You've probably noticed that Bynder and Brandfolder are mentioned a lot when you’re researching for a digital asset manager. That’s because they’ve been around a long time and have become dominant players in the digital asset management (DAM) industry.
But they’re super expensive and their features are complex, which makes them poor DAM contenders for growing ecommerce brands on a budget.
But the good thing is you don’t have to settle for either of them. There are digital asset management solutions, like Dash 🤩, built for the unique challenges of a growing businesses. And it’s super affordable, too.
In this article, we'll compare two of the most popular DAM tools, Bynder and Brandfolder. You’ll learn about their differences whilst discovering alternatives that won’t break the bank.
What is Bynder?
In their words, “Bynder is a digital asset management (DAM) platform that goes far beyond managing digital assets.”
They’re all about helping large businesses collaborate and launch marketing campaigns faster. Organising and sharing visual assets is an important part of this, yes. But it also includes:
- Content planning and creative project management: This helps you customise approval workflows, assign tasks and track deliverables.
- A mobile DAM application: So you can work on go—ideal for sales teams travelling around the world.
- Customisable brand guidelines: Templates for consistency across all of your organisation’s digital content
Bynder could become the favourite tool in your arsenal if you’re an enterprise business looking for an all-in-one platform to help you coordinate large-scale marketing efforts. But all those extra features easily overwhelm smaller, more agile companies and make the digital asset management experience super complicated.
We covered more Bynder pros and cons in our Bynder alternatives article.
What is Brandfolder?
It’s nearly impossible to discuss visual asset management without mentioning Brandfolder. It’s been around for a while (2012, precisely) and helps large companies like Zoom and Celerion save thousands of brand asset management hours.
Brandfolder clients particularly love how it balances many features with a functional and easy-to-understand user interface. Let’s take a quick look at some of the things enterprise companies can do with Brandfolder:
- Content automation: Brandfolder lets you automatically create and export assets that match your brand guidelines for consistent brand presentation.
- Brand intelligence: You get real-time data insights on how your brand assets are being used. This is super helpful when you’re a part of a large company where many people can access your DAM. You can see your top-performing content and monitor asset distribution easily.
- Manage archived assets: You can organise and store outdated digital files in a separate vault inside Brandfolder called ‘cold storage’. This way, you have a single source of truth for your digital assets without mixing outdated content with the images and videos you’re currently using.
But it’s not the best solution for growing brands. Read our Brandfolder alternative article to find out why.
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Brandfolder vs Bynder: Key features
Let’s see how these two DAM heavyweight tools square up with each other so you have a better idea of what they can do for your growing ecommerce business.
If you’re looking at these features and wishing you could get them at a reasonable cost, then you’re in luck. Dash offers most of the important digital asset management benefits that Brandfolder and Bynder does, but for just £79/$109 per month. Dash also has essential features required for a growing ecommerce business, including:
- Advanced search functions like AI tagging and custom fields so you can find assets quickly and launch new product and marketing campaigns faster.
- Cropping and resizing to get assets ready for different marketing channels, including social media platforms.
- Integrations with core tools like Shopify, Hootsuite, Canva and more.
- Public portals for sharing assets with retail partners and distributors.
- Guest uploads for receiving content from freelancers and other external collaborators quickly.
Check out our complete list of digital asset management features to find out how Dash can help you grow your brand.
Bynder vs. Brandfolder: Pricing
In typical enterprise DAM fashion, Bynder and Brandfolder aren’t upfront about pricing, so you need to contact them for a custom quote. Honestly, you’ll have to jump through a few hoops.
You’ll need to book a demo call, explain your business’s specific needs and wait for a sales manager to design a custom plan for you. What’s more, visual content is super important to most ecommerce brands, so you’ll likely have loads of assets that you want to store which will push the price up. Just take Kelly Wynne, who was quoted $10,000+ for a DAM, just because they wanted to store lots of assets!
