# Xinet Reviews **Vendor:** Ignite Enterprise Software Solutions **Category:** [Desktop Publishing Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/desktop-publishing) **Average Rating:** 3.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 14 ## About Xinet The Xinet solution is a flexible, efficient DAM system that excels at InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator workflows for smaller production teams and creative workgroups within the enterprise. ## Xinet Reviews ### 1. XINET: FALLING BEHIND... BUT STILL RELEVANT IN THE STACK FOR SOME. BUT FOR HOW LONG? **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2021 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Xinet, unlike most platforms, offers the combination of the backend of a traditional fileserver for ease of bulk ingestion, and a web-based front end browser-based proxy--media engagement (altho that can be a double-edged sword if you don't adequately assess the server resources/cores you will require to generate proxies in near realtime. Without adequate cores, etc... it's easy for the proxy db generation to fall behind the live-file engagement from the backend, holding up your front-end UI workflows. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The platform Is not configurable for the most part... requires development and/or customized dev to build what you need. As expected, that makes for tricky - and often expensive - release management. If you're hosting on a non-VM environment, traditional hardware gets expensive to replace every couple years, or when you outgrow the current build due to demand. Lack of a hybrid engagement is rather shameful (cloud/SaaS/on-prem) in 2021. Front end UI from all sources ranges from weak to poorly designed (regardless if you use 3rd party experiences, Xinet-provided, etc). Lack of native AI is weak Lack of native data exchange acceleration like UDP is weak The webnative admin console is horrendous. UI/UX is desperately needed. The company historically didn't provide advance release roadmaps, and/or product roadmaps to give clients a nod as to where the platform's going. That's terrible, There's more... but the build does offer a modicum of positives as well. It truly comes down to what you need, and why. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Up until Aclate and Ignite, the NP partner was fairly willing to rollout necessary improvements with only a small amount of clients endorsing the change. That is critical for anyone who isn't a huge conglomerate with enough power behind them, to force needed change. PHP updates have held back release 20 from 19, for over a year. We've pushed the company to make more secure choices with their dev, including their PHP. ### 2. Review for Xinet **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sc L. | Service Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 12, 2020 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Highly customisable. Features rich. Excellent fit for graphics uses **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Need an experience or well trained user to power use **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Automate workflow. Reduced repeated steps ### 3. Software that changed my company **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike W. | network administrator, Marketing and Advertising, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 10, 2018 **What do you like best about Xinet?** This back-end piece of software does so much - it's hard to fit in one review. First it is a web based Digital Asset Manager that allows you to (add, sort by, categorize by and view existing) metadata. This web based digital asset manager also adds the following functionality - web based thumb nail previews for almost any graphic format, web based image manipulation (crop, change size, change resolution, etc), web based file manipulation (ex. change photoshop file to jpeg), it ties into file archiving software and backup software. That's not all, the software also works as a high-end printer rip. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** 1. Not the cheapest of software 2. While it runs on most OS's, the server should be run on RedHat (or CentOS) for performance reasons. RedHat support addes to the cost of the server 3. You need fairly beefy hardware to run this software **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Just do it **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** We run a cross-platform (Mac and PC) business. Before this software, the PC users were unable to view any graphics files that the Macs were working on. Since the web based software does graphic thumb nails for just about any file type, it solved the problem. Hot folders can also be configured to farther increase productivity. ### 4. Production System Admin **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** brent s. | Mac Systems Admin, Marketing and Advertising, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 28, 2017 **What do you like best about Xinet?** The ability to archive and restore via OnFile. Changes made to a database enabled volume can be tracked when users are working from mounted volumes or if they are working in Portal. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The UI. It is getting much better though. Administering user access to mounted volumes. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** N/A **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use XInet in our production studio. Used as a file server and used to archive old work using OnFile. ### 5. Years of success with North Plains **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lawrence C. | Principal/CSO, Marketing and Advertising, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Rock solid software for both on premise solutions and SaaS solutions for DAM. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Cost can always be a factor but in the final analysis you get what you pay for. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** The North Plains solution solve a variety of problems as it relates to managing Digital Assets in an ecosystem that may also include orkflow automation, etc . . . ### 6. The People at North Plains are great to work with, and they have a valuable product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Xinet?** License group and operations responds to my questions in a timely fashion. Very Helpful. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The change to v19 was rocky. Could of used more info **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are a reseller ### 7. North Plains Telescope **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Staffing and Recruiting | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2017 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Visual library that can be accessible externally **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Search functions are hard, often times i type in something and what i'm looking for does not populate **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Easier search functions **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having a visual library allows self serving access to different functions of our company/partners ### 8. User Experience is so poor you'll want to hit things..... **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jon J. | UX Designer, Design, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 08, 2016 **What do you like best about Xinet?** It's pretty hard to say what I like best about telescope. So I guess the only thing I'll say about it is that it's a great place for us to store all of our photography, include information about model release and IP information. That's really the best I've got for saying what I like about it. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Oh my goodness....where do i start? The search tools are horrible and hard to understand. Navigating from page to page is a slider bar. It's full of unclear icons that don't make sense. It's slow. If you don't log out it keeps the session active on the server which means that when you are in a company like we are of thousands of employees it gets super bogged down and slow. In fact, the screenshot i'm going to upload to prove to G2 that I use this worthless software is going to be of me trying to search for a photo and having a spinning loading icon. That's pretty much all you can except when you preform a search. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Don't use it. Just contact your dev team and have them build you a solution. It will be ten times better than this crap. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need a repository for the thousands of photos and design files we use in our organization. Each photo needs an ID, attached IP information, usage info, and the ability to attach working files. ### 9. Clunky but works **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Broadcast Media | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 11, 2017 **What do you like best about Xinet?** This software makes asset management possible, but it needs a big upgrade **What do you dislike about Xinet?** It's very old school in its implementation, the searching is very clunky and playing back assets for sound effects is very hard. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** To store digital assets **Official Response from Erica Helmer:** > Hi! So sorry to hear you aren't 100% satisfied with our digital asset management technology. We've recently announced a complete overhaul of our legacy technology, and I'd like to see what we can do to help improve your experience. Send me an email at erica@northplains.com, and I'll get you connected with our senior support team. ~ Erica ### 10. Serves its purpose **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 03, 2016 **What do you like best about Xinet?** I work at a photo studio and I like that I can access direct mailers in each stage. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Sometimes I don't have access to certain months that mailers come out. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** It's fairly easy to use if you are properly trained on it. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** If I have access issues, I contact the help desk and it usually gets resolved. ### 11. industry standard WIP DAM solution **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rich C. | Technical Account Manager, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 14, 2015 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Xinet allows work in progress assets to be managed seamlessly for production departments. Since it generally functions as a file server to that community, they don't need to do anything more complex than save their files to the server. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The interface needs to be reworked to get current with modern UX standards **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** it's the default choice for any marketing or creative department that has more than 5 users. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy management of assets and easy distribution of those assets extenally ### 12. Works Much better with Customizations **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maryellen M. | Application Support Manager, Marketing and Advertising, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 17, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** The portal interface on top of Xinet allows for a lot of front end customization to make "pretty". The back end of Xinet is functional and a bit of a workhorse. With people with the right skillsets, it integrates well with other applications and allows for workflow efficiencies. For instance, we have an integration with our Merchansie Management/Shot Management systems, that allows for a placeholder image to be created in Xinet before the shot is complete. This allows for something to be placed on an Indesign page.. Later in the workflow, thru the use of a hot folder, the Placeholder gets replaced with the real image. When the Page reopens, the image automatically updates. Saves a ton of time for a person to not have to g and fetch the image again. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Out of the box the interface is ugly and clunky. It is not inexpensive to operate and support. You cannot purchase directly from Xinet, everything goes through a reseller, and while i do like our vendor very much, I'm at their mercy as it relates to cost. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Xinet was purchased by North Plains Software a bit ago, NP has their own DAM (Telescope) that has a lot of functionality that Xinet never had, I've been hoping some of those features would be integrated into XInet but that hasn't happened yet. Xinet is really two pieces. Xinet which is the server piece of it -where all the 'heavy lifting' occurs. and Portal which is the pretty front end - that does allow for customization and **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Primary use is a Digital Asset Management system to support multiple clients (internal use and makes assets available to external clients. Internally it's very easy to manage access requests via Active Directory. ### 13. Xinet within Advertising Agencies **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Lisa N. | Digital Assets Manager / Print Production Manager, Marketing and Advertising, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Xinet is a system that has allowed us to clear up much of our workflow and image repetition on our servers. With customization of an additional Transition Portal front end, the user interface has much improved. With properly training users, the metadata and search functions have proved helpful. It is customizable to a very individual level if you have the administration team to support that customization. This has helped us allow for very individualized access and abilities within the system for all of our users or groups of users. We also appreciate being able to customize individual portals for client access. Being able to set up various triggers and actions to help things move through the system and provide notifications is helpful as well. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The back end administration can be a bit cumbersome to figure out. And the training manuals aren't always clear. It has required the support of our integrator several times to figure out how to customize some functions or make triggers/actions happen. The search function doesn't work quite as well as we'd like, but we're hoping the new SOLR search will make a large difference. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** This is a good "middle of the road" product. There are definitely products out there that have many more bells and whistles. There are also products with much less. This is a good product that allows for search-ability, metadata management and workflow solutions. But to get your money's worth, you must be willing to allow for an administration team to manage this product that allow for both IT support and front end user support and training (which isn't necessarily the same set of people). **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** With Xinet we have mainly solved our asset management for imagery usage rights, repetition of imagery and workflow issues. One of the largest benefits that we have resolved is the reduction of server space that we need by eliminating much duplication. Of course, that need grows regardless as time progresses. Another large benefit is the relative ease as compared to our previous processes for finding archived or older jobs, images, etc. We also have found a cost savings for our clients as all of our users can now access so many files that previously they would have to go through several steps and people to acquire. ### 14. A great program for agencies with multiple clients **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Angelina A. | Graphic Designer, Social Media, Marketing and Advertising, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 08, 2015 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Helped keep assets and user permissions to access those assets organized. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** I learned just enough to use the program so I never learned all the ins and out of the program. And it is a vast program. I didn't explore too much because I was afraid I might change something that was working well for our agency. So I feel like there should have been better descriptors in each section to explain what each section does. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** The agency I worked for needed a way to house large amount of assets for multiple clients and control the access permissions for hundreds of users. We needed a system where users can easily search for assets by filename and keywords. We needed to control the usage of images, making sure images couldn't be downloaded if the usage expired. I was a Junior Asset Manager are the agency and learned enough to get by. But if I ever needed help, Xinet has a wealth of information online and my Studio Manager had a great relationship with the help desk at Xinet. ### 15. Telescope is a robust, customizable DAM **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dianna D. | Life Coach, Information Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** - Customization ability, e.g. to create not only a robust approval system based on the digital rights of the assets, but to limit accessibility to individuals or groups. Option to create 2 systems for asset security; visibility (access,) and downloading controls based on digital rights. - Drag and drop in V9 speeds up the process of adding to catalogs quite a lot. - Metadata can be created in several formats: including single to multiple values, dropdowns (cascading,) tree search, horizontal and vertical, non-validated and validated fields. Presents only the fields applicable to key values, shortening the list and the time for the input process. - "Sticky fields" - the metadata sheet in the system held the values from the last sheet, (though you could blank it out,) saving key strokes when ingesting ingesting similar assets. And, as ours was configured, many administrative fields for our assets would always have the same values so half the work was already done. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** It time consuming to input the metadata on an Excel spreadsheet while gathering the necessary information, because Telescope did not let you save an ingested asset without completing all the required fields, then copy and paste into the DAM. Further, when copying and pasting lists from Excel to Telescope, (we had to put multiple keywords into a Word doc to convert the comma delineated lists to lists with returns, which was the only way it would work in Telescope for values enabling multiple terms.) There was not a thesaurus or similar automatic solution to add synonyms to accommodate various terms input for searches. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Telescope is the Cadillac of DAMs; if you only need a bicycle, buy something simple that you can use right out of the box. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. Siloed assets, Iike CDs in people's drawers 2. Needed an automated delivery system to the whole company (over 100,000 on staff) 3. A way to keep track of digital rights and descriptive info about the assets. 4. To stop duplication of purchasing and shooting photos The most tangible benefit was the cost savings based on reuse of images that would not have been possible before. Then there was the risk reduction of litigation due to rights violations. Our information workers had more choices to create higher-quality materials, presentations, etc. End users' time saved searching, asking everyone you know if they have such and such photos or footage; and archivists' time saved searching and presenting sets of images the "client" may or may not like. ### 16. Review of Xinet with Portals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kristine P. | Digital Asset Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** We have the capability to create different branded portal sites for multiple clients. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Metadata that gets inputted in from our database remains on the site, it does not follow the file around. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** When you are setting up portals for different clients keep in mind their internet speed. When implementing the box and server location(s), keep in mind who will be using the system, who will be doing the uploads for your company. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Xinet has helped our company be able to archive old working files as well as be able to restore those files. It has served as a temporary solution to route new assets and approve of them by our Global clients. It has also served as a way for our marketing partners to view videos that we have created prior to downloading or asking for the high-res versions of the video. ### 17. As a digital asset manager I use this system daily to manage creative assets of all kinds. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Electronics | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 21, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** It's a big robust system that allows for many different uses; creative file management, asset management, metadata tagging, etc. As an enterprise level system it can handle a lot of data I can see why large companies find it useful and reliable. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** I dislike a lot about this product. The interface is not at all user friendly and in my experience using it, is often written off by potential users within a company because of the confusing nature of it's interface. Data is not readily available and requires a few too many clicks to get to. Searches are not at all intuitive and often the results are not particularly helpful to the user. It's also not a particularly fast system and file management, bulk tagging, file movement and custom cart downloads routinely get hung up and fail. It's too bad that such a big system is so clunky. Global users find it very slow and often have to create their own localized versions of assets they download. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Look at lots of other systems before choosing. Weight all possible uses and potential lack of use before deciding. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** The main business problem we're solving is the management of photographic assets. Large photoshoots and final image library assets. Metadata tagging is an important part of this and probably the biggest benefit we're seeing, which I realize is not a lot. I think we could see more benefits if we were to invest more money into customization and upgrades, adding available features we're not using and providing a greater degree of training to our users. But ultimately all of that falls short and is replaced with other more reliable means to those ends, ftp file transfer, desktop volume mounting, etc. These types of uses of the assets and the creative files tend to be most used by our employees. ### 18. Great Experience with Xinet DAM **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John Alex C. | Business Analyst, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Xinet and their reseller, IO Integration, were always willing to work with me regarding feature upgrades and how-to questions. In some cases, they'd walk me through the steps to solve a problem within a few hours of opening a support ticket. When I had to customize a portal site, I knew I could count on my Xinet team to see me through to success. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** When it came to heavily customizing a portal site, it was unfortunate that our onsite-hosted solution would need to be rigorously checked for any possible situations once a Xinet update was released. In those cases, I would have appreciated a highly-customizable, web-based solution with look-and-feel templates to deploy. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** When I was using Xinet, it was to manage digital assets for a marketing firm. Many of the benefits we realized had to do with metadata. The organization was rarely keen on actually putting metadata into the system, so we were able to use the Xinet Uploader tool to ensure that metadata was applied when the assets were entering the system. Also, we were able to provide off-site access to all of our assets through our client portal sites. This solved a lot of headaches at photoshoots when teams were willing to use the tools provided. ### 19. Telescope DAM applied to Print production **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 16, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Telescope is best used in an environment where detailed software implementation had been employed and clear guidelines such as those with the back-end information that comes with an ISBN are deployed. Once in place the software is robust. External vendors require a little bit of instruction for file ingestion however, InDesign, PDF and e-book files reveal well and are easily accessed by the end-user. This DAM has all most used capabilities of a viable asset repository in the printed matter world. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** As an asset repository, there is not much to dislike about Telescope. It is not a WIP-DAM unless you have external processes in place for the work-in-progress vehicle in your production environment. The new interface is more visually pleasing than older versions. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Well organized implementation is key to the success in the deployment of this product. For this to happen both parties have to have a clear deployment strategy and metadata structure in place before implementation. Greater success can come from continued in-house IT support coupled with consistent digital asset management team to monitor file ingestion and deliver assets and metrics to brand users. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits of a classic asset repository such as Telescope are that of strong support for a brand, it's work and history of growth as captured by the digital archive. Telescope is a stable software and runs best with IT and digital asset management team support adding pertinent metadata to make the archive robust. ### 20. Xinet for Prepress **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** This is a great DAM system for prepress departments. Many years ago, I first used this enterprise software at an ad agency as an internal-facing repository for storing high res assets. This company dealt mainly with print catalog development. Currently Xinet is used by a color house I work with for a large retailer. They use this system to manage campaign photography. We have the ability to admin the site remotely and customize for our user groups who need 24-hour access. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** This isn't the most advanced DAM system I've used and the interface seems a little dated. This software is geared primarily for prepress use and therefore not well-suited for enterprise level global asset distribution. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** I would highly recommend to those in the prepress industry. Though the parent company, North Plains, has two other products that could help scale a DAM platform enterprise wide. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need a location to store photography assets in various stages of retouching. This has greatly helped us streamline the number of locations assets are located within our organization. ### 21. Great for PrePress, but definitely in need of an Update **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 10, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** This is a very basic system that allows for some customization. It's main focus is for PrePress and I do like that it embedds XMP into the files. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The UI is cumbersome, it needs a LOT of customization right out of the box, does not handle video or large RAW file formats well. I have to rely on 3rd party plugins to get the features that I want. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** fine if you're working with mainly still assets, but I would look for another solution if you're working with extremely large files and/or video **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have an internally facing repository of unretouched and final produced assets and needed a system for agency users to view metadata and request files. Since this is the first agency DAM, it has helped with our process, but I'm not convinced that this product was the best choice for the future. ### 22. A bit complicated but gets the job done **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 29, 2015 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Xinet worked well for integrating with existing systems and workflows. It seemed configurable enough to be able to work around or with current processes. Although I wasn't part of the deployment, as a key administrator, I felt that it worked well with other tools. There were several pieces to our workflow of creating, delivering and repurposing content, and Xinet was able to handle the workload. The underlying logic, from my perspective, was very straight forward i.e. If A, then B. Setting up workflows and automation was very detailed and could be time consuming, but the end result was a clear cut solution that allowed for easy troubleshooting. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** Xinet isn't an ideal stand-alone DAM. That is, the user interface and search capabilities are very clunky and not intuitive. General users always had difficulty with on-boarding, and that required a lot of extra training and effort on the administrative side. So many people who needed it as a DAM came in thinking it was Google, and their single word search wouldn't retrieve their expected results. It was of no fault of the system, it was user error. Getting all of our users to understand and appreciate the tool for what it could and could not do was a large time commitment. And the UI has limited customization. