking for where the share icon lives and find that I can't share certain folders or that I need to make certain selections before sharing. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

How easy it is to manage and share files uploaded onto the platform to different users, as well as controlling visibility of said files thorough different user specific portals. It is unbelievably easy to manage users as well, with registration to it being able to be set up as a self-registration process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Excel Exports could be more robust, in terms of being able to filter or pull specific groups of files (Such as duplicates) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We have a lot of creative, spanning from raw image files to full-on ad campaigns. Being able to use tags, which are easily searchable, has been a HUGE time saver. Being able to crop, resize and compress images before downloading make our life a lot easier. I personally really like the Branding Guidelines feature; we can share it with our partners and it's a very clean and simple experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can be a bit overwhelming at the beginning. There are a LOT of customization options in the backend and it takes practice and diligence to become proficient at it. But it's worth it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto has great albums and folders to organize everything you need by photo shoot, photographer, keywords, etc. Creating outward facing albums is a little complicated, but makes it very easy to send files/links to outward facing clients. Their templating system is also extremely helpful to keep us on brand. It's a little non-intuitive to create and upload the templates, but easy once you learn the system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Their templating system is through a third party vendor, so when my team had issues with this system earlier this year, there were extra steps required to get the issues addressed. Canto was very helpful and apologetic, but it did take extra time while we were on a deadline. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Canto's search feature. The facial recognition makes it easy to find photos of specific people. I also like that I can start typing in a key word/photo tag and the search provides a list of suggested words to search for. I can also change the size of the thumbnails and apply filters while I'm looking through photos. The search feature makes it quick and easy to find what I'm looking for and keeps me from having to scroll through galleries to find what I'm looking for Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

When I'm looking through photo galleries, it takes a while for the photos to load. I also found that when I'm waiting for the photos to load, the page will jump back up to the beginning of the gallery and I have to scroll through all the photos again. The interface also seems a little dated and clunky. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Beautifully visual and easy to use platform, which was vital to serve our internal sales team who are not super technically savvy. Love that you can organize photos into Portals, Albums, and Collections, as well as tag them with important keywords. It gives you multiple ways to browse and search for photos. I also like the ability to choose the file type and size of your image prior to download, so you don't have to edit the size down later in photo editing software. This platform gave us a solution to having a one-touch access point to all of our marketing approved imagery, and had the ability to keep things gated, so that certain images were available to certain teams. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are some technical glitches every now and then. Photos sometimes default as CMYK instead of RGB, causing people who are not aware, to download a CMYK image and the coloring is way off. Another glitch is when you bulk upload, sometimes the prior settings get transferred over to your new batch of downloads, which is inaccurate. I wish there was more capability in sharing or that their account tiers were more flexible on the amount of portals. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto has been easy to use and easy to get up and running. The simplicity of having all of our images in one place have been astronomical. The amount of time spent wasted looking for marketing images has been eliminated completely. That was our main purpose for selecting a DAM platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only bad thing I can say was our onboarding tech wasn't really the greatest. She just wasn't very with it on the training. She would retell us things that we just spoke about so it was wasting a bit of time during user training. She was good at follow up, but the training was meh. I would say have people other than the onboarding specialist reach out to make sure everything is going well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that we're able to customize the platform to what we need so easily. We mainly use it to organize, store, and manage our extensive collection of in-house photos and marketing collateral, and it has been a great resource for that! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nothing really - the legwork of setting it up was extensive, but totally worth it to have a system that works perfectly for us! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto's administration tools are awesome and allow users to easily be managed with regards to rights/privileges. User sign ups are quite easy as the user can self register. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There's a bit of a learning curve with regards to mass tagging. But, with that being said, once you understand the concept behind meta-tagging in bulk, it makes for a very powerful tool. If you're a decent excel user, you should be fine when it comes to this task. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.