To give you an idea on pricing, we dug around and found that Brandfolder pricing plans start at a whopping $1,600 per month, while Bynder’s basic package costs about $450 monthly. These are huge numbers for any small business, plus you’ll be paying for many features you don’t need.
Things are different with Dash. First, we are very transparent about pricing and features because we don’t want you jumping through hoops just to find out if we fit your budget. We know that every minute counts for a growing ecommerce business and we want to help you find the right DAM software—so you can start reaping the rewards early.
Now, to the actual numbers: For £79/$109 per month, you get access to all of Dash’s features, including portals for external collaborators, integrations to apps like Dropbox and Hootsuite, and so much more, from day one. You also get unlimited users, meaning you won't suddenly be paying more as your team grows.
In one of our customer’s words, “The value for money is unbeatable compared with competitors who offer more expensive solutions with more options, but which we don't want to use because of the size of our company. Dash adapts to our company's size and provides the functionality we need at our level.”
Brandfolder vs Bynder: User interface and experience
A well-designed DAM with intuitive navigation and a visually pleasing interface will reduce the time you spend searching for digital media files.
When comparing Brandfoler vs Bynder: Brandfolder wins. It has a simple yet visually elegant interface that lets you easily organise and deploy images and videos. Take a look. 👇
It’s pretty easy to use too. In one user’s review, they say: “The intuitive user interface makes it easy for our team to add assets. Navigating is simple for the reviewers. We have access to all the industry standard tools that simplify organising and sharing assets. We don't need to spend much time training those who use Brandfolder. You can log in and get up to speed very quickly.”
However, the user experience still needs a bit of work. For example, the auto-tagging feature sometimes adds irrelevant keywords to your content’s metadata, which you have to update manually. Assets can easily get mixed up or lost if you don’t have a solid tagging system.
Bynder’s users say the tool’s out-of-the-box UI experience can be a bit barebones and confusing without customisation. The design feels clunky and has a significant learning curve because of its many features.
“It just feels like dated technology, to be honest,” one user explains. “We were learning how to create a visually pleasing home page for our DAM, and I felt like I was using a website backend from 2005. There are also simple things it can't do, like a notification system for users when certain asset types are added.”
Here's a screenshot of Bynder's interface.
So, how does Dash compare? Pretty well, if we do say so ourselves.
Our user interface is super user-friendly and designed to do your visual content justice. For example, you get beautiful image previews instead of boring thumbnails. Most of our customers’ Dash’s could pass for beautifully curated Pinterest pages 😍. Take COAT Paints, for example.
Dash helps you quickly locate and distribute your assets. The advanced search functionality and auto-tagging make it easy for you to organise assets and find what you need on time. As one of our customers explains:
“Finding images is incredibly easy with Dash’s tagging system. Dash is worlds more intuitive and streamlined than any other DAM system I've used. My colleagues can find exactly what they need in seconds and easily send packages to partners.”
Brandfolder vs Bynder: Onboarding
Both Brandfolder and Bynder have significant learning curves. Even with robust onboarding processes, it takes time to get the hang of how they work and use them effectively.
For example, this Brandfolder user says they don’t have a 100% understanding of the tool despite spending hours on training. And this user had to hire an in-house Brandfolder administrator to help the team get and stay up to speed with the tool.
It’s a similar narrative to Bynder. Several gaps in its knowledge base make it difficult for users to learn about and implement features quickly. For example, this user struggled with organising and categorising assets into hierarchies.
“It takes some effort to understand the logic behind setting up the digital asset management taxonomy—some settings are not easily found/understood. Setting up the single sign-on (for Azure) is not that difficult, but it would have helped to have platform-specific help/instruction. Now, we spent quite some time finding it out ourselves.”
Getting started with Dash is really easy. First, you won’t need to spend time undergoing lengthy onboarding training or hire in-house support. We have a robust self-serve academy where you and your team can watch (and rewatch) hands-on tutorials for setting up your Dash on your own schedules. We also have a help centre filled with support articles explaining our features.
