How Much Does a DAM System Cost?

The amount you pay for a software solution should never exceed the results you get from it. For businesses that deal in products, having a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform is essential for tracking all assets related to your products. But how much does a DAM cost, and which platform provides the most functionality for your investment? The answer lies in the platform you pick.

What Are the Benefits of a DAM System?

A digital asset management platform, or a DAM, is a solution that provides a central location for managing digital assets across your business. Digital assets include things like videos, forms, documents, images, and any other digital file related to your products. From a marketing perspective, DAMs provide many benefits for manufacturers and other product-focused businesses.

A DAM gives you the ability to tag digital assets with relevant keywords or descriptors to make it easier to find the file you need. Rather than searching through databases and looking through different file names to try and track down assets, you can search for the item and pull it up with ease. These assets are searchable by your entire team, making it easy to pull up files when needed without sending emails around the department asking for something to be shared. This improves collaboration and helps businesses become more agile.

You can also use a DAM to automatically update digital experiences like your website or product catalog. When a product asset is updated in the DAM, it automatically updates that same information on other channels where the asset is located. For example, if you change the image of a product in your DAM, the image will update across your website product pages and your digital catalog.

In addition, most DAMs allow you to create brand portals. These portals are used to share a curated selection of digital assets to other users, like teams in other departments, agencies, or supply chain partners. These portals don’t give third parties total access to your system, but allow them to find what they need without lengthy delays from trying to track down file owners and get permission to access the document or file in question.

How Do I Choose a DAM System?

As with most types of software solutions, there are many different Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions available. Determining which is the best solution for your business requires some forethought. It’s helpful to begin by asking yourself these five key questions:

• What is the primary problem(s) we’re trying to solve with the DAM?

• How many digital assets do we have and what types?

• How will we structure the taxonomy of our digital assets?

• What other systems do you need to integrate with?

• Where and how will the digital assets be used?

What is the Best DAM Software?

Many businesses want to know what the best DAM software is, so they can move forward with the solution. However, there are considerations to keep in mind as you browse through the options. Not every solution will work for every business. Some of the best DAM systems and the most popular options include:

• Lumavate

• Nuxeo

• Acquia

• Dash

• OpenText

• Adobe

• Canto

• Bynder

• Brandfolder

The last four DAM vendors —Adobe, Canto, Bynder, and Brandfolder— are some of the more common solutions that businesses will explore. However, these solutions are standalone DAMs. That means that they still require you to use a third-party solution or different agencies and developers to create digital experiences. That adds to the initial cost of the software on its own.

In addition, Adobe in particular is known for having a high cost and a lengthy implementation time. That could mean months before you can actually use the solution as intended due to the long set-up process. Overall, the high costs combined with the long implementation period limits the value that Adobe can provide to users. Even though it is the biggest name out of the DAM options, it is often not the best solution for manufacturing businesses.

Lumavate, on the other hand, is not only a DAM, but also includes a full Product Information Management and Digital Experience Platform in the platform. This provides a seamless integration with the DAM for users, who can get the benefits of all of these platforms combined into one coherent solution. Lumavate’s DAM can also be associated with product records in just a few clicks. That allows you to build digital experiences without any technical resources or reliance on developers and agencies.

How Much Does a DAM System Cost?

Digital Asset Management cost can vary a great deal based on the solution you select and the functionality it provides. A DAM pricing comparison can also have significant variations in price based on whether the solution is an on-premise solution or a cloud-based solution. The average digital asset management cost will typically range between $1,000 - $250k+ every year. Answering the five key questions listed above and knowing what you want to get out of your solution can help you narrow down what price point you are aiming for.

Lumavate is a full Product Experience Management (PXM) solution, unlike other competitors in the space. Lumavate provides built-in Digital Asset Management (DAM), Product Information Management (PIM), and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) functionality. On top of those four platforms in one solution, Lumavate also has text messaging capabilities for easy communication and a form builder solution to allow you to add form directly into your product experiences. No other solution on the market is able to provide the breadth and depth of functionality the way Lumavate can.

Some solutions have hidden pricing, like Adobe DAM pricing and Brandfolder pricing. This makes it difficult for businesses to determine what solution is the best for their needs, as they don’t know what the annual cost for the platform will be as they do research. Lumavate publicly shares its pricing on its website, so you can immediately know what tier of functionality works for your budget. Lumavate is typically 75 percent more cost-effective than other competitive solutions while providing more return on investment. These factors are what make Lumavate the best DAM system for functionality, integration, and cost.