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** If you don't have existing workflows and content, and you're just looking for your first central image repository, Xinet may be more than you need or are ready to handle. I would consider Xinet a good DAM for the more experience DAMers with more technical background. Although it could very well solve your basic needs, it could prove very time consuming on the on-boarding and configuration side up front. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Its original purpose was for soft-proofing, and Xinet excelled in that area. A follow-up use for Xinet was as the central digital asset management tool. It was to be the central truth for all digital assets enterprise wide. Those assets and our users varied to great extents, and the search interface has limited customizability. We spent a lot of time documenting best practices, communicating training, tips and tricks and serving as a reference desk for hundreds of regular users who simply couldn't figure out how to conduct a search. Once they knew, they were set, but it's not intuitive for general users. ### 23. Solid print production and DAM solution **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** I appreciate the seamless flow of the entire suite of the Xinet offering in that it is a solid underlying production workflow system (with add-ons) as well as a clean client facing DAM. This reduces the moving and duplication of assets which is great. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The slowness of the updates. It seems there is a bit of a longer lag time between updates than other systems. Also the license is a bit on the high side. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Make sure you partner with the correct integrator that understands your business case. Ie. if they have extensive experience in implementing in corporate marketing environments and none in creative agency environments, you might want to keep looking. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing development, production and delivery of globally created campaigns across multiple offices with ease. This has reduced some inconsistency in production of master assets and eliminated the sheer panic when someone needs to find something that another office delivered and they are closed for some non-US holiday. ### 24. Xinet image management provides stability. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Printing | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 19, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** The search ability using metadata is incredibly powerful when managing a database of thousands of images. You are able to sort and select those which match the criteria you seek. Cross platform of course, the ability to access and store a clients images to them to use remotely off site in incredibly easy. **What do you dislike about Xinet?** The preview system for images with clipping paths is sometimes unreliable and at times the client cannot zoom in to an image to which the user and manipulators have done. **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Great database handeling of large masses of images once keywords submitted. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Faster delivery to client and the ability to do online proofing based on xinet previews is a valuable costly time saving alternative. ### 25. Robust, highly customizable DAM **Rating:** 2.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Sporting Goods | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 18, 2014 **What do you like best about Xinet?** Incredibly customizable, metadata driven, cloud-based **What do you dislike about Xinet?** UI isn't always intuitive, not much flexibility in image previews **Recommendations to others considering Xinet:** Search for other options depending on desired feature set. Know that customized implementations will rely heavily on NP support which has not always proven to be reliable or expedient. **What problems is Xinet solving and how is that benefiting you?** Asset availability and access across global teams, standardization of asset metadata to allow for effective searching and identification of desired assets. ## Xinet Discussions - [What is Xinet by Northplains used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-xinet-by-northplains-used-for) - [What is Telescope by Northplains used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-telescope-by-northplains-used-for) - [View Xinet pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/xinet/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-15+09%3A46%3A35+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=2a7acf77-bb61-4712-b46e-4161f6473c01&secure%5Btoken%5D=459e8b78d8eb09750f21d3156c346335c298616c340f78323c199577b57debd7&format=llm_user) ## Xinet Features **Interface and Performance** - Import/Export - Organizational Interface - Search - File Preview - Analytics **Design** - Templates - Layout editor - Publishing formats - Saved preferences - Infographics - Asset Library **Asset Management** - File Types - Metadata - File Transformation - Versioning - Expiration - Watermark - Digital Rights Management - Brand Guidelines **Platform Additional Functionality** - Mobile Access - File Storage **Media Types** - Video - Audio - Images **Administration** - Workflow Management - User, Role, and Access Management - Brand Portal - Integration with Creative Software - Integration with Marketing Software **Agentic AI - Digital Asset Management** - Cross-system Integration ## Top Xinet Alternatives - [Brandfolder](https://www.g2.com/products/brandfolder/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (1,371 reviews) - [Acquia DAM (Widen)](https://www.g2.com/products/acquia-dam-widen/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (614 reviews) - [Bynder Webdam](https://www.g2.com/products/bynder-webdam/reviews) - 3.9/5.0 (114 reviews)