On top of that, there’s an Ideas Hub where you can submit feature requests and provide direct feedback to our product development team.
But we know these resources don’t replace the need for human interaction. That’s why we have a super-responsive customer success team on call to help you resolve any issues quickly. As a matter of fact, we were voted as having the Best Relationship at G2’s Spring Awards.
Here’s what one of our customers thinks about our awesome CS team:
“Dash’s customer service is fast. They never tell you, ‘Have you searched this already?’ They just get on with the job of helping you so you can keep working. Working with a new system is always hard, but the service team at Dash have been so helpful in getting things how we want them without sending us loads of YouTube links to watch to try and fix the problem ourselves.”
Bynder vs Brandfolder: Customer support
You already know that Dash takes the lead in customer support responsiveness. Let’s see how Bynder and Brandfolder compare.
Bynder has done a great job with customer support. In fact, there are lots of glowing reviews where Bynder customers shout out their favourite customer success managers, like this one:
“[Bynder employee] has been an excellent trainer! Answers all questions and concerns, trains us accordingly and does not overwhelm us with information. [Other Bynder employee]was also a great help when we needed additional add-ons in our subscription and made sure we got what we were looking for.”
But some aspects of their service need a bit of work. For example, customers don’t have points of contact on the customer success team, which affects how quickly they can get a response from Bynder’s support team.
How does Brandfolder compare? Its support team covers the basics like responding to customer issues, providing training and helping customers make the most out of the tool. But larger teams say the support process isn’t as hands-on as they need.
“I don't find our CSM to be very helpful. That's not necessarily a downside of the platform itself, but we have 1,000 staff members using this platform and could sometimes use some extra support with training opportunities. We've been told we have to pay extra for these services.”
If you use Dash, we’ll never charge you extra help. You can simply send us a message via the in-app chat support, and we’ll aim to resolve your issue ASAP. And, if necessary, we’ll be available to hop on a quick call so you can share your screen and show us what your issue is. To learn more about our support, check out our G2 profile which rates us as having 9.6/10 for quality of customer support. 🙌
Which is the best DAM for you?
Now you’ve weighed up Brandfolder and Bynder, where does that leave you?
Remember, you don’t need to settle for an enterprise DAM solution. Even if you’ve got lots of budget to spend on a digital asset management tool, why would you want to spend thousands of dollars on a software solution that might not fit all your needs? If this rings true, here’s a quick summary of why Dash might be the better choice:
- Dash is simple and intuitive, meaning there are no big learning curves.
- Pricing starts at £79/$109 per month, and you get all features and unlimited users (you’ll only pay more if you need to increase your storage capacity).
- Dash has excellent customer service and you can ask us a question anytime via the in-app chat.
- Dash integrates with some key ecommerce tools like Shopify, Canva and Adobe CC.
If you’re interested to hear from real customers, take a look at some ecommerce brands who love using Dash for their digital asset management workflows:
- Haws watering cans use Dash to get marketing assets out to their retail partners around the world.
- COAT Paints enjoy Dash’s beautiful user interface to organise their assets like a Pinterest board.
- Emmy London uses Dash’s keyword search to find themes for their upcoming marketing campaigns.
- MOO uses Dash to improve their creative operations.
- Kinetics use Dash to maintain a consistent brand presence online.
We hope you like the sound of Dash, but if you’re keeping your options open, check out these handy resources to help you find the best DAM for your business.
- Digital asset management software comparison worksheet
- Why you don’t need an enterprise DAM
- How to prove the ROI of your DAM
We've also got a series of articles exploring some key digital asset management vendors and their alternatives:
- Frontify alternatives
- Air digital asset management alternatives
- Canto alternatives
- MediaValet alternatives
- Image Relay alternatives
But, if you’re ready to jump in, try Dash for free with a 14-day, no-commitment trial and let us know what you think ✨
Faith Uzuegbu is a content marketer and freelance writer for B2B SaaS and tech companies like ClassPass, PlayPlay, and Thinkific.
