Canto Reviews & Product Details

Holy smokes!! We love Canto! It's basically like having Google images for your photos/assets. It is easy to search and tag images. Looking for a photo with a lot of white space for a website? Not a problem! You no longer have to scroll through thousands of images looking for a photo with white space because you've tagged your images and you can easily pull it up with search. So easy and saves so much time. The facial recognition feature is HUGE. Does it take you hours to search through photos to find the one you are looking for of a specific person? Not anymore! You can search for it, and voi la! You've got your mits on it! The Adobe integration is fantastic. You don't have to download each image and then insert, they are all right in a library in the Adobe App (and guess what?! you still have all of the same great search features so you don't have to spend hours scrolling).

If you are a brand, you NEED Canto! It will save you so much time, you will thank me later, and it is worth every penny!

There are a lot of DAMs out there, I met and spoke with all of them. Canto is no questions asked the best. It is fantastic! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is cumbersome to learn. There are a lot of features. Maybe too many features that it seems a bit overwhelming sometimes. They do have a FANTASTIC team that does a multi-week on-boarding with you. And their customer service is great if you have questions down the road. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto is an excellent digital asset management (DAM) platform. This is our first DAM, so shifting our processes, developing best practices, and training was a significant lift at the start. Our implementation manager at Canto, Meghan, was knowledgeable, thoughtful, and patient as we moved through the setup and training. She took the time to answer questions, offer resources, and got answers when we had unique requests.

The platform itself is easy to use, straightforward, and offers a lot of customization for us. Canto also provides a plug-in to InDesign (Canto Connect), which was a key factor in deciding to go with Canto. While we considered other DAM options, Canto had the most approachable way to integrate images from the DAM to projects and maintain the integrity of the files and the security of copyright agreements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are some limitations in the backend file structure or metadata when loading to the system, however, the Canto team is nimble and R&D listens to customer comments and works on improvements. Otherwise, no major issues at this point. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The initial sales demo and calls were informative, providing clear answers to our questions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

As an organization, we made the decision to purchase this subscription under very specific terms, including a delayed implementation start date of January 2024. However, we were pressured by the sales team to sign the agreement before the end of November 2023 due to pricing constraints that would not extend into December.

Despite our clear timeline, an unexpected staff transition in December left us unable to begin implementation as planned. We reached out that same month to request a deferment, knowing that we would not be able to proceed for the first eight months of 2024. That request was ignored until we followed up again in January, at which point we were informed that no adjustments could be made due to the signed contract. Additionally, the original sales representative had left the company, leaving us with no point of contact who had been involved in our initial discussions. This response made it clear that our business was not valued and that there was little regard for building a trusted relationship with us as a new customer.

Despite numerous emails throughout the year, we finally met with an account representative on December 13, who assured us they would explore potential solutions. However, despite multiple prior outreach attempts—starting with an initial email in September—there was no follow-up after that meeting. The only communication we received was an invoice for payment. Even after reiterating that we were still awaiting a resolution, the only response came from the accounts payable department.

Now, after eight weeks of silence, we have finally received a follow-up, only to be offered a mere six-month extension—despite having already paid for an entire year of service that we have been unable to use and demanding another year of payment with no clear path of onboarding or implementation. This offer does not acknowledge the challenges we faced, the lack of communication, or the fact that we have been trying to resolve this issue for months.

We are extremely disappointed by this experience. The lack of responsiveness, inflexible policies, and disregard for customer needs reflect poorly on the company’s commitment to service and support. We had hoped to establish a productive, long-term relationship, but this experience has left us questioning whether this is a company that truly prioritizes its customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It has great tools to search for assets, download and manage the galleries. The search tool is quite good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The experience of uploading assets has issues. The suggestions for TAGS is too aggresive, and the suggestion should not take precedent, especially if it does not start with the same spelling as what was typed.

For example the tag FISH, and the suggestion is ICE FISHING, and we have to redo the process several times to ensure the correct tag is entered.

Pressing enter after adding a TAG, makes the cursor dissaperar and the user has to select the input bar again for every tag. Best practice is that Enter selects the tag and keeps the curson on the same dialogue box so a new TAG can be added.

The Chat bubble is very annoying, it covers the Download Button when the Download window is opened.

When I create a single download preset for a Portal, and no other alternatives existe, Do we really need to go through all the selection process? Can it go straight to download with the preset, just like it does when you download the original?

When sharing a URL to a folder from the main library, with a user who is only in a portal but has access to the same folder I'm sharing, it's a very convoluted process to go to the portal that that user has, and share that URL.

Is there a way to share a URL that will open that folder to all of those who have access? It becomes very tedious to go to different portals, select the URL and share each URL with the different users when working with users who are using different portals. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that it's very customizable with lots of eco-systems to help streamline and group work or departments to ensure everyone is getting access to the assets they need. The integration was so seamless and since the look and feel is similar to Google drive it was easy to implement and use. The customer support is very quick and helpful. Since switching to Canto we had an increase in platform use and reduced the amount of assets that were lost in our 'asset graveyard'. I use this took in our marketing department every day! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I wish you could group assets together in the same sizes instead of having them upload as separate assets but the in-tool resize and crop feature is top notch! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Our team uses Canto to store and organize our photos, branding, and internal image assets. Images in our library are tagged and categorized, and facial recognition is used to identify the people in our photos. This type of image organization has made it easier for colleagues to view, share, and search for photos and assets within our image collections. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It takes quite a bit of time to organize things, adding information to images, and making the assets information-rich. I have also gotten error messages when uploading images more than once. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Helpful implementation crew, lots of great tutorials/information. Recently they started having video series that you can attend or get in your inbox that help you better understand all the cool things Canto can do.

When speaking to an account rep, they were able to help solve a few problems and make my job easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No downside other than the fact that I still have not used all the great bells and whistles that it offers! My only disappointment is that some OTHER companies charge for you to use Canto's integrations. (Hootsuite) Not Canto's fault, though! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the tagging feature and ability to share content out to clients without them having full access to our account and they can share with attendees that have been at an event. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are certainly glitches and the system can be a bit slow and rudimentary. For example within an album trying to create a new section and having the images show up in a section below but the title not appearing after several reattempts to log in. Another issue is when faced is when using the mobile upload function it takes an extensive amount of time even if you are on a strong wifi network. Sometimes it crashes and you have to start over on the upload. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Canto is so user-friendly and easy to navigate. It arranges all digital content into an easy-to-use platform that can be shared internally and externally with ease. The search feature in Canto is excellent! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The one thing we have struggled with Canto is that multiple people cannot contribute to a collection. This feature was possible in Merlin and we lost that during the migration to Canto. We have teams that curate/add pictures to a folder in SharePoint and Canto not being able to allow this feature makes us have to contineu to use SharePoint. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We were looking for a platform that would be able to house our sermon videos (.mp4 & .mov), audio files (.mp3), lesson outlines (PDF & Microsoft Word), and graphics (PSD, JPG, PNG). We had our files in abou 20 locations (emails, Dropbox, OneDrive, individual computers, servers) and they were not organized. We were looking for a solution that would house everything & allow team members to search for the files & be user-friendly for them. Canto provided this. We created a standard operating procedure for how to enter the data (i.e., file naming procedures, listing of keywords, etc.). It has worked well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One of the reasons I selected Canto was because they provided direct URLs and cloud links. However, I'm not able to use these direct URLs on our mobile app or other applications. I still have to download the video & upload them to those apps. So, they are not useful when trying to use them in other applications. They seem to only work well when sending them to others to open the file. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.