Before diving deep into the sea of digital asset management systems, let me ask you a question, what is a digital asset? Well, the digital asset is just like any other media viz video, document, or photo.

But then why a different terminology? The reason is digital assets come with a ‘right to use’ policy. In other words, digital assets are digital media files that contain a right to use with them.

The use of digital assets is increasing exponentially, the reason being we live in a digital age where content creation and content sharing is the trend.

Now that we understand digital assets and know that it’s growing exponentially, a question must have popped up in our minds. How companies manage such huge accretion of these assets? Well, that’s where the DAM comes into play.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) offers an effective system that provides for storing, sharing, and organizing of the digital content in a central location.

In short, the DAM is a complete solution for content sharing and storage demand of an enterprise.

Let’s see the Top 7 free Digital Asset Management Software

Adobe Experience Manager

Adobe Experience Manager is one of the most popular tools for digital asset management. It’s mostly used for designing, maintaining, and customization of different types of websites by IT people and marketers.

Features:

Capable of storing huge amounts of digital content.

Inbuilt integration with various platforms like Email Marketing, e-commerce marketing for promoting brands, etc.

Creates and manages the social media community.

Pros:

Sharing of digital content across various channels digitally & translation for multi-devices.

Capable of tag managers, non-technical admins, and digital asset managers.

Easily searchable with metadata.

Easy creation and upload of files and folders in AEM

Cons:

Needs more automation for maintenance like purging, re-indexing, etc.

Knowledge of Java is required.

Sometimes too buggy.

Awful design of OOB related components.

HyperCMS

HyperCMS is used for the management of both digital assets and content. It’s mainly used for the content depository. Being an open-source CMS it’s used to store and maintain digital assets.

Features:

Can be accessed anywhere.

Support for mobile phones and tablets as well

One can create content once and publish anytime, anywhere on the cloud.

Pros:

Fast and reliable.

Easy integration with social media

Support for mobile phones and tablets

Large files can be sent without spamming the client’s mailbox

Cons:

Reduces the flexibility of websites

Takes time to update

Training is required for using the tool

OpenText MediaBin

OpenText is not only an on-premise but also a cloud-based solution. It helps in the accomplishment of digital assets more proficiently. Decreases repetition, inefficiency, and invalid assets that don’t meet the values of the brand.

Features:

Centralized repository

Self-service access

Asset searching

Content analysis

Automatic extraction of key concepts

Speech-to-text conversion

Reprtoir

Reprtoir is an online suite that helps music publishers and record labels in centralizing their content, managing their rights, and assist creative and administrative teams in their day-to-day tasks.

Features:

Managing and sharing playlists with your contacts.

Manage contracts and royalty splits.

Management of tracks and albums

The software is free of cost.

ResourceSpace

ResourceSpace is an open-source DAM system. Trusted by 250,000 users globally across organizations like Coca Cola, Toyota Google, and Autotrader.

Providing 24/7, multilingual, unlimited user, mobile & web-enabled access to help marketing professionals get the most from their digital assets. Though it is an open-source tool you’d need to pay for support.

Features:

Asset categorization

Customizable branding

Available as a mobile app

Pros:

Clean and highly customizable interface

Plug-in support

Cons:

Slightly difficult to navigate through

Doesn’t offer more advanced features, like image/video editing, the graphical workflow engine

Pimcore

Pimcore DAM, again an open-source DAM system, offers a single and centralized platform to enterprises. It consolidates, manages, and shares digital assets.

Features:

Incorporates a powerful central repository

Boasts a multi-tab interface

Configurable metadata management technology

Audio content

Customizable templates

Image editor

SEO management

Pros:

A flexible and extendable framework

Easy for developers to add customized features

Cons:

Requires various customizations

Phraseanet

It is an open-source DAM software. You can view, share, archive, publish an unlimited number of media files like videos, images, audio, documents, etc. from any standard web browser.

Features:

Asset categorization

Workflow management

Metadata management

Asset sharing

Pro:

Intuitive interface

Cons:

Not available as a mobile app

No customizable branding

No file conversion

Besides the top 7 free DAM software mentioned, once can also avail of some other top-rated DAM software. The catch here is that they’ll be paid.

Top 5 paid DAM systems

Adobe Experience Manager Assets

In Adobe’s DAM users can manage all the content and assets through a single platform. By streamlining collaborative processes allows marketers in working together more efficiently. Equipped with AI capabilities and data-driven insights, it can easily identify the content which is achieving a higher ROI.

Bynder

Bynder uses AWS services which enable scalability and performance. Bynder offers on-demand publishing features that give access to a smart template tool to users.

This access helps in creating branded materials such as advertisements, business cards, and banners.

Canto

Canto offers a gallery-style interface and also allows you to preview visual content. Users can run numerous reports to examine the performance of the content. Also, using the admin dashboard is a piece of cake.

Cloudinary

Armed with AI capabilities, Cloudinary’s DAM assists you in tagging assets. Setting the automatic tagging feature by the color, object, and facial recognition really works well.

Manipulation of assets stored here can be done in real-time.

CELUM

CELUM’s DAM comes with full integration and can be easily connected to other systems. This DAM solution offers a platform for searching, uploading, sharing, and managing files.

The work-in-progress feature enables automation and tracking the process becomes an easy job via its task management feature